A literary work is the structure of a work of art. II structure of a work of art and its analysis. "The structure of a literary work" in books

A literary work is a multifaceted and integral phenomenon. The integrity of a work of art is by no means internal homogeneity (=homogeneity – when any arbitrarily taken fragment of this “body” is absolutely identical in its structure to any other and to the whole body as a whole). C The wholeness of a literary work is not a simple sum of its constituent elements. The closest analogy to the integrity of a literary work is the integrity of a biological organism, or organic integrity (parts of such a whole can exist only together with other parts). A literary work is spiritual organism and product of creativity. Aspects of a literary work are described in science in a system of related concepts (content and form, plot and narration, author, hero and reader, composition, motive, etc.). As a speech thing, a literary work is structured, that is, parts can be distinguished in it: in an epic work, songs(in the case of an epic poem) or chapters(if we are talking about a novel), in a dramatic work these are acts, actions and mise en scenes, in a lyrical work - stanzas and lines (poems). A text is a connected sign complex (words of a natural language are used as signs). The word "text" originally meant a fabric formed by a plexus of fibers. An important property of the text is its fixation and internal coherence. A literary work is a text, since the fundamental features of textuality are the internal coherence and fixedness of what has been said, which is a prerequisite for the existence of a literary work. H it is impossible to put an equal sign between the concepts of "text" and "literary work" = the concept of a literary work is irreducible to the concept of a text. The difference between a work and a text can be found: A literary work has integrity. The literary work is completed and in this sense it cannot be continued in principle (technically (textually) it is possible to continue the novel, but it will be a different work. The text may be complete or incomplete. This is the case, for example, with many texts of ancient literature that have come down to us , or the text remains unfinished by the author. In these cases, we are talking about the fragmentation of the text of a literary work. Even a fragmentary text can be works of literature, that is, have an inexcessive completeness of meaning. The text of a literary work exists independently of our consciousness as an objective speech thing and in this sense it is completely does not need our existence.

14 The structure of a literary work. The inner world of a literary work. Narrated event.

While reading the text (a set of connected words and sounds) of a literary work, we do not see words (text), but we see people and their actions, from this point of view, the text becomes a special kind of reality. This reality is called differently in science: poetic reality, the inner world of a literary work, the world of heroes, etc. The inner world of a literary work arises precisely at the moment of the meeting of our consciousness with the consciousness of the author, which is imprinted in the text of the work and does not exist anywhere outside of this meeting. That is, it is formed by the creative interaction of the consciousness of the author and the reader. This reality is not a copy of any other reality.For example: Dostoevsky's novel "Crime and Punishment" is saturated with the realities of Russian life in the 60s, nothing happens in it that could not happen in this cultural and historical slice of time. And at the same time, one can note such features of the structure of this world that cannot be found in the reality with which it is correlated. So, without exception, all the events taking place in Dostoevsky's novel are somehow correlated with the fate of its main character Raskolnikov. Thus, the world of the novel turns out to be, as it were, drawn to the hero as his natural center. According to M.M. Bakhtin, “the world of a literary work (any literary work) is always “condensed around the hero”. In reality, no person, even the most prominent, can become its center for the simple reason that this reality, in principle, cannot have any center.)

