1 literary criticism as a science. Literary criticism as a science of fiction
The theory of literature studies the general patterns of the literary process, literature as a form of social consciousness, literary works as a whole, the specifics of the relationship between the author, the work and the reader. Develops general concepts and terms.
Literary theory interacts with other literary disciplines, as well as with history, philosophy, aesthetics, sociology, and linguistics.
Poetics - studies the composition and structure of a literary work.
The theory of the literary process - studies the patterns of development of genera and genres.
Literary aesthetics - the study of literature as an art form.
The history of literature studies the development of literature. It is divided by time, by direction, by place.
Literary criticism deals with the evaluation and analysis of literary works. Critics evaluate the work in terms of aesthetic value.
From the point of view of sociology, the structure of society is always reflected in works, especially ancient ones, so she is also engaged in the study of literature.
Auxiliary literary disciplines:
a) textual criticism - the study of the text as such: manuscripts, editions, editions, time of writing, author, place, translation and commentary
b) paleography - the study of the ancient carriers of the text, only manuscripts
c) bibliography - an auxiliary discipline of any science, scientific literature on a particular subject
d) library science - the science of funds, repositories of not only fiction, but also scientific literature, consolidated catalogs.
Literature is now viewed as the above system, where everything is interconnected. The author always writes for the reader. There are different types of readers, as Chernyshevsky says. An example is Mayakovsky, who addressed his descendants through his contemporaries. The literary critic is also addressed to the personality of the author, his opinion, biography. He is also interested in the reader's opinion.
Art and its types
Art is the main type of spiritual activity of people, serving to satisfy the aesthetic feelings of a person, his need for beauty.
An art form is a form of mastering the world according to the laws of beauty, when an artistic image is created, filled with a certain ideological and aesthetic content.
Art Functions:
Aesthetic - the ability to form artistic tastes, moral values, awakens the creative personality traits.
Educational - education of the individual, the impact on the morality and worldview of a person.
Information - carries certain information.
Cognitive - knowledge of the world with special depth and expressiveness.
Communicative - artistic communication between the author and the recipient; attachment to that time and place.
Ethnogenetic - the preservation of memory, embodies the image of the people.
Hedonistic - giving pleasure.
Transformative - stimulates the activity of the individual.
Compensatory - empathy for the hero.
Anticipations - the writer is ahead of his time.
Types of art: theater, music, painting, graphics, sculpture, literature, architecture, decor, cinema, photography, circus. About 400 activities.
The synthetic nature of art is the ability to holistically reflect life in the interconnection of all its aspects.
The ancients identified five types of arts, the basis of the classification is the material carrier. Music is the art of sounds, painting is the art of colors, sculpture is stone, architecture is plastic forms, literature is the word.
However, already Lesin in the article "Laocoön or on the Limits of Painting" issued the first scientific classification: the division into spatial and temporal arts.
From Lesin's point of view, literature is a temporary art.
They also single out expressive and fine arts (sign principle). The expressive expresses emotions, conveys the mood, the pictorial - embodies the idea.
Expressive art is music, architecture, abstract painting, poetry.
Fine - painting, sculpture, drama and epic.
According to this classification, literature is an expressive art.
8. Origin of art. Totemism, magic, their connection with folklore and literature. Syncretism.
The word "art" is ambiguous, in this case it is called the actual artistic activity and what is its result (work). Art as artistic creativity was delimited from art in a broader sense (as skills, crafts). Thus, Hegel noted the fundamental difference between "skillfully made things" and "works of art."
Syncretism - an indivisible unity of different types of creativity - existed at an early stage of human development. This is connected with the ideas of primitive people about the world, with anthropomorphism in the consciousness of natural phenomena - the animation of the forces of nature, likening them to man. This was expressed in primitive magic - the idea of how to influence nature so that it favors a person's life, his actions. One of the manifestations of magic is totemism - a complex of beliefs and rituals associated with ideas of kinship between genera and certain types of animals and plants. Primitive people painted animals on the walls of the caves, made them their intercessors, and in order to appease them, they danced and sang to the sounds of the first musical instruments. This is how painting and sculpture, pantomime and music were born.
Folklore is an oral form of existence of the artistic word.
Gradually, the rituals became more diverse, people began to perform ritual actions not only in front of their totems, but also when they were going to hunt, before the arrival of spring. Not only ritual, but also ordinary lyrical songs, as well as other genres - fairy tales, legends - have already appeared. So began to develop folklore - oral folk art.
The main features that distinguish folklore from fiction are oral existence, anonymity, variance, and brevity.
9. Fiction as an art form. Subject and object of literary creativity.
The ancients identified five types of arts, the basis of the classification is the material carrier. Music is the art of sounds, painting is the art of colors, sculpture is stone, architecture is plastic forms, literature is the word.
However, already Lesin in the article "Laocoön or on the Limits of Painting" issued the first scientific classification: the division into spatial and temporal arts.
From Lesin's point of view, literature is a temporary art.
They also single out expressive and fine arts (sign principle). The expressive expresses emotions, conveys the mood, the pictorial - embodies the idea.
-Expressive art is music, architecture, abstract painting, lyrics.
-Fine - painting, sculpture, drama and epic.
According to this classification, literature is an expressive art.
Literature is the art of the word, which differs from other arts in its material.
The word in some way limits our perception, but painting, sculpture, music are universal. On the one hand, this is a lack of literature, but on the other hand, it is its merit. the word can convey both plastic, and sound, and dynamic. image. With the help of a word, you can describe both a portrait and a landscape (descriptive function).
The word can convey the sound of music, it can only convey the general impression of the music.
A word in literature can also convey dynamics, recreate some kind of dynamic series. Then the word appears in the narrative function.
The word is the most important element in the construction of an artistic image in literature, a complete semantic unit.
It is connected with the satisfaction of the aesthetic needs of a person, with his desire to create beauty, to enjoy it. These tasks are served by art, presented in various forms.
Fiction is divided into:1. By content: historical, detective, humorous, journalistic, satirical. 2. By age categories: for preschoolers, younger students, students, adults. 3. By implementation in specific forms: poetry, prose, dramaturgy, criticism, journalism.
The object of fiction is the whole world.
The subject of fiction is man.
Literature and society. Citizenship, folk literature.
As an integral part of the national culture, literature is the bearer of the features that characterize the nation, the expression of common national properties.
Literature is the art of the word, therefore, the features of the national language in which it is written are a direct expression of its national identity.
At the early stages of the development of society, certain natural conditions give rise to common tasks in the struggle of man with nature, a commonality of labor processes and skills, customs, way of life, world outlook. Impressions from the surrounding nature affect the properties of the narrative, the features of metaphors, comparisons and other artistic means.
As a nation is formed from a nation, national identity is manifested in the features of social life. The development of class society, the transition from the slave-owning system to the feudal system and from the feudal to the bourgeois one, proceeds among different peoples at different times, under different conditions. The external and internal political activity of the state develops differently, which influences the emergence of certain moral norms, the formation of ideological ideas and traditions. All this leads to the emergence of a national characteristic of the life of society. From childhood, people are brought up under the influence of a complex system of relationships and ideas of the national society, and this leaves an imprint on their behavior. This is how the characters of people of different nations are historically formed - national characters.
Literature has an important place in revealing the features of the national character. Fiction shows both the diversity of national types, and their concrete class nature, and their historical development.
The characters of people in their national characteristics not only act as an object of artistic knowledge, but are also depicted from the point of view of the writer, who also carries the spirit of his people, his nation.
The first deep exponent of the national Russian character in literature is Pushkin. In it, Russian nature, the Russian soul, the Russian language, the Russian character are reflected in the same purity, in such purified beauty, in which the landscape is reflected on the convex surface of optical glass.
Genuine folk literature most fully expresses national interests, therefore it also has a pronounced national identity. It is the work of such artists as Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, L. Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gorky, Sholokhov, Tvardovsky that determines our idea of the nationality of art and its national identity.
Rhyme, its functions.
Rhyme is the repetition of more or less similar combinations of sounds that connect the endings of two or more lines or symmetrically arranged parts of poetic lines. In classical Russian versification, the main feature of rhyme is the coincidence of stressed vowels. The rhyme marks the end of the verse (clause) with a sound repetition, emphasizing the pause between the lines, and thus the rhythm of the verse.
Depending on the location of stresses in rhyming words, rhyme can be: masculine, feminine, dactylic, hyperdactylic, exact and inexact.
- Masculine - rhyme with stress on the last syllable in the line.
- Feminine - with stress on the penultimate syllable in the line.
- Dactylic - with an accent on the third syllable from the end of the line, which repeats the dactyl pattern - -_ _ (stressed, unstressed, unstressed), which, in fact, is the reason for the name of this rhyme.
- Hyperdactylic - with stress on the fourth and subsequent syllables from the end of the line. This rhyme is very rare in practice. It appeared in the works of oral folklore, where the size as such is not always visible. The fourth syllable from the end of the verse is no joke!
Main functions: versifying, phonic, semantic.
Rhyme classification.
There are several important bases for the classification of rhymes. Firstly, the characteristics of clauses are transferred to rhymes: in terms of syllabic volume, rhymes can be masculine (last syllable), feminine (penultimate syllable), dactylic (third from the end), hyperdactylic (fourth from the end). At the same time, rhymes ending in a vowel sound are called open (for example: spring - red), in a consonant - closed (hell - garden), in the sound "y" - iotized, or softened (spring - forest).
Second, rhymes vary in degree of precision. In poems designed for auditory perception (namely, such is the poetry of the 19th-20th centuries), exact rhyme implies the coincidence of sounds (not letters!), Starting from the last stressed vowel to the end of the verse: unbearable - haymaking; cold - hammer (the consonant "d" at the end of the word is stunned); fear - horses (the letter "i" indicates the softness of the consonant "d"); glad - it’s necessary (the shock “a” and “o” are reduced, they sound the same), etc. In 19th century poetry exact rhymes predominate. Inaccurate rhymes have greatly supplanted the exact ones among many poets of the 20th century, especially those who write in accent verse.
The third criterion is the richness / poverty of consonances. A rhyme is considered rich if the reference consonant is repeated in the clauses, i.e. consonant preceding the last stressed vowel: foreign land - mountain ash; grapes are happy. The exception is the masculine open rhyme (mountain - hole), since "in order for the rhyme to feel sufficient, you need to match at least two sounds." Therefore, the rhyme: mountain - hole should be considered sufficient. In other cases, the coincidence in the lines of the reference consonant, and even more so the sounds preceding it, "increases the sonority of the rhyme, enriches it<...>feels like an "unexpected gift".
