COMPOSITION OF A LITERARY AND ARTISTIC WORK. TRADITIONAL COMPOSITION TECHNIQUES. DEFAULT/RECOGNITION, “MINUS”-RECEIPT, CO- AND CONTRASTINGS. INSTALLATION.
The composition of a literary work is the mutual correlation and arrangement of units of the depicted and artistic and speech means. Composition ensures the unity and integrity of artistic creations. The foundation of the composition is the orderliness of the fictional reality and the reality depicted by the writer.
Elements and levels of composition:
- plot (in the understanding of formalists - artistically processed events);
- system of characters (their relationship with each other);
- narrative composition (change of narrators and point of view);
- composition of parts (correlation of parts);
- the relationship between narrative and description elements (portraits, landscapes, interior, etc.)
Traditional compositional techniques:
- repetitions and variations. They serve to highlight and emphasize the most significant moments and links of the subject-speech fabric of the work. Direct repetitions not only dominated historically early song lyrics, but also constituted its essence. The variations are modified repetitions (the description of the squirrel in Pushkin’s “The Tale of Tsar Saltan”). Increasing repetition is called gradation (the increasing claims of the old woman in Pushkin’s “The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish”). Repetitions also include anaphors (single beginnings) and epiphoras (repeated endings of stanzas);
- co- and oppositions. The origins of this technique are figurative parallelism developed by Veselovsky. Based on the combination of natural phenomena with human reality (“The silk grass spreads and curls / Across the meadow / Kisses, pardons / Mikhail his little wife”). For example, Chekhov's plays are based on comparisons of similarities, where the general life drama of the depicted environment takes precedence, where there are neither completely right nor completely guilty. Contrasts take place in fairy tales (the hero is a saboteur), in Griboyedov’s “Woe from Wit” between Chatsky and “25 Fools,” etc.;
- “silence/recognition, minus reception. The defaults are beyond the scope of the detailed image. They make the text more compact, activate the imagination and increase the reader’s interest in what is depicted, sometimes intriguing him. In a number of cases, silences are followed by clarification and direct discovery of what was hitherto hidden from the reader and/or the hero himself - what Aristotle called recognition. Recognitions can complete a reconstructed series of events, as, for example, in Sophocles’ tragedy “Oedipus the King.” But silences may not be accompanied by recognitions, remaining gaps in the fabric of the work, artistically significant omissions - minus devices.
- installation. In literary criticism, montage is the recording of co- and oppositions that are not dictated by the logic of what is depicted, but directly capture the author’s train of thought and associations. A composition with such an active aspect is called a montage. In this case, the spatio-temporal events and the characters themselves are weakly or illogically connected, but everything depicted as a whole expresses the energy of the author’s thought and his associations. The montage principle one way or another exists where there are inserted stories (“The Tale of Captain Kopeikin” in “Dead Souls”), lyrical digressions (“Eugene Onegin”), chronological rearrangements (“Hero of Our Time”). The montage structure corresponds to a vision of the world that is distinguished by its diversity and breadth.
THE ROLE AND SIGNIFICANCE OF ARTISTIC DETAIL IN A LITERARY WORK. RELATIONSHIP OF DETAILS AS A COMPOSITION DEVICE.
An artistic detail is an expressive detail in a work that carries a significant semantic, ideological and emotional load. The figurative form of a literary work contains three sides: a system of details of object representation, a system of compositional techniques and a speech structure. Artistic detail usually includes subject details - everyday life, landscape, portrait.
Detailing the objective world in literature is inevitable, since only with the help of details can the author recreate an object in all its features, evoking the necessary associations in the reader with details. Detailing is not decoration, but the essence of the image. The addition by the reader of mentally missing elements is called concretization (for example, the imagination of a certain appearance of a person, an appearance that is not given by the author with exhaustive certainty).
According to Andrei Borisovich Yesin, there are three large groups of parts:
- plot;
- descriptive;
- psychological.
The predominance of one type or another gives rise to the corresponding dominant property of the style: plot ("Taras and Bulba"), descriptiveness ("Dead Souls"), psychologism ("Crime and Punishment").
Details can either “agree with each other” or be opposed to each other, “argue” with each other. Efim Semenovich Dobin proposed a typology of details based on the criterion: singularity / multitude. He defined the relationship between detail and detail as follows: detail gravitates toward singularity, detail affects multitudes.
Dobin believes that by repeating itself and acquiring additional meanings, a detail grows into a symbol, and a detail is closer to a sign.
DESCRIPTIVE ELEMENTS OF COMPOSITION. PORTRAIT. SCENERY. INTERIOR.
