The plot of a work of art. Categories of artistic form. Plot

Plot (from French sujet - subject)

1) in literature - the development of action, the course of events in narrative and dramatic works, and sometimes in lyrical works. To literature the word "S." first used in the 17th century. classicists P. Corneille and N. Boileau, meaning, following Aristotle, events in life legendary heroes antiquities (for example, Antigone and Creon or Medea and Jason), borrowed by playwrights of later times. But Aristotle in “Poetics” used the ancient Greek word “myth” (мýthos) in the sense of “tradition” to refer to such incidents, which in Russian literary criticism is usually translated incorrectly by the Latin word “fable”. Latin word“fabula” (from the same root as the verb fabulari - to tell, narrate) was used by Roman writers as a designation for all kinds of stories, including myths and fables, and became widespread much earlier than the French term “S.” In German classical aesthetics (Schelling, Hegel), the events depicted in works were called “action” (Handlung). The difference in terms denoting one phenomenon has made them unstable and ambiguous.

In modern Soviet literary-critical and school practice, the terms “S.” and “fabula” are understood either as synonyms, or S. is called the entire course of events, and fabula is the main artistic conflict that develops in them (in both cases the terms are doubled). In literary criticism, two other interpretations collide. In the 1920s representatives of OPOYAZ proposed an important distinction between the two sides of the narrative: the development of the events themselves in the lives of the characters, the order and method of reporting about them by the author-storyteller; giving great value Based on how the work was “made”, they began to call S. the second side, and the first - the plot. This tradition continues to be preserved (see “The Theory of Literature...” in three volumes, vol. 2, M., 1964). Another tradition comes from Russian democratic critics of the mid-19th century, as well as from A. N. Veselovsky (See Veselovsky) and M. Gorky; all of them S. called the development of action (Belinsky V.G.: “Gogol’s poem can be fully enjoyed only by those who... the content is important, and not the “plot”” - Complete collection soch., vol. 6, 1955, p. 219; Gorky M.: “... The plot... connections, contradictions, likes and dislikes and in general the relationships of people...” - Collection of works, vol. 27, 1953, p. 215). Such terminology is not only more traditional and familiar, but also more etymologically accurate (S., in the meaning of the word, is the “subject”, that is, what is being narrated, the plot; from the same point of view, the story itself about S.). However, it is important for supporters of this theory to assimilate the theoretical innovation of the “formal school” and, calling S. the main, substantive side of the narrative or stage action, use the term “plot” to designate the second, actually compositional side (see Composition).

S. works - one of essential means embodiment of the content - the generalizing “thought” of the writer, his ideological and emotional understanding of the real characteristics of life, expressed through a verbal image fictional characters in their individual actions and relationships. S. in all its unique originality is the main aspect of the form (and thereby the style (See Style)) of the work in its correspondence with the content, and not the content itself, as is often understood in school practice. The entire structure of the story, its conflicts and the relationship between narrative and dialogical episodes that develops them must be studied functionally, in its connections with the content, in its ideological and aesthetic significance. At the same time, it is necessary to distinguish S. in its uniqueness from abstract plot, or more precisely, conflict “schemes” (A loves B, but B loves C, etc.), which can be historically repeated, borrowed and each time find a new concrete artistic embodiment .

In the early stages historical development his epic stories were built on the temporary, chronicle principle of combining episodes ( fairy tales, knightly and picaresque novels). Later, in European epic, concentric conflicts appeared, based on a single conflict. In the concentric style of epic and drama, the conflict runs through the entire work and is distinguished by the definiteness of its plot (See Plot) and climax (See Climax). and interchanges (See Interchange).

Only on the basis of the analysis of S. can one functionally analyze the plot of a work in all the complex relationships of its own aspects (see Plot).

2) B fine arts- a certain event, situation depicted in a work and often indicated in its title. Unlike theme (See theme) , S. is a specific, detailed, figurative and narrative disclosure of the idea of a work. S.'s particular complexity is typical for works of everyday and historical genres.

Lit.: Aristotle. On the art of poetry, M., 1937; Lessing G. E., Laocoon, or On the Borders of Painting and Poetry, M., 1957; Hegel, Aesthetics, vol. 1, M., 1968: Belinsky V.G., Complete. collection soch., vol. 5, M., 1954, p. 219; Veselovsky A. N., Poetics of plots, in his book: Historical poetics, L., 1940; Shklovsky V.B., On the theory of prose, M.-L., 1925; Medvedev P. N., Formal method in literary criticism, L., 1928: Freidenberg O. M., Poetics of plot and genre, L., 1936; Kozhinov V.V., Plot, plot, composition, in the book: Theory of Literature..., vol. 2, M., 1964; Questions of film dramaturgy, in. 5 - Plot in cinema, M., 1965; Pospelov G. N., Problems literary style, M., 1970; Lotman Yu. M., The structure of a literary text, M., 1970; Timofeev L.I., Fundamentals of the Theory of Literature, M., 1971; Wellek R., Warren A., Theory of literature, 3 ed., N. Y., 1963.