By place in the verse:
End
· Initial
· Internal
According to the location of rhyme chains (types of rhyming):
Adjacent - rhyming of adjacent verses: the first with the second, the third with the fourth (aabb) (the endings of the verses that rhyme with each other are indicated by the same letters).
Cross - rhyming of the first verse with the third, the second - with the fourth (abab)
Ring (girded, embracing) - the first verse - with the fourth, and the second - with the third. (abba)
· Finally, the woven rhyme has many patterns. This is a common name for complex types of rhyming, for example: abvabv, abvvba, etc.
Solid forms of verse.
SOLID forms - poetic forms that predetermine the volume, meter, rhyme, stanza of a whole small poem (and partly the figurative structure, composition, etc.). In European poetry from the 13th-15th centuries. predominantly solid forms of French and Italian origin (sonnet, triolet, rondo, rondelle, sextine) are in use, from the 19th century. also eastern (gazelle, rubai, tanka).
Tercet - in versification, a stanza of 3 verses (lines). It can have 2 types: all 3 verses for one rhyme or 2 verses rhyme, the 3rd without rhyme. Did not receive distribution. In the narrow sense of the word, three-verse parts of a sonnet are called tercet.
Quatrain - a quatrain, a separate stanza of four lines. The rhyming system in the quatrain: abab (cross rhyme), aabb (pair), abba (girdle). Quatrain is used for inscriptions, epitaphs, epigrams, sayings. The four-line stanzas of the sonnet are also called quatrains.
Sonnet - a solid poetic form: a poem of 14 lines, divided into 2 quatrains (quatrains) and 2 three-lines (tercet); in quatrains only 2 rhymes are repeated, in terzets - 2 or 3.
Some “rules” for the content of a sonnet were also recommended, but did not become universal: stanzas should end with dots, words should not be repeated, the last word should be “key”, 4 stanzas correlate as a thesis - development - antithesis - synthesis or as a plot - development - climax - denouement. The most vivid, figurative thought should be contained in the last two lines, the so-called sonnet lock.
Rondel is a solid poetic form (translated from French - circle). Rondel appeared in the XIV-XV centuries in France. The rondel scheme can be represented as: ABba + abAB + abbaA, in which identical lines are indicated in capital letters. Less commonly used is a double rondel of 16 verses with the rhyme ABBA+abAB+abba+ABBA.
Rondo is a solid poetic form; developed from the rondelle in the 14th century by shortening the chorus to a half line. Its heyday falls on the XVI-XVII centuries. His scheme: aavva + avvR + aavvaR, in which the capital letter P is a non-rhyming refrain repeating the initial words of the first line.
Triolet is a solid poetic form; a poem consisting of 8 lines with two rhymes. The first, fourth and seventh lines are identical (from the triple repetition of the first verse and this name came about) The second and eighth are also. Triolet scheme: ABaAavAB, in which repeated lines are indicated in capital letters. After the second and fourth verses, as a rule, there was a canonical pause (pointe). The verse is almost always four-foot - trochaic or iambic.
The sextina is a solid poetic form that developed from the canzone and gained popularity thanks to Dante and Petrarch. The classical sextine consists of 6 stanzas of six verses each, usually non-rhyming (in the Russian tradition, the sextine is usually written in rhymed verse). Words that end lines in the first stanza end lines in all subsequent stanzas, with each new stanza repeating the end words of the previous stanza in the sequence: 6 - 1 - 5 - 2 - 4 - 3.
Octave - in versification, a stanza of 8 verses with the rhyme abababcc. Developed in Italian poetry of the 14th century, it became a traditional stanza of the poetic epic of the Italian and Spanish Renaissance.
Terzina - (Italian terzina, from terza rima - the third rhyme), a form of chain stanzas: a series of three lines rhymed according to the scheme aba, bcb, cdc, ded ... yzy z. Thus, tercina give a continuous rhyming chain of arbitrary length, convenient for works of large forms.
Haiku (haiku) is a three-line (three-line) lyric, usually a poem, which is a national Japanese form. Haiku usually depicts nature and man in their eternal continuity. In each haiku, a certain measure of verses is observed - in the first and third verses, five syllables each, in the second verse, seven, and in total there are 17 syllables in haiku.
Rubai - (Arabic, lit. quadruple), in the poetry of the peoples of the East, an aphoristic quatrain with the rhyme aaba, aaaa.
Genera, species, genres.
The genres of literature are large associations of verbal and artistic works according to the type of relationship of the speaker ("carrier of speech") to the artistic whole. There are three types: drama, epic, lyrics.
DRAMA is one of the four genres of literature. In the narrow sense of the word - the genre of a work depicting a conflict between characters, in a broad sense - all works without the author's speech. Types (genres) of dramatic works: tragedy, drama, comedy, vaudeville.
LYRICS - one of the four types of literature, reflecting life through the personal experiences of a person, his feelings and thoughts. Types of lyrics: song, elegy, ode, thought, message, madrigal, stanzas, eclogue, epigram, epitaph.
LYROEPIC is one of the four types of literature in which the reader observes and evaluates the artistic world from the outside as a plot narrative, but at the same time events and characters receive a certain emotional assessment of the narrator.
EPOS is one of the four types of literature, reflecting life through a story about a person and the events that happen to him. The main types (genres) of epic literature: epic, novel, story, short story, short story, artistic essay.
TYPES (GENRES) OF EPIC WORKS:
(epopee, novel, story, story, fairy tale, fable, legend.)
EPIC is a major work of art that tells about significant historical events. In ancient times - a narrative poem of heroic content.
ROMAN is a large narrative work of art with a complex plot, in the center of which is the fate of the individual.
A STORY is a work of art that occupies a middle position between a novel and a short story in terms of the volume and complexity of the plot. In ancient times, any narrative work was called a story.
STORY - a work of art of a small size, which is based on an episode, an incident from the life of a hero.
FAIRY TALE - a work about fictional events and heroes, usually with the participation of magical, fantastic forces.
FABLE (from “bayat” - to tell) is a narrative work in poetic form, small in size, moralizing or satirical in nature.
TYPES (GENRES) OF LYRICAL WORKS:
(ode, hymn, song, elegy, sonnet, epigram, message)
ODA (from the Greek “song”) is a choral, solemn song.
HYMN (from Greek “praise”) is a solemn song based on programmatic verses.
EPIGRAM (from Greek “inscription”) is a short satirical poem of a mocking nature that arose in the 3rd century BC. e.
ELEGY - a genre of lyrics dedicated to sad thoughts or a lyrical poem imbued with sadness.
MESSAGE - a poetic letter, an appeal to a specific person, a request, a wish, a confession.
SONNET (from the Provencal sonette - "song") - a poem of 14 lines, which has a certain rhyming system and strict stylistic laws.
Epos as a literary genre.
Epos - (gr.story, narration) - one of the three types of literature, narrative type. Genre varieties of the epic: fairy tale, short story, story, short story, essay, novel, etc. The epic as a kind of literature reproduces the external, in relation to the author, objective reality in its objective essence. The epic uses a variety of ways of presentation - narration, description, dialogue, monologue, author's digressions. Epic genres are enriched and improved. Techniques of composition, means of depicting a person, the circumstances of his life, everyday life are being developed, a multilateral image of the picture of the world and society is being achieved.
The literary text is similar to a kind of fusion of narrative speech and the statements of the characters.
Everything that is told is given only through narration. The epic as a literary genre very freely masters reality in time and space. He knows no limits in the amount of text. Epic novels also belong to the epic.
Epic works include Honorémp de Balzac's novel "Father Goriot", Stendhal's novel "Red and Black", Leo Tolstoy's epic novel "War and Peace".
Epos - the original form - a heroic poem. Arises at break of a patriarchal society. In Russian literature - epics, folding into cycles.
The epic reproduces life not as a personal, but as an objective reality - from the outside. The purpose of any epic is to tell about an event. The content dominant is the event. Earlier - wars, later - a private event, facts of inner life. The cognitive orientation of the epic is an objective beginning. A story about events without evaluation. "The Tale of Bygone Years" - all the bloody events are told dispassionately and ordinary. epic distance.
The subject of the image in the epic is the world as an objective reality. Human life in its organic connection with the world, fate is also the subject of the image. Bunin's story. Sholokhov "The Fate of Man". It is important to understand fate through the prism of culture.
Forms of verbal expression in the epic (type of speech organization) - narration. The functions of the word - the word depicts the objective world. Narration is a way/type of utterance. Description in the epic. The speech of heroes, characters. Narration is the speech of the image of the author. The speech of the characters - polylogues, monologues, dialogues. In romantic works, the confession of the protagonist is obligatory. Internal monologues are the direct inclusion of the words of the characters. Indirect forms - indirect speech, improper direct speech. It is not isolated from the author's speech.
The important role of the system of reflections in the novel. The hero can be endowed with a quality that the author does not like. Example: Silvio. Pushkin's favorite characters are verbose. Very often it is not clear to us how the author relates to the hero.
A) narrator
1) The character has his own destiny. "The Captain's Daughter", "Tales of Belkin".
2) Conditional narrator, faceless in terms of speech. Very often we are. Speech mask.
3) Tale. Speech coloring - says society.
1) Objective. "History of the Russian State" Karamzin, "War and Peace".
2) Subjective - orientation to the reader, appeal.
A tale is a special speech manner that reproduces a person’s speech, as if not literary processed. Leskov "Lefty".
Descriptions and lists. important for the epic. The epic is perhaps the most popular genre.
Romance and epic.
The novel is a large form of the epic genre of literature. The most common features are the depiction of a person in complex forms of the life process, the multilinear plot, covering the fate of a number of characters, polyphony, mostly a prose genre. Initially, in medieval Europe, the term meant narrative literature in the Romance languages (lat.), Retrospectively, some works of ancient literature were also called that.
In the history of the European novel, a number of historically established types can be distinguished, successively replacing each other.