Artistic reality is a conditional ordered reality that lives according to its own special autonomous laws and has its own special, internal measure of certainty. Therefore, artistic worlds are impenetrable to each other and cannot serve as a measure for each other. What is reliable for one world turns out to be unreliable for another artistic world (for example, for the heroes of the artistic world, the Turgenevans can behave the way Dostoevsky's heroes behave). The events taking place in the world of a literary work enter into relations with each other that are peculiar only to this world. This is the case with cause and effect relationships. For example, Tolstoy's novel War and Peace. His hero Kutuzov, just like his historical prototype, Field Marshal Prince Mikhail Illarionovich Golenishchev-Kutuzov, dies shortly after the Russian troops cleared the territory of the Russian Empire from the French. The historical truth seems to be observed here. from the point of view of the natural-scientific picture of the world, Kutuzov's death and the end of the war of 1812 are not connected in any way: he could have died earlier, he could have died later. However, in the artistic world of Tolstoy's novel, these events turn out to be connected as cause and effect: “A representative of the Russian people, after the enemy was destroyed, Russia was liberated and placed on the highest degree of its glory, the Russian person as Russian, had nothing more to do. The representative of the people's war had no choice but death. And he died." Any biographer of Kutuzov could convict Tolstoy of a mass of inaccuracies (which was done at one time). But Tolstoy did not write a biography of Kutuzov and not a history of the war of 1812, but a novel, and Kutuzov in it is the same character as, say, Andrei Bolkonsky or Pierre Bezukhov. And he lives according to the same laws of fiction, according to which other characters live, and he can only be the way Tolstoy portrayed him. Artistic reality is a reality that has eventful completeness: there is no place for chance in it. The event, which is a work of art, is an event of a special kind. This is not a life-practical event, but an aesthetic event. The text of a literary work and the world of a literary work are two different aspects of the existence of a literary work as a whole. Those relationships that form the world of a literary work, expressed in text literary work. Example: in the text of "Classical Ballet", the opposition of the "rough" word and conditional poetic formulas allows us to understand the structure of the poetic world of this poem and the nature of the event taking place in it, the harmonization of the initial contradiction, the incompatibility of the world of poetry and the world of prose, art and life.The narrated event is the one that is described in the work. The participants of this event are the people depicted in it (the hero and characters of the second plan).

15 The structure of a literary work. Literary work as an event of storytelling. Author's concept.

The literary work is the event of the story itself (= the process of storytelling). The hero of a literary work is not a participant in this event, the event of storytelling. He is a participant in the story. What, from our point of view, is a story, for him is the most serious reality in which he sets and solves life problems, fights enemies, falls in love and is disappointed, comprehends his own actions, etc. Storytelling event participants are: those who tell = the subject of the story. Depending on the status, this subject can be designated by such terms as: narrator, narrator, secondary author = image of the author. And its addressee = reader= to whom the speech of the subject of the story is addressed. The reader can be textually expressed = the image of the reader. For example, in “Eugene Onegin”: “Friends of Lyudmila and Ruslan / With the hero of my novel \ Without preface, at the same hour \ Let me introduce you.” And can only be implied. Between the subject of the narrative and the author of this work of art, the image of the reader and historically real persons for whom a literary work is created - the difference is the same as between the real prototype of a literary hero (if any) and the literary hero himself. Separately, one should consider cases when the narrator is, as it were, present in the world of heroes, that is, in the depicted event. For example, the novel "Eugene Onegin". There, the subject of the story presents himself to us either as the author of the imaginary world of heroes: “With the hero of my novel ...”, then as a friend of Onegin, who as a friend cannot be the hero of the novel: “Onegin, my good friend, etc.”, "The conditions of light overthrowing the burden \ how tired he was from the bustle \ I became friends with him at that time \ I liked his features ...". But formally staying within the artistic world of the novel, this person is not a participant in the events depicted in it. Another happening- widespread in the literature first person narrative type.