Descriptive elements of the composition usually include landscape, interior, portrait, as well as characteristics of the heroes, a story about their multiple, regularly repeated actions, habits (for example, a description of the usual daily routine of the heroes in “The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich” by Gogol ). The main criterion for a descriptive element of a composition is its static nature.
Portrait. A portrait of a character is a description of his appearance: physical, natural, and in particular age properties (facial features and figures, hair color), as well as everything in a person’s appearance that is formed by the social environment, cultural tradition, individual initiative (clothing and jewelry, hairstyle and cosmetics).
Traditional high genres are characterized by idealizing portraits (for example, the Polish woman in Taras Bulba). Portraitures in works of a humorous, comedy-farcical nature had a completely different character, where the center of the portrait is the grotesque (transformative, leading to a certain ugliness, incongruity) presentation of the human body.
The role of a portrait in a work varies depending on the type and genre of literature. In drama, the author limits himself to indicating age and general characteristics given in the stage directions. The lyrics make maximum use of the technique of replacing the description of appearance with an impression of it. Such a replacement is often accompanied by the use of epithets “beautiful”, “charming”, “charming”, “captivating”, “incomparable”. Comparisons and metaphors based on the abundance of nature are very actively used here (a slender figure is a cypress tree, a girl is a birch tree, a timid doe). Precious stones and metals are used to convey the shine and color of eyes, lips, and hair. Comparisons with the sun, moon, and gods are typical. In the epic, a character's appearance and behavior are associated with his character. Early epic genres, such as heroic tales, are full of exaggerated examples of character and appearance - ideal courage, extraordinary physical strength. The behavior is also appropriate - the majesty of poses and gestures, the solemnity of unhurried speech.
In the creation of portraits until the end of the 18th century. the leading tendency remained its conditional form, the predominance of the general over the particular. In the literature of the 19th century. Two main types of portrait can be distinguished: exposure (gravitating towards static) and dynamic (transitioning into the entire narrative).
An exhibition portrait is based on a detailed listing of the details of the face, figure, clothing, individual gestures and other features of appearance. It is given on behalf of the narrator, who is interested in the characteristic appearance of representatives of some social community. A more complex modification of such a portrait is a psychological portrait, where external features predominate, indicating the properties of character and inner world (Pechorin’s non-laughing eyes).
A dynamic portrait, instead of a detailed listing of appearance features, presupposes a brief, expressive detail that arises during the course of the story (images of heroes in “The Queen of Spades”).
Scenery. Landscape is most correctly understood as a description of any open space in the outside world. Landscape is not an obligatory component of the artistic world, which emphasizes the conventionality of the latter, since landscapes are everywhere in the reality around us. The landscape carries several important functions:
- designation of the place and time of action. It is with the help of the landscape that the reader can clearly imagine where and when events take place. At the same time, the landscape is not a dry indication of the spatio-temporal parameters of the work, but an artistic description using figurative, poetic language;
- plot motivation. Natural, and, in particular, meteorological processes can direct the plot in one direction or another, mainly if this plot is chronicle (with the primacy of events that do not depend on the will of the characters). Landscape also occupies a lot of space in animal literature (for example, the works of Bianchi);
- a form of psychologism. The landscape creates a psychological mood for the perception of the text, helps to reveal the internal state of the characters (for example, the role of the landscape in the sentimental “Poor Lisa”);
- form of the author's presence. The author can show his patriotic feelings by giving the landscape a national identity (for example, Yesenin’s poetry).
Landscape has its own characteristics in different types of literature. He is presented very sparingly in the drama. In his lyrics, he is emphatically expressive, often symbolic: personification, metaphors and other tropes are widely used. In epic there is much more scope for introducing landscape.
The literary landscape has a very ramified typology. There are rural and urban, steppe, sea, forest, mountain, northern and southern, exotic - contrasted with the flora and fauna of the author’s native land.
Interior. The interior, unlike the landscape, is an image of the interior, a description of an enclosed space. It is used mainly for the social and psychological characteristics of the characters, demonstrating their living conditions (Raskolnikov’s room).
"NARRATORY" COMPOSITION. NARRATOR, STORYTELLER AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP WITH THE AUTHOR. “POINT OF VIEW” AS A CATEGORY OF NARRATORY COMPOSITION.
