Artistic convention is non-identity artistic image object of reproduction. A distinction is made between primary and secondary convention depending on the degree of credibility of the images and the awareness of artistic fiction at different times. historical eras. Primary convention is closely related to the nature of art itself, inseparable from convention, and therefore characterizes any work of art, because it is not identical to reality. The image, attributed to the primary convention, is artistically plausible, its “madeness” does not declare itself, is not emphasized by the author. Such a convention is perceived as something generally accepted and taken for granted. Partially, the primary convention depends on the specifics of the material with which the embodiment of images in a certain form of art is associated, on its ability to reproduce the proportions, forms and patterns of reality (stone in sculpture, paint on a plane in painting, singing in opera, dance in ballet). "Immateriality" literary images corresponds to the immateriality of linguistic signs. When perceiving a literary work, the conventionality of the material is overcome, while verbal images are correlated not only with the facts of extraliterary reality, but also with their supposed “objective” description in literary work. In addition to the material, the primary convention is realized in style in accordance with the historical ideas of the perceiving subject about artistic verisimilitude, and is also expressed in the typological features of certain types and stable genres of literature: extreme tension and concentration of action, external expression of the internal movements of characters in drama and isolation of subjective experiences in lyrics, great variability of narrative possibilities in the epic. During periods of stabilization of aesthetic ideas, convention is identified with normativity artistic means, which in their era are perceived as necessary and plausible, but in another era or from another type of culture are often interpreted in the meaning of an outdated, deliberate stencil (bustles and masks in the ancient theater, performed by men female roles up to the Renaissance, the “three unities” of the classicists) or fiction (the symbolism of Christian art, mythological characters in the art of antiquity or the peoples of the East - centaurs, sphinxes, three-headed, multi-armed).
Secondary convention
Secondary convention, or convention itself, is a demonstrative and conscious violation of artistic verisimilitude in the style of the work. The origins and types of its manifestation are diverse. There is a similarity between conventional and plausible images in the very method of their creation. There are certain creative techniques: 1) combination - combining elements given in experience into new combinations; 2) accentuation - emphasizing certain features in the image, increasing, decreasing, sharpening. The entire formal organization of images in a work of art can be explained by a combination of combination and emphasis. Conventional images arise with such combinations and accents that go beyond the bounds of the possible, although they do not exclude the real life basis of fiction. Sometimes a secondary convention arises during the transformation of the primary one, when open methods of detecting artistic illusion are used (appeal to the audience in Gogol’s “The Inspector General”, principles epic theater B. Brecht). The primary convention develops into a secondary one when using the imagery of myths and legends, carried out not to stylize the source genre, but in new ones artistic purposes(“Gargantua and Pantagruel”, 1533-64, F. Rabelais; “Faust”, 1808-31, I.V. Goethe; “The Master and Margarita”, 1929-40, M.A. Bulgakova; “Centaur”, 1963 , J. Updike). Violation of proportions, combination and emphasis of any components art world, revealing the frankness of the author's fiction, give rise to special stylistic devices that indicate the author's awareness of the game with convention, addressing it as purposeful, aesthetically meaningful means. Types of conventional imagery - fantasy, grotesque; related phenomena - hyperbole, symbol, allegory - can also be fantastic (Grief-Misfortune in ancient Russian literature, Lermontov’s Demon), and believable (the symbol of a seagull, Chekhov’s cherry orchard). The term “convention” is new, its consolidation dates back to the 20th century. Although Aristotle already has a definition of “impossible” that has not lost its credibility, in other words, a secondary convention. “In general... the impossible... in poetry should be reduced either to what is better than reality, or to what they think about it - for in poetry the impossible, but convincing, is preferable to the possible, but unconvincing” (Poetics. 1461)
Convention- this is an integral feature of any work of art. Artistic convention involves the use of techniques that serve as a special form of reflecting reality and help to better understand the meaning of the work. There are two types of conventions in literature.
The primary (hidden, implicit) convention is not emphasized by the author: the work is created on the principle of life-likeness, although both the characters and the plot itself may be fictitious. The author resorts to typification even if his heroes have real prototypes. An example of the embodiment of this type of convention can be considered the plays of A. Ostrovsky and the novels of I. Turgenev. Everything described in them is quite plausible and could actually happen.