ROMAN (French roman), a literary genre, an epic work of great form, in which the narrative is focused on the fate of an individual in his relation to the world around him, on the formation, development of his character and self-consciousness. The novel is the epic of modern times; unlike the folk epic, where the individual and the folk soul are inseparable, in the novel the life of the individual and social life appear as relatively independent; but the “private,” inner life of the individual is revealed in him “epopically,” that is, with the revelation of its generally significant and social meaning. A typical novel situation is a clash in the hero of the moral and human (personal) with natural and social necessity. Since the novel develops in modern times, where the nature of the relationship between man and society is constantly changing, its form is essentially “open”: the main situation is filled with concrete historical content every time and is embodied in various genre modifications. Historically, the picaresque novel is considered the first form. In the 18th century two main varieties develop: the social novel (G. Fielding, T. Smollett) and the psychological novel (S. Richardson, J. J. Rousseau, L. Stern, I. V. Goethe). Romantics create a historical novel (V. Scott). In the 1830s the classical era of the socio-psychological novel of critical realism of the 19th century begins. (Stendhal, O. Balzac, C. Dickens, W. Thackeray, G. Flaubert, L. N. Tolstoy, F. M. Dostoevsky).
The epic is one of the oldest epic genres. There was an epic in Greece. From the Greek epic is translated as I create, or created. Greek epics, like much of Greek literature, were based on ancient Greek mythology. The most outstanding epics from Greek literature can be called the Odyssey and Hellas by Homer. The events of both of these works are so closely intertwined with myths (and many of the events taking place in them are simply a continuation) that the plot is complex and confusing. In general, due to the theme of Greek epics, it is generally accepted in literary criticism that the subject of an epic should be:
It is based on the celebration of an event
Military, conquest campaigns
The interests of the people, the nation (meaning that the epic cannot but capture problems and issues that are not of interest to the bulk of the population).
This is partly due to the fact that, despite the presence of slavery in Greece, this social system was overcome by the Greeks and by common efforts, they came to feudal democracy. The main meaning of the Greek epics was that the opinion of the people (the majority) always wins over the opinion of the minority. Thus, judge for yourself that what was not in Greek prose was individualism. Maybe you remember the lively dialogue between Tristan and Odysseus himself? Tristan seems to be right, but he is in the minority, and therefore Odysseus wins.
Traditionally, the epic was written in verse, however, modern stylizations of epics can be found more and more often in prose. In the era of classicism, the epic regains popularity, take, for example, Virgil and his Aeneid. For the Slavs, this work is especially remarkable, since it was on their lands that many parodies of this classic epic went.
Lyric works.
The lyrical-epic genre of literature is works of art in poetic form, which combine epic and lyrical images of life.
In the works of the lyrical-epic kind, life is reflected, on the one hand, in a poetic narrative about the actions and experiences of a person or people, about the events in which they take part; on the other hand, in the experiences of the poet-narrator, caused by the pictures of life, the behavior of the characters in his poetic story. These experiences of the poet-narrator are usually expressed in works of the lyrical-epic kind in the so-called lyrical digressions, sometimes not directly related to the course of events in the work; lyrical digressions are one of the types of author's speech.
Such, for example, are the well-known lyrical digressions in A. S. Pushkin's poetic novel "Eugene Onegin", in his poems; such are the chapters “From the Author”, “About Me” and lyrical digressions in other chapters of the poem in A. T. Tvardovsky’s poem “Vasily Terkin”.
LYROEPIC TYPES (GENRES): poem, ballad.
POEM (from the Greek poieio - “I do, I create”) - a large poetic work with a narrative or lyrical plot, usually on a historical or legendary topic.
BALLAD - a story song of dramatic content, a story in verse.
TYPES (GENRES) OF DRAMA WORKS:
tragedy, comedy, drama (in the narrow sense).
TRAGEDY (from the Greek tragos ode - “goat song”) is a dramatic work depicting a tense struggle of strong characters and passions, which usually ends with the death of the hero.
COMEDY (from the Greek komos ode - "fun song") - a dramatic work with a cheerful, funny plot, usually ridiculing social or domestic vices.
DRAMA (“action”) is a literary work in the form of a dialogue with a serious plot, depicting a person in her dramatic relationship with society. Drama may be tragicomedy or melodrama.
VAUDEVILLE - a genre variety of comedy, it is a light comedy with singing couplets and dancing.
Literary criticism.
Literary criticism - (Judgment, the art of understanding, judging) - is one of the components of literary criticism. Closely connected with the history and theory of literature, which are mainly engaged in determining the nature of verbal creativity, establishing the basic laws of the aesthetic development of reality, and analyzing the classical literary heritage. Literary criticism mainly evaluates contemporary literary development, interprets works of art from the point of view of modernity.
Determining the ideological and aesthetic quality of the current book and magazine literary and artistic production, literary criticism proceeds, first of all, from the tasks facing society at this stage of its development.
A work of art that does not broaden the reader's spiritual outlook, does not give a person aesthetic pleasure, that is, is emotionally poor and therefore does not affect the aesthetic sense - such a work cannot be recognized as truly artistic.
The history of literary criticism has its roots in the distant past: critical judgments about literature were born simultaneously with the appearance of works of art. The first readers from among the thinking, wise by life experience and endowed with aesthetic flair were, in essence, the first literary critics. Already in the era of antiquity, literary criticism was formed as a relatively independent branch of creativity.
Criticism indicates to the writer the merits and shortcomings of his work, contributing to the expansion of his ideological horizons and the improvement of skill; Turning to the reader, the critic not only explains the work to him, but involves him in a living process of joint comprehension of what he has read at a new level of understanding. An important advantage of criticism is the ability to consider a work as an artistic whole and to realize it in the general process of literary development.
In modern literary criticism, various genres are cultivated - an article, a review, a review, an essay, a literary portrait, a polemical remark, a bibliographic note. But in any case, the critic in a certain sense must combine in himself a politician, a sociologist, a psychologist with a literary historian and an esthetician. At the same time, criticism needs a talent that is related to the talent of both the artist and the scientist, although not at all identical with them.
The structure of literary criticism. The main branches of the science of literature.
Literary theory studies the general patterns of the literary process, literature as a form
Literary criticism is the science of fiction, its origin, essence and development. Literary criticism studies the fiction of various peoples of the world in order to understand the features and patterns of its own content and the forms that express them.
Literary criticism originates from ancient times. The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle in his book "Poetics" was the first to give the theory of genres and types of literature (epos, drama, lyrics).
In the 17th century, N. Boileau created his treatise "The Art of Poetry", based on an earlier work by Horace ("The Science of Poetry"). It separates knowledge about literature, but it was not yet a science.
In the XVIII century, German scientists tried to create educational treatises (Lessing "Laocoon. On the Limits of Painting and Poetry", Gerber "Critical Forests").
At the beginning of the 19th century in Germany, the Grimm brothers created their theory.
In Russia, the science of literature as an independent discipline, as a certain system of knowledge and a tool for analyzing literary phenomena with its own concepts, theory and methodology, was established by the middle of the 19th century.
Modern literary criticism consists of three independent, but closely related core disciplines:
literary theory
literary history
literary criticism.
Literary theory explores the nature of verbal creativity, develops and systematizes laws, general concepts of fiction, patterns of development of genera and genres. Literary theory studies the general laws of the literary process, literature as a form of social consciousness, literary works as a whole, the specifics of the relationship between the author, the work and the reader.
The theory of literature develops in the process of philosophical and aesthetic comprehension of the totality of the facts of the historical and literary process.
^ Literary history explores the originality of various national literatures, studies the history of the emergence, change, development of literary movements and trends, literary periods, artistic methods and styles in different eras and among different peoples, as well as the work of individual writers as a naturally conditioned process.
The history of literature considers any literary phenomenon in historical development. Neither a literary work, nor the work of a writer can be understood without connection with time, with a single process of the literary movement.
The history and theory of literature are closely interrelated. However, their means and techniques are different: the theory of literature seeks to determine the essence of the developing aesthetic system, gives a general perspective on the artistic process, and the history of literature characterizes specific forms and their specific manifestations.
^ Literary criticism(from the Greek kritike - the art of disassembling, judging) is engaged in the analysis and interpretation of works of art, their evaluation in terms of aesthetic value, the identification and approval of the creative principles of a particular literary movement.
Literary criticism proceeds from the general methodology of the science of literature and is based on the history of literature. Unlike the history of literature, it illuminates the processes taking place primarily in the literary movement of our time, or interprets the literature of the past from the point of view of contemporary social and artistic tasks. Literary criticism is closely connected both with life, social struggle, and with the philosophical and aesthetic ideas of the era.
Criticism points out to the writer the merits and faults of his work. Turning to the reader, the critic not only explains the work to him, but involves him in a living process of joint comprehension of what he has read at a new level of understanding. An important advantage of criticism is the ability to consider a work as an artistic whole and to realize it in the general process of literary development.
In modern literary criticism, various genres are cultivated - an article, a review, a review, an essay, a literary portrait, a polemical remark, a bibliographic note.
The source base of the theory and history of literature, literary criticism are auxiliary literary disciplines:
textology
historiography
bibliography
Textology studies the text as such: manuscripts, editions, revisions, time of writing. The study of the history of the text at all stages of its existence gives an idea of the sequence of the history of its creation (the "material" embodiment of the creative process - sketches, drafts, notes, variants, etc.). Textology also deals with the establishment of authorship (attribution).
Historiography is devoted to the study of the specific historical conditions for the appearance of a particular work.
Bibliography- a branch of scientific description and systematization of information about published works. This is an auxiliary discipline of any science (scientific literature on a particular subject), based on two principles: thematic and chronological. There is a bibliography for individual periods and stages, for personalities (authors), as well as a bibliography of fiction and literary criticism. Bibliographies can be auxiliary (with explanatory annotations and brief comments) and advisory (containing lists of major publications on certain sections and topics).
Modern literary criticism is a very complex and mobile system of disciplines, which is characterized by close interdependence of all its branches. Thus, literary theory interacts with other literary disciplines; criticism is based on the data of the history and theory of literature, and the latter take into account and comprehend the experience of criticism, while criticism itself eventually becomes the material of the history of literature, etc.
Modern literary criticism is developing in close connection with history, philosophy, aesthetics, sociology, linguistics, and psychology.
Control questions to the topic "Literary criticism as a science"
1.
What is the subject of study of literary criticism as a science?
2.
What is the structure of literary criticism (main and auxiliary disciplines of the science of literature)?
3.
What does literary theory study?
4.
What is the study of literary history?
5.
What are the functions of literary criticism?
6.
What is the subject of study of auxiliary disciplines of literary criticism?
7.
The relationship of all the main and auxiliary sections of the science of literature.
Lecture 2
^ SPECIFICITY OF ART LITERATURE
The term “literature” refers to any works of human thought fixed in the written word and having social significance. There are technical, scientific, journalistic, reference literature, etc. However, in a stricter sense, literature is usually called works of fiction, which, in turn, is a kind of artistic creativity, i.e. art.