For example: "The Captain's Daughter". Grinev tells about the events in which he himself is an active participant (hero). But between Grinev the narrator and Grinev the hero, as in the case of Onegin, a boundary is established, but the other is temporary, the narrator looks at himself from the side = they are not equal to each other, we are essentially two different faces separated by time and life experience. The artistic world of a literary work appears - two inseparable, but also unmerged realities = as a story about an event and at the same time an event of storytelling. The factor that unites these events is the author-creator, or primary author. Primary Author- This the subject of aesthetic activity is the creative will, = that/those who create an artistic work, the existence of this will certifies the unity of the creative attitude found in the text of a literary work. Behind this unity is most often a real human personality, but it may not be,for example, the author as a single creative setting is present in folklore works, but a folklore work does not have an individual human author - it is the fruit of the collective creativity of many people while maintaining a single creative setting, and there may be several real people. An example is co-authorship, when two different people, Ilf and Petrov, are behind the single creative will that created the novels The Twelve Chairs and The Golden Calf. The material of the life of the author-creator (events, views, opinions, experiences, etc.) can enter the world of a work of art, then we are with an autobiographical hero (Konstantin Levin, for example, in Anna Karenina) or autobiographical prose in general, for example, the autobiographical trilogy of Tolstoy or M. Gorky. Sometimes the whole work as a whole can represent such material, for example, the experience of this person, for example. in lyrics, and then we are dealing with a lyrical hero. " "Historically authentic" author stays outside the world of a literary work, primary author, according to M.M. Bakhtin, it is on a tangent in relation to the world depicted by him. The secondary author (the image of the author) is outside the world of heroes and is not a hero(the hero is the one who does things, and the secondary author talks about them), does not participate in the event, is a participant=organizer of a storytelling event. It is located on the border that separates and at the same time connects two aspects of the artistic world of a literary work: the narrated event and the event of the story.

After reading this article, you will know what is three-act structure of a literary work, learn how to quickly and competently draw up a plan for a story or novel, and you can also come up with a stunning plot in just an hour. Interested? Then you are welcome to our hut.

Three-act structure of the work according to A. Mitte.

So what kind of animal is this? ? This term is widely known, but for the first time I learned about it from a wonderful book. A. Mitta "Cinema between hell and heaven". In it, the author makes an interesting observation: the plots of the vast majority of world masterpieces (cinema, literature and drama) are built on the same principles, which in a simplified form form the same three-act structure. In general, there is nothing surprising in that, although you may object that each book is individual! I do not argue, however, it is well known that in every story there is a plot, development and denouement? And this is exactly the same three-act structure. Individuality and originality will be in the method of presentation, artistic content, but the structure in many cases will remain the same.

Now to the point. In his book, A. Mitta rightly believes that any drama (do not be intimidated by the term, the above mechanism applies to all story-based, conflict-based stories) can be built in three acts. Each act has its own goals and objectives, knowing and fulfilling which, you can easily come up with a great story in a couple of hours. In the Western tradition, each act was even given an appropriate name, resulting in the line "Thesis - Antithesis - Synthesis". Here is the structure itself:

1 ACT. THESIS.

The main tasks of the first act are the designation of the active forces, the description of the characters and the scene of action, as well as the emergence of the conflict. Remember, in the article of the same name, I already wrote about what the author should designate no later than the first third of the story? This requirement arose precisely within the framework of the three-act structure and means that the conflict must appear in the first act. If you plunge into chess terminology, then the first act is the opening of the game. We designate the sides: here is the main character, there -. The parties begin to take action, their interests collide, resulting in a conflict. Nothing more is required from the first act.

However, at the end of the first third, there should be a sharp turn that complicates the situation or directs the plot in a direction unexpected for the reader. The transitional moment is very important. It is he who gives the start to the development of the main events, and it is he who will largely determine the further interest of the public in what is happening.

The task of the first act: designation of the parties, the origin of the conflict.

2 ACT. Antithesis.

After the sharp turn that ended the first act, the situation becomes more complicated. The opposing sides are moving to active actions: they create obstacles for each other and overcome them. Do not forget that each time the obstacles become more difficult. First, the hero is intimidated, then beaten, and only after that they try to kill him - not vice versa. In the second act there is conflict development. For me, this is the most interesting, but at the same time the most difficult part. For most authors, the plot sags precisely in the middle, during the development of the conflict. The article is devoted to the issue of competent development and construction of the conflict, I strongly recommend that you read it.

At the end of the second act, after a chain of complications, another turn comes, which puts the parties to the conflict on the brink of disaster. Important! This turn is the moment of maximum complication of the situation. Events give the hero an ultimatum - either he wins or he is overtaken. This moment in the story often coincides with the climax, though not always.

The task of the second act: the development of the conflict, bringing it to a catastrophe.