The author resorts to secondary (open, explicit) convention if he wants to emphasize the absurdity, fantasticality, and originality of the situation. This is achieved through the use of the grotesque, fantasy, symbols, and a whole range of tropes (allegory, hyperbole, metaphors, etc.) - all these are ways of deforming reality, forms of deliberate departure from plausibility.
This type of convention was often used by Saltykov-Shchedrin - this is distinctive feature his style. The writer combines several narrative plans at once: real, everyday and fantastic (“ wise minnow"is an enlightened moderate liberal, the details of his everyday life, fantastic fairy tale elements). In “The History of a City,” the satirist combines the comic and the tragic, the plots of legends, fairy tales, myths with real events. Gloomy-Burcheev is funny in his steps, but his activities have tragic consequences both for his family (children die) and for the whole of Foolov.
The writer makes extensive use of allegory: the characters in his fairy tales, as in I. Krylov’s fables, are often a lion, a bear, and a donkey, personifying both individual human traits and full-fledged characters. Shchedrin supplements the traditional list with his own characters: roach, crucian carp, gudgeon, etc.
The author often resorts to hyperbole: the obedience and love of the Foolovites for their rulers are clearly exaggerated. Sometimes exaggeration reaches the point of absurdity, fantasy and reality are mixed. In “The Wild Landowner” a grotesque “swarm of men” appears, which was robbed and sent to the district. All the mayors in “The History of a City” are grotesque.
Means of satirical depiction
Aesopian language- a special type of allegory; deliberately obscure, full of hints and omissions, the language of a writer who, for various reasons, expresses his thoughts not directly, but allegorically. The subject about which we're talking about in the work, not named, but described and easily guessed.
Hyperbola- method of expressiveness, means artistic image, based on exaggeration; a figurative expression consisting in an exorbitant exaggeration of events, feelings, strength, meaning, size of the depicted phenomenon. Can be idealizing and humiliating.
Litotes- a technique of expressiveness, a means of artistic depiction based on understatement of the size, strength, and significance of the depicted phenomenon (“a boy the size of a finger,” “a little man the size of a fingernail”).
Grotesque- a type of comic, the maximum possible satirical exaggeration, presenting the ridiculed life phenomenon in an incredible, fantastic form, violating the boundaries of plausibility.
Image artistic reality requires abandoning the foundations of this reality. With any transformation, a qualitative leap occurs from the world of three or four dimensions to the world of images (the sensation is experienced by analogy) the term “realism” carries a contradiction, because By its nature, art does not remake the world, but includes it within itself. For example, "Crime and Punishment". The author does not care about the reality check; he has caught the trends that exist in reality and refracts them. Art turns out to be more important and significant than the reality from which he denied.
Reality is one of the forms of convention, so that thin. the world of the work cannot or could be confused with reality. Secondary convention is what is associated with the elimination of external connection with reality. The primary convention is that when transforming reality into thin. the world is transforming the reality of 3 dimensions into a dictionary dimension.
14. Epic as a literary genre.
Distinct concepts about childbirth took shape in German aesthetics in the works of Schiller, Goethe, Schelling, and Hegel. Classic question about childbirth, necessary for reviewing the literature, has existed since the late 18th century. 19th centuries since the time of Hegel. Classification: epic, drama, lyric. Each species has a special way of relating, seeing, and imitating reality.
A writer, when he sits down to write, does not think about which of the categories what he is planning will fall into, only vague expectations. And he chooses the genre right away. The unawareness of the 1st choice and the awareness of the 2nd choice make it possible to dissolve the classical system of literature and say that not all genres correspond to genders.
Aristotle's definition. The epic tells not what is in the soul, but what is outside, imitating nature, creating nature, like Homer. Reflects reality as a really existing picture of reality, described in its features. Treating the world as real the existing world can be reproduced in art. Even the person himself is described objectively, as if from the outside. Objectivity in objectivity.
Hegel's theory reflecting the question of childbirth (universal process).
1) Thesis (epic). Proposition of 1 main thesis, the beginning of development towards perfection, after which development occurs within the human world, public life, the whole world reacts and appears
2) Antithesis (lyrics), which conflicts with the thesis. The thesis is not canceled, but the conflict between thesis and antithesis leads to a new formation of theories and relationships.
3) Transition to a new stage, the stage of synthesis (drama). The properties of thesis and antithesis receive a new existence, unite, creating a new one.
