The plot and composition of a literary work. Basics of composition: elements and techniques

In addition to external connections, temporary and cause-and-effect, there are internal, emotional and semantic connections between the events depicted. They are

mainly constitute the sphere of plot composition. Thus, the juxtaposition of the chapters of “War and Peace” dedicated to the death of old Bezukhov and the merry name days in the Rostovs’ house, externally motivated by the simultaneity of these events, carries a certain content. This compositional technique sets the reader in the mood of Tolstoy’s thoughts about the inseparability of life and death.

In many works, the composition of plot episodes becomes crucial. Such, for example, is the novel by T. Mann “The Magic Mountain”. Consistently, without any chronological rearrangements, capturing the course of Hans Castorp's life in a tuberculosis sanatorium, this novel at the same time contains significant and complex system comparisons between depicted events, facts, episodes. It is not for nothing that T. Mann advised people interested in his work to read “The Magic Mountain” twice: the first time - to understand the relationships of the characters, i.e. the plot; in the second - to delve into the internal logic of connections between chapters, that is, to understand the artistic meaning of the composition of the plot.

The composition of the plot is also a certain order of telling the reader about what happened. In works with a large volume of text, the sequence of plot episodes usually reveals the author's idea gradually and steadily. In novels and stories, poems and dramas that are truly artistic, each subsequent episode reveals to the reader something new for him - and so on until the ending, which is usually, as it were, a supporting moment in the composition of the plot. “The force of the blow (artistic) is at the end,” noted D. Furmanov (82, 4, 714). The role of the final effect in small one-act plays, short stories, fables, and ballads is even more important. The ideological meaning of such works is often revealed suddenly and only in the last lines of the text. This is how OTenry's short stories are structured: often their endings turn inside out what was said earlier.

Sometimes the writer seems to intrigue his readers: for some time he keeps them in the dark about the true essence of the events depicted. This compositional technique is called by default and the moment when I read Finally, together with the heroes, he learns about what happened earlier - recognition(the last term belongs to

lives by Aristotle). Let us recall the tragedy of Sophocles “Oedipus the King”, where neither the hero, nor the viewer and readers for a long time They do not realize that Oedipus himself is to blame for the murder of Laius. In modern times, such compositional techniques are used mainly in the picaresque and adventure genres, where, as V. Shklovsky put it, “the technique of mystery” is of paramount importance.

But realist writers sometimes keep the reader in the dark about what happened. Pushkin’s story “The Blizzard” is based on default. Only at the very end does the reader learn that Maria Gavrilovna is married to a stranger, who, as it turns out, was Burmin.

Silences about events can add greater tension to the depiction of action. So, reading “War and Peace” for the first time, for a long time, together with the Bolkonsky family, we believe that Prince Andrei died after the Battle of Austerlitz, and only at the moment of his appearance in Bald Mountains do we learn that this is not so. Such omissions are very characteristic of Dostoevsky. In The Brothers Karamazov, for example, the reader believes for some time that Fyodor Pavlovich was killed by his son Dmitry, and only Smerdyakov’s story puts an end to this misconception.

Chronological rearrangements of events become an important means of plot composition. Usually they (like omissions and recognitions) intrigue the reader and thereby make the action more entertaining. But sometimes (especially in realistic literature) rearrangements are dictated by the desire of the authors to switch readers from the external side of what happened (what will happen to the characters next?) to its deeper background. Thus, in Lermontov’s novel “A Hero of Our Time,” the composition of the plot serves to gradually penetrate into the secrets inner world Main character. First, we learn about Pechorin from the story of Maxim Maksimych (“Bela”), then from the narrator-author, who gives a detailed portrait of the hero (“Maksim Maksimych”), and only after that Lermontov introduces the diary of Pechorin himself (the stories “Taman”, “Princess Mary", "Fatalist"). Thanks to the sequence of chapters chosen by the author, the reader’s attention is transferred from the adventures undertaken by Pechorin to the mystery of his character, which is “solved” from story to story.

For realistic literature of the 20th century. works with detailed backstories of the characters are typical,

given in independent plot episodes. In order to more fully discover the successive connections of eras and generations, in order to reveal the complex and difficult ways of forming human characters, writers often resort to a kind of “montage” of the past (sometimes very distant) and the present of the characters: the action is periodically transferred from one time to another. This kind of “retrospective” (turning back to what happened before) composition of the plot is characteristic of the works of G. Green and W. Faulkner. It is also found in some dramatic works. Thus, the heroes of Ibsen’s dramas often tell each other about long-standing events. In a number of modern dramas, what the characters remember is depicted directly: in stage episodes that interrupt the main line of action (“Death of a Salesman” by A. Miller).

Internal, emotional and semantic connections between plot episodes sometimes turn out to be more important than the plot connections themselves, cause and time. The composition of such works can be called active, or, using the term of filmmakers, “montage”. An active, montage composition allows writers to embody deep, not directly observable connections between life phenomena, events, and facts. It is typical for the works of L. Tolstoy and Chekhov, Brecht and Bulgakov. The role and purpose of this kind of composition can be characterized by Blok’s words from the preface to the poem “Retribution”: “I am used to comparing facts from all areas of life accessible to my vision at a given time, and I am sure that all of them together always create a single musical pressure.” (32, 297).

The composition of the plot in the system of artistic means of epic and drama, therefore, has a very important place.

CHARACTERS' STATEMENTS

The most important aspect of the substantive depiction of epic and drama is the statements of the characters, that is, their dialogues and monologues. In epics and novels, stories and short stories, the speech of the heroes takes up a very significant, and sometimes even the largest part. In the dramatic genre of literature, it dominates unconditionally and absolutely.

Dialogues and monologues are expressively significant statements, as if emphasizing, demonstrating their “authorship”. Dialogue is invariably associated with mutual, two-way communication, in which the speaker takes into account the immediate reaction of the listener, and the main thing is that activity and passivity pass from one participant in communication to another. The most favorable for dialogue is the oral form of contact, its relaxed and non-hierarchical nature: the absence of social and spiritual distance between speakers. Dialogue speech is characterized by alternation short statements two (sometimes more) persons. A monologue, on the contrary, does not require anyone's immediate response and proceeds regardless of the reactions of the perceiver. This is speaking that is not interrupted by “someone else’s” speech. Monologues can be “solitary and”, taking place outside of the speaker’s direct contact with anyone: they are pronounced (aloud or silently) alone or in an atmosphere of psychological isolation of the speaker from those present. But much more common are addressed monologues, designed to actively influence the consciousness of listeners. These are the speeches of speakers, lecturers, teachers before students 1.