Art – a kind of spiritual assimilation of reality by a social person, aimed at the formation and development of his ability to creatively transform the world around him and himself. Piece of art is the result (product) of artistic creativity . Onov in a sensual-material form embodies the spiritual and meaningful intention of the artist and is the main custodian and source of information in the field of artistic culture.
Works of art are a necessary accessory to the life of both an individual and human society as a whole.
Ancient forms of world exploration were based on syncretism. During the centuries of life and activity of people, various types of art arose. whose boundaries were not clearly defined for a long time. Gradually, an understanding came of the need to distinguish between artistic means and images characteristic of different arts.
All types of art spiritually enrich and ennoble a person, give him a lot of different knowledge and emotions. Outside of man and his emotions there is no art and cannot be. The subject of art, and therefore of literature, is a person, his inner and outer life, and everything that is somehow connected with him.
The general properties of art find a specific manifestation in its various types, which at different times subdivided it into pictorial(epic and dramatic genre of literature, painting, sculpture and pantomime) and expressive(lyrical kind of literature, music, choreography, architecture); then on spatial and temporal etc. Their modern classification involves the division of classical arts into spatial(architecture), temporary(literature), pictorial(painting, graphics, sculpture); expressive(music), representative(theater, cinema); lately there have been many arts , possessing synthetic character.
^ Artistic image
Art is thinking with artistic images, therefore imagery is a common essential feature of all types of art. An artistic image is a way of reflecting, reproducing life, specific to art, its generalization from the standpoint of the artist's aesthetic ideal in a living, concrete-sensual form.
^ Artistic image is a special way of mastering and transforming reality, inherent only in art. In the artistic image, the objective-cognitive and subjective-creative principles are inextricably merged.
One of the most important specific features of art is artistic convention as a principle of artistic depiction, in general, denoting the non-identity of the artistic image with the object of reproduction. The artistic specificity of the image is determined by the fact that it reflects and comprehends the existing reality and creates new, fictional world.
There can be no work of art without images. In the visual arts, the image is always perceived visually. But in music, the artistic image is addressed not to sight, but to hearing, and does not necessarily have to evoke any visual associations; it does not necessarily have to “depict”. In fiction, the visual representation of an image is also not a general rule (although it is very common); usually a character or a literary hero is called an image, but this is a narrowing of the concept of “artistic image”.
^ In fact, any phenomenon creatively recreated in a work of art is an artistic image.
The place of fiction among the arts
In different periods of the cultural development of mankind, literature was assigned a different place among other types of art - from the leading to one of the last. For example, ancient thinkers considered sculpture the most important of the arts. In the 18th century, a tendency arose in European aesthetics to promote literature to the fore. Renaissance artists and classicists, like ancient thinkers, were convinced of the advantages of sculpture and painting over literature. Romantics in the first place among all kinds of arts put poetry and music. Symbolists considered music to be the highest form of culture, and they tried in every possible way to bring poetry closer to music.
The peculiarity of literature, its difference from other types of art, is due to the fact that it is verbal (verbal) art, since its “primary element” is the word. Using the word as the main "building" material when creating images, literature has great potential in the artistic exploration of the world. Being, in fact, a temporary art, literature, like no other art, is capable of reproducing reality both in time and space, and in expression, both in “sound” and in “picture” images, limitlessly expanding for the reader the scope of his life impressions (true, verbal images, unlike pictorial and sculptural ones, are not visual, they arise in the reader's imagination only as a result of the associative connection of words and ideas, therefore the intensity of the aesthetic impression depends largely on the reader's perception).
Reproducing speech activity (using such forms as dialogues and monologues), literature recreates the processes of people's thinking and their spiritual world. Literature can depict thoughts, sensations, experiences, beliefs - all aspects of a person's inner world.
Imprinting human consciousness with the help of speech is available to the only kind of art - literature. Literature as the art of the word is the sphere where the observation of the human psyche was born, formed and achieved great perfection and refinement.
Literature allows you to understand the laws of personality development, human relations, the characters of people. It is capable of reproducing various aspects of reality, recreating events of any scale - from the daily actions of an individual to historical conflicts that are important for the fate of entire nations, social movements. This is a universal form of art, which, moreover, is distinguished by its acute problematic nature and a more distinct expression of the author's position than in other types of art.
Nowadays, the brightest literary artistic images, plots and motifs often form the basis of many works of other types of art - painting, sculpture, theater, ballet, opera, variety art, music, cinema, acquiring a new artistic embodiment and continuing their life.
^ Functions of Fiction
Fiction is distinguished by a variety of functions:
Cognitive function: literature helps to understand nature, man, society.
Communicative function: the language of fiction becomes the most effective means of communication between people, generations and nations (but it should be borne in mind that literary works are always created in the national language, and therefore there is a need to translate them into other languages).
aesthetic the function of literature lies in its ability to influence people's views, to form an aesthetic taste. Literature offers the reader an aesthetic ideal, a standard of beauty and an image of the base.
emotional function: literature has an impact on the feelings of the reader, evokes feelings.
Educational function: the book carries priceless spiritual knowledge, forms the individual and social consciousness of a person, contributes to the knowledge of good and evil.
^ Literature and Science
There is a close relationship between literature and science, as they are called upon to cognize nature and society. Literature, like science, has enormous cognitive power. But science and literature each have their own object of knowledge, and special means of presentation, and their own goals.
Distinctive character poetic thoughts that she appears before us in a living concrete image. The scientist operates with a system of evidence and concepts, and the artist recreates a living picture of the world. The science, observing a mass of homogeneous phenomena, establishes their patterns and formulates their in logical terms. Wherein scientist is distracted from the individual characteristics of the subject, from his concrete-sensual form. When abstracting, individual facts, as it were, lose their objectivity, are absorbed by a general concept.
In art, the process of knowing the world is different. Artist, like a scientist, when observing life, he goes from single facts to generalizations, but expresses his generalizations in concrete-sensual images.
The main difference between the scientific definition and the artistic image is that we can only understand the scientific logical definition, while the artistic image refracted in our feelings, we seem to see, imagine, hear, feel.
Control questions to the topic "Specificity of fiction":
1.
Art is a kind of spiritual exploration of reality.
2.
Artistic convention as a principle of artistic depiction.
3.
What is an artistic image?
4.
Fiction as an art form. Its place among other art forms.
5.
The specificity of the verbal image in relation to the images of other arts.
6.
What is the difference between a literary image and a musical, pictorial, sculptural image?
7.
What are the distinguishing features of literature as a work of art?
8.
What are the subject, goals and functions of fiction?
9.
Literature and science.
Lectures 3-4-5.
^ LANGUAGE OF ART LITERATURE
Each art form uses only its own means of expression. These means are usually called the language of this art. Distinguish between the language of fiction, the language of sculpture, the language of music, the language of architecture, etc.
^ The language of fiction, in other words, poetic language, is the form in which the type of verbal art is materialized, objectified, in contrast to other types of art, for example, music or painting, where sound, paint, color serve as means of materialization; the language of choreography - specific expressive movements of the human body, etc.
The artistic image in literature is created both through the word and through composition, and in poetry also through the rhythmic and melodic organization of speech, which together form the language of the work. Therefore, the language of fiction can be considered the totality of all these means, and not just one of them. Without the totality of these means, a work of fiction cannot exist. However, the word, the primary element, the main building material of literature, plays the main, decisive role in the language of fiction.
The language of fiction (poetic language) differs from the literary (canonized, normative) language, which does not allow deviations, in that elements of colloquial language, vernacular, dialect expressions, etc. are used in a work of art.
Considering language as the main means of artistic depiction of life in literature, one should focus on the features poetic language, which differs from other forms of speech activity in that it is subordinate creation of artistic images. The word in the language of a work of art acquires an artistic meaning. The figurativeness of artistic speech is expressed in its emotional saturation, extreme accuracy, economy and simultaneous capacity.
The search for the most necessary, the only possible word in this or that case is associated with great creative efforts of the writer. Artistic speech is not a set of any special poetic words and phrases. Figurative and expressive means (epithets, comparisons, metaphors, etc.) are not in themselves, out of context, a sign of artistry.
Any word, except for the direct, exact meaning denoting the main feature of an object, phenomenon, action, has a number of other meanings, i.e. it is polysemantic (the phenomenon of polysemy of words). Polysemy allows you to use the word in a figurative sense, for example, iron hammer - iron character; storm - a storm of anger, a storm of passion; fast driving - quick mind, quick look etc.
^ The use of a word, expression, phrase in a figurative sense is called a trope. trails are based on an internal convergence, a correlation of two phenomena, of which one explains, clarifies the other. Tropes are often found in colloquial speech, some of them become so familiar that they seem to lose their figurative meaning ( ate a plate, lost his head, a river runs, it rains, table legs). In artistic speech, the paths most clearly and accurately reveal the most essential feature of the depicted object or phenomenon, thereby enhancing the expressiveness of speech.
There are various types of trails, since the principles of convergence of diverse objects and phenomena are different. ^ The simplest types of trope are simile and epithet.
Comparison- this is a comparison of two objects or phenomena that have a common feature, to explain one to the other. Comparison consists of two parts, which are connected most often through conjunctions ( like, exactly, as if, like, as if etc.):
You look like a pink sunset, and like snow, radiant and bright;
like fiery snakes; similar to black lightning.
Quite often, the comparison is expressed using the instrumental case: “Inaudibly, the night comes from the east like a gray she-wolf” (M. Sholokhov); “Silvering with frosty dust / His beaver collar” (A.S. Pushkin).
In addition to direct comparisons, there are negative comparisons: “It’s not the wind that hums on the feather grass, it’s not the wedding train that hums, relatives howled along Prokla, the family howls along Prokla” (Nekrasov). Often there are examples when writers resort to so-called comparisons that reveal a number of signs of a phenomenon or group of phenomena: “I remember a wonderful moment / You appeared before me, / Like a fleeting vision, like a genius of pure beauty” (Pushkin).
^ Epithet– a more difficult type of trail – artistic definition emphasizing the most essential feature of an object or phenomenon ( golden head, gray sea, fiery speech). The epithet must not be confused with a logical definition (oak table) separating one object from another. Depending on the context, the same definition can perform both a logical and artistic function: gray sea - gray head; oak table - oak head, and therefore the epithet is always used only with the word being defined, enhancing its figurativeness. In addition to adjectives, the epithet can be expressed by a noun (" gold, gold folk heart"- Nekrasov).