3 ACT. Synthesis.

The denouement, or in chess slang, the endgame. The hero is in danger of disaster; he makes his move, and as a result either wins or crashes. In any case, the conflict is at least temporarily, but resolved, but the result depends entirely on the hero - was he able to reverse himself and the circumstances or not.

The task of the third act: conflict resolution.

That's the whole structure. As you can see, there is nothing supernatural in it, but the results of its use are truly amazing! Personally, I use this structure extensively when drawing up a plan and already concentrate my creative efforts on the turning scenes in advance. After all, the more vivid and unexpected the transitions from act to act are, the more interesting the plot is - and the reader simply does not have time to get bored. The text, planned according to a three-act structure, no longer looks like cotton wool or stretched chewing gum, the author knows exactly where the story is leading, but as soon as the reader begins to guess about it, a sharp turn occurs. But it is also interesting that a three-act can act as a universal structure, create nested constructions within itself: that is, within the framework of the first act, there can be a structure of three micro-acts, revealing some kind of local conflict. This is especially useful when working with large epic canvases. Moreover, the imaginary three acts can be used quite well when working with separate scenes.

You may ask, what is the turning point? In principle, any, but it should be unexpected (not follow from the logic of the previous story) and should develop, aggravate the conflict. Let's go back to the example of the snake story that I came up with in the article about . Let's try to decompose the plot into three acts and highlight the turning events.

An example of working with a three-act structure.

1 ACT.

Two couples with children go on a country trip to nature. Characters are outlined, both families are presented to us as old good friends, helping each other always and in everything. But at a halt, a little girl is bitten by a snake. The father of the second family tries to drive away the reptile, but it bites him too. Quite quickly it is possible to determine that the snake's venom is deadly, and tourists simply will not have time to get to the city.

turning point : a bitten man has an ampoule with an antidote on him. However, he is not eager to give it to the injured girl.

2 ACT.

The girl's parents are trying to persuade the man to give the antidote. He is silent, but his wife stands up for him - she rushes into a cry, hugs her young son to her. The woman declares that they will not give the antidote. The girl’s mother can’t stand it here - she is ready to throw herself at her opponent, but her husband pulls her away, still hoping to solve the problem amicably. He offers to split the antidote in half, but this option is rejected - in this case, it will not help anyone. Screaming and disputes rise again, and then the girl's father invites his friend to make a decision himself, not listening to women (he hopes for his upbringing, adherence to moral standards and their strong long-term friendship). After thinking, the bitten man declares that he will not give up the antidote, and this plunges his comrade into a rage. Both families are ready to destroy each other. The bitten man opens the ampoule and brings it to his mouth.

turning point : at this very moment, the son grabs an ampoule from his father's hands and gives it to another family.

3 ACT.

The bitten man throws himself on his friend in desperation, the antidote falls somewhere in the grass, the men roll on the grass, trying to kill each other with their bare hands. Suddenly, two mushroom pickers appear from somewhere - they come out of the forest to the noise of a fight and screams. Together with the women and the boy, they manage to separate the fighters. In the heat of the fight, the ampoule was broken, but the mushroom pickers say that their village is not far away - an hour's walk from here, and they have the necessary antidote in the health center - these snakes regularly bite someone from the city here. Mushroom pickers bring tourists to the village, where they safely take the antidote.

Here's how, using the three-act system, you can write a decent story in just half an hour. Naturally, then you need to think through the details, paint the characters, but this is a separate story and a topic for another article.

In the meantime, I hope you figured out what it is three-act structure of the work, using a specific example, we saw how it is used when drawing up a plan. It remains only to test it in your own practice! In which I wish you success. Subscribe to blog updates "Literary Workshop". See you soon!

The structure of a work of verbal art, its internal and external organization, the method of connection of its constituent elements. The presence of a certain structure ensures the integrity of the work, its ability to embody and transmit ... ...