In the early stages of the formation and development of verbal art (in myths, parables, fairy tales), the statements of the characters usually represented practically significant remarks: the depicted people (or animals) briefly informed each other about their intentions, expressed their desires or demands. Casually spoken dialogue was present in comedies and farces.

However, in the leading, high genres of pre-realistic literature, the oratorical, declamatory, rhetorical and poetic speech of the characters, lengthy, solemn, outwardly effective, and mostly monologue, prevailed.

These are the words Hecuba addresses in the Iliad to his son Hector, who briefly left the battlefield and came to his home:

Why do you, O my son, come, leaving a fierce battle?

It is true that the hated Achaeans are cruelly oppressing them,

Ratuja close to the walls? And your heart turned to us:

Do you want to raise your hands to the Olympian from the Trojan castle?

But wait, my Hector, I will take out the cup of wine

To Zeus the father and other eternal deities.

Afterwards, when you wish to drink, you yourself will be strengthened;

For a husband exhausted by work, wine renews his strength;

But you, my son, are weary, struggling for your citizens.

And Hector answers in even more detail why he does not dare to pour wine to Zeus “with an unwashed hand.”

Such conventionally declamatory, rhetorical, pathetic speech is especially characteristic of tragedies: from Aeschylus and Sophocles to Schiller, Sumarkov, Ozerov. It was also characteristic of characters in a number of other genres of pre-realistic eras. As part of this speech, monological principles, as a rule, took precedence over dialogical ones: rhetoric and declamation were relegated to the background, or even negated the natural conversationality. Ordinary, unvarnished speech was used mainly in comedies and satires, as well as in works of a parody nature.

At the same time, the so-called monophony prevailed in literature: characters spoke in the speech manner required by the literary (primarily genre) tradition 1 .

The character's statement still to a small extent became his speech characteristic. The diversity of speech manners and styles in pre-realistic eras was captured only in a few outstanding works - in “ Divine Comedy"Dante, Rabelais' tales, Shakespeare's plays, "Don Quixote" by Cervantes. According to the observations of one of the famous translators, the novel “Don Quixote” is multilingual and polyphonic: “... there is the language of the peasants, and the language of the then “intelligentsia”, and the language of the clergy, and the language of the nobility, and student jargon, and even “thieves’ music” (68, 114).

Realistic creativity of the 19th-20th centuries. inherent

1 Note that in modern literary criticism, dialogical speech is often understood broadly, as any implementation of contact, so that it is given universality. In this case, monologue speech is considered as having secondary importance and practically non-existent in its pure form. This kind of sharp and unconditional preference for dialogical speech occurs in the works of M. M. Bakhtin.

1 “The speech of the character,” writes D. S. Likhachev about ancient Russian literature, - this is the author’s speech for him. The author is a kind of puppeteer. The doll is deprived own life and your own voice. The author speaks for her in his own voice, his own language and his usual style. The author, as it were, restates what the character said or could have said... This achieves a peculiar effect of muteness of the characters, despite all their external verbosity" (in the collection: XVIII century in world literary development. M., 1969. With 313).

heteroglossia. Here, as never before, the socio-ideological and individual characteristics of the speech of characters who acquired their own “voices” began to be widely mastered. At the same time, the character’s inner world is revealed not only by the logical meaning of what is said, but also by the very manner, the very organization of speech.

He thinks: “I will be her savior. I will not tolerate the corrupter tempting a young heart with fire and sighs and praises; So that the despicable, poisonous worm sharpens the stem of the lily; So that the two-morning flower fades while still half-open.” All this meant, friends: I’m shooting with a friend.

These lines from “Eugene Onegin” perfectly characterize the structure of Lensky’s soul, who elevates his experiences to a romantic pedestal and is therefore prone to emphatically sublime, conventionally poetic speech, syntactically complicated and replete with metaphorical phrases. These features of the hero’s statement are especially striking thanks to the naturally free, worldly ingenuous, completely “unliterary” commentary of the narrator (“All this meant, friends: || I’m shooting with a friend”). And Lensky’s romantically effective monologue bears the stamp of irony.

Writers of the 19th-20th centuries. (and this is their greatest artistic achievement) with a hitherto unprecedented breadth they introduced relaxed colloquial speech, mainly dialogical, into their works. Lively conversation in its social diversity and wealth of individually expressive principles and aesthetic organization was reflected in “Eugene Onegin”, in the narrative works of Gogol, Nekrasov, Leskov, Melyshkov-Pechersky, in the dramaturgy of Griboedov, Pushkin, Ostrovsky, Turgenev, Chekhov, Gorky.

The speech of the characters often conveys their unique psychological states; statements, in the words of G. O. Vinokur, are built on “clumps of conversational expression” (39, 304). “The talkativeness of the heart” (an expression from the novel “Poor People”) is not characteristic only of Dostoevsky’s heroes. This mental ability of a person has been mastered by many realist writers.

“To think “figuratively” and write like this, it is necessary that

The writer’s heroes each spoke in their own language, characteristic of their position... - said N. S. Leskov. - A person lives by words, and you need to know at what moments of psychological life which of us will have what words... I carefully and for many years listened to the pronunciation and pronunciation of Russian people at different levels of their social status. They all talk to me in my own wayhim, and not in a literary way" (82, 3, 221). This tradition was inherited by many Soviet writers: “in their own way, not in a literary way,” the heroes of Sholokhov and Zoshchenko, Shukshin and Belov speak.

A literary work represents a holistic picture of life and recreates some experience. Integrity literary work is determined by the specific content revealed in it.

E. in the appropriate system of means and methods of expression. The image, genre, rhythm, vocabulary, plot, composition are meaningful and illuminated by the artist’s ideals.

In a work of art, content and form are inseparable. The unity of content and form is dynamic, moving, because art is a living process of reflecting objective reality. Time gives birth to new ones art forms. As I wrote

V. Mayakovsky, “...novelty of material and technique is mandatory for every poetic work”94. New rhythms of time demanded new forms from the poet.

Each literary work is unique, special art world with its own content, inherent only to it, and with a form expressing this content. Violation of the integrity of a work leads to a decrease or destruction of its artistry. The criterion of artistry is the harmonious unity of the content and form of the work. A literary work is the aesthetic unity of all aspects of its form, serving to embody artistic content.

1sch1 Structure of a literary work

The artistic embodiment of a holistic picture of life in all its complexity and inconsistency, which manifests itself in events, relationships, circumstances, thoughts and feelings of characters, is carried out by very different means.