G. N. Pospelov(S. in literature).

Big Soviet encyclopedia. - M.: Soviet Encyclopedia. 1969-1978 .

Synonyms:

See what “Plot” is in other dictionaries:

- (from the French sujet subject) in literature, drama, theater, cinema and games, a series of events (sequence of scenes, acts) occurring in a work of art (on the theater stage) and built for the reader (viewer, player) ... Wikipedia

1. S. in literature, a reflection of the dynamics of reality in the form of the action unfolding in the work, in the form of internally connected (causal and temporal connection) actions of characters, events that form a certain unity, constituting some ... Literary encyclopedia

Plot- PLOT is the narrative core of a work of art, a system of effective (factual) mutual direction and arrangement of speakers in this work persons (objects), provisions put forward in it, events developing in it... ... Dictionary literary terms

- (French, from Latin subjectum subject). The content, the interweaving of external circumstances that form the basis of the known. literary or arts. works; in music: fugue theme. In theatrical language, an actor or actress. Dictionary of foreign words included in... ... Dictionary of foreign words of the Russian language

Cm … Dictionary of synonyms

- (from French sujet subject, subject) sequence of events in literary text. The paradox associated with the fate of the concept of S. in the twentieth century is that as soon as philology learned to study it, literature began to destroy it. In studying S... Encyclopedia of Cultural Studies

PLOT, plot, husband. (French sujet). 1. A set of actions, events in which the main content is revealed work of art(lit.). Plot Queen of Spades Pushkin. Choose something as the plot of a novel. 2. transfer Content, topic of what... ... Dictionary Ushakova

From life. Razg. Joking. iron. About what l. an everyday life episode, an ordinary everyday story. Mokienko 2003, 116. Plot for a short story. Razg. Joking. iron. 1. Something worth talking about. 2. Which l. strange, interesting story. /i> From... ... Big dictionary Russian sayings

- (French sujet, literally subject), in an epic, drama, poem, script, film, the way the plot unfolds, the sequence and motivation for presenting the events depicted. Sometimes the concepts of plot and plot are defined the other way around; sometimes they are identified... Modern encyclopedia

- (French sujet lit. subject), in an epic, drama, poem, script, film, the way the plot unfolds, the sequence and motivation for presenting the events depicted. Sometimes the concepts of plot and plot are defined the other way around; sometimes they are identified. IN… … Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

Delving into the historical depths of the question of plot (from the French - content, the development of events in time and space (in epic and dramatic works, sometimes in lyrical works)) and plot, we find theoretical discussions on this matter for the first time in Aristotle’s Poetics. Aristotle does not use the terms “plot” or “plot” themselves, but in his reasoning he shows interest in what we now mean by plot, and expresses a number of valuable observations and comments on this matter. Not knowing the term “plot”, as well as the term “fable”, Aristotle uses a term close to the concept of “myth”. By it he understands the combination of facts in their relation to the verbal expression vividly presented before the eyes.

When translating Aristotle into Russian, the term “myth” is sometimes translated as “plot”. But this is inaccurate: the term “fabula” is Latin in origin, “Gautage”, which means to tell, narrate, and in exact translation means story, narration. The term "plot" in Russian literature and literary criticism begins to be used from approximately mid-19th century, that is, somewhat later than the term “plot”.

For example, “plot” as a term is found in Dostoevsky, who said that in the novel “Demons” he used the plot of the famous “Nechaevsky case”, and in A. N. Ostrovsky, who believed that “plot often means completely ready-made content ... with all the details, but there is a plot short story about some incident, incident, a story devoid of any color.”

In G. P. Danilevsky’s novel “Mirovich,” written in 1875, one of the characters, wanting to tell another a funny story, says: “...And listen to this comedian’s plot!” Despite the fact that the novel takes place in the middle of the 18th century and the author monitors the verbal authenticity of this time, he uses a word that has recently appeared in literary use.

The term “plot” in its literary sense was widely used by representatives French classicism. In “The Poetic Art” of Boileau we read: “You must introduce us into the plot without delay. // You should maintain the unity of the place in it, // Than to tire our ears and disturb our minds with an endless, meaningless story.” IN critical articles Corneille, dedicated to the theater, also uses the term “plot”.

