A short story is a literary genre, the art of a short story. The difference between a short story and a novella

Foreign critics do not find any difference between such literary concepts as a story and a novella. In the West, these terms are called synonyms. However, in Russia, the short story and short story are considered independent genres that have special features. Before determining the difference between a novella and a short story, each of these literary phenomena should be examined in detail.

What is a story?

The story, as a genre of literature, originates from ancient times, where its ancestors were works of folklore: fairy tales, parables, stories passed on from mouth to mouth. Then, changing over time and, along with other prose genres, passing through certain historical stages, the story began to take shape as short work about an event in the life of one person.

Today the story is narrative literary genre characterized by brevity, richness artistic image, deep psychologism, short-term nature of the described event.

The plot of the story is focused on one important and interesting episode from the life of the main character. The author, as a rule, shows his personal attitude and main intention through a detailed and expressive description of the appearance and character of the main characters and the hero himself, their thoughts and mental anguish. The narration is usually told in the first person. The narrator can be either the author himself or one of the heroes of the work.

What is a novella?

The short story, as a literary genre, arose during the Renaissance after the writing of the book “The Decameron” Giovanni Boccaccio. Then the main features of the novella were considered: the presence of an acute conflict in the plot, unexpected turns, disrupting the peaceful course of life of the protagonist.

Over time, the short story genre has changed, acquiring new features. Thus, the short stories of the Romantic era, written by Edgar Allan Poe, Novalis and Hoffmann, had a fantastic, mystical, fabulous content. Later, under the influence of Guy de Maupassant and Prosper Merimee, the short story began to be considered an exclusively realistic genre.

In Russia, the short story, as a literary genre, was able to take shape thanks to Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin. His work "" is considered to be the first Russian short story. Although the title contains the word “stories,” literary scholars and critics are still convinced that “The Stories of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin” refers specifically to short stories.

Later, the short story genre absorbed much of the physiological essay. So the short story became an essay-novel. Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol wrote wonderful essays and short stories, such as “ Nose", "" and others, which in their content were far from a short story in the classical sense.

Only in the 20th century was the short story genre inspired new life. The landmark works of this time are considered to be the short stories of Sigismund Krzhizhanovsky and Alexander Green.

Nowadays, the short story is a prose literary genre, which is characterized by: small volume, neutral style of depiction, action-packed, unexpected ending. The author's attention is focused not on the emotional experiences of the characters, but on the events occurring in the work. His goal is to show the situation objectively, without expressing his personal attitude, to achieve maximum intensity of passions and lead to an unpredictable end. The novella has only one storyline, any deviations from the main action are unacceptable. The number of actors is also limited. The appearance of new characters or mention of them is allowed only on the condition that the scenes with their participation will strengthen the overall dynamics of the plot.

So, having examined in detail the genres of short stories and short stories, we can highlight their common and distinctive features.

Common features of a short story and a short story

First of all, the short story and short story belong to the epic narrative genres.
Works of both genres should be small in volume and presented as briefly as possible. Although sometimes the volume of the story can reach several dozen pages.
The plots of novellas and short stories are limited to certain time frames.
The plots of the novel and short story have a clear structure, the main elements of which are the climax and denouement.
The plots of novellas and short stories highlight one specific event in the life of the main character.

The main differences between a novella and a short story

The story describes the events with greater artistic expression than in the novella.
The author of the story freely shows his personal attitude to what is happening in the work, the main characters, their thoughts and actions. For the author of a novel this is unacceptable. Main feature short stories are the absence of any authorial assessment.
In the story, the author strives to show the internal development of the main character and the motives of his actions. For a short story, the main thing is the dynamics of the plot and the severity of the conflict. The novella depicts the event without analyzing the psychology of the characters.
The severity of the conflict in the novella is more pronounced than in the story.
Very often the story carries hidden subtext. No other interpretations of the main plot are allowed in the novella.
A story may contain several subplots. There is only one storyline in the novel.

Although in Russian literary criticism the short story is distinguished as an independent literary genre, Russian writers it is rarely addressed, giving preference to the story. Many Russian critics are unanimous with their Western colleagues that the short story and the short story are so close, and their differences are not so significant, to consider the short story an independent genre. They equate a short story with a story, or consider a short story to be one of the varieties of a story.