The creative techniques of each artist are unique, but there are common means arising from the characteristics of literature. This, to use Gorky's term, is the primary element of literature - the language with the help of which verbal images. This is a depiction of life in its processes, movement, which highlights the plot, in which human characters and social conflicts are revealed. This is a composition, that is, the construction of a literary work, because in order to realize the ideological and artistic concept, the writer has to resort to various techniques. And the last thing is genre features, with which the embodiment of the artist’s creative concept is always associated.

The concept of artistry, like the definition of artistic, serves to indicate the specifics of art. The basis of the specificity of art is its aesthetic nature. Artistry is the highest cultural form of aesthetic attitude towards the world, for “the aesthetic fully realizes itself only in art”95.

In a work of art, Hegel noted, “the spiritual value possessed by a certain event, individual character, action... is purer and more transparent than is possible in everyday non-artistic reality”96.

A fact of life, becoming a more artistic element! prose, is transformed into a work, participates in the construction of a plot, which is, according to V. Shklovsky’s definition, “a study of reality”97, and according to E. Dobin’s formula - “a concept of reality”98.

From the south? t (French suj?t - subject, content) is a system of events that makes up the content of the action of a literary work; in a broader sense, it is the story of a character shown in a specific system of events.

The understanding of plot as the course of events arose in the 19th century.

V. What then scientists, in particular A. Veselovsky, considered as a plot, representatives modern literary criticism considered as a plot (lat. fabula - legend, fable); They call an artistically processed plot a plot. “The set of events in a mutual internal connection... let's call it a plot. The artistically constructed distribution of events in a work is called a plot,” noted B. Tomashevsky. He proposed the following distinction: the plot is “what actually happened”, the plot is “how the reader found out about it”99.

A textbook example of the discrepancy between plot and plot is Lermontov’s novel “A Hero of Our Time.” If we adhere to the plot sequence, then the stories in the novel should have been arranged in the following order: “Taman”, “Princess Mary”, “Bela”, “Fatalist”, “Maksim Maksimych”. But M. Lermontov distributed the events in the novel in a different sequence, following the path of deepening the character of the hero of his time, because he set himself the task of “revealing the history of the human soul.”

In the textbook “Introduction to Literary Studies,” edited by G. Pospelov, the sequence of presentation of events in the text of a work (what V. Shklovsky called “plot”) is proposed to be called “plot composition,” and the term “plot” retains the meaning dating back to the 19th century . L. Timofeev believes that practically there is no need for the term “plot” and refuses it, and interprets the plot as one of the forms of composition100. As we see, in literary criticism XX

V. the problem of the plot remained largely debatable.

A plot in prose is a system of events, changes in situations, external or internal changes in the state of the characters. Narration in a prose work is a story about events, in a poetic work it is a sequence of the author’s emotional statement.

Let’s compare M. Lermontov’s works of different genres: the poem “Don’t cry, don’t cry, my child...” and the story “Bela” from the novel “A Hero of Our Time.”

The first of them is a story about the events in the life of a girl whom a young man who came from a distant, alien land fell in love with out of boredom, seeking glory and war, who valued affection dearly, but he will not appreciate your tears! The plot as a system of events or actions of heroes is absent here. The events seem to be outside the scope of the poem. In the center is a reaction to an earlier event: consolation of the saddened mountain woman, a feeling of compassion for her. This is how the dramatic situation is restored: the story of love and separation of two people.

The plot of the story “Bela” is a story about the tragedy of an abandoned mountain woman, the story of her death. Events here are of dominant importance. Through their dynamics, Pechorin’s character is revealed and assessed. And the main conflict, the cause of which was Pechorin’s internal duality, was expressed in his actions. He failed to appreciate Bela’s love, only for a moment he believed that her feelings would fill the void in his soul. The motive of sympathy, compassion for Bela is present here too, but only in the intonation of the narrator - Maxim Maksimych.

The events that make up the plot are with each other or in a temporary connection when they follow one after another, as in Homer’s “Odyssey”, in I. Goncharov’s “Ordinary History”, or in a cause-and-effect relationship, as in a novel F. Dostoevsky “Crime and Punishment.” As a result, there are two types of plots - chronicle plots and concentric plots, or, what is also called, plots of a single action.

Aristotle spoke about these two types of plots. Each of them has special artistic capabilities. Chronicle stories recreate reality in all its diverse manifestations and are more often used in epic works. They allow the writer to talk in more detail about the formation human personality (autobiographical trilogy M. Gorky’s “Childhood”, “In People”, “My Universities”, N. Ostrovsky’s novel “How the Steel Was Tempered”), allow one to depict wide layers of life (“Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow” by A. Radishchev, “The Artamonov Case” by M. Gorky). Temporary connections play a big role in them. Concentric plots explore the cause-and-effect relationships of events that occur in the lives of the heroes, as in Boccaccio’s “Decameron” and in the novels by I. Ilf and E. Petrov about Ostap Bender.

Concentric and chronic origins can correlate with each other. This creates multilinear plots (“Anna Karenina” and “War and Peace” by L. Tolstoy, “At the Lower Depths” by M. Gorky).

There is no doubt that the plot reflects reality, figuratively reveals life conflicts and expresses the writer’s assessment of them.

The plot cannot be identified with the content of the work, since it may also contain extra-plot elements, which will be discussed below. The plot mainly consists of the actions of the characters. Moreover, they can be saturated with external dynamics, when many events occur in the lives of the heroes, rapidly changing, leading to sharp shifts in their destinies (we see this in fairy tales, in the tragedies of W. Shakespeare, in the works of A. Dumas, F. Dostoevsky, M. Sholokhov, A. Fadeev). But writers often turn to internal action when they show profound changes in the lives of their characters not as a result of their decisive actions and the rapid change of events, and as a result of their understanding of complex human relationships and reflection on a contradictory life. In the plots of such works, much fewer events occur, the characters are less active, more inclined to introspection (recourse to internal action is typical for the plays of A. Chekhov, the stories of V. Likhonosov and Yu. Kazakov, for the novel by M. Proust “In Search of Lost Time” and etc.).

The plot of a work of art contains one degree or another of generalization. Aristotle also noted that “the task of the poet is to speak not about what actually happened, but about what could happen, therefore, about what is possible by probability or by necessity”101.

The plot of the work includes not only events from the lives of the characters, but also events from the spiritual life of the author. Thus, digressions in “Eugene Onegin” by A. Pushkin and in “ Dead souls"N. Gogol - these are deviations from the plot, and not from the plot.