Assimilating the French tradition, the Russian critical literature uses the term plot in a similar sense. In the article “On the Russian story and the stories of N.V. Gogol” (1835), V. Belinsky writes: “Thought is the subject of his (the modern lyric poet’s) inspiration. Just as in an opera words are written for music and a plot is invented, so he creates, at the will of his imagination, a form for his thought. In this case, his field is limitless.”

Subsequently, such a major literary theorist, the second half of the 19th century century, like A. N. Veselovsky, who laid the foundation for the theoretical study of plot in Russian literary criticism, is limited only to this term.

The evaluation of the action, positive and negative, is already connected with the generalization.” And then he concludes: “By plot I mean the scheme in which different positions- motives."

As we see, in Russian criticism and literary tradition For quite a long time, both terms have been used: “plot” and “plot”, although without distinguishing between their conceptual and categorical essence.

The most detailed development of these concepts and terms was made by representatives of the Russian “formal school”.

It was in the works of its participants that the categories of plot and fable were first clearly distinguished. In the works of the formalists, plot and plot were subjected to careful study and comparison.

B. Tomashevsky writes in “Theory of Literature”: “But it is not enough to invent an entertaining chain of events, limiting them to a beginning and an end. It is necessary to distribute these events, to construct them in some order, to present them, to make a literary combination out of the plot material. The artistically constructed distribution of events in a work is called a plot.”

Thus, the plot here is understood as something predetermined, like some story, incident, event taken from the life or works of other authors.

So, for quite a long time in Russian literary criticism and criticism, the term “plot” has been used, which originates and is borrowed from French historians and literary theorists. Along with it, the term “fable” is also used, quite widely used since the middle of the 19th century. In the 20s of the 20th century, the meaning of these concepts was terminologically divided within the same work.

At all stages of the development of literature, the plot was occupied central place in the process of creating a work. But by the middle XIX century Having received brilliant development in the novels of Dickens, Balzac, Stendhal, Dostoevsky and many others, the plot seems to begin to weigh on some novelists... “What seems beautiful to me and what I would like to create,” writes the great French stylist in one of his letters in 1870 Gustave Flaubert (whose novels are beautifully plotted) is a book that would have almost no plot, or at least one in which the plot would be almost invisible. The most wonderful works those in which there is the least amount of matter... I think that the future of art lies in these prospects...”

In Flaubert's desire to free himself from plot, a desire for a free plot form is noticeable. Indeed, later in some novels of the 20th century the plot no longer has such a dominant meaning as in the novels of Dickens, Tolstoy, and Turgenev. The genre of lyrical confession and memoirs with in-depth analysis has gained the right to exist.

But one of the most widespread genres today, the detective novel genre, has made a fast-paced and unusually sharp plot its basic law and only principle.

Thus, the modern plot arsenal of the writer is so huge, he has at his disposal so many plot devices and principles for constructing and arranging events that this gives him inexhaustible possibilities for creative solutions.

Not only did the plot principles become more complex, but the method of storytelling itself became incredibly complex in the 20th century. In the novels and stories of G. Hesse, X. Borges, G. Marquez, the basis of the narrative is complex associative memories and reflections, the displacement of different episodes far removed in time, and multiple interpretations of the same situations.

Events in an epic work can be combined in different ways. In the “Family Chronicle” by S. Aksakov, in the stories of L. Tolstoy “Childhood”, “Adolescence”, Youth” or in “Don Quixote” by Cervantes, the plot events are connected to each other by a purely temporal connection, since they develop sequentially one after another over a long period of time. period of time.

The English novelist Forster presented this order in the development of events in a short figurative form: “The king died, and then the queen died.” This type of plot began to be called chronicle, in contrast to concentric, where the main events are concentrated around one central moment, are interconnected by a close cause-and-effect relationship and develop in a short period of time. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief,” continued his thought about concentric stories the same Forster.

Of course, it is impossible to draw a sharp line between the two types of plots, and such a division is very conditional. Most a shining example Concentric novels could be called the novels of F. M. Dostoevsky.

For example, in the novel “The Brothers Karamazov” the plot events rapidly unfold over the course of several days, are interconnected solely by a causal relationship and are concentrated around one central moment of the murder of the old man F. P. Karamazov. The most common type of plot is the most often used in modern literature— chronicle-concentric type, where events are in a causal-temporal relationship.

Today, having the opportunity to compare and study classic examples of plot perfection (novels by M. Bulgakov, M. Sholokhov, V. Nabokov), we can hardly imagine that in its development the plot went through numerous stages of formation and developed its own principles of organization and formation. Aristotle already noted that a plot must have “a beginning that presupposes a further action, a middle that presupposes both a previous and a subsequent one, and an ending that requires a previous action but has no subsequent one.”