STRUCTURE- a literary work (lat. structura - structure, arrangement), a special organization, the relationship of the elements of a literary text, in which a change in one of them entails a change in the rest. Understanding art... Literary Encyclopedic Dictionary

Semantic structure, or meaning, of the text- - a multi-level hierarchical organization of the content side of the text (represented in its surface structure through the relationship of text units, typical text structures, architectonics, composition, etc.), the components of which ... ...

Linguistic and stylistic analysis of a literary text- - a detailed and thorough analysis of the role and functions of linguistic means of different levels in the organization and expression of the ideological and thematic content of the work. The beginning of the formation of the theoretical foundations of L. a. X. t. was laid down in the work of the famous Russian ... ... Stylistic encyclopedic dictionary of the Russian language

_5. Dictionary entry structure (microstructure)- V.V. Dubichinskiy formulates the peculiarity of the dictionary microstructure as follows, which, in his opinion, is “the construction of a dictionary entry as a special diverse system within the entire dictionary as a complex independent system” ... ... Experimental syntactic dictionary

Semantic deployment of a literary text- - gradual reflection in the minds of communicants of diverse knowledge about the world, expressed in verbal figurative form from the standpoint of a certain aesthetic ideal. It is necessary to differentiate the objective content of the artist. text (as a product of aesthetic ... Stylistic encyclopedic dictionary of the Russian language

Composition (from Latin compositio ≈ compilation, composition), ═ 1) the construction of a work of art, due to its content, nature and purpose, and largely determining its perception. K. ≈ the most important organizing component ... ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia

I Composition (from Latin compositio compilation, composition) 1) the construction of a work of art, due to its content, nature and purpose, and largely determining its perception. K. the most important organizing component ... ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia

- (from the Latin "componere" to fold, build) a term used in art history. In music, K. is called the creation of a musical work, hence: the composer is the author of musical works. In literary criticism, the concept of K. moved from ... ... Literary Encyclopedia

Composition- - (from lat. compositio - compilation, composition). one). A certain construction of a work of art, which is due to its content, character and purpose, and largely determines the perception. Composition is the most important organizing ... ... Encyclopedic Dictionary of Media

Books

• Analysis of a Poetic Text: The Structure of Verse, Yuri Lotman. The book of the famous literary scholar Yu. M. Lotman is devoted to the principles of analysis of a poetic text. A literary work fulfills its social function only because...
• Text and its structure. Textbook, Kukharenko Valeria Andreevna. The textbook `Text and its structure` is devoted to the description of the factors that ensure the specificity of the text of a work of art, determine the originality of its organization, as well as the elements ...

The conceptual and terminological apparatus of theoretical poetics, on the one hand, has some stability, on the other hand, there is a lot of controversial and mutually exclusive in it. The systematization of aspects (facets, levels) of a literary work is based on different concepts and terms. The conceptual pair “form and content” is most deeply rooted in theoretical poetics. Thus, Aristotle in his Poetics distinguished between a certain “what” (an object of imitation) and a certain “how” (means of imitation) in works. Threads stretch from such judgments of the ancients to the aesthetics of the Middle Ages and Modern times. In the 19th century the concepts of form and content (including their application to art) were carefully substantiated by Hegel. This conceptual pair is invariably present in the theoretical and literary works of our century.