The narrator is the one who informs the reader about the events and actions of the characters, records the passage of time, depicts the appearance of the characters and the setting of the action, analyzes the internal state of the hero and the motives of his behavior, characterizes his human type, without being either a participant in the events or the object of the image. for any of the characters. The narrator is not a person, but a function. Or, as Thomas Mann said, “the weightless, ethereal and omnipresent spirit of storytelling.” But the function of the narrator can be attached to the character, provided that the character as a narrator will completely differ from him as an actor. So, for example, the narrator Grinev in “The Captain's Daughter” is by no means a definite personality, in contrast to Grinev, the protagonist. Grinev's character's view of what is happening is limited by the conditions of place and time, including features of age and development; his point of view as a narrator is much deeper.
In contrast to the narrator, the narrator is entirely within the reality being depicted. If no one sees the narrator inside the depicted world and does not assume the possibility of his existence, then the narrator certainly enters the horizons of either the narrator or the characters - listeners of the story. The narrator is the subject of the image, associated with a certain socio-cultural environment, from the position of which he portrays other characters. The narrator, on the contrary, is close in his outlook to the author-creator.
In a broad sense, a narrative is a set of those statements of speech subjects (narrator, narrator, image of the author) that perform the functions of “mediation” between the depicted world and the reader - the addressee of the entire work as a single artistic statement.
In a narrower and more accurate, as well as more traditional meaning, narration is the totality of all speech fragments of a work, containing various messages: about events and actions of characters; about the spatial and temporal conditions in which the plot unfolds; about the relationships between the characters and the motives of their behavior, etc.
Despite the popularity of the term “point of view,” its definition has raised and continues to raise many questions. Let's consider two approaches to the classification of this concept - by B. A. Uspensky and by B. O. Korman.
Uspensky says about:
- ideological point of view, meaning by it the vision of the subject in the light of a certain worldview, which is conveyed in different ways, indicating its individual and social position;
- phraseological point of view, meaning by it the author’s use of different languages or, in general, elements of foreign or substituted speech when describing different characters;
- spatio-temporal point of view, meaning by it the place of the narrator, fixed and defined in spatio-temporal coordinates, which may coincide with the place of the character;
- point of view in terms of psychology, understanding by it the difference between two possibilities for the author: to refer to one or another individual perception or to strive to describe events objectively, based on the facts known to him. The first, subjective, possibility, according to Uspensky, is psychological.
Corman is closest to Uspensky from a phraseological point of view, but he:
- distinguishes between spatial (physical) and temporal (position in time) points of view;
- divides the ideological-emotional point of view into a direct-evaluative one (an open relationship between the subject of consciousness and the object of consciousness lying on the surface of the text) and an indirect-evaluative one (the author’s assessment, not expressed in words that have an obvious evaluative meaning).
The disadvantage of Corman's approach is the absence of a “plane of psychology” in his system.
So, the point of view in a literary work is the position of the observer (narrator, narrator, character) in the depicted world (in time, space, in the socio-ideological and linguistic environment), which, on the one hand, determines his horizons - both in terms of volume ( field of view, degree of awareness, level of understanding), and in terms of assessing what is perceived; on the other hand, it expresses the author’s assessment of this subject and his outlook.
A prologue is the introductory part of a work. It either precedes the storyline or main motives of the work, or represents events that preceded those described on the pages.The exposition is in some ways akin to the prologue, however, if the prologue does not have a special impact on the development of the plot of the work, it directly introduces the reader into the atmosphere. It describes the time and place of action, the central characters and their relationships. The exposure can be either at the beginning (direct exposure) or in the middle of the piece (delayed exposure).
With a logically clear construction, the exposition is followed by a plot - an event that begins the action and provokes the development of the conflict. Sometimes the plot precedes the exposition (for example, in L.N. Tolstoy’s novel “Anna Karenina”). In detective novels, which are distinguished by the so-called analytical construction of the plot, the cause of events (i.e., the plot) is usually revealed to the reader after the consequence it generates.
The plot is traditionally followed by the development of action, consisting of a series of episodes in which the characters strive to resolve the conflict, but it only escalates.
Gradually, the development of the action approaches its highest point, which is called the climax. The climax is a clash between characters or a turning point in their fate. After the climax, the action moves irresistibly towards the denouement.
Resolution is the end of an action, or at least a conflict. As a rule, the denouement occurs at the end of the work, but sometimes it appears at the beginning (for example, in I.A. Bunin’s story “Easy Breathing”).
Often the work ends with an epilogue. This is the final part, which usually tells about the events that followed the completion of the main plot, and about the further fate of the characters. These are the epilogues in the novels of I.S. Turgeneva, F.M. Dostoevsky, L.N. Tolstoy.