Writers have always had to deal with a variety of plot and compositional problems: how to introduce new characters into the unfolding action, how to take them away from the pages of the narrative, how to group and distribute them in time and space. Such a seemingly necessary plot point as the climax was first truly developed only by the English novelist Walter Scott, the creator of tense and exciting plots.

Introduction to literary criticism (N.L. Vershinina, E.V. Volkova, A.A. Ilyushin, etc.) / Ed. L.M. Krupchanov. - M, 2005

Delving into the historical distance of the question of the plot (from French. sujet- content, development of events in time and space - in epic and dramatic works, sometimes in lyrical) and plot, we find theoretical discussions on this matter for the first time in Aristotle's Poetics. Aristotle does not use the terms “plot” or “plot” themselves, but in his reasoning he shows interest in what we now mean by plot, and expresses a number of valuable observations and comments on this matter. Not knowing the term “plot”, as well as the term “fable”, Aristotle uses a term close to the concept of “myth”. By it he understands the combination of facts in their relation to the verbal expression vividly presented before the eyes.

When translating Aristotle into Russian, the term “myth” is sometimes translated as “plot”. But this is inaccurate: the term “fabula” is Latin in origin, "fabulare" what does it mean to tell, narrate, and in exact translation means story, narration. The term “plot” in Russian literature and literary criticism begins to be used around the middle of the 19th century, i.e. somewhat later than the term "plot".

For example, “plot” as a term is found in Dostoevsky, who said that in the novel “Demons” he used the plot of the famous “Nechaevsky case”, and in A. N. Ostrovsky, who believed that “plot often means completely ready-made content ... with all the details, and the plot is a short story about some incident, incident, a story devoid of any color.”

In G. P. Danilevsky’s novel “Mirovich,” written in 1875, one of the characters, wanting to tell another a funny story, says: “...And listen to this comedian’s plot!” Despite the fact that the novel takes place in the middle of the 18th century. and the author monitors the verbal authenticity of this time; he uses a word that has recently appeared in literary use.

The term “plot” in its literary sense was widely used by representatives of French classicism. In “The Poetic Art” of Boileau we read: “You, without hesitation, must plot enter. // You should maintain the unity of place in it, // Than with an endless, meaningless story // We tire our ears and disturb our minds." In Corneille's critical articles on the theater, the term "plot" is also found ( sujet).

Assimilating the French tradition, Russian critical literature uses the term plot in a similar sense. In the article “On the Russian story and the stories of N.V. Gogol” (1835), V. Belinsky writes: “Thought is the subject of his (the modern lyric poet’s) inspiration. Just as in an opera words are written for music and a plot is invented, so he creates the will of your imagination a form for your thought. In this case, one hundred fields are limitless."

Subsequently, such a major literary theorist of the second half of the 19th century as A. N. Veselovsky, who laid the foundation for the theoretical study of plot in Russian literary criticism, limited himself only to this term.

Having broken down the plot into its component elements - motives, tracing and explaining their origin, Veselovsky gave his definition of the plot: “Plots are complex schemes in the imagery of which well-known acts of human life and psyche are generalized in alternating forms of everyday reality. The assessment of the action is also connected with the generalization , positive and negative." And then he concludes: “By plot I mean a scheme in which different situations - motives - scurry about.” As we see, in Russian criticism and the literary tradition, both terms have been used for quite a long time: “plot” and “plot”, although without distinguishing between their conceptual and categorical essence.

The most detailed development of these concepts and terms was made by representatives of the Russian “formal school”. It was in the works of its participants that the categories of plot and fable were first clearly distinguished. In the works of the formalists, plot and plot were subjected to careful study and comparison. B. Tomashevsky in “Theory of Literature” writes: “But it is not enough to invent an entertaining chain of events, limiting them to a beginning and an end. These events need to be distributed, they need to be built in some order, presented them, made of the plot material into a literary combination. Artistically constructed distribution of events in the work is called the plot."

Thus, the plot here is understood as something predetermined, like some story, incident, event taken from the life or works of other authors.

So, for quite a long time in Russian literary criticism and criticism, the term “plot” has been used, which originates and is borrowed from French historians and literary theorists. Along with it, the term “fable” is also used, quite widely used since the middle of the 19th century. In the 1920s the meaning of these concepts is terminologically divided within the same work.

At all stages of the development of literature, the plot occupied a central place in the process of creating a work. But by the middle of the 19th century, having received brilliant development in the novels of Dickens, Balzac, Stendhal, Dostoevsky and many others, the plot seemed to begin to weigh on some novelists... “What seems beautiful to me and what I would like to create,” he writes in one of his letters 1870 by the great French stylist Gustave Flaubert (whose novels are beautifully organized plotwise) is a book that would have almost no plot, or at least one in which the plot would be almost invisible. The most beautiful works are those in which there is the least amount of matter... I think that the future of art lies in these prospects...".