Metaphor- one of the main types of trail. The metaphor is based on a hidden comparison of one object or phenomenon with another according to the principle of their similarity: the east burns a new dawn», « star of captivating happiness". Unlike comparison, which contains two members (the object of comparison and the object with which it is compared), in a metaphor there is only the second member. The object of comparison in the metaphor is not named, but implied. Therefore, any metaphor can be expanded into a comparison:
"Parade, deploying my army pages,
I walk along the line front ... ".
A type of metaphor is personification. personification- such a metaphor in which objects, natural phenomena and concepts are endowed with signs of a living being:
“A golden cloud spent the night on the chest of a giant cliff”, “Mountain peaks sleep in the darkness of night”,
"Hands of my dear - a pair of swans - dive in the gold of my hair."
Personification is most often found in oral folk art, which was due to the fact that a person at an early stage of his development, not understanding the laws of nature, spiritualized it. Later, such personification developed into a stable poetic turn, helping to reveal the most characteristic feature of the depicted object or phenomenon.
Allegory- this is a figurative allegory, the expression of abstract ideas (concepts) through specific artistic images. In the visual arts, allegory is expressed by certain attributes (for example, the allegory of "justice" - a woman with weights). In literature, allegory is most often used in fables, where the whole image has a figurative meaning. Such works are called allegorical. Allegorical images are conditional, since they always mean something else.
The allegoricalness of fables, fairy tales, proverbs is characterized by stability, certain and constant qualities are assigned to their characters (greed, anger for a wolf; cunning, dexterity for a fox; power, strength, etc. for a lion). Allegorical fable and fairy-tale images are unambiguous, simple, applicable to one concept.
Metonymy- replacement of the direct name of an object or phenomenon with a figurative one. It is based on the convergence of objects that are not similar, unlike metaphor, but are in a causal (temporal, spatial, material) or other objective relationship. For example: “Soon you will find out yourself at school, / Like an Arkhangelsk peasant / By his own and God’s will / Became reasonable and great.”
Varieties of metonymy are diverse, as are the connections between objects and phenomena of reality. The most common are the following: 1) the name of the author instead of his works: ( bought Pushkin, carried Gogol, did not get Rasputin): 2) the name of the weapon instead of the action (" His pen breathes love»); 3) the name of the place, the country instead of the people and the people who are and live there (“ No. / My Moscow did not go to him with a guilty head»); 4) the name of the containing instead of the content (" The hiss of foamy glasses»); 5) the name of the material from which the thing is made, instead of the thing itself (" porcelain and bronze on the table»); 6) the name of one sign, attribute instead of a person, object or phenomenon (“ All flags will visit us»).
A special kind of metonymy is synecdoche, in which the value from one object or phenomenon is transferred to another according to the principle of a quantitative ratio. Synecdoche is characterized by the use of the singular instead of the plural:
“And it was heard before dawn how the Frenchman rejoiced” (Lermontov),
and vice versa, plural instead of singular:
“... what can their own Platons
and quick-witted Newtons
The Russian land is to give birth" (Lomonosov).
Sometimes a definite number is used instead of an indefinite one (" a million Cossack hats poured onto the square» Gogol). In some cases, the specific concept replaces the generic one ("the proud grandson of the Slavs" Pushkin) or the specific one (" Well, sit down, luminary!» Mayakovsky).
paraphrase- indirect mention of the object by not naming, but describing (for example, "night luminary" - the moon). A paraphrase is also called the replacement of a proper name, the name of an object with a descriptive phrase, in which the essential features of the implied person or object are indicated. Lermontov in his poem "The Death of a Poet" calls Pushkin " slave of honor”, thereby revealing the reasons for his tragic death and expressing his attitude towards him.
In paraphrases, the names of objects and people are replaced by indications of their characteristics, for example, “writer of these lines” instead of “I” in the author’s speech, “fall into a dream” instead of “fall asleep”, “king of beasts” instead of “lion”. There are logical paraphrases (“the author of Dead Souls” instead of Gogol) and figurative paraphrases (“the sun of Russian poetry” instead of Pushkin).
A special case of paraphrase is euphemism- a descriptive expression of "low" or "forbidden" concepts ("unclean" instead of "hell", "get by with a handkerchief" instead of "blow your nose").
Hyperbola And litotes also serve as means of creating an artistic image. Figurative meaning hyperbole(artistic exaggeration), and litotes(artistic understatement) is based on the fact that what was said should not be taken literally:
“Yawning tears the mouth wider than the Gulf of Mexico” (Mayakovsky)
“You have to bow your head below a thin blade of grass” (Nekrasov)
Hyperbola tropes based on a clearly implausible exaggeration of a quality or feature (for example, in folklore, the images of the heroes Ilya Muromets, Dobrynya Nikitich and others personifying the mighty strength of the people).
Litotes- a trope opposite to hyperbole and consisting in an excessive understatement of a sign or quality.
“Your Spitz, lovely Spitz, is no more than a thimble” (Griboedov)
Gogol and Mayakovsky very often resorted to hyperbole.
Irony(mockery) is the use of words in a figurative sense, directly opposite to their usual meaning. The irony is based on the contrast of its internal meaning and external form: “... You will fall asleep, surrounded by the care of your dear and beloved family,” Nekrasov about the “owner of luxurious chambers”, revealing in the next line the true meaning of the attitude of relatives towards him: “looking forward to your death ".
The highest degree of irony, evil, bitter or angry mockery is called sarcasm.
^ Tropes contribute to a large extent to the artistic expressiveness of the poetic language, but do not define it entirely. The greater or lesser use of tropes depends on the nature of the writer's talent, on the genre of the work and its specific features. In lyrics, for example, tropes are used much more widely than in epic and drama. Thus, tropes are only one of the means of artistic expressiveness of the language, and only in interaction with all other means helps the writer to create vivid life pictures and images.
^ Poetic figures– deviations from the neutral mode of presentation for the purpose of emotional and aesthetic impact. The artistic expressiveness of the language is achieved not only by the appropriate selection of words, but also by their intonational-syntactic organization. Syntax, like vocabulary, is used by the writer to individualize and typify speech, being a means of creating character. To be convinced of this, it is enough to compare the speeches of the characters from the novel "Fathers and Sons" by Turgenev. Special ways of constructing a sentence that enhance the expressiveness of artistic speech are called poetic figures. The most important poetic figures are inversion, antithesis, repetition, rhetorical question, rhetorical appeal and exclamation.
Inversion- (permutation) means an unusual order of words in a sentence:
Not the wind blowing from above
Sheets touched on a moonlit night. (A.K. Tolstoy)
Antithesis- (opposition) is a combination of sharply opposed concepts and ideas:
They came together: wave and stone,
Poetry and prose, ice and fire
Not so different from each other. (Pushkin)
This combination of concepts contrasting in meaning emphasizes their meaning more strongly and makes poetic speech more vivid and figurative. On the principle of antithesis, whole works can sometimes be built, for example, “Reflections at the Front Door” (Nekrasov), “War and Peace” by L. Tolstoy, “Crime and Punishment” by Dostoevsky.
The combination of two or more adjacent lines of verses with the same syntactic construction is called concurrency:
The stars are shining in the blue sky
The waves crash in the blue sea. (Pushkin).
Parallelism gives artistic speech rhythm, enhancing its emotional and figurative expressiveness. According to the poetic function, parallelism is close to comparison:
And, devoted to new passions,
I couldn't stop loving him.
So the temple left is the whole temple,
A defeated idol is all God! (Lermontov)
Parallelism is a form of repetition, as it is often accompanied by the repetition of individual words in a line or verse:
He laughs at the clouds, He cries for joy! (Bitter).
The repetition of the initial words in a line or in a verse that carry the main semantic load is called anaphora, and the repetition of the final epiphora:
He groans through the fields, along the roads,
He groans in prisons, in prisons ... (Nekrasov).
There the bride and groom are waiting, -
no pop,
And I'm here too.
There they take care of the baby, -
no pop,
And I'm here too. (Twardowski).
Parallel elements can be sentences, their parts, phrases, words. For example:
Will I see your bright eyes?
Will I hear a gentle conversation? (Pushkin)
Your mind is as deep as the sea
Your spirit is as high as mountains. (V. Bryusov)
There are more complex types of parallelism that combine different figures of speech. An example of parallelism with anaphora and antithesis:
“I am a king, I am a slave, I am a worm, I am a god” (Derzhavin)
Anaphora(or monophony) - the repetition of sounds, words or groups of words at the beginning of each parallel row, i.e. in the repetition of the initial parts of two or more relatively independent segments of speech (half-verses, verses, stanzas or prose passages)
^ Sound anaphora- repetition of the same combinations of sounds:
Gr ozy demolished bridges,
Gr both from a blurry cemetery (Pushkin)
Anaphora morphemic- Repetition of the same morphemes or parts of words:
^ Cherno eye girl,
Cherno maned horse!.. (Lermontov)
Anaphora lexical- repetition of the same words:
Not intentionally the winds blew,
Not intentionally there was a storm. (Yesenin)
Anaphora syntactic- repetition of the same syntactic constructions:
Am I wandering I'm along the noisy streets,
Do I enter to the crowded temple,
I'm sitting between foolish youths,
I surrender to my dreams. (Pushkin)
Anaphora strophic- repetition of each stanza from the same word:
Earth!..
From snow moisture
She's still fresh.
She wanders by herself
And breathes like deja.
Earth!..
She runs, runs
A thousand miles ahead
Above her the lark trembles
And he sings about her.
Earth!..
Everything is more beautiful and visible
She lies around.
And there is no better happiness - on it
Live until death ... (Tvardovsky)
Epiphora - repetition of the last words:
dear friend and in this quiet house
the fever is drinking me
Can't find a place for me in this quiet house
Near peaceful fire (Block)
^ Rhetorical question- this is an unanswered question addressed to the reader or listener in order to draw their attention to the depicted:
What is he looking for in a distant country?
What did he throw in his native land? .. (Lermontov).
^ Rhetorical address, affirmation and rhetorical exclamation- also serves to enhance the emotional and aesthetic perception of the depicted:
Moscow, Moscow!.. I love you like a son... (Lermontov).
It's him, I recognize him!
No, I'm not Byron, I'm different
Another unknown chosen one ... (Lermontov).
gradation- a figure of speech consisting in such an arrangement of parts of a statement related to one subject that each subsequent part turns out to be richer, more expressive or impressive than the previous one. In many cases, the feeling of an increase in emotional richness and richness is associated not so much with a semantic increase, but with the syntactic features of the structure of the phrase:
And where is ^ Mazepa? Where the villain?