In the epic genre of literature (ancient gr. epos - word, speech), the organizing beginning of the work is the narration of the characters ( characters ah), their destinies, actions, mindsets, about the events in their lives that make up the plot. Narration is characterized by a temporary distance between the conduct of speech and the subject of verbal designations. It (Aristotle: the poet talks “about an event as something separate from himself”) is spoken from the outside and, as a rule, has the grammatical form of the past tense. The distance between the time of the depicted action and the time of the narration about it is perhaps the most significant feature of the epic form.
“Narrative” in the narrow sense is a detailed designation in words of something that happened once and had a temporal extent. In a broader sense, narration also includes descriptions, i.e. recreating through words something stable, stable or completely motionless (these are most landscapes, characteristics of the everyday environment, appearance features of characters, their states of mind). Descriptions are also verbal images of something that repeats itself periodically. “It used to be that he was still in bed: / They carried notes to him,” it is said, for example, about Onegin in the first chapter of Pushkin’s novel. In the same way, the narrative fabric includes the author’s reasoning, which plays a significant role in L.N. Tolstoy, A. France, T. Mann.
In epic works, the narrative connects to itself and, as it were, envelops the statements of the characters - their dialogues and monologues, including internal ones, actively interacting with them, explaining, supplementing and correcting them. AND literary text turns out to be a fusion of narrative speech and statements of characters.
The epic has no restrictions on the volume of text. Epic as a type of literature includes both short stories (medieval and Renaissance short stories; the humor of O'Henry and the early A.P. Chekhov), as well as epics and novels that cover life with extraordinary breadth. These are the ancient Greek "Iliad" and "Odyssey" Homer, "War and Peace" by L. N. Tolstoy, "The Forsyte Saga" by J. Galsworthy, " Gone with the Wind" M. Mitchell.
An epic work can “absorb” such a number of characters, circumstances, events, destinies, and details that are inaccessible to either other types of literature or any other type of art. At the same time, the narrative form contributes to the deepest penetration into inner world person. She is quite accessible to complex characters, possessing many traits and properties, incomplete and contradictory, in motion, formation, development.
In epic works, the presence of a narrator is deeply significant. This is quite specific form artistic reproduction of a person. The narrator is an intermediary between the person depicted and the reader, often acting as a witness and interpreter of the persons and events shown. In any epic work the manner of perceiving reality inherent in the one who narrates, his characteristic vision of the world and way of thinking are captured. In this sense, it is legitimate to talk about the image of the narrator. This concept has become firmly established in literary criticism thanks to B.M. Eikhenbaum, V.V. Vinogradov, M.M. Bakhtin (works of the 1920s). Summarizing the judgments of these scientists, G.A. Gukovsky wrote in the 1940s: “The narrator is not only a more or less specific image<".>but also a certain figurative idea, principle and appearance of the speaker, or in other words - certainly a certain point of view on what is being presented, a psychological, ideological and simply geographical point of view, since it is impossible to describe from anywhere and there can be no description without a descriptor."
The epic form reproduces what is being told and the one telling it. The appearance of the narrator is revealed not in actions or in direct outpourings of the soul, but in a kind of narrative monologue. Example: there cannot be a full perception of folk tales without close attention to their narrative style, in which, behind the naivety and ingenuousness of the one telling the story, gaiety and slyness, life experience and wisdom are discerned. It is impossible to feel the charm of the heroic epics of antiquity without grasping the sublime structure of thoughts and feelings of the rhapsode and storyteller.
Types of storytelling:
In which, between the characters and the one who reports about them, there is, so to speak, an absolute distance. He understands everything and has the gift of “omniscience.” And his image, the image of a being who has risen above the world, gives the work the flavor of maximum objectivity. It is significant that Homer was often likened to the celestial Olympians and called “divine.” Based on such forms of storytelling, dating back to Homer, classical aesthetics of the 19th century. argued that the epic genre of literature is the artistic embodiment of a special, “epic” worldview, which is marked by the maximum breadth of outlook on life and its calm, joyful acceptance.
The distance between the narrator and the characters is not updated. This is already evidenced by ancient prose: in the novels “Metamorphoses” (“The Golden Ass”) by Apuleius and “Satyricon” by Petronius, the characters themselves talk about what they have seen and experienced. Such works express a view of the world that has nothing in common with the so-called “epic worldview.”