In Flaubert's desire to free himself from plot, a desire for a free plot form is noticeable. Indeed, later in some novels of the 20th century. the plot no longer has such a dominant meaning as in the novels of Dickens, Tolstoy, Turgenev. The genre of lyrical confession and memoirs with in-depth analysis has gained the right to exist.

But one of the most widespread genres today, the detective novel genre, has made a fast-paced and unusually sharp plot its basic law and only principle.

Not only did the plot principles become more complex; it became incredibly complex in the 20th century. the way of storytelling itself. In the novels and stories of G. Hesse, X. Borges, G. Marquez, the basis of the narrative is complex associative memories and reflections, the displacement of different episodes far removed in time, and multiple interpretations of the same situations.

Events in an epic work can be combined in different ways. In the “Family Chronicle” by S. Aksakov, in the stories of L. Tolstoy “Childhood”, “Adolescence”, “Youth” or in “Don Quixote” by Cervantes, the plot events are interconnected by a purely temporal connection, since they consistently develop one after another throughout long period of time. The English novelist Forster presented this order in the development of events in a short figurative form: “The king died, and then the queen died.” This type of plot began to be called chronicle, in contrast to concentric, where the main events are concentrated around one central moment, are interconnected by a close cause-and-effect relationship and develop in a short period of time. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief,” - this is how the same Forster continued his thought about concentric plots. Of course, it is impossible to draw a sharp line between the two types of plots, and such a division is very conditional. The most striking example of a concentric novel could be called the novels of F. M. Dostoevsky. For example, in the novel "The Brothers Karamazov" the plot events rapidly unfold over the course of several days, are interconnected solely by a causal relationship and are concentrated around one central moment of the murder of the old man F. P. Karamazov. The most common type of plot - the one most often used in modern literature - is the chronicle-concentric type, where events are in a causal-temporal relationship.

Writers have always had to deal with many plot and compositional problems: how to introduce new characters into the unfolding action, how to take them away from the pages of the story, how to group and distribute them in time and space. Such a seemingly necessary plot point as the climax was first truly developed only by the English novelist Walter Scott, the creator of tense and exciting plots.

The plot consists of episodes constructively organized in different ways. These story episodes: differently participate in the preparation of the plot climax and, in connection with this, have varying degrees of “emphasis” or tension.

Concrete-narrative episodes are a narrative about specific events, the actions of characters, their actions, etc. These episodes can only be scenic, since they depict only what is happening before the reader’s eyes at the present moment.

Summary-narrative episodes tell about events in general outline, taking place both in the present plot time and with large digressions and excursions into the past, along with author’s comments, related characteristics, etc.

Descriptive the episodes consist almost entirely of descriptions of a very different nature: landscape, interior, time, place of action, certain circumstances and situations.

Psychological episodes depict inner experiences, processes of the psychological state of characters, etc.

These are the main types of episodes from which the plot in an epic work is built. However, much more important is the question of how each episode of the plot is constructed and what narrative components it consists of. After all, everyone story episode there is its own composition of the image forms from which it is built. This composition is best called design plot episodes.

There are a great many options for the construction of episodes and the use of various narrative components in them, but each author usually repeats them. It should also be noted that the components of the plot episode themselves have different degrees of expressiveness and intensity among different writers. Thus, in F. M. Dostoevsky’s novel “The Brothers Karamazov” one can identify relatively few components that participate in the construction of episodes of different nature and alternate with each other in a certain order. These are backstories, conversations between two characters (with or without a witness), dialogues, triologies and crowded gathering scenes. Conversations between two characters, according to their constructive form, are divided into conversations in the form of a confession of one of the characters (this constructive-narrative form can be called a confession) and conversation-dialogues. Separate narrative components can be considered the depiction of the external actions of the characters and various descriptions. All other components are not clearly expressed; they serve only as a connecting link and cannot be separated into independent ones.

Similarly, the use of narrative components in other novelists can be identified and classified.

The plot traces the stages of movement of the underlying conflict. They are designated by the terms:

– “prologue” (introduction separated from the action);
– “exposition” (depiction of life in the period immediately preceding the beginning);
– “commencement” (the beginning of an action, the emergence of a conflict);
– “development of action”, “culmination” ( highest point tension in the development of events);
– “decoupling” (the moment of the end of the action);
– “epilogue” (final, separate from the action of the main part of the text).