At the same time, scientists have repeatedly disputed the applicability of the terms "form" and "content" to works of art. Thus, representatives of the formal school argued that the concept of "content" for literary criticism is superfluous, and "form" should be compared with life material, which is artistically neutral. Ironically characterized the usual terms Yu.N. Tynyanov: “Form – content = glass – wine. But all the spatial analogies applied to the concept of form are important in that they only pretend to be analogies: in fact, a static attribute closely connected with spatiality is invariably slipped into the concept of form. Approvingly responding to Tynyanov's judgment half a century later, Yu.M. Lotman proposed replacing the traditional and, as he believed, negatively significant, one-sidedly "dualistic" terms with "monistic" terms "structure and idea". In the same “structuralist” era in literary criticism (also as a replacement for boring form and content), the words “sign and meaning” came, and later, in the “post-structuralist” time, “text and meaning”. The attack on the usual "form and content" has been going on for three quarters of a century. In his recent article on poetry, O.E. Mandelstam E.G. Etkind once again proposes that these, as he believes, “meaningless” terms “replace with others that are more consistent with today’s view of verbal art.” But what concepts and terms are needed now - does not indicate. In theoretical literary criticism, with the allocation of two fundamental aspects of the work (dichotomous approach), other logical constructions are also widely used. So, A.A. Potebnya and his followers characterized three aspects of works of art, which are: external form, internal form, content (as applied to literature: word, image, idea). There is also a multi-level approach proposed by phenomenological literary criticism. So, R. Ingarden singled out four layers (Schicht) in the composition of a literary work: 1) the sound of speech; 2) the meaning of words; 3) the level of the depicted objects; 4) the level of types (Ansicht) of objects, their auditory and visual appearance, perceived from a certain point of view. The multilevel approach has its supporters in domestic science as well.

These theoretical approaches to works of art (dichotomous and multilevel) are not mutually exclusive. They are quite compatible and are complementary. This was convincingly substantiated by N. Hartmann in his Aesthetics (1953). The German philosopher argued that in terms of structure, works are inevitably multi-layered, but “in terms of the way of being” they are “unshakably two-layered”: their foreground is material-sensual objectivity (figuration), while the background is “spiritual content”. Based on Hartmann's vocabulary, marked by a spatial analogy (metaphor), it is legitimate to liken a work of art to a three-dimensional translucent object (be it a sphere, a polygon or a cube), which is always turned to the perceiver by the same side (like the moon). The “foreground”, visible plan of this object has certainty (although not absolute). This is a form. The "background" plan (content) is viewed incompletely and is much less defined; much here is guessed, and even remains a mystery. At the same time, a different measure of "transparency" is inherent in works of art. In some cases, it is very relative, one might say, small (“Hamlet” by W. Shakespeare as a great mystery), while in others, on the contrary, it is maximum: the author pronounces the main thing directly and openly, persistently and purposefully, as, for example, Pushkin in the ode “ Liberty "or L.N. Tolstoy in Resurrection.

A modern literary critic, apparently, is "doomed" to navigate in a patchwork of conceptual and terminological constructions. Below we undertake the experience of considering the composition and structure of a literary work on the basis of a synthesizing attitude: to take as much as possible from what has been done by theoretical literary criticism of different trends and schools, mutually agreeing on the existing judgments. At the same time, we take the traditional concepts of form and content as a basis, trying to free them from all kinds of vulgarizing layers that have generated and continue to generate distrust of these terms.

Form and content are philosophical categories that are used in various fields of knowledge. The word "form" (from lat. forma), related to other gr. morphe and eidos. The word "content" is rooted in the new European languages ​​(content, Gehalt, contenu). In ancient philosophy, form was opposed to matter. The latter was conceived as qualityless and chaotic, subject to processing, as a result of which ordered objects appear, which are forms. The meaning of the word "form" in this case (among the ancients, as well as in the Middle Ages, in particular, Thomas Aquinas) turned out to be close to the meaning of the words "essence", "idea", "Logos". “Form I call the essence of the being of every thing,” wrote Aristotle. This pair of concepts (matter - form) arose from the need of the thinking part of humanity to designate the creative, creative power of nature, gods, people.

In the philosophy of modern times (especially active in the 19th century), the concept of "matter" was pushed aside by the concept of "content". The latter began to be logically correlated with the form, which at the same time is thought in a new way: as expressively significant, embodying (materializing) some intelligible essence: general (natural-cosmic), mental, spiritual. The world of expressive forms is much wider than the realm of artistic creations proper. We live in this world and we ourselves are part of it, because the appearance and behavior of a person testifies to something and expresses something. This pair of concepts (an expressively significant form and the intelligible content embodied by it) meets the need of people to understand the complexity of objects, phenomena, personalities, their diversity, and, above all, to comprehend their implicit, deep meaning associated with the spiritual existence of a person. The concepts of form and content serve to mentally distinguish the external from the internal, essence and meaning from their embodiment, from the ways of their existence, i.e. respond to the analytical impulse of human consciousness. In this case, the content is called the basis of the subject, its defining side. The form is the organization and appearance of the object, its defined side.