The fact that the plot acts as a system of events in works is due to the fact that most works explore important social conflicts. M. Gorky spoke about the role of plot: “A writer must understand that he not only writes with a pen, but also draws with words and draws not like a master of painting, depicting a person motionless, but tries to depict people in continuous movement, in action, in endless collisions among themselves, in the struggle of classes, groups, units”102. The disclosure of the conflict in the plot (in its development and resolution) is of great importance. And the most important function of the plot is to reveal life’s contradictions, that is, conflicts.

Conflict (Latin sopShsShe - collision) in literature is a clash between characters, or between characters and the environment, a hero and fate, as well as a contradiction within the consciousness of a character or the subject of a lyrical statement3.

The theory of conflict (collision) was first developed by Hegel. Subsequently, this issue was addressed by B. Shaw, L. Vygotsky, M. Bakhtin, M. Epstein and others.

The entire dynamics of the content of a literary work is based on artistic conflicts, which are a reflection of the conflicts of reality. , ^

In a literary work, in its artistic structure, the ideological and aesthetic embodiment is given to the social, philosophical, and moral debates waged by the heroes of these works, and a multi-level system is formed artistic conflicts, which expresses the author’s ideological and aesthetic concept. Plot conflicts and ways of their implementation are very diverse and determined by historical and social reasons. It is in collisions that characters reveal their true properties. Because of this, the analysis of the plot cannot be separated from the analysis of the character’s character, which cannot be revealed outside of conflicts.

The plot of the story by A. Solzhenitsyn “ Matrenin Dvor"are episodes from the eventless life of the elderly peasant woman Matryona Vasilievna Grigorieva, in which there were few joys: hard work, the difficulties of collective farm life, war, personal grief and, most importantly, loneliness, spiritual loneliness, because those around her (even close people) considered Matryona “holy fool” because of her disdain for property: ... and did not pursue acquisitions; and not careful; and she didn’t even keep a pig, for some reason she didn’t like to feed it; and, stupid, helped strangers for free.

The characterization of the selfless Matryona is dominated by the words: “wasn’t,” “didn’t have,” “didn’t pursue.” She had a different value system: she preferred to “give” everything to people. The story is based on the opposition of the selfless Matryona to the “money-grubbers” (Thaddeus, stepdaughter Kira with her husband, etc.). Conflict allows us to comprehend two philosophies of life. From the author’s point of view, the insatiable thirst for property turns out to be a national disaster, trampling moral ideals, loss of spiritual values. And there is one more opposition in the story: the meager life of a person and his existence, which consists of inescapable suffering, courageous “enduring”, quiet resistance to everything that prevents a person from remaining human. Original title The story was “A village is not worthwhile without a righteous man.” Matryona, in her deepest essence, continues the type of righteous man who appeared in the works of N. Leskov (her closeness to the hero of the story “Odnodum” is especially acutely felt).

And the character of Pushkin’s hero is revealed in the plot. The severity of the conflict, the purposefulness and swiftness of the actions of the hero of “The Queen of Spades” Hermann are determined by his character and will. There is no continuous, progressive development of action in the story, although the character central character and plot are closely related. The past is involved in the present, the present is seen and assessed from the past. The nature of the movement of plot time is subject to the will of the author, who freely handles it and breaks its consistent flow.

The discontinuity of the epic plot is born of the need to comprehend the circumstances and characters motivating the development of the action. Thus, description, open author’s assessments invade, the connections between the author and the heroes change (either he is omniscient and omniscient, then he is only an observer, “accompanying” his heroes, then he simply refuses to comment on some events, then he is extremely objective when talking about his characters). In Pushkin's story there is the cohesion of everything with everything, the diversity and unity of a complex life process.

The artist cannot help but focus on conflicts that are important for his time, for the people. Thus, Gogol in his comedy “The Inspector General” showed not only the conflict between officials and the imaginary auditor Khlestakov, but also the conflict between officials and townspeople who were completely dependent on them - bribe-takers and embezzlers.

Conflict is the most important content category. The choice of conflicts and their arrangement into a system determine the uniqueness of the writer’s position. Through the study of conflicts, one can come to an understanding of the motives behind the words and actions of the characters, and reveal the uniqueness of the author's intention and the moral position of the writer.

Using V. Belinsky’s term “pathos of sociality,” we can say that in many works conflicts are depicted as a product of specific historical situations. We encounter this in Pushkin’s tragedy “Boris Godunov”, in Turgenev’s novel “Fathers and Sons”, in Nekrasov’s poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'”, which tell about the contradictions between different classes, in groups. These are common conflicts. They can be refracted in private conflicts, since historical and social upheavals pass through the fate of each individual person, for example Pechorin, the Karamazov brothers, Rudin, Grigory Melekhov, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov.

Conflicts can be not only external, but also internal, psychological character. Let us remember the spiritual struggle of Arbenin (M. Lermontov “Masquerade”), Oblomov (A. Goncharov “Oblomov”), dissatisfaction with himself in Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin.

Very often in works, personal and social conflicts are closely interconnected (A. Griboyedov “Woe from Wit”; M. Lermontov “Masquerade”; A. Ostrovsky “The Thunderstorm”).

Connections of events in the plot (cause-and-effect and chronicle) and the sequence of the story about these events or their stage presentation in dramatic works - different aspects compositions.

Chatsky’s conflict with Famusov’s Moscow reflected the struggle of two antagonistic social forces: advanced nobles and serf owners. Griboedov reflected the internal contradictions in Russian society in the first quarter of the 19th century. The problems of the comedy “Woe from Wit” are connected with the author’s thoughts about the future of Russia, in particular, about the problems civil service, the need to educate and educate citizens.

“Woe from Wit” by Griboedov is a comedy in which the domestic and social planes are intertwined. Both conflicts were realized in it - public (external) and personal (internal, psychological). They climax in Act III, in which Sophia becomes the culprit of gossip about Chatsky’s madness. A conversation with Repetilov (phenomena 4-7 of Act IV) opens Chatsky’s eyes to what happened during his absence in Moscow.

Features of development storylines Chatsky - Famusov (Famusov society), Chatsky - Sophia contribute to a deeper revelation of Chatsky’s character, who, as the plot develops, turns into a passionate denouncer of the existing order. The denouement of personal intrigue occurs in scenes 13-14 of Act IV. There is no formally expressed outcome of the social conflict in the play; it remains outside the boundaries of the actual stage action. Chatsky is forced to flee the capital - Griboyedov seems to anticipate the political defeat of the Decembrists in 1825. Famus Society is not going to tolerate “freethinkers”, “Jacobins”.