Where did you run Judas in fear? (Pushkin)
In sweet misty care
Not an hour, not a day, not a year will pass ... (Baratynsky).
^ Poetic style
polyunion(or polysyndeton) - a stylistic figure consisting in an intentional increase in the number of conjunctions in a sentence, usually to connect homogeneous members. Slowing down speech with forced pauses, polyunion emphasizes the role of each of the words, creating a unity of enumeration and enhancing the expressiveness of speech.
“The ocean walked before my eyes, and swayed, and thundered, and sparkled, and faded, and shone, and went somewhere to infinity” (V.G. Korolenko)
"I will either sob, or scream, or faint" (Chekhov)
And the waves are crowding and rushing
And they come again, and hit the shore ... "(Lermontov)
“But the grandson, and the great-grandson, and the great-great-grandson
They grow in me while I myself grow ... ”(Antokolsky)
Asyndeton(or asindeton) - such a construction of speech in which conjunctions connecting words are omitted. Gives the statement swiftness, dynamism, helps to convey a quick change of pictures, impressions, actions.
Flickering past the booth, women,
Boys, benches, lanterns,
Palaces, gardens, monasteries,
Bukharians, sleighs, vegetable gardens,
Merchants, shacks, men,
Boulevards, towers, Cossacks,
Pharmacies, fashion stores,
Balconies, lions on the gates
And flocks of jackdaws on crosses. (Pushkin)
Night, street, lamp, pharmacy,
Meaningless and dim light... (Block)
Ellipsis- the intentional omission of non-essential words in a sentence without distorting its meaning, and often to enhance the meaning and effect:
"Champagne!" (Implied "Bring a bottle of champagne!").
Day in dark night in love
Spring is in love with winter
Life into death...
And you? ... You are in me! (Heine)
The figure of poetic style is and oxymoron- a combination of words with the opposite meaning (that is, a combination of incongruous). An oxymoron is characterized by the deliberate use of contradiction to create a stylistic effect (light ink, cold sun). An oxymoron is often used in the titles of prose literary works (“The Living Corpse” - a drama by L.N. Tolstoy, “Hot Snow” - a novel by Y. Bondarev), is often found in poetry:
And the day has come. Gets up from the bed
Mazepa, this frail sufferer,
This dead body, just yesterday
Moaning weakly over the grave. (Pushkin)
^ Poetic phonetics (phonics)
Poetic phonetics– this is a sound organization of artistic speech, the main element of which is sound repetition as an ornamental technique for highlighting and fastening the most important words in a verse.
There are the following types of sound repetitions:
assonance- repetition of vowel sounds, mainly percussion (“He groans across the fields, along the roads ...”, Nekrasov);
alliteration- repetition of consonant sounds, mainly at the beginning of words (“It's time, the pen asks for rest ...”, Pushkin);
onomatopoeia(sound) - a system of sound repetitions, selected with the expectation of onomatopoeia rustle, whistle, etc. (“The reeds rustle quietly, barely audibly ...”, Balmont).
^ Poetic vocabulary
(Learn on your own using the Dictionary of Literary Terms)
Emphasizing the originality of a particular way of life, life, writers widely use various lexical layers of the language, the so-called passive dictionary, as well as words that have a limited scope of use: archaisms, historicisms, vernacular, jargonisms, vulgarisms, barbarisms, dialectisms, provincialisms, Slavicisms, Biblicalisms, professionalisms, neologisms.
The use of such vocabulary, being an expressive device, at the same time often creates difficulties for the reader. Sometimes the authors themselves, anticipating this, supply the text with notes, special dictionaries, as, for example, N. Gogol did in “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka”. The author could immediately write Russian words, but then his work would largely lose its local flavor.
It is important not only to know the characteristics of the various layers of stylistic and lexical originality of artistic speech (dialectisms, professionalisms, jargon, vulgarisms, etc.), figurative words and expressions (tropes), intonation-syntactic means (verbal repetitions, antitheses, inversion, gradation and etc.), but to be able to find out their pictorial and expressive function in the studied work of art. For this, it is necessary to consider each means of verbal expressiveness not in isolation, but in the context of the artistic whole.
Control questions on the topic "Language of fiction":
1.
What is the main difference between poetic language and other forms of speech activity?
2.
The difference between the language of fiction (poetic language) and the standard literary language. language.
3.
Define a trail and list its types.
4.
Define poetic figures and name the most important of them.
5.
Name the main figures of poetic style.
6.
What words make up the stylistic and lexical originality of artistic speech?
7.
What is poetic phonetics and what are its types?
Lectures 6.
A literary and artistic work as a work of art is not a natural phenomenon, but a cultural one, which means that it is based on a spiritual principle, which, in order to exist and be perceived, must certainly acquire some material embodiment. Spirituality is content, and its material embodiment - form.
^ Content and form- categories that serve to designate the main aspects of a literary and artistic work. In a work of art, both form and content are equally important. A literary work is a complex whole, so there is a need to know the internal structure of the work, i.e. structural relationship between content and form.
topic, problem idea which are closely related and interdependent.
Thus, stand out content categories : theme, problem, idea.
The theme is the objective basis of the work, characters and situations portrayed by the author. In a work of art, as a rule, there is a main theme and private, subordinate themes, there may be several main themes. The totality of the main and particular themes of works is called topics.
problem considered the main question posed in the work. A distinction is made between problems that can be solved and problems that cannot be solved. Many problems are called issues.
In the choice and development of the theme of a literary work, the worldview of the writer plays an important role. The figuratively expressed author's thoughts and feelings, the attitude to the depicted and the assessment, which constitute the main generalizing idea in a work of art, are usually denoted in literary criticism by the term "idea». Idea is closely connected with the author's idea of the highest standard of life ("author's position"), about how a person and the world should be ("ideal").
The system of means and techniques that serve to embody the content and to emotionally influence the reader is art form works.
Difference between " plot" And " plot”is defined in different ways, some literary critics do not see a fundamental difference between these concepts, while for others, “plot” is the sequence of events as they happen, and “plot” is the sequence in which the author arranges them.
plot- the actual side of the narrative, those events, cases, actions, states in their causal-chronological sequence. The term "plot" refers to what is preserved as the "basis", "core" of the narrative.
Plot- this is a reflection of the dynamics of reality in the form of an action unfolding in a work, in the form of interrelated (by causal relationship) actions of characters, events that form a unity, that make up some complete whole. The plot is a form of development of the theme - an artistically constructed distribution of events.
The driving force behind the development of the plot, as a rule, is conflict(literally "collision"), a conflicting life situation, put by the writer at the center of the work. In a broad sense conflict we should call that system of contradictions that organizes a work of art into a certain unity, that struggle of images, characters, ideas, which is especially widely and fully developed in epic and dramatic works
Conflict- a more or less acute contradiction or clash between characters with their characters, or between characters and circumstances, or within the character and consciousness of a character or a lyrical subject; this is the central moment not only of epic and dramatic action, but also of lyrical experience.
There are various types of conflicts: between individual characters; between character and environment; psychological. The conflict can be external (the struggle of the hero with the forces opposing him) and internal (the struggle in the mind of the hero with himself). There are plots based only on internal conflicts (“psychological”, “intellectual”), the action in them is based not on events, but on the ups and downs of feelings, thoughts, experiences. In one work there can be a combination of different types of conflicts. Sharply pronounced contradictions, the opposite of the forces acting in the work, is called a collision.
Composition (architectonics) is the construction of a literary work, the composition and sequence of the arrangement of its individual parts and elements (prologue, exposition, plot, development of the action, climax, denouement, epilogue).
Prologue- introductory part of a literary work. The prologue tells about the events that precede and motivate the main action, or explains the author's artistic intention.
Exposure- a part of the work that precedes the beginning of the plot and is directly related to it. The exposition follows the arrangement of the characters and the circumstances, the reasons that “trigger” the plot conflict are shown.
tie in the plot - the event that served as the beginning of the conflict in a work of art; an episode that determines the entire subsequent deployment of the action (in N.V. Gogol's "Inspector General", for example, the plot is the message of the mayor about the arrival of the auditor). The plot is present at the beginning of the work, indicates the beginning of the development of artistic action. As a rule, it immediately introduces the work into the main conflict, determining the entire narrative and plot in the future. Sometimes the plot comes before the exposition (for example, the plot of the novel "Anna Karenina" by L. Tolstoy: "Everything is mixed up in the Oblonsky's house"). The writer's choice of one or another type of plot is determined by the stylistic and genre system in terms of which he draws up his work.
climax- the point of the highest rise, tension in the development of the plot (conflict).
denouement- conflict resolution; it completes the struggle of contradictions that make up the content of the work. The denouement marks the victory of one side over the other. The effectiveness of the denouement is determined by the significance of the entire preceding struggle and the climactic sharpness of the episode preceding the denouement.
Epilogue- the final part of the work, which briefly reports on the fate of the characters after the events depicted in it, and sometimes discusses the moral, philosophical aspects of the depicted (“Crime and Punishment” by F.M. Dostoevsky).
The composition of a literary work includes off-plot elements– author's digressions, inserted episodes, various descriptions(portrait, landscape, world of things), etc., serving to create artistic images, the disclosure of which, in fact, the whole work serves.
So, for example, episode as a relatively complete and independent part of the work, which depicts a completed event or an important moment in the fate of the character, can become an integral link in the problematics of the work or an important part of its general idea.
Scenery in a work of art, it is not just a picture of nature, a description of a part of the real environment in which the action unfolds. The role of the landscape in the work is not limited to depicting the scene. It serves to create a certain mood; is a way of expressing the author's position (for example, in the story of I.S. Turgenev "Date"). The landscape can emphasize or convey the state of mind of the characters, while the internal state of a person is likened or contrasted with the life of nature. The landscape can be rural, urban, industrial, marine, historical (pictures of the past), fantastic (the image of the future), etc. The landscape can also perform a social function (for example, the landscape in the 3rd chapter of the novel by I.S. Turgenev "Fathers and Sons", the urban landscape in the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky "Crime and Punishment"). In lyrics, the landscape usually has an independent meaning and reflects the perception of nature by a lyrical hero or a lyrical subject.
Even small artistic detail in a literary work it often plays an important role and performs a variety of functions: it can serve as an important addition to characterize the characters, their psychological state; be an expression of the author's position; can serve to create a general picture of morals, have the meaning of a symbol, etc. Artistic details in the work are classified into portrait, landscape, world of things, psychological details.