The form understood in this way is secondary, derivative, dependent on the content, and at the same time is a condition for the existence of the object. Its secondary nature in relation to content does not signify its secondary significance: form and content are equally necessary aspects of the phenomena of being. In relation to objects that are becoming and evolving, the form is conceived as a more stable beginning, embracing the system of its stable connections, and the content - as constituting the sphere of dynamics, as a stimulus for change.

Forms expressing the content can be associated with it (associated) in different ways: one thing is science and philosophy with their abstract semantic principles, and something completely different is the fruits of artistic creativity, marked by imagery and the predominance of a single and uniquely individual. According to Hegel, science and philosophy, which constitute the sphere of abstract thought, "possess a form not posited to itself, external to it." It is legitimate to add that the content here does not change when it is restructured: the same thought can be captured in different ways.

In Russian literary criticism, the concept of meaningful form, almost central in the composition of theoretical poetics, was substantiated by M.M. Bakhtin in the works of the 20s. He argued that the artistic form has no meaning outside of its correlation with the content, which is defined by the scientist as the cognitive and ethical moment of the aesthetic object, as the identified and evaluated reality: the "moment of content" allows "to comprehend the form in a more significant way" than roughly hedonistically. In another wording about the same thing: the art form needs "extra-aesthetic weight of the content." Using the phrases "meaningful form", "formed content", "shaping ideology", Bakhtin emphasized the inseparability and inseparability of form and content, spoke of the importance of "emotional-volitional intensity of form". “In every smallest element of the poetic structure,” he wrote, “in every metaphor, in every epithet, we will find a chemical combination of cognitive definition, ethical assessment and artistic finalization.”

Artistic content is a unity of objective and subjective principles. This is a combination of what came to the author from the outside and is known to him, and what is expressed by him and comes from his views, intuition, personality traits.

The artistic content is embodied (materialized) not in some separate words, phrases, phrases, but in the totality of what is present in the work.

Composition is the construction of a work of art. It is the composition that determines the effect that the text has on the reader, since the doctrine of composition says: it is important not only to be able to tell amusing stories, but also to present them competently.

It gives different definitions of composition, in our opinion, the simplest definition is as follows: composition is the construction of a work of art, the arrangement of its parts in a certain sequence.
Composition is the internal organization of a text. Composition is about how the elements of the text are arranged, reflecting the different stages of the development of the action. The composition depends on the content of the work and the goals of the author.

Stages of action development (composition elements):

Composition elements- reflect the stages of development of the conflict in the work:

Prologue - introductory text that opens the work, anticipating the main story. As a rule, thematically related to the subsequent action. Often it is the "gate" of the work, that is, it helps to penetrate the meaning of the further narrative.

exposition- the prehistory of the events underlying the work of art. As a rule, the exposition provides a description of the main characters, their arrangement before the start of the action, before the plot. The exposition explains to the reader why the hero behaves in this way. Exposure can be direct or delayed. direct exposure is located at the very beginning of the work: an example is the novel The Three Musketeers by Dumas, which begins with the history of the D'Artagnan family and the characteristics of the young Gascon. delayed exposure is placed in the middle (in I.A. Goncharov’s novel Oblomov, the story of Ilya Ilyich is told in Oblomov’s Dream, that is, almost in the middle of the work) or even at the end of the text (the textbook example of Gogol’s Dead Souls: information about Chichikov’s life before arrivals in the provincial city are given in the last chapter of the first volume). Delayed exposure gives the work a mystery.