The genre specificity of “Woe from Wit” is complex and multifaceted - the text of the social comedy contains elements of noble satire (Chatsky’s monologue “Who are the judges?”), civil elegy (Chatsky’s monologues are in direct correlation with the problems of Pushkin’s “Village” with its denunciation of serfdom) , epigrams of the 18th century, fables, vaudeville. It also contains elements of the classical style: the traditional number of acts - there are five of them, adherence to the rule of “three unities” - time, place, action, the use of “speaking” surnames, traditional roles (Lisa is a “subrette”). But this realistic comedy: the characters in it are revealed deeply and multifaceted, individualized with the help speech characteristics. The play was extremely topical. V.G. Belinsky saw in it “an energetic protest against the vile Russian reality”1. The ideological meaning of the comedy is to expose the immorality of the serf-owners (Famusov), the social roots of the silent people (Molchalin), and the Arakcheev people (Skalozub).

Conflict plays a special role in a dramatic work, where it becomes the most important content category. Dramatic collisions are an important way of revealing the life programs of characters and self-disclosure of their characters. The conflict determines the direction of the plot movement in the play. Drama conflicts, according to their content and emotional coloring, are divided into tragic, comic and actually dramatic, which differ from tragic ones in that they can be resolved.

A.N. Ostrovsky in the drama “The Thunderstorm” managed to discover a new nature of drama, contained in the real social contradictions of the time. In “The Thunderstorm,” the “dramatic conflict of the era” is inextricably linked with the internal conflict of Katerina, whose character, as N. Dobrolyubov argued in the article “A Ray of Light in dark kingdom“,” “is focused, decisive and selfless in the sense that death is better for him than life under such principles...”.

As the conflict unfolds, it can transform. Thus, in I. Turgenev’s novel “Fathers and Sons” social conflict between the liberal nobles (the Kirsanov family) and the commoner Bazarov turns into a philosophical conflict - into disputes about life and death, love and hate, the eternal and the temporary.

In the stories of M. Gorky, written by him in the 10s of the 20th century, conflicts occur between people who were disfigured in different ways by the autocratic serfdom system (“Chelkash”), and who were freed to varying degrees from the heavy remnants of the past (“Konovalov,” “ The Orlov spouses"), or between people who are representatives different classes and social groups (“Ozornik”). An internal conflict occurs in the souls of the heroes themselves, who develop new ideas and feelings (“Poor Pavel”).

Aesthetics has always attached great importance to conflict. It also admits the insolubility of the conflict in individual works(for example, in tragedies; for example, the conflict in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” is unresolved).

As noted, conflict is at the core of the plot. Being the basis and driving force action, it determines the main stages of plot development.

In accordance with the main stages of development of the conflict in the plot, the main elements are distinguished plot construction, representing the main points in the development of the depicted life conflict. The origin of a conflict is the beginning, its highest aggravation is the climax. Conflict is a relatively complete moment in the life process, having its own beginning, development and end.

The plot includes the following elements: exposition, beginning, development of action, climax, denouement and postposition. Some works have a prologue and an epilogue. Each of these elements serves its purpose.

The starting point of the plot organization is the exposition (Latin exroyaSho - presentation, explanation) - the background of the events underlying the work of art. Usually it describes the main characters, their arrangement before the start of the action, before the plot. The exposition motivates the behavior of the characters in the conflict in question.

The location and nature of the construction of the exhibition are determined by the artistic tasks assigned to the writer. Thus, in M. Gorky’s story “Mother,” the exhibition describes the life of a workers’ settlement. It tells of the hard life of workers, of a growing sense of protest against unbearable living conditions. The factory “waited with indifferent confidence” for workers in the morning, and in the evening threw out “like waste slag.” And “gloomy people”, “like frightened cockroaches”, “breathing smoky, oily air”, returned home. The exposition of the story leads to the idea that it was impossible to continue living like this, that people had to appear who would try to change this life. Thus, it leads to the beginning - a meeting between Pavel Vlasov and representatives of the revolutionary intelligentsia.

The exposure can be straight, standing beginning of the piece, as in Gorky’s story, but can be delayed, given in the middle or at the end of the work. In this case, it imparts mystery and obscurity to the work of art (Katerina’s story about free life in her parents’ house in A.N. Ostrovsky’s drama “The Thunderstorm”; information about Chichikov’s life before his arrival in the provincial town, given in last chapter the first volume of "Dead Souls"

N. Gogol). The exposition should always be considered in its meaningful purpose, this will help to establish a connection between the circumstances and the characters.

The plot is the event that is the beginning of the action. It either reveals existing contradictions, or creates (“entangles”) conflicts itself. Such a moment, for example, is Luka’s arrival at the shelter (M. Gorky “At the Lower Depths”). The plot of Gogol's comedy "The Inspector General" is the mayor's receipt of a letter informing him of the expected arrival of the inspector. Officials, terribly worried about this news, begin to prepare for the meeting with the auditor: the beginning leads to the development of action.

Composition (Latin Compositio - composition, combination, creation, construction) is the plan of a work, the relationship of its parts, the relationship of images, paintings, episodes. A work of fiction should have as many characters, episodes, scenes as necessary to reveal the content. A. Chekhov advised young writers to write in such a way that the reader, without the author’s explanation, could understand what was happening from the conversations, actions, and actions of the characters.

An essential quality of a composition is accessibility. A work of art should not contain unnecessary pictures, scenes, or episodes. L. Tolstoy compared a work of art to a living organism. “In a real work of art - poetry, drama, painting, song, symphony - you cannot take one verse, one bar out of its place and put it on another without violating the meaning of this work, just as it is impossible not to violate the life of an organic being if you take it out one organ from its place and insert into another." According to K. Fedin, composition is the "logic of the development of the theme." When reading a work of art, we must feel where, at what time, the hero lives, where the center of events is, which of them the most important and which ones are less important.

A prerequisite for composition is perfection. L. Tolstoy wrote that the main thing in art is not to say anything superfluous. A writer must depict the world by spending as much as possible less words. No wonder A. Chekhov called brevity the sister of talent. The talent of a writer is found in the mastery of composition of a work of art.

There are two types of composition - event-plot and non-story, non-story or descriptive. The event type of composition is characteristic of most epic and dramatic works. The composition of epic and dramatic works has hourly space and cause-and-effect forms. The event type of composition can have three forms: chronological, retrospective and free (montage).

V. Lesik notes that the essence of the chronological form of an event composition “lies in the fact that events... come one after another in chronological order- the way they happened in life. There may be temporary distances between individual actions or pictures, but there is no violation of the natural sequence in time: what happened earlier in life is presented earlier in the work, and not after subsequent events. Consequently, there is no arbitrary movement of events, no violation of the direct movement of time."