Subjective narration. The narrator began to look at the world through the eyes of one of the characters, imbued with his thoughts and impressions. Tolstoy sometimes paid tribute to this method of depiction. The Battle of Borodino in one of the chapters of “War and Peace” is shown in the perception of Pierre Bezukhov, who was not experienced in military affairs; The military council in Fili is presented in the form of the impressions of the girl Malasha.
Third person narration.
The narrator may well appear in the work as a certain “I”. It is natural to call such personalized narrators, speaking in their own, “first” person, storytellers. The narrator is often also a character in the work (Maksim Maksimych in the story “Bela” from “A Hero of Our Time” by M.Yu. Lermontov, Grinev in “The Captain’s Daughter” by A.S. Pushkin).
ARTISTIC CONVENTION
An integral feature of any work, associated with the nature of art itself and consisting in the fact that the images created by the artist are perceived as non-identical to reality, as something created by the creative will of the author. Any art conditionally reproduces life, but the measure of this U. x. may be different. Depending on the ratio of plausibility and artistic fiction (see artistic fiction), a distinction is made between primary and secondary fiction. For primary fiction. a greater degree of verisimilitude is characteristic when the fictionality of the depicted is not declared or emphasized by the author. Secondary U. x. - this is a demonstrative violation by the artist of verisimilitude in the depiction of objects or phenomena, a conscious appeal to fantasy (see science fiction), the use of the grotesque, symbols, etc., in order to give certain life phenomena a special sharpness and prominence.
Dictionary of literary terms. 2012
See also interpretations, synonyms, meanings of the word and what ARTISTIC CONVENTION is in the Russian language in dictionaries, encyclopedias and reference books:
- CONDITIONALITY in the Encyclopedic Dictionary:
, -i, w. 1. ohm conditional. 2. A purely external rule entrenched in social behavior. Captured by conventions. The enemy of all... - ARTISTIC
AMATEUR ARTISTIC ACTIVITY, one of the forms of folk art. creativity. Teams X.s. originated in the USSR. In mid. 20s the Tram movement was born (see ... - ARTISTIC in the Big Russian Encyclopedic Dictionary:
ART INDUSTRY, industrial production. methods of decorative and applied art. products serving for art. household decoration (interior, clothing, jewelry, dishes, carpets, furniture... - ARTISTIC in the Big Russian Encyclopedic Dictionary:
"FICTION", state. publishing house, Moscow. Basic in 1930 as State. publishing house literature, in 1934-63 Goslitizdat. Collection op., fav. prod. ... - ARTISTIC in the Big Russian Encyclopedic Dictionary:
RHYTHMIC GYMNASTICS, a sport where women compete in performing gymnastics combinations to music. and dance. exercises with an object (ribbon, ball, ... - CONDITIONALITY in the Complete Accented Paradigm according to Zaliznyak:
conventions, conventions, conventions, conventions, conventions, conventions, conventions, conventions, conventions, conventions, conventions, … - CONDITIONALITY in the Thesaurus of Russian Business Vocabulary:
- CONDITIONALITY in the Russian Language Thesaurus:
Syn: contract, agreement, custom; ... - CONDITIONALITY in the Russian Synonyms dictionary:
virtuality, assumption, relativity, rule, symbolism, convention, ... - CONDITIONALITY in the New Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language by Efremova:
1. g. Distraction noun by value adj.: conditional (1*2,3). 2. g. 1) Distraction noun by value adj.: conditional (2*3). 2) ... - CONDITIONALITY in the Complete Spelling Dictionary of the Russian Language:
convention... - CONDITIONALITY in the Spelling Dictionary:
convention,... - CONDITIONALITY in Ozhegov’s Dictionary of the Russian Language:
a purely external rule entrenched in social behavior in captivity of conventions. The enemy of all conventions. convention<= … - CONDITIONALITY in Ushakov’s Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language:
conventions, g. 1. units only Distraction noun to conditional in 1, 2 and 4 meanings. Conditionality of the sentence. The conventions of theatrical production. ... - CONDITIONALITY in Ephraim's Explanatory Dictionary:
convention 1. g. Distraction noun by value adj.: conditional (1*2,3). 2. g. 1) Distraction noun by value adj.: conditional (2*3). ... - CONDITIONALITY in the New Dictionary of the Russian Language by Efremova:
I distracted noun according to adj. conditional I 2., 3. II g. 1. abstract noun according to adj. conditional II 3. ... - CONDITIONALITY in the Large Modern Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language:
I distracted noun according to adj. conditional I 2., 3. II g. 1. abstract noun according to adj. conditional II 1., ... - FANTASTIC in the Literary Encyclopedia:
in literature and other arts - the depiction of implausible phenomena, the introduction of fictitious images that do not coincide with reality, a clearly felt violation by the artist... - AMATEUR ARTISTIC ACTIVITIES
amateur performance, one of the forms of folk art. Includes the creation and performance of artistic works by amateurs performing collectively (clubs, studios, ... - AESTHETICS in the Newest Philosophical Dictionary:
term developed and specified by A.E. Baumgarten in his treatise "Aesthetica" (1750 - 1758). The New Latin linguistic formation proposed by Baumgarten goes back to the Greek. ... - POP ART in the Dictionary of Postmodernism:
(POP-ART) ("mass art": from English, popular - folk, popular; retrospectively associated with pop - suddenly appear, explode) - the direction of artistic ... - ARTICULATION TRIPLE CINEMATOGRAPHIC CODE in the Dictionary of Postmodernism:
- a problem field that was constituted in discussions between film theorists and semioticians of a structuralist orientation in the mid-1960s. In the 1960s and 1970s, the appeal (or return) of film theory... - TROITSKY MATVEY MIKHAILOVICH in the Brief Biographical Encyclopedia:
Troitsky (Matvey Mikhailovich) - representative of empirical philosophy in Russia (1835 - 1899). The son of a deacon in a rural church in Kaluga province; graduated... - FANTASTIC in the Dictionary of Literary Terms:
- (from the Greek phantastike - the art of imagining) - a type of fiction based on a special fantastic type of imagery, which is characterized by: ... - Troubadours in the Literary Encyclopedia:
[from the Provençal trobar - “to find”, “to invent”, hence “to create poetic and musical works”, “to compose songs”] - medieval Provençal lyric poets, songwriters... - VERSIFICATION in the Literary Encyclopedia:
[otherwise - versification]. I. General concepts. The concept of S. is used in two meanings. It is often regarded as a doctrine of the principles of poetic... - RENAISSANCE in the Literary Encyclopedia:
— Renaissance is a word, in its special sense, first put into circulation by Giorgio Vasari in Lives of Artists. ... - IMAGE. in the Literary Encyclopedia:
1. Statement of the question. 2. O. as a phenomenon of class ideology. 3. Individualization of reality in O. . 4. Typification of reality... - LYRICS. in the Literary Encyclopedia:
The division of poetry into three main types is traditional in literary theory. Epic, literature and drama seem to be the main forms of all poetic... - CRITICISM. THEORY. in the Literary Encyclopedia:
The word "K." means judgment. It is no coincidence that the word “judgment” is closely related to the concept of “court”. Judging is, on the one hand,... - KOMI LITERATURE. in the Literary Encyclopedia:
Komi (Zyrian) writing was created at the end of the 14th century by the missionary Stefan, Bishop of Perm, who in 1372 compiled a special Zyryan alphabet (Perm ... - CHINESE LITERATURE in the Literary Encyclopedia.
- PROPAGATIONAL LITERATURE in the Literary Encyclopedia:
a set of artistic and non-artistic works, which, influencing the feelings, imagination and will of people, encourage them to certain actions and actions. Term... - LITERATURE in the Big Encyclopedic Dictionary:
[lat. lit(t)eratura lit. - written], written works of social significance (for example, fiction, scientific literature, epistolary literature). More often under literature... - ESTONIAN SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLIC in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB:
Soviet Socialist Republic, Estonia (Eesti NSV). I. General information The Estonian SSR was formed on July 21, 1940. From August 6, 1940 in ... - SHAKESPEARE WILLIAM in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB:
(Shakespeare) William (23.4. 1564, Stratford-on-Avon, - 23.4.1616, ibid.), English playwright and poet. Genus. in the family of a craftsman and trader John... - ART EDUCATION in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB:
education in the USSR, the system of training masters of fine, decorative and industrial arts, architects-artists, art historians, artist-teachers. In Rus' it originally existed in the form... - FRANCE
- PHOTO ART in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB:
a type of artistic creativity based on the use of the expressive capabilities of photography. F.’s special place in artistic culture is determined by... - UZBEK SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLIC in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB.
- TURKMEN SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLIC in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB.