Lyrical digressions
The composition may also contain extra-plot elements, for example, lyrical digressions. In them, the author himself appears before the reader, expressing his own opinions on various issues that are not always directly related to action. Of particular interest are the lyrical digressions in “Eugene Onegin” by A.S. Pushkin and in “Dead Souls” by N.V. Gogol.All of the listed elements of the composition make it possible to give the work artistic integrity, consistency and excitement.
Composition of a work of art
Composition- this is the construction of all elements and parts of a work of art in accordance with the author’s intention (in a certain proportion, sequence; the figurative system of characters, space and time, and the sequence of events in the plot are compositionally formed).
Compositional and plot parts of a literary work
Prologue- what led to the emergence of the plot, previous events (not in all works).
Exposition- designation of the original space, time, heroes.
The beginning- events that give development to the plot.
Development of action- development of the plot from beginning to climax.
Climax- the moment of the highest tension of the plot action, after which it moves towards the denouement.
Denouement- termination of action in a given conflict area when contradictions are resolved or removed.
Epilogue- “announcement” of further events, summing up.
Composition elements
Compositional elements include epigraphs, dedications, prologues, epilogues, parts, chapters, acts, phenomena, scenes, prefaces and afterwords of “publishers” (created by the author’s imagination of extra-plot images), dialogues, monologues, episodes, inserted stories and episodes, letters, songs (Oblomov’s dream in Goncharov’s novel “Oblomov”, letters from Tatyana to Onegin and Onegin to Tatyana in Pushkin’s novel “Eugene Onegin”); all artistic descriptions (portraits, landscapes, interiors).
Compositional techniques
Repeat (refrain)- the use of the same elements (parts) of the text (in poems - the same verses):
Protect me, my talisman,
Keep me in the days of persecution,
In days of repentance and excitement:
You were given to me on the day of sorrow.
When the ocean rises
The waves are roaring around me,
When the clouds burst into thunder -
Protect me, my talisman...
(A.S. Pushkin “Keep Me, My Talisman”)
Depending on the position, frequency of appearance and autonomy, the following compositional techniques are distinguished:
Anaphora- repeat at the beginning of the line:
Past the lists, temples,
past temples and bars,
past gorgeous cemeteries,
past the big markets...
(I. Brodsky “Pilgrims”)
Epiphora- repeat at the end of the line:
My horse, don’t touch the earth,
Don’t touch my star’s forehead,
Don't touch my sigh, don't touch my lips,
The rider is a horse, the finger is a palm.
(M. Tsvetaeva “The Khan is full”)
Simploca- the next part of the work begins in the same way as the previous one (usually found in folklore works or stylizations):
He fell on the cold snow
On the cold snow, like a pine
(M.Yu. Lermontov “Song about Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich ...”)
Antithesis- opposition (works at all levels of text from symbol to character):
I swear by the first day of creation,
I swear by his last day.
(M.Yu. Lermontov “Demon”)
They got along. Wave and stone
Poetry and prose, ice and fire...
(A.S. Pushkin “Eugene Onegin”)
Compositional techniques related with time shifts(combination of time layers, retro jump, insert):
Retardation- stretching a unit of time, slowing down, braking.
Retrospection- returning the action to the past, when the reasons for the narrative taking place at the present moment were laid (the story about Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov - I.S. Turgenev “Fathers and Sons”; the story about Asya’s childhood - I.S. Turgenev “Asya”).
Changing “points of view”- a narration about one event from the point of view of different characters, character and narrator (M.Yu. Lermontov “Hero of Our Time”, F.M. Dostoevsky “Poor People”).
Parallelism- the arrangement of identical or similar in grammatical and semantic structure of speech elements in adjacent parts of the text. Parallel elements can be sentences, their parts, phrases, words.
Your mind is as deep as the sea
Your spirit is as high as the mountains
(V. Bryusov “Chinese poems”)
An example of compositional parallelism in a prose text is the work of N.V. Gogol "Nevsky Prospekt".
Main types of composition
- Linear composition: natural time sequence.
- Inversion (retrospective) composition: reverse chronological order.
- Ring composition: repetition of the initial moment in the finale of the work.
- Concentric composition: plot spiral, repetition of similar events as the action progresses.
- Mirror composition: a combination of repetition and contrast techniques, as a result of which the initial and final images are repeated exactly the opposite.
Narration is a verbal depiction of a sequence of interconnected events that together constitute a concrete fact of reality..
The subject of the story is action. It can be depicted “from the third person”, when the narrator seems to see the event from the outside. Sometimes the narration is constructed in the first person. In this case, the narrator appears as a participant in the events, its center. But this technique allows the writer to speak on behalf of a fictitious person, who himself becomes the subject of the image.