The peculiarity of a retrospective composition is that the writer does not adhere to chronological sequence. The author can talk about the motives, reasons for events, actions after they have been carried out. The sequence in the presentation of events may be interrupted by the memories of the characters.

The essence of the free (montage) form of event composition is associated with violations of cause-and-effect and spatial relationships between events. The connection between episodes is often associative-emotional rather than logical-semantic in nature. The montage composition is typical of 20th century literature. This type of composition was used in Yu. Japanese's novel "Riders". Here the storylines are connected at the associative level.

A variation of the event type of composition is event-narrative. Its essence lies in the fact that the same event is told by the author, narrator, storyteller, and characters. The event-narrative form of the composition is characteristic of lyrical-epic works.

The descriptive type of composition is characteristic of lyrical works. “The basis for the construction of a lyrical work,” notes V. Lesik, “is not the system or development of events..., but the organization of lyrical components - emotions and impressions, the sequence of presentation of thoughts, the order of transition from one impression to another, from one sensory image to another "." Lyrical works describe the impressions, feelings, experiences of the lyrical hero.

Yu. Kuznetsov in the “Literary Encyclopedia” distinguishes plot-closed and open composition. The plot is closed, characteristic of folklore, works of ancient and classic literature (three repetitions, happy endings in fairy tales, alternation of choir performances and episodes in ancient Greek tragedy). “The composition is open in plot,” notes Yu. Kuznetsov, “devoid of a clear outline, proportions, flexible, taking into account the genre-style opposition that arises in specific historical conditions literary process. In particular, in sentimentalism (Sternivska composition) and in romanticism, when open works became the negation of closed ones, classicistic...”

What does the composition depend on, what factors determine its features? The originality of the composition is primarily due to the design of the work of art. Panas Mirny, having familiarized himself with the life story of the robber Gnidka, set himself the goal of explaining what caused the protest against the landowners. First, he wrote a story called “Chipka,” in which he showed the conditions for the formation of the hero’s character. Subsequently, the writer expanded the concept of the work, demanded complex composition, this is how the novel “Do oxen roar when the manger is full?” appeared.

The features of the composition are determined by the literary direction. Classicists demanded three unities from dramatic works (unity of place, time and action). Events in a dramatic work were supposed to take place over the course of a day, grouped around one hero. The Romantics portrayed exceptional characters in exceptional circumstances. Nature was often shown during natural disasters (storms, floods, thunderstorms); they often occurred in India, Africa, the Caucasus, and the East.

The composition of a work is determined by its genus, type and genre; lyrical works are based on the development of thoughts and feelings. Lyrical works are small in size, their composition is arbitrary, most often associative. In a lyrical work, the following stages of development of feeling can be distinguished:

a) the initial moment (observation, impressions, thoughts or state that became the impetus for the development of feelings);

b) development of feelings;

c) climax (the highest tension in the development of feelings);

In the poem by V. Simonenko “Swans of Motherhood”:

a) the starting point is to sing a lullaby to your son;

b) development of feelings - the mother dreams about the fate of her son, how he will grow up, go on a journey, meet friends, his wife;

c) climax - the mother’s opinion about the possible death of her son in a foreign land;

d) summary - You don’t choose your homeland; what makes a person is love for their native land.

Russian literary critic V. Zhirmunsky identifies seven types of composition of lyrical works: anaphoristic, amoebaic, epiphoristic, refrain, ring, spiral, junction (epanastrophe, epanadiplosis), pointe.

Anaphoristic composition is typical for works that use anaphora.

You have renounced your native language. You

Your land will stop giving birth,

Green branch in a pocket on a willow tree,

It fades from your touch.

You have renounced your native language. Zaros

Your path disappeared into a nameless potion...

You don't have tears at funerals,

You don't have a song at your wedding.

(D. Pavlychko)

V. Zhirmunsky considers anaphora an indispensable component of amoebaic composition, but in many works it is absent. Characterizing this type of composition, I. Kachurovsky notes that its essence is not in anaphora, “but in the identity of the syntactic structure, replica or counter-replica of two interlocutors, or in a certain pattern of roll call of two choirs." "I. Kachurovsky finds an illustration of the amoebaic composition in the work German romantic Ludwig Uland:

Have you seen the tall castle,

A castle over the sea shire?

The clouds float quietly

Pink and gold above it.

Into the mirror-like, peaceful waters

He would like to bow down

And rise into the evening clouds

Into their radiant ruby.

I saw a tall castle

Castle over the sea world.

Hail the deep fog

And a month stood over him.

(Translation by Michael Orestes)

The amoebaine composition is most common in the tenzons and pastorals of the troubadours.

Epiphoristic composition is characteristic of poems with epiphoristic endings.

Breaks, kinks and fractures...

They broke our spine in circles.

Understand, my brother, finally:

Before heart attacks

We had them - don’t touch them!

Heart attacks of souls... heart attacks of souls!

There were ulcers, like infections,

There were images to the point of disgust -

This is disgusting, my brother.

So leave it, go and don’t touch it.

We all have crazy minds:

Heart attacks of souls... heart attacks of souls!

In this bed, in this bed

In this scream to the ceiling,

Oh, don't touch us, my brother,

Don't touch paralytics!

We all have crazy minds:

Heart attacks of souls... heart attacks of souls!

(Yu. Shkrobinets)

A refrain composition consists of the repetition of a group of words or lines.

How quickly everything in life goes by.

And happiness will only flicker with its wing -

And he's no longer here...

How quickly everything in life goes by,

Is this our fault? -

It's all the metronome's fault.

How quickly everything in life goes by...

And happiness will only flicker with its wing.

(Lyudmila Rzhegak)

I. Kachurovsky considers the term “ring” to be unfortunate. “Where better,” he notes, “is a cyclic composition. The scientific name of this remedy is anadiplosis composition. Moreover, in cases where anadiplosis is limited to any one stanza, this refers not to composition, but to stylistics.” Anadiplosis as a compositional means can be complete or partial, when part of a stanza is repeated, when the same words are in a changed order, when some of them are replaced by synonyms. The following options are also possible: not the first stanza is repeated, but the second, or the poet gives the first stanza as the final one.

Evening sun, thank you for the day!

Evening sun, thank you for being tired.

The forests are silent, enlightened

Eden and cornflower in golden rye.

For your dawn, and for my zenith,

and for my burnt zeniths.

Because tomorrow wants greens,

For what oddzvenity managed to do yesterday.