However, one should not mechanically divide the plot of any work into these elements. The options here are very different and interesting. For example, a work may begin with a prologue (“ Bronze Horseman"A.S. Pushkin) or from the epilogue ("What to do?" by N.G. Chernyshevsky), from the exposition ("Ionych" by A.P. Chekhov) or immediately from the beginning ("The Inspector General" by N.V. Gogol). For reasons of ideological and artistic expressiveness, the exhibition can move (the biography of Chichikov, the story of Oblomov’s childhood, etc.) At the same time, it would be wrong to consider these elements of the plot only as the external movement of what is happening, as connecting links, as methods of linking events. They also play a significant role in ideological and artistic terms: the writer shows in them the characters, the logic of relationships between people, which allows us to understand the typical conflict of the depicted era, and gives them his assessment.

IN major work, as a rule, contains several storylines that either intertwine, or merge, or develop in parallel (for example, in the novels of F. M. Dostoevsky and L. N. Tolstoy). A plot may have one or more climaxes. Thus, in I. S. Turgenev’s novel “Fathers and Sons” in the storyline Evgeny Bazarov - Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov, the climax is the duel scene. In the Bazarov-Odintsov storyline, the climax is the scene when the hero confesses his love to Anna Sergeevna and rushes to her in a fit of passion...

No matter how complex a literary work may be, no matter how storylines no matter what it has, everything in it is directed towards a single goal - towards the expression cross-cutting idea, uniting all the plot threads into one whole.

Prologue, exposition, plot, climax, denouement, epilogue - all these are integral components of the plot, which can appear in one or another combination.

In ancient times, plot schemes migrated from one work to another, and writing on the same plot by different authors was common and literary. For example, tragic fate Antigones in the plot interpretation of Sophocles and Euripides. Traditional plot schemes moved from country to country, from literature to literature, and became the basis of many epic and dramatic works. Such plots were called wandering. The story of Don Juan, for example, has gone around almost everyone European literatures and became the basis for the plots of works of various genres.

In an epic work, the plot is considered as the object-figurative side of the form, since the image of the characters, consisting of many different details: actions, statements, external descriptions etc., and the very temporal sequence of these actions, this or that relationship of events is an individual expression of the general properties of life in their author’s understanding and assessment. Through the sequence of its development, the plot reveals the characters, issues, and ideological and emotional assessment of the events in the work. The connection between the plot and the content has a certain character, which should best be described as functional, because the plot fulfills various artistic functions but in relation to the content it expresses.

Each time, a unique and individual sequence of events and actions of the characters is the result of a creative typification of characters in their life situations and relationships. In the typification of characters and situations there is almost always hyperbolization and creative development. Above the plot of the work there is almost always the most painful and painstaking work. After all, it is the plot that reveals the essence of the characters depicted and serves to highlight, strengthen, and develop those aspects of life that are most significant for the writer.

The plot almost never emerges right away. Before taking a complete and permanent form, it changes many times, is reworked, acquires new facts from the lives of the characters, plot connections and motivations, each time turning into one of the future options in creative imagination writer. For example, in the drafts for the novel “Demons,” Dostoevsky goes through numerous possibilities for the relationships of several characters. Numerous variations of the same event arise. There are about eight plot options for revealing Stavrogin’s secret marriage with Lame Leg.

When creating a plot, creative expressiveness and emotionality of the image play an active role. The character needs to express himself most fully and completely in the events found and invented by the author. In connection with these events, experiences, reasoning, actions, and self-exposure of the heroes arise, which serve to reveal and embody their characters. Thus, the plot is created by the creative imagination of the artist to express the main ideological content and is functionally connected to it.

The revelation of character traits can only be realized in action, in actions and events, in the sequence of these events, or in plot. Development of character relationships, individual motivations, biographical, love stories, experiences - in other words, the entire individual dynamic series represents the plot of the work.

Usually, in the process of developing the plot, the writer depicts those aspects of his character’s character that seem to him the most significant, revealing the idea of the work as fully as possible and which can only appear in certain events and their sequence. When revealing his plot, the author cannot and does not set out to cover all plot links, episodes, relationships, etc. equally. By concentrating his attention on central, key event moments, choosing some of them for detailed depiction and sacrificing others, the writer can build the development of the plot in a variety of ways. And this purposeful, sequential selection of events and relationships, some of which are placed at the center of the plot narrative, and others serve as a connecting link or an insignificant passing moment, is the most important for the construction of the plot.

The author's assessment can be expressed in different ways during the plot narration. This can be direct authorial intervention, the author's maxims and moral teachings, the election of one or several characters as the author's "mouthpiece", a kind of judge of what is happening. But in any case, the entire course of events, the entire causal and temporal conditionality of these events is built on the principle of the most expressive expression in them of the ideological assessment of the characters.