- USSR. RADIO AND TELEVISION in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB:
and television Soviet television and radio broadcasting, as well as other media and propaganda, have a great influence on ... - USSR. LITERATURE AND ART in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB:
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- ROMANIA in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB:
(România), Socialist Republic of Romania, SRR (Republica Socialista România). I. General information R. is a socialist state in the southern part of Europe, in ... - RUSSIAN SOVIET FEDERAL SOCIALIST REPUBLIC, RSFSR in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB.
- LITHUANIA SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLIC in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB:
Soviet Socialist Republic (Lietuvos Taribu Socialistine Respublika), Lithuania (Lietuvos). I. General information The Lithuanian SSR was formed on July 21, 1940. From 3 ...
Image and sign in a work of art, the relationship between these concepts. Aristotle's theory of mimesis and theory of symbolization. Life-like and conditional types of image. Types of conventions. Fiction. Coexistence and interaction of conventions in twentieth-century literature.
Subject of discipline“Theory of Literature” - the study of the theoretical principles of fiction. The purpose of the discipline is to provide knowledge in the field of literary theory, to introduce students to the most important and current methodological and theoretical problems, and to teach the analysis of literary and artistic works. Objectives of the discipline- study of the basic concepts of literary theory.
Art has as its goal the creation of aesthetic values. Drawing its material from a variety of spheres of life, it comes into contact with religion, philosophy, history, psychology, politics, and journalism. Moreover, it embodies even the most sublime objects in sensual form<…>", or in artistic images (Old Greek eidos - appearance, appearance).
Artistic image, a common property of all works of art, the result of the author’s comprehension of a phenomenon, a process of life, in a way characteristic of a particular type of art, objectified in the form of both the whole work and its individual parts.
Like a scientific concept, an artistic image performs a cognitive function, but the knowledge it contains is largely subjective, colored by how the author sees the depicted object. Unlike a scientific concept, an artistic image is self-sufficient; it is a form of expression of content in art.
Basic properties of an artistic image- objective-sensory character, integrity of reflection, individualization, emotionality, vitality, special role of creative fiction - differ from such properties of the concept as abstractness, generality, logicality. Because the artistic image has multiple meanings, it cannot be fully translated into the language of logic.
An artistic image in the broadest sense ndash; the integrity of a literary work, in the narrow sense of the word; character images and poetic imagery, or tropes.
An artistic image always carries a generalization. Images of art are concentrated embodiments of the general, typical, in the particular, individual.
In modern literary criticism the concepts of “sign” and “sign” are also used. A sign is the unity of the signifier and the signified (meaning), a kind of sensory-objective representative of the signified and its substitute. Signs and sign systems are studied by semiotics, or semiology (from the Greek semeion - “sign”), the science of sign systems based on phenomena that exist in life.
In the sign process, or semiosis, three factors are distinguished: sign (sign means); designatum, denotation- the object or phenomenon that the sign indicates; interpretant - the influence by virtue of which the corresponding thing turns out to be a sign for the interpreter. Literary works are also considered from the aspect of iconicity.
In semiotics there are: indexicals- a sign that denotes but does not characterize a single object; the action of the index is based on the principle of contiguity between the signifier and the signified: smoke is an index of fire, a footprint in the sand is an index of human presence; signs-symbols are conventional signs in which the signifier and the signified have no similarity or contiguity; these are words in natural language; iconic signs- denoting objects that have the same properties as the signs themselves, based on the actual similarity of the signifier and the signified; “Photography, star map, model - iconic signs<…>" Among the iconic signs, diagrams and images are distinguished. From a semiotics point of view, artistic image is an iconic sign whose designatum is value.
The main semiotic approaches are applicable to signs in a work of art (text): identifying semantics - the relationship of a sign to the world of extra-sign reality, syntagmatics - the relationship of a sign to another sign, and pragmatics - the relationship of a sign to the group using it.
Domestic structuralists interpreted culture as a whole as a sign system, a complexly structured text, breaking up into a hierarchy of “texts within texts” and forming complex interweavings of texts.
Art ndash; this is an artistic exploration of life. The principle of cognition is placed at the forefront of the main aesthetic theories - the theory of imitation and the theory of symbolization.