Heaven in the sky, for children's laughter.

For what I can and for what I must,

Evening sun, thank you all,

who did not defile the soul in any way.

For the fact that tomorrow awaits its inspiration.

That somewhere in the world blood has not yet been shed.

Evening sun, thank you for the day,

For this need, words are like prayers.

(P. Kostenko)

The spiral composition creates either a “chain” stanza (terzina), or stropho-genres (rondo, rondel, triolet), i.e. acquires stanza-creative and genre characteristics.

I. Kachurovsky considers the name of the seventh type of composition indecent. A more acceptable name, in his opinion, is epanastrophe, epanadiplosis. A work where the repetition of rhyme when two adjacent stanzas collide has a compositional character is E. Pluzhnik’s poem “Kanev”. Each twelve-Shova stanza of the poem consists of three quatrains with rhymes that move from quatrain to quatrain, the last verse of each of these twelve verses rhymes with the first poem as follows:

And the time and fatness will begin in their homes

Electricity: and the newspaper rustled

Where once the prophet and poet

The great spirit behind the darkness has dried up

And will be reborn in millions of masses,

And not only from the portrait,

The competition of immortals is a symbol and sign,

Apostle of truth, peasant Taras.

And since my dozen phrases

In the boring collection of an anchorite,

As the times to come show off,

On the shores lies indifferent Lethe...

And the days will become like the lines of a sonnet,

Perfect...

The essence of the pointe composition is that the poet leaves the interesting and essential part of the work for last. This could be an unexpected turn of thought or a conclusion from the entire previous text. The means of pointe composition is used in the sonnet, the last poem of which should be the quintessence of the work.

Exploring lyrical and lyrical-epic works, I. Kachurovsky found three more types of composition: simplocial, gradational and main.

I. Kachurovsky calls a composition in the form of a simplocal simplocial.

Tomorrow on earth

Other people walking

Other people love -

Kind, affectionate and evil.

(V. Simonenko)

Gradational composition with such types as descending climax, growing climax, broken climax is quite common in poetry.

The gradation composition was used by V. Misik in the poem “Modernity”.

Yes, perhaps, even during Boyan’s time

It's spring time

And the rains fell on the youth,

And the clouds moved in from Tarashche,

And the hawks flew over the horizon,

And the cymbals echoed loudly,

And in Prolis the cymbals are blue

We peered into the heavenly strange clarity.

Everything is as it was then. Where is it, modernity?

It is in the main thing: in you.

The main composition is typical for wreaths of sonnets and folk poetry. Epic works tell the story of people's lives over a period of time. In novels and stories, events and characters are revealed in detail and comprehensively.

Such works may have several storylines. In small works (stories, novellas), there are few plot lines, few characters, situations and circumstances are depicted succinctly.

Dramatic works are written in the form of dialogue, they are based on action, they are small in size, because most of them are intended to be staged. In dramatic works there are stage directions that perform service function- give an idea of ​​the location of the action, the characters, advice to the artists, but are not included in the artistic fabric of the work.

The composition of a work of art also depends on the characteristics of the artist’s talent. Panas Mirny used complex plots and digressions of a historical nature. In the works of I. Nechuy-Levitsky, events develop in chronological order, the writer draws detailed portraits of heroes and nature. Let's remember "Kaidashev's family". In the works of I.S. Turgenev, events develop slowly, Dostoevsky uses unexpected plot moves and accumulates tragic episodes.

The composition of the works is influenced by folklore traditions. The fables of Aesop, Phaedrus, Lafontaine, Krylov, Glebov “The Wolf and the Lamb” are based on the same folklore plot, and after the plot there is a moral. In Aesop's fable it sounds like this: “The fable proves that even a just defense has no power for those who undertake to do injustice.” Phaedrus ends the fable with the words: “This tale was written about people who seek to destroy the innocent by deception.” The fable “The Wolf and the Lamb” by L. Glebov begins, on the contrary, with a moral:

It has been going on in the world for a long time,

The lower he bends before the highest,

And more than a smaller party and even beats

The structure of the plot, its functions. Composition of the plot. Plot and plot.

Plot (from fr.
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sujet) - a chain of events depicted in a literary work, that is, the life of the characters in its spatio-temporal changes, in successive positions and circumstances. The events recreated by writers form (along with the characters) the basis objective world work and thereby an integral “link” of its form. The plot is the organizing principle of most dramatic and epic (narrative) works. It must also be significant in the lyrical genre of literature.

Plot elements: The main ones include exposition, plot, development of action, twists and turns, climax, denouement. Optional ones: prologue, epilogue, background, ending.

We will call the plot the system of events and actions contained in the work, its chain of events, and precisely in the sequence in which it is given to us in the work. The last remark is important, since quite often events are not told in chronological order, and the reader can find out what happened earlier later. If we take only the main ones, key episodes plot, which are absolutely necessary for its understanding, and if we arrange them in chronological order, we will get plot - plot outline or, as they sometimes say, “straightened plot”. Fables in various works are very similar to each other, but the plot is always uniquely individual.

There are two types of plots. In the first type, the development of the action occurs intensely and as quickly as possible, the events of the plot contain the main meaning and interest for the reader, the plot elements are clearly expressed, and the denouement carries a huge meaningful load. This type of plot is found, for example, in “The Stories of Belkin” by Pushkin, “On the Eve” by Turgenev, “The Gambler” by Dostoevsky, etc.
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Let's call this type of plot dynamic. In another type of plot - let's call it, in contrast to the first, adynamic – the development of the action is slow and does not strive for a denouement, the events of the plot do not contain much interest, the elements of the plot are not clearly expressed or are completely absent (the conflict is embodied and moves not with the help of plot, but with the help of other compositional means), the denouement is either completely absent or is purely formal; in the overall composition of the work there are many extra-plot elements (see about them below), which often shift the center of gravity of the reader’s attention. We see this type of plot, for example, in “Dead Souls” by Gogol, “Muzhik” and other works by Chekhov, etc. There is a fairly simple way to check what kind of plot you are dealing with: works with an adynamic plot can be re-read from anywhere, for works with a dynamic plot it is typical to read and re-read only from beginning to end. Dynamic scenes, usually, built on local conflicts, adynamic - on substantial. This pattern does not have the character of a strict 100% dependence, but still in most cases this relationship between the type of conflict and the type of plot takes place.

Concentric plot– one event (one event situation) comes to the fore. Characteristic of small epic forms, dramatic genres, literature of antiquity and classicism. (Telegram by K. Paustovsky, Notes of a Hunter by I. Turgenev) Chronicle story - events do not have cause-and-effect relationships with each other and are correlated with each other only in time (Don Quixote by Cervantes, Odyssey by Homer, Don Juan by Byron).