^ All elements of form and content are artistically significant(including those representing the so-called "frame" - title, subtitle, epigraph, preface, dedication, etc.), are closely interconnected and constitute the artistic whole of a literary work. So, for example, the conflict belongs not only to the plot or figurative world, but also to the content; an epigraph prefixed to a literary and artistic work serves as a means of determining the theme of the narration, posing a problem, expressing the main idea, etc. Conscious violation of the chronological sequence of events present in a literary work - digressions (lyrical, journalistic, philosophical) and other elements – are subordinate to the general idea, express the position of the writer and are the material embodiment of the author's intention.
Control questions on the topic "content and form of a literary work":
2.
Define the concept idea.
3.
What's happened subject (themes) a work of art?
4.
What's happened problem(problem)?
6.
What is the difference between the concepts plot And plot?
7.
name elements compositions literary work .
8.
What is the role conflicts in a work of art. Types conflicts.
9.
name off-plot elements.
10.
What is the role of artistic details in a literary work.
11.
What's happened scenery? Role landscape in a literary work.
12.
What is the integrity of the work of art?
literary criticism- a science that studies fiction, a philological discipline
literary criticism- one of the two philological sciences - the science of literature. Another philological science, the science of language, is linguistics, or linguistics.
Subject of study- not only fiction, but all the artistic literature of the world - written and oral.
Literary criticism as a science arose at the beginning of the 19th century.
The subject of literary criticism is not only fiction, but also the entire artistic literature of the world - written and oral.
Literary criticism faces two main questions. Firstly, why does every nation, in every era, along with other types of social consciousness, also have artistic literature (literature), what is its significance for the life of this people and all of humanity, what is its essence, its features, the reason for its emergence? Secondly, why is the artistic literature (literature) of each nation different in every era, as well as within the epoch itself, what is the essence of these differences, why does it historically change and develop, what is the reason for such and not its other development?
Modern literary criticism consists of three main sections:
theory of literature;
history of literature;
literary criticism.
Literary theory studies the general patterns of the literary process, literature as a form of social consciousness, literary works as a whole, the specifics of the relationship between the author, the work and the reader. Develops general concepts and terms. Literary theory interacts with other literary disciplines, as well as with history, philosophy, aesthetics, sociology, and linguistics. Poetics is a part of the theory of literature that studies the composition and structure of a literary work. The theory of the literary process is a part of the theory of literature that studies the patterns of development of genera and genres. Literary aesthetics - studies literature as an art form.
Literary history gives a historical approach to works of art. The historian of literature studies every work as an indecomposable, integral unity, as an individual and intrinsically valuable phenomenon in a number of other individual phenomena. Analyzing individual parts and aspects of the work, he seeks only to understand and interpret the whole. This study is supplemented and unified by the historical illumination of what is being studied, i.e. establishing links between literary phenomena and their significance in the evolution of literature. Thus, the historian studies the grouping of literary schools and styles, their succession, the significance of tradition in literature, and the degree of originality of individual writers and their works. Describing the general course of the development of literature, the historian interprets this difference, revealing the reasons for this evolution, which lie both within literature itself and in relation to literature to other phenomena of human culture, in the midst of which literature develops and with which it is in constant relationship. The history of literature is a branch of the general history of culture.
Literary criticism deals with the interpretation and evaluation of works of literature from the point of view of modernity (as well as pressing problems of social and spiritual life, therefore, it often has a journalistic, political and topical character), from the point of view of aesthetic value; expresses the self-consciousness of society and literature in their evolution; reveals and approves the creative principles of literary trends; has an active influence on the literary process, as well as directly on the formation of public consciousness; relies on the theory and history of literature, philosophy, aesthetics.
Auxiliary literary disciplines:
textology- studies the text as such: manuscripts, editions, editions, time of writing, author, place, translation and comments;
paleography- study of ancient text carriers, only manuscripts;
bibliography- auxiliary discipline of any science, scientific literature on a particular subject;
library science- the science of funds, repositories of not only fiction, but also scientific literature, summary catalogs.
Literary theory has 2 main content blocks:
methodology
Methodology.
There are two opposite tendencies in the development of literary theory:
passion for the theories of comparativeism and formalism (the very concept of “content of a work” is discarded, it is argued that literature consists only of form, that only form must be studied. Life is the “material” necessary for a writer for formal constructions - compositional and verbal. A work of art is a system creative techniques that have aesthetic value).
strengthening and deepening in the literature of the materialistic world outlook.
Literary criticism faces two main questions:
why every nation in every era, along with other types of social consciousness, also has artistic literature (literature, what is its significance for the life of this people and all of humanity, what is its essence, its features, the reason for its occurrence.
why the literature of each nation is different in every epoch, as well as within the epoch itself, what is the essence of these differences, why it historically changes and develops, what is the reason for such and not other development.
Literary criticism can answer these questions only if it establishes some kind of connection between the literature of individual peoples and their life as a whole.
The method of literary criticism is a certain understanding of the links that exist between the development of literature and the general development of the life of peoples and of all mankind.
Methodology - the theory of the method, the doctrine of it.
Poetics is the study of the organization of the artistic whole, the science of the means and methods of expressing artistic content. Sometimes historical: the development of the components of literature (genera, genres, tropes and figures). And there is also a theoretical one: it considers the most general laws of content.
Literary criticism and its sections. The science of literature is called literary criticism. It covers various areas of the study of literature and at the present stage of scientific development is divided into such independent scientific disciplines as literary theory, literary history and literary criticism.
Literary theory studies the social nature, specifics, patterns of development and the social role of fiction and establishes the principles for reviewing and evaluating literary material.
Familiarity with literary theory is extremely important for every student of literature. At one time, Chekhov showed in one of his stories the teacher of Russian language and literature, Nikitin, who, during his years at the university, did not bother to read one of the classic creations of aesthetic thought - Lessing's Hamburg Dramaturgy. Another character in this story ("Teacher of Literature") - a passionate lover of literature and theater Shebaldin, learning about this, "was horrified and waved his hands as if he had burned his fingers." Why was Shebaldin horrified, why does this Chekhovian story renew the discussion of the "Hamburg Dramaturgy" several times, and why does Nikitin even dream of it? Because the teacher of literature, without joining the great achievements of the science of literature, without making them his property, cannot deeply understand either the general properties of fiction, or the nature of literary development, or the features of an individual literary work. How will he teach his pupils the understanding of literature?
More particular, but no less important tasks are solved by the history of literature. It explores the process of literary development and, on this basis, determines the place and significance of various literary phenomena. Literary historians study literary works and literary criticism, the work of individual writers and critics, the formation, features and historical fate of artistic methods, literary types and genres.
Since the development of the literature of each nation is characterized by national identity, its history is divided into the histories of individual national literatures. This does not mean, however, that one can and should limit oneself to the study of each of them separately. Tracing the literary process in one country or another, literary historians, if necessary, correlate with it the processes that took place in other countries - and on this basis reveal the universal significance of the national contribution that has been made or is being made by a certain people to world literature. It becomes global, like world history, only at a certain stage of development in the process of the emergence and strengthening of ties and interactions between peoples. As K. Marx wrote, "World history did not always exist; history as world history is the result."
The same result in relation to individual national literatures is world literature. It is precisely the result of the connections and interactions of these national literatures, which allows us, when considering each of them in an international context, "to see not only the logic of its internal development, but also the system of its interconnections with the world literary process."
Proceeding from this indisputable, in our opinion, position, I. G. Neupokoeva called "not just to state the known facts of the histories of national literatures, but to more clearly identify in them what is most significant from the point of view of the history of world literature: not only the uniqueness of the contribution of each national literature into the treasury of world art, but also the manifestation in the national literary system of general patterns of development, its genetic, contact and typological connections with other literatures.
Literary criticism is a lively response to the most important literary events of the time. Its task is a comprehensive analysis of certain literary phenomena and an assessment of their ideological and artistic significance for the present. The subject of analysis in literary criticism can be either a separate work, or the work of a writer as a whole, or a number of works by various writers. The aims of literary criticism are many-sided. On the one hand, the critic is called upon to help readers correctly understand and appreciate the works he analyzes. On the other hand, the duty of the critic is to be a teacher and educator of the writers themselves. Clear evidence of the enormous role that literary criticism can and must play is, for example, the activity of the great Russian critics - Belinsky, Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov. Their articles inspired, ideologically educated both writers and wide circles of readers.
One can refer to V. I. Lenin’s high appraisal (N. Valentinov recalls it) of the educational value of Dobrolyubov’s articles. “Speaking of Chernyshevsky’s influence on me, as the main one, I cannot but mention the additional influence experienced at that time from Dobrolyubov, a friend and companion of Chernyshevsky. I also took seriously reading his articles in the same Sovremennik. Two his articles - one on Goncharov's Oblomov, another on Turgenev's On the Eve - struck like lightning. Dobrolyubov beat this approach out of me. This work, like Oblomov, I re-read, one might say, with Dobrolyubov's interlinear remarks. From the analysis of Oblomov, he made a cry, a call for will, activity, revolutionary struggle, and from analysis of "On the Eve" a real revolutionary proclamation, so written that it is not forgotten to this day. That's how to write! When Zarya was organized, I always said to Starover (Potresov) and Zasulich: "We need literary reviews of just this kind. Where there! Dobrolyubov, whom Engels called the socialist Lessing, we did not have."
Just as great, naturally, is the role of literary criticism in our time.
Literary theory, literary history and literary criticism are in direct connection and interaction. The theory of literature is based on the totality of the facts obtained by the history of literature and on the achievements of critical studies of literary monuments.
The history of literature proceeds from the general principles developed by the theory of literature for examining the literary process and is largely based on the results of literary criticism. criticism literary art
Literary criticism, starting, like the history of literature, from theoretical and literary prerequisites, at the same time strictly takes into account historical and literary data that help it to clarify the degree of that new and significant that is introduced into literature by the analyzed work in comparison with the previous ones.
Thus, literary criticism enriches the history of literature with new material and clarifies the tendencies and prospects of literary development.
Literary criticism, like any other science, also has auxiliary disciplines, which include historiography, textual criticism and bibliography.
Historiography collects and studies materials that introduce the historical development of the theory and history of literature and literary criticism. By highlighting the path traversed by each given science and the results it has achieved, historiography makes it possible to fruitfully continue research, relying on all the best that has already been created in this field.
Textual criticism determines the author of an unnamed work of art or scientific work, the degree of completeness of various editions. By restoring the final, so-called canonical, edition of certain works, textual critics provide an invaluable service to readers and researchers.