The doctrine of imitation is born in the works of the ancient Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle. According to Aristotle, “the writing of epics, tragedies, as well as comedies and dithyrambs,<…>, - all this as a whole is nothing more than imitation (mimesis); they differ from each other in three ways: either by different means of imitation, or by different objects, or by different, non-identical methods.” The ancient theory of imitation is based on the fundamental property of art - artistic generalization, it does not imply naturalistic copying of nature, a specific person, a specific fate. By imitating life, the artist learns about it. Creating an image has its own dialectic. On the one hand, the poet develops and creates an image. On the other hand, the artist creates the objectivity of the image in accordance with its “requirements”. This creative process is called process of artistic cognition.
The theory of imitation retained its authority until the 18th century, despite the identification of imitation with a naturalistic image and the excessive dependence of the author on the subject of the image. In the XIX-XX centuries. The strengths of the theory of imitation led to the creative success of realist writers.
A different concept of cognitive principles in art - symbolization theory. It is based on the idea of artistic creativity as the recreation of certain universal essences. The center of this theory is doctrine of symbol.
Symbol (Greek symbolon - sign, identifying mark) - in science the same as a sign, in art - an allegorical multi-valued artistic image, taken in the aspect of its iconicity. Every symbol is an image, but not every image can be called a symbol. The content of a symbol is always significant and generalized. In a symbol, the image goes beyond its own limits, since the symbol has a certain meaning that is inseparably fused with the image, but is not identical to it. The meaning of a symbol is not given, but given; a symbol in its direct form does not speak about reality, but only hints at it. The “eternal” literary images of Don Quixote, Sancho Panza, Don Juan, Hamlet, Falstaff and others are symbolic.
The most important characteristics of a symbol: the dialectical relationship of identity and non-identity in a symbol between the signified and the signified, the multi-layered semantic structure of the symbol.
The symbol is close to allegory and emblem. In allegory and emblem, the figurative-ideological side is also different from the subject, but here the poet himself draws the necessary conclusion.
The concept of art as symbolization appears in ancient aesthetics. Having adopted Plato’s judgments about art as an imitation of nature, Plotinus argued that works of art “do not simply imitate the visible, but go back to the semantic essences of which nature itself consists.”
Goethe, for whom symbols meant a lot, connected them with the vital organic nature of the principles expressed through symbols. Reflections on symbol occupy a particularly large place in the aesthetic theory of German romanticism, in particular in F.W. Schelling and A. Schlegel. In German and Russian romanticism, the symbol expresses primarily a mystical otherworldliness.
Russian symbolists saw unity in the symbol - not only of form and content, but also of a certain higher, Divine project that lies at the basis of being, at the source of all things - this is the unity of Beauty, Good and Truth, discerned by the Symbol.
The concept of art as symbolization, to a greater extent than the theory of imitation, is focused on the general meaning of imagery, but it threatens to take artistic creativity away from the multicolored nature of life into the world of abstractions.
A distinctive feature of literature, along with its inherent imagery, is also the presence of artistic fiction. In works of different literary movements, movements and genres, fiction is present to a greater or lesser extent. Both forms of typification existing in art are associated with fiction - life-like and conventional.
Since ancient times, in art there has been a life-like method of generalization, which presupposes compliance with the physical, psychological, cause-and-effect and other laws known to us. Classic epics, the prose of Russian realists and the novels of French naturalists are distinguished by their similarity to life.
The second form of typification in art is conditional. There is primary and secondary convention. The discrepancy between reality and its image in literature and other forms of art is called primary convention. This includes artistic speech, organized according to special rules, as well as the reflection of life in the images of heroes, different from their prototypes, but based on life-likeness. Secondary convention ndash; allegorical way generalizations of phenomena based on the deformation of life reality and the denial of life-likeness. Artists of words resort to such forms of conditional generalization of life as fantasy, grotesque in order to better comprehend the deep essence of what is being typified (the grotesque novel by F. Rabelais “Gargantua and Pantagruel”, “Petersburg Tales” by N.V. Gogol, “The History of a City” by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin). Grotesque ndash; “an artistic transformation of life forms, leading to some kind of ugly incongruity, to the combination of incompatible things.”
There are also features of secondary convention in figurative and expressive techniques(tropes): allegory, hyperbole, metaphor, metonymy, personification, symbol, emblem, litotes, oxymoron, etc. All these paths are built on a general principle conditional relationship between direct and figurative meanings. All these conventional forms are characterized by a deformation of reality, and some of them are characterized by a deliberate deviation from external plausibility. Secondary conventional forms have other important features: the leading role of aesthetic and philosophical principles, the depiction of those phenomena that do not have a specific analogy in real life. Secondary conventions include the most ancient epic genres of verbal art: myths, folklore and literary fables, legends, fairy tales, parables, as well as genres of literature of the New Age - ballads, artistic pamphlets (“Gulliver’s Travels” by J. Swift), fairy tales, scientific and social philosophical fiction, including utopia and its variety - dystopia.