The composition of a story is usually three-part: beginning, middle and end. However, this is only a general outline. In fact, stories can be constructed in different ways, and also have different construction options within the three parts.
The beginning of the story has the following options:
1) Appeal to the reader (listener): Listen, guys, to what I'm going to tell you; Do you know what Ukrainian night is?
2) General idea of the story: It’s true what they say is that you can’t escape fate; In the fall they go to the forest to pick mushrooms, and in the spring they go to the dentist for their teeth. Here is the beginning of one of Teffi's stories: Man only imagines that he has unlimited power over things. Sometimes the most inconspicuous thing will rub itself into life, twist it and turn your entire destiny in the wrong direction where it was supposed to go...
3) The most common beginning option: place, time, character. Example from A.P. Chekhov: One fine evening, the no less wonderful executor Ivan Dmitrievich Chervyakov was sitting in the second row of seats and looking through binoculars at “The Bells of Corneville”...
The middle of the story may obey different principles of plot movement. The most common way to develop an action is the natural course of events. In this case, events move towards the most intense moment, called in plot composition culmination after which it begins denouement actions.
The end of the story contains the ending of the story: a briefly and strongly expressed moral thought, a conclusion from the story, for the sake of which it is built. An example of such an ending can be fables with a so-called “moral”: For the powerful, the powerless is always to blame; When there is no agreement among the comrades, things will not go well for them.
However, narrators do not always make this conclusion, leaving the reader to “figure it out” for the author. The denouement itself may not be presented. In short, there are a lot of options. The narrator's task is to choose the best compositional drawing for a given story. Stories can also be lengthy or short.
Here is an example of a miniature story, the master of which was M.M. Zoshchenko:
ROOSTER
Yard Sun. Big flies are flying.
I'm sitting on the steps of the porch. I'm eating something. Must be a bun.
I throw the pieces to the chickens.
A rooster approaches me. He turns his head and looks at me.
I wave my hand for the rooster to go away. But he doesn't leave. Approaching me. And suddenly, jumping up, he pecks at my bun.
I run away screaming in horror.
This story conveys the feelings of a three-year-old boy and is as if written by a child. The story is a necessary part of a large book (Before Sunrise) with a very serious and complex topic. But the miniature itself is a complete story, including the main elements of the plot.
The ability to choose an interesting, instructive or funny event from one’s personal life is not common to everyone, nor is the ability to tell stories simply, clearly and vividly. Anyone who wants to learn how to tell a good story should learn from the masters of this craft, analyzing their stories, including their construction.
Composition (Latin sotrope - to fold, to build) - the construction, arrangement and relationship of parts, episodes, characters, means of artistic expression in a literary work. The composition holds together all the elements of the work, subordinating them to the author’s idea. Component elements of the composition: characters, ongoing events, artistic details, monologues and dialogues, portraits, landscapes, interiors, lyrical digressions, inserted episodes, artistic foreshadowing and framing. V. Khalizev identifies such elements of the composition as repetitions and variations that become motifs, silences and recognitions. There are different types of compositions. Thus, the composition of lyrical works can be linear (the poem “Winter. What should we do in the village? I meet...” by A.S. Pushkin), amoebaic (regular, symmetrical alternation of two voices or themes - Russian folk songs); it can also often be based on the technique of antithesis (the poem “Demon” by A.S. Pushkin); ring (coincidence of beginning and ending - S.A. Yesenin’s poem “Darling, let’s sit next to each other...”); hidden circular (the same theme is given at the beginning and at the end of the work - the theme of a snowstorm, both a natural phenomenon and the whirlwind of life in the poem “Snow memory is crushed and pricked...” by S.A. Yesenin). Prose works are characterized by a wide variety of compositional techniques. There is a linear composition (the sequential unfolding of events and the gradual discovery of the psychological motivations for the actions of the heroes - the novel “An Ordinary Story” by I.A. Goncharov), a circular composition (the action ends where it began - the story “The Captain's Daughter” by A.S. Pushkin) , reverse composition (the work opens with the last event, which gradually begins to be explained to the reader - the novel “What is to be done?” by N.G. Chernyshevsky), mirror composition (the images and episodes are symmetrical - the novel in verse “Eugene Onegin” by A.S. Pushkin), associative composition (the author uses the technique of default, the technique of retrospection, the technique of “story within a story” (the story “Bela” in “A Hero of Our Time” by M.Yu. Lermontov, the story “Asya” by I.S. Turgenev), dotted composition (characterized by intermittency in the description of the events and psychological motivations, the narrative suddenly ends, intriguing the reader, the next chapter begins with a different episode - the novel “Crime and Punishment” by F.M. Dostoevsky).
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