Bibliography - an index of literary works - helps to navigate in a huge number of theoretical-literary, historical-literary and literary-critical books and articles. It registers both existing and emerging works in these sections of literary criticism, compiles general and thematic lists, and gives the necessary annotations.
Analysis and generalization of the practice of literary creativity and literary development are naturally inseparable from understanding the entire development of social life, in the process of which various forms of social consciousness arise and take shape. Therefore, it is natural for literary critics to turn to a number of scientific disciplines closely related to the science of literature: to philosophy and aesthetics, to history, to the science of art and the science of language.
Section II.
Brief presentation of theoretical material
| № | Lecture Topics | watch | ||||
| Literary criticism as a science | ||||||
| Understand Literature | ||||||
| Literary genera and genres | ||||||
| literary style. Figures of poetic language. | ||||||
| Poetry and prose. The theory of verse. | ||||||
| Word / literary work: meaning / content and meaning. | ||||||
| Narrative and its structure | ||||||
| The inner world of a literary work | ||||||
| Methodology and methods of semiotic analysis of a work of art. | ||||||
Theme I. Literary criticism as a science.
(Source: Zenkin S.N. Introduction to Literary Studies: Theory of Literature: Textbook. Moscow: RGGU, 2000).
1. Prerequisites for the emergence of literary criticism as a science
2. The structure of literary criticism.
3. Literary disciplines and subjects of their study
3. Methods of approach to the text: commentary, interpretation, analysis.
4. Literary criticism and related scientific disciplines.
The subject of any science is structured, singled out in a continuous mass of real phenomena by this very science. In this sense, science logically precedes its subject matter, and in order to study literature, one must first ask what literary criticism is.
Literary criticism is not something taken for granted; in terms of its status, it is one of the most problematic sciences. Indeed, why study fiction - that is, the mass production and consumption of obviously fictional texts? And how is it justified in general (Yu.M. Lotman)? So, the very existence of the subject of literary criticism needs to be explained.
Unlike a number of other cultural institutions that have a conditionally "fictitious" nature (such as, for example, a chess game), literature is a socially necessary activity - proof of this is its mandatory teaching at school, in various civilizations. In the era of romanticism (or at the beginning of the “modern era”, modernity) in Europe, it was realized that literature is not just an obligatory set of knowledge for a cultural member of society, but also a form of social struggle, ideology. Literary competition, unlike sports competition, is socially significant; hence the possibility, speaking of literature, of actually judging life ("real criticism"). In the same era, the relativity of different cultures was discovered, which meant the rejection of normative ideas about literature (the ideas of “good taste”, “correct language”, canonical forms of poetry, plot construction). There are variations in culture, there is no one fixed norm in it.
It is necessary to describe these options not in order to determine the best (so to speak, to identify the winner), but to objectively clarify the possibilities of the human spirit. This is what literary criticism, which arose in the romantic era, took up.
So, two historical prerequisites for scientific literary criticism are the recognition of the ideological significance of literature and cultural relativity.
The specific difficulty of literary criticism lies in the fact that literature is one of the "arts", but very special, since language serves as its material. Each science of culture is a certain metalanguage for describing the primary language of the corresponding activity.
The difference between the metalanguage and the language of the object required by logic is given by itself in the study of painting or music, but not in the study of literature, when one has to use the same (natural) language as literature itself. Reflection on literature is forced to carry out the complex work of developing its own conceptual language, which would rise above the literature studied by it. Many forms of such reflection are not of a scientific nature. Historically, the most important of these are criticism, which arose many centuries earlier than literary criticism, and another discourse that has long been institutionalized in culture - rhetoric. Modern literary theory largely uses the ideas of traditional criticism and rhetoric, but its general approach is essentially different. Criticism and rhetoric are always more or less normative.
Rhetoric is a school discipline designed to teach a person to build correct, elegant, persuasive texts. From Aristotle comes the distinction between philosophy, seeking truth, and rhetoric, working with opinions. Rhetoric is needed not only for a poet or writer, but also for a teacher, a lawyer, a politician, in general, any person who has to convince someone of something. Rhetoric is the art of fighting to convince the listener, on a par with the theory of chess or the art of war: all these are tactical arts that help to achieve success in rivalry. Unlike rhetoric, criticism has never been taught at school, it belongs to the free sphere of public opinion, therefore it has a stronger individual, original beginning. In the modern era, the critic is a free interpreter of the text, a kind of "writer". Criticism uses the achievements of rhetorical and literary knowledge, but does it in the interests of literary and / or social struggle, and the appeal of criticism to the general public puts it on a par with literature. So, criticism is located at the intersection of the boundaries of rhetoric, journalism, fiction, literary criticism.
Another way to classify metaliterary discourses is "genre" distinction between three types of text analysis: commentary, interpretation, poetics. A typical commentary is an expansion of the text, a description of all kinds of extra-texts (such are the facts of the author’s biography or the history of the text, the responses of other people to it; the circumstances mentioned in it, for example, historical events, the degree of veracity of the text; the relationship of the text with the linguistic and literary norms of the era , which may become obscure for us, like obsolete words; the meaning of deviations from the norm is the ineptitude of the author, following some other norm, or a conscious breaking of the norm). When commenting, the text is split into an unlimited number of elements that belong to the context in the broadest sense of the word. Interpretation reveals in the text a more or less coherent and holistic meaning (always, of necessity, private in relation to the whole text); it always proceeds from some conscious or unconscious ideological premises, it is always biased - politically, ethically, aesthetically, religiously, etc. It proceeds from a certain norm, that is, this is a typical critic's occupation. The scientific theory of literature, since it deals with the text and not the context, is left with poetics - a typology of artistic forms, or rather forms and situations of discourse, since they are often indifferent to the artistic quality of the text. In poetics, the text is considered as a manifestation of the general laws of narration, composition, system of characters, organization of language. Initially, literary theory is a transhistorical discipline about eternal types of discourse, and it has been so since Aristotle. In the modern era, its goals have been rethought. A.N. Veselovsky formulated the need for historical poetics. This connection - history + poetics - means the recognition of the variability of culture, the change in it of different forms, different traditions. The very process of such a change also has its own laws, and their knowledge is also the task of the theory of literature. So, the theory of literature is not only a synchronic but also a diachronic discipline; it is a theory not only of literature itself, but also of the history of literature.
Literary criticism correlates with a number of related scientific disciplines. The first one is linguistics. The boundaries between literary criticism and linguistics are shaky, many phenomena of speech activity are studied both from the point of view of their artistic specificity, and outside it, as purely linguistic facts: for example, narrative, tropes and figures, style. The relationship between literary criticism and linguistics in the subject can be characterized as osmosis (interpenetration), between them there is, as it were, a common band, a condominium. In addition, linguistics and literary criticism are connected not only by the subject, but also by methodology. In the modern era, linguistics supplies methodological techniques for the study of literature, which gave reason to combine both sciences within the framework of one common discipline - philology. Comparative-historical linguistics developed the idea of the internal diversity of languages, which was then projected into the theory of fiction, structural linguistics provided the basis for structural-semiotic literary criticism.
From the very beginning of literary criticism, history interacts with it. True, a significant part of her influence is connected with the activity of commentators, and not literary theory, with the description of the context. But in the course of the development of historical poetics, the relationship between literary criticism and history becomes more complicated and becomes two-sided: there is not just an import of ideas and information from history, but an interchange. For the traditional historian, the text is an intermediate material to be processed and overcome; the historian is busy "criticizing the text", rejecting unreliable (fictitious) elements in it and isolating only reliable data about the era. The literary critic works all the time with the text - and discovers that its structures find their continuation: in the real history of society. Such, in particular, is the poetics of everyday behavior: based on patterns and structures extrapolated to non-literary reality.
The development of these bilateral relations between literary criticism and history was especially stimulated by the emergence and development of semiotics. Semiotics (the science of signs and sign processes) has developed as an extension of linguistic theories. She developed effective procedures for analyzing text, both verbal and non-verbal, for example, in painting, cinema, theater, politics, advertising, propaganda, not to mention special information systems from the maritime code of flags to electronic codes. Particularly important was the phenomenon of connotation, which is well observed in fiction; i.e., literary criticism has also become a privileged area for the development of ideas that can be extrapolated to other types of sign activity; however, literary works are not only of a semiotic nature, they are not reduced to only discrete sign processes.
Two more related disciplines are aesthetics and psychoanalysis. Aesthetics interacted more with literary criticism in the 19th century, when theoretical reflection on literature and art was often carried out in the form of philosophical aesthetics (Schelling, Hegel, Humboldt). Modern aesthetics has shifted its interests to a more positive, experimental sphere (specific analysis of ideas about the beautiful, ugly, funny, sublime in different social and cultural groups), and literary criticism has developed its own methodology, and their relationship has become more distant. Psychoanalysis, the last of the “companions” of literary criticism, is partly scientific, partly practical (clinical) activity, which has become an important source of interpretive ideas for literary criticism: psychoanalysis provides effective schemes of unconscious processes that are also isolated in literary texts. The main two types of such schemes are, firstly, Freud's "complexes", the symptoms of which Freud himself began to identify in the literature; secondly, Jung's "archetypes" are the prototypes of the collective unconscious, which are also widely found in literary texts. The difficulty here lies precisely in the fact that complexes and archetypes are found too widely and easily, and therefore depreciate, do not allow determining the specifics of the text.
Such is the circle of metaliterary discourses in which literary criticism finds its place. It has grown in the process of reworking criticism and rhetoric; there are three approaches in it - commentary, interpretation and poetics; it interacts with linguistics, history, semiotics, aesthetics, psychoanalysis (as well as psychology, sociology, the theory of religion, etc.). The place of literary criticism turns out to be indefinite: it often deals with “the same” as other sciences, sometimes approaches the boundaries beyond which science becomes art (in the sense of “art” or practical “art” like military). This is due to the fact that literature itself in our civilization occupies a central position among other types of cultural activity, which is the reason for the problematic position of the science about it.
Literature: Aristotle. Poetics (any edition); Zhenemm Zh. Structuralism and literary criticism / / Genette Zh. Figures: Works on poetics: In 2 vols. He is. Criticism and poetics // Ibid. T. 2; He is. Poetics and history / / Ibid.; Lomman Yu.M. The structure of the artistic text. M., 1970; Todorov Ts. Poetics / / Structuralism: "for" and "against" M. 1975; Tomashevsky B.V. Literary Theory: Poetics (any edition); Jacobson R.O. Linguistics and poetics / / Structuralism: "for" and "against" M. 1975.