Every scene, every episode, plot device has a specific function. In each plot, all the main and minor characters, while fulfilling their meaningful function, at the same time they represent a certain hierarchy, individual in each case, of oppositions, oppositions, entanglements, united according to a certain artistic system.

In an extremely general form, a plot is a kind of basic scheme of a work, which includes the sequence of actions occurring in the work and the totality of character relationships existing in it. Typically, a plot includes the following elements: exposition, plot, development of action, climax, denouement and postposition, and, in some works, prologue and epilogue. The main prerequisite for the development of the plot is time, and how historical period actions and the passage of time during the work.

The concept of plot is closely related to the concept of the plot of the work. In modern Russian literary criticism (as well as in the practice of school teaching of literature), the term “plot” usually refers to the very course of events in a work, and the plot is understood as the main artistic conflict, which develops in the course of these events. Historically, there were other views on the relationship between plot and plot, different from the one indicated. In the 1920s, representatives of OPOYAZ proposed to distinguish between two sides of the narrative: they called the very development of events in the world of the work “plot”, and the way these events are depicted by the author - “plot”.

Another interpretation comes from Russian critics of the mid-19th century and was also supported by A. N. Veselovsky and M. Gorky: they called the plot the very development of the action of the work, adding to this the relationships of the characters, and by the plot they understood the compositional side of the work, that is, how exactly the author reports the content of the plot. It is easy to see that the meanings of the terms “plot” and “plot” in this interpretation, compared to the previous one, change places.

There is also a point of view that the concept of “plot” has no independent meaning, and to analyze a work it is quite enough to operate with the concepts of “plot”, “plot diagram”, “plot composition”.

Typology of plots

Repeated attempts have been made to classify the plots of literary works, divide them according to various criteria, and highlight the most typical ones. The analysis made it possible, in particular, to identify a large group of so-called “wandering plots” - plots that are repeated many times in different designs among different nations and in different regions, mostly- V folk art(fairy tales, myths, legends).

There are several attempts to reduce the diversity of plots to a small, but at the same time comprehensive set of plot schemes. In the famous short story “The Four Cycles,” Borges claims that all plots come down to just four options:

On the assault and defense of the fortified city (Troy)
About the Long Return (Odysseus)
About the search (Jason)
About the suicide of a god (Odin, Atis)

Notes

Links

The meaning of the word “plot” in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia
Brief summaries of literary works by various authors
Lunacharsky A.V., Thirty-six plots, “Theater and Art” magazine, 1912, No. 34.
Nikolaev A.I. The plot of a literary work // Fundamentals of literary criticism: training manual for students of philological specialties. – Ivanovo: LISTOS, 2011.

Subjects, motives
Basic concepts	Plot Motif (literature) Motif (art) Scale-thematic structures of Fabliau Index of folk tale plots Fairytale plot Type of tale Genre model Plot frame Thematic block Stylistic cliche Elementary plot Wandering plot Eternal images Classification of subjects Artistic image
Genres	Literary genres Musical genres Film genres Rhetorical genres

Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Synonyms:

Aloy
Chen Zaidao

See what “Plot” is in other dictionaries:

Plot- 1. S. in literature, a reflection of the dynamics of reality in the form of the action unfolding in the work, in the form of internally connected (causal and temporal connection) actions of characters, events that form a certain unity, constituting some ... Literary encyclopedia

plot- a, m. sujet m. 1. An event or a series of interconnected and sequentially developing events that make up the content literary work. BAS 1. || trans. Relationships. He is a newcomer and immediately understands the plot of the camera: the hidden power of P... Historical Dictionary of Gallicisms of the Russian Language

Plot- PLOT is the narrative core of a work of art, a system of effective (factual) mutual direction and arrangement of persons (objects) appearing in a given work, the positions put forward in it, the events developing in it.… … Dictionary of literary terms

PLOT- (French, from Latin subjectum subject). The content, the interweaving of external circumstances that form the basis of the known. literary or arts. works; in music: fugue theme. In theatrical language, an actor or actress. Dictionary of foreign words included in... ... Dictionary of foreign words of the Russian language

plot- Cm … Dictionary of synonyms

PLOT- (from French sujet subject, subject) sequence of events in a literary text. The paradox associated with the fate of the concept of S. in the twentieth century is that as soon as philology learned to study it, literature began to destroy it. In studying S... Encyclopedia of Cultural Studies

PLOT- PLOT, plot, husband. (French sujet). 1. A set of actions and events in which the main content of a work of art is revealed (lit.). The plot of Pushkin's Queen of Spades. Choose something as the plot of a novel. 2. transfer Content, topic of what... ... Ushakov's Explanatory Dictionary

PLOT- from life. Razg. Joking. iron. About what l. an everyday life episode, an ordinary everyday story. Mokienko 2003, 116. Plot for a short story. Razg. Joking. iron. 1. Something worth talking about. 2. Which l. strange, interesting story. /i> From... ... Large dictionary of Russian sayings

Event in a literary text. Plot and non-plot narration. Features of plot construction: plot components (plot, course of action, climax, denouement - if any), sequence of main components. The relationship between plot and plot. Plot motives. System of motives. Types of plots.