The plot of the action is an event that becomes the beginning of an action. The plot either reveals an already existing contradiction, or creates, “sets up” conflicts. The plot in "Eugene Onegin" is the death of the protagonist's uncle, which forces him to go to the village and enter into an inheritance. In the story of Harry Potter, the plot is a letter of invitation from Hogwart, which the hero receives and thanks to which he learns that he is a wizard.

The main action, the development of actions - the events that the characters take after the beginning and before the climax.

climax(from the Latin culmen - peak) - the highest point of tension in the development of action. This is the highest point of the conflict, when the contradiction reaches its greatest limit and is expressed in a particularly acute form. The climax in "The Three Musketeers" is the scene of the death of Constance Bonacieux, in "Eugene Onegin" - the scene of the explanation of Onegin and Tatyana, in the first story about "Harry Potter" - the scene of the fight over Voldemort. The more conflicts in a work, the more difficult it is to reduce all actions to only one climax, so there can be several climaxes. The climax is the most acute manifestation of the conflict and at the same time it prepares the denouement of the action, therefore it can sometimes precede it. In such works, it can be difficult to separate the climax from the denouement.

denouement- the outcome of the conflict. This is the final moment in the creation of artistic conflict. The denouement is always directly connected with the action and, as it were, puts the final semantic point in the narrative. The denouement can resolve the conflict: for example, in The Three Musketeers, this is the execution of Milady. The final denouement in Harry Potter is the final victory over Voldemort. However, the denouement may not eliminate the contradiction, for example, in "Eugene Onegin" and "Woe from Wit" the characters remain in difficult situations.

Epilogue (from the Greekepilogos - afterword)- always concludes, closes the work. The epilogue tells about the further fate of the heroes. For example, Dostoevsky in the epilogue of Crime and Punishment talks about how Raskolnikov changed in hard labor. And in the epilogue of War and Peace, Tolstoy talks about the life of all the main characters of the novel, as well as how their characters and behavior have changed.

Lyrical digression- deviation of the author from the plot, author's lyrical inserts, little or not at all related to the theme of the work. Lyrical digression, on the one hand, slows down the development of the action, on the other hand, allows the writer to openly express his subjective opinion on various issues that are directly or indirectly related to the central theme. Such, for example, are the famous lyrical digressions in Pushkin's Eugene Onegin or Gogol's Dead Souls.

Types of composition:

Traditional classification:

Direct (linear, serial)– events in the work are depicted in chronological order. "Woe from Wit" by A.S. Griboyedov, "War and Peace" by L.N. Tolstoy.
Ring - the beginning and end of the work echo each other, often completely coincide. In "Eugene Onegin": Onegin rejects Tatyana, and in the finale of the novel, Tatyana rejects Onegin.
Mirror - combining the techniques of repetition and opposition, as a result of which the initial and final images are repeated exactly the opposite. In one of the first scenes of "Anna Karenina" by L. Tolstoy, the death of a man under the wheels of a train is depicted. This is how the main character of the novel takes her own life.
A story within a story - The main story is told by one of the characters in the story. According to this scheme, M. Gorky's story "Old Woman Izergil" is built.

A.Besin's classification (according to the monograph "Principles and methods of analysis of a literary work"):

Linear - events in the work are depicted in chronological order.
Mirror - initial and final images and actions are repeated exactly the opposite, opposing each other.
Ring - the beginning and end of the work echo each other, have a number of similar images, motives, events.
Retrospection - in the process of narration, the author makes "digressions into the past." The story of V. Nabokov "Mashenka" is built on this technique: the hero, having learned that his former lover is coming to the city where he now lives, looks forward to meeting her and recalls their epistolary novel, reading their correspondence.
Default - about the event that happened before the rest, the reader learns at the end of the work. Thus, in A.S. Pushkin's The Snowstorm, the reader learns about what happened to the heroine during her flight from home, only during the denouement.
Free - mixed activities. In such a work, one can find elements of a mirror composition, and techniques of default, and retrospection, and many other compositional techniques aimed at holding the reader's attention and enhancing artistic expression.