Secondary convention has long existed in literature, but at different stages of the history of world art of speech it played a different role.
Among the conventional forms in works of ancient literature, the following came to the fore: idealizing hyperbole, inherent in the depiction of heroes in the poems of Homer and the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and satirical grotesque, with the help of which the images of the comedic heroes of Aristophanes were created.
Typically, techniques and images of secondary convention are intensively used in complex, transitional eras for literature. One of these eras falls on the end of the 18th - first third of the 19th centuries. when pre-romanticism and romanticism arose.
The Romantics creatively processed folk tales, legends, traditions, widely used symbols, metaphors and metonymies, which gave their works philosophical generality and increased emotionality. A fantastic movement arose in the romantic literary direction (E.T.A. Hoffman, Novalis, L. Tieck, V.F. Odoevsky and N.V. Gogol). The conventionality of the artistic world among romantic authors is an analogue of the complex reality of an era torn apart by contradictions (“Demon” by M.Yu. Lermontov).
Realist writers also use techniques and genres of secondary convention. In Saltykov-Shchedrin, the grotesque, along with a satirical function (images of mayors), also has a tragic function (image of Judushka Golovlev).
In the 20th century the grotesque is reborn. During this period, two forms of grotesque are distinguished - modernist and realistic. A. France, B. Brecht, T. Mann, P. Neruda, B. Shaw, Fr. Dürrenmatt often creates conditional situations and circumstances in her works and resorts to shifting temporal and spatial layers.
In the literature of modernism, a secondary convention takes on leading importance (“Poems about a Beautiful Lady” by A.A. Blok). In the prose of Russian symbolists (D.S. Merezhkovsky, F.K. Sologub, A. Bely) and a number of foreign writers (J. Updike, J. Joyce, T. Mann) a special type of myth novel appears. In the drama of the Silver Age, stylization and pantomime, the “comedy of masks” and the techniques of ancient theater were revived.
In the works of E.I. Zamyatin, A.P. Platonov, A.N. Tolstoy, M.A. Bulgakov, scientistic neo-mythologizing predominates, due to the atheistic picture of the world and associated with science.
Fiction in Russian literature of the Soviet period often served as an Aesopian language and contributed to the criticism of reality, which manifested itself in such ideologically and artistically capacious genres as dystopian novel, legend story, fairy tale story. The genre of dystopia, fantastic in nature, was finally formed in the 20th century. in the works of E.I. Zamyatin (novel “We”). Memorable works of the dystopian genre were also created by foreign writers - O. Huxley and D. Orwell.
At the same time, in the 20th century. Fairy-tale fiction also continued to exist (“The Lord of the Rings” by D.R. Tolkien, “The Little Prince” by A. de Saint-Exupéry, the dramaturgy of E.L. Schwartz, the work of M.M. Prishvin and Yu.K. Olesha).
Life-likeness and convention are equal and interacting methods of artistic generalization at different stages of the existence of verbal art.
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5. Rodnyanskaya I.B. Image // Literary encyclopedia of terms and concepts. Stb.669-674.
For students should get acquainted with the concepts of image and sign, the main provisions of the Aristotelian theory of imitation of art of reality and Plato’s theory of art as symbolization; know what artistic generalization is in literature and what types it is divided into. Need to have an idea about life-likeness and secondary convention and its forms.
Students must have clear ideas:
- about imagery, sign, symbol, paths, genres of secondary convention.
The student must acquire skills
- use of scientific, critical and reference literature, analysis of life-likeness and secondary conventions (fantasy, grotesque, hyperbole, etc.) in literary and artistic works.
1. Give examples of artistic image in the broad and narrow meanings of the term.
2. Present the classification of signs in the form of a diagram.
3. Give examples of literary symbols.
4. Which of the two theories of art as imitation does O. Mandelstam criticize in the article “The Morning of Acmeism”? Give reasons for your point of view.
5. What types of artistic conventions are divided into?
6. What literary genres are characterized by secondary convention?