The difference between " plot" And " plot“is defined differently, some literary scholars do not see a fundamental difference between these concepts, while for others, “plot” is the sequence of events as they occur, and “plot” is the sequence in which the author arranges them.

Fable– the factual side of the narrative, those events, incidents, actions, states in their causal and chronological sequence. The term “plot” refers to what is preserved as the “base”, “core” of the narrative.

Plot- this is a reflection of the dynamics of reality in the form of the action unfolding in the work, in the form of internally connected (cause-temporal relationship) actions of characters, events that form a unity, constituting some complete whole. The plot is a form of theme development - an artistically constructed distribution of events.

The driving force behind the development of the plot, as a rule, is conflict(literally “clash”), a conflicting life situation placed by the writer at the center of the work. In a broad sense conflict should be called that system of contradictions that organizes a work of art into a certain unity, that struggle of images, characters, ideas, which unfolds especially widely and fully in epic and dramatic works

Conflict- a more or less acute contradiction or clash between characters and their characters, or between characters and circumstances, or within the character and consciousness of a character or lyrical subject; it is the central moment not only of epic and dramatic action, but also of lyrical experience.

There are different types of conflicts: between individual characters; between character and environment; psychological. The conflict can be external (the hero’s struggle with forces opposing him) and internal (the hero’s struggle with himself in the mind). There are plots based only on internal conflicts (“psychological”, “intellectual”), the action in them is based not on events, but on the vicissitudes of feelings, thoughts, and experiences. One work may contain a combination of different types of conflicts. Sharply expressed contradictions, the opposition of forces acting in a product, are called collision.

Composition (architectonics) is the construction of a literary work, the composition and sequence of arrangement of its individual parts and elements (prologue, exposition, plot, development of action, climax, denouement, epilogue).

Prologue – introductory part literary work. The prologue reports the events that precede and motivate the main action, or explains the author's artistic intent.

Exposition- the part of the work that precedes the beginning of the plot and is directly related to it. The exposition follows the arrangement characters and circumstances develop, the reasons that “trigger” the plot conflict are shown.

The beginning 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 development of the action (in “The Inspector General” by N.V. Gogol, for example, the plot is the mayor’s message about the arrival of the inspector). The plot is present at the beginning of the work, indicating the beginning of development artistic action. As a rule, it immediately introduces the main conflict of the work, subsequently determining the entire narrative and plot. Sometimes the plot comes before the exposition (for example, the plot of the novel “Anna Karenina” by L. Tolstoy: “Everything was mixed up in the Oblonskys’ house”). The writer’s choice of one type of plot or another is determined by the style and genre system in terms of which he designs his work.

Climax– the point of 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 severity of the episode preceding the denouement.

Epilogue- the final part of the work, which briefly reports on the fate of the heroes after the events depicted in it, and sometimes discusses the moral and philosophical aspects of what is depicted (“Crime and Punishment” by F.M. Dostoevsky).

The composition of a literary work includes extra-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, is the entire work.

So, for example, episode as a relatively completed 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 problems 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 part of the real environment in which the action takes place. The role of landscape in a work is not limited to depicting the scene of action. It serves to create a certain mood; is a way of expressing author's position(for example, in the story by I.S. Turgenev “Date”). The landscape can emphasize or convey the mental state of the characters, while the internal state of a person is likened to 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. Landscape can also perform a social function (for example, the landscape in the 3rd chapter of I.S. Turgenev’s novel “Fathers and Sons”, the city landscape in F.M. Dostoevsky’s novel “Crime and Punishment”). In lyric poetry, landscape usually has an independent meaning and reflects the perception of nature by the lyrical hero or lyrical subject.

Even small artistic detail in a literary work it often plays an important role and performs diverse functions: it can serve as an important addition to characterize the characters and their psychological state; be an expression of the author's position; can serve to create big picture morals, have a symbolic meaning, etc. Artistic details in a work are classified into portrait, landscape, world of things, and psychological details.

Basic literature: 20, 22, 50, 54,68, 69, 80, 86, 90