Plot and composition. The concept of composition is broader and more universal than the concept of plot. The plot fits into the overall composition of the work, occupying one or another, more or less important place in it based on the author’s intentions. There is also an internal composition of the plot, which we now turn to consider.

Considering the dependence of the relationship between plot and plot in specific work talk about different types and plot composition techniques. The simplest case is when the events of the plot are linearly arranged in direct chronological sequence without any changes. This composition is also called straight or plot sequence. A more complex technique is in which we learn about the event that happened earlier than the others at the very end of the work- this technique is usually called by default. This technique is very effective because it allows you to keep the reader in the dark and in tension until the very end, and at the end surprise him with surprise. plot twist. Thanks to these properties, the technique of silence is almost always used in works of the detective genre, although, of course, not only in them. Another method of violating chronology or plot sequence is the so-called retrospection , when, as the plot develops, the author makes digressions into the past, as a rule, to the time preceding the plot and beginning of this work. Finally, the plot sequence must be disrupted in such a way that events at different times are given intermixed; the narrative always returns from the moment of the action taking place to various previous time layers, then again turns to the present in order to immediately return to the past. This plot composition is often motivated by the memories of the characters. She is usually called free composition and to some extent is used by different writers quite often: for example, we can find elements of free composition in Pushkin, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky. At the same time, it happens that free composition becomes the main and determining principle of plot construction in in this case As a rule, we are actually talking about free composition.

Extra-plot elements. In addition to the plot, in the composition of the work there are also so-called extra-plot elements, which are often no less, or even more important, than the plot itself. If the plot of a work is the dynamic side of its composition, then extra-plot elements are static; Non-plot elements are those that do not move the action forward, during which nothing happens, and the characters remain in their previous positions. There are three main types of extra-plot elements: description, author's digressions and inserted episodes(otherwise they are also called plug-in novels or insert stories). Description - this is a literary image of the external world (landscape, portrait of the world of things, etc.) or sustainable way of life, that is, those events and actions that occur regularly, day after day and, therefore, are also not related to the movement of the plot. Descriptions are the most common type of extra-plot elements; they are present in almost every epic work. Author's digressions – these are more or less detailed author's statements of philosophical, lyrical, autobiographical, etc. character; Moreover, these statements do not characterize individual characters or the relationships between them. Author's digressions are an optional element in the composition of a work, but when they do appear there (Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, Gogol's Dead Souls, Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, etc.), they usually play a very important role and are subject to mandatory analysis. Finally, insert episodes – these are relatively complete fragments of action in which other characters act, the action is transferred to another time and place, etc. Sometimes inserted episodes begin to play an even greater role in the work than the main plot: for example, in Gogol’s “Dead Souls”.

In some cases, extra-plot elements can also include psychological image, if state of mind or the hero’s thoughts are not a consequence or cause of plot events, and are excluded from the plot chain. In this case, as a rule, internal monologues and other forms psychological image one way or another are included in the plot, since they determine the further actions of the hero and, consequently, the further course of the plot.

In general, extra-plot elements often have a weak or purely formal connection with the plot and represent a separate compositional line.

The reference points of the composition. The composition of any literary work is constructed in such a way that from beginning to end the reader's tension does not weaken, but intensifies. In a work of small volume, the composition most often represents a linear development in an increasing direction, directed towards the finale, the ending, in which the point of highest tension is located. In larger works, the composition alternates between rises and falls of tension with general development ascending. We will call the points of greatest reader tension the reference points of the composition.

The simplest case: the reference points of the composition coincide with the elements of the plot, primarily with the climax and denouement. We encounter this when the dynamic plot is not just the basis of the composition of the work, but essentially exhausts its originality. The composition in this case contains practically no extra-plot elements and uses compositional techniques to a minimal extent. An excellent example of such a construction is an anecdote story, such as Chekhov’s story “The Death of an Official” discussed above.

In the event that the plot traces different turns of the external fate of the hero with the relative or absolute static character of his character, it is useful to look reference points in the so-called vicissitudes - sharp turns in the hero’s fate. It was precisely this construction of reference points that was typical, for example, for ancient tragedy, devoid of psychologism, and was later and is used in adventure literature.

Almost always, one of the reference points falls on the ending of the work (but not necessarily on the denouement, which may not coincide with the ending!). In small, mostly lyrical works, this, as has already been said, is often the only supporting point, and everything previous only leads to it, increases the tension, ensuring its “explosion” at the end.

In major works of art, the ending also, as a rule, contains one of the supporting points. It is no coincidence that many writers have said that over last sentence they work especially carefully, and Chekhov pointed out to aspiring writers that it should sound “musical.”

Sometimes - although not that often - one of the reference points of the composition is, on the contrary, at the very beginning of the work, as, for example, in Tolstoy’s novel “Resurrection”.

The reference points of a composition can sometimes be located at the beginning and end (usually) of parts, chapters, acts, etc. Types of composition. In the very general view two types of composition can be distinguished – let’s call them conventionally simple and complex. In the first case, the function of composition is reduced only to combining parts of a work into a single whole, and this unification is always carried out in the simplest and most naturally. In the field of plotting, this will be a direct chronological sequence of events, in the field of narration - a single narrative type throughout the entire work, in the field of subject details– a simple list of them without highlighting particularly important, supporting, symbolic details, etc.

With a complex composition, in the very construction of the work, in the order of combination of its parts and elements, a special artistic sense. So, for example, the sequential change of narrators and the violation of the chronological sequence in Lermontov’s “Hero of Our Time” focus attention on the moral and philosophical essence of Pechorin’s character and allow us to “get closer” to it, gradually unraveling the character.

Simple and complex types of composition are sometimes difficult to identify in a particular work of art, since the differences between them turn out to be, to a certain extent, purely quantitative: we can talk about the greater or lesser complexity of the composition of a particular work. There are, of course, pure types: for example, the composition of, say, Krylov’s fables or Gogol’s story “The Stroller” is simple in all respects, but Dostoevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov” or “The Lady with the Dog” by Chekhov is complex in all respects. All this makes the question of the type of composition quite complex, but at the same time very important, since simple and complex types of composition can become style dominants work and, thus, determine its artistic originality.

The structure of the plot, its functions. Composition of the plot. Plot and plot. - concept and types. Classification and features of the category "Structure of the plot, its functions. Composition of the plot. Plot and plot." 2017, 2018.