Novella and short story - these two literary concepts almost identical. However, this is only at first glance. Valid in European tradition the concept of a short story is often used as a synonym for a story. However, in Russian literary criticism, the short story and the short story, although they have common features, however, are quite clearly separated. Let's look at the difference between a story and a novella in more detail.

So what is a story? This is a small form of epic prose, characterized by unity art event. What is a novella? This is also a small form of epic prose; it is characterized by an unpredictable, unexpected ending. As we can see from the definitions presented, a short story and a short story are united by a small volume. Some literary scholars classify the short story as a type of short story. However, there are some differences between the story and the novella.

First of all, the main place in the story is occupied by the author's narration, various descriptions, ranging from landscape sketches and ending psychological state hero. In addition, the story, as a rule, clearly expresses the position of the author, his subjective assessment of the events described. The story describes an incident that could happen to any person. A character in a story may be given detailed characteristics. The short story as a genre is more common in Russian literature.

What is the difference between a novella and a short story? The novella is not characterized by psychologism. In the novel you will not find descriptions, ratings or other characteristics. The author of the novel puts an unusual, extraordinary plot at the forefront. And if the story is turned to the contemplative side human existence, then the short story is an active one.

So, the main difference between a story and a short story is the artistry of what is depicted. This is achieved not through a tense plot and the unusual nature of what is happening (as in a short story), but through all kinds of descriptions.

Definition

Novella- a small prose work, which is characterized by a sharp plot with an unexpected outcome, brevity and a neutral style of presentation, as well as the absence of a pronounced author's position in relation to literary heroes.

Story– variety of works epic genre, which are characterized by a narration about events from the life of the main character, revealing psychological aspect his actions or state of mind.

Comparison

The novella is distinguished by its emphasized brevity of the narrative. It does not allow direct author's assessment actions literary characters or conditions that determine the development of the events described.

In the story, such an assessment is indirectly expressed in portrait characteristics and copyright disclaimers. It is necessary to reveal a topic that is often associated with identifying psychological factors, fundamentally important for understanding the mental state of the protagonist. His behavior is unusual life situation forms the basis of the plot of the story. The plot action is limited to a narrow time frame and tied to a specific place of events.

There is no psychologism in the novella. The most important thing in it is the extraordinary event that sets the dynamic tension of the plot. The focus of the reader's attention is not so much on the hero, but on what happens to him. The novelist does not seek to create a deep subtext for the main content of his short work. His task is to add spice to the plot and achieve the utmost intensity of the narrative at the climax.

With a limited number of characters in a story, a subplot can develop. In a short story, the plot cannot have a branched structure. Event-wise, it is connected only with what happens to the main character. Other characters appear extremely rarely in the story: as a rule, only if an additional episode with their participation enhances the dynamics of the action.

Conclusions website

In the novella the sharpness of the plot is expressed to a greater extent than in the short story.
The short story is characterized by a neutral style of presentation, while the story uses the author's assessment of characters or events.
In the story, the action reveals the motivation for the hero's actions. The novella depicts the action itself and lacks techniques psychological analysis character behavior.
A story may have hidden subtext that is important for the realization of the author's intention. The novel does not allow ambiguity in interpretations of the main theme.

Taking into account all the features short story, sometimes it can be very difficult to determine the difference between a novella, a story and a sketch (a short sketch, sketch). Everyone knows what at least the story is exactly: either narrative prose, defined as “shorter than a novella” or, in the words of the first deep researcher of the short form, Edgar Allan Poe, “not longer than what can be read at one sitting.”

Apart from this definition, according to Western educators, only two things can be distinguished that characterize a short story. First, the story is about something that happened to someone. Secondly, a well-composed story demonstrates the harmony of all principles more fully than any other literary form, with the possible exception of poetry, that is, it is comprehensive and “ideal.” “And this is already quite enough,” says Canadian educator Rust Hills, “the first statement distinguishes a short story from a sketch, and the second from a novella.”

So, a story differs from a sketch in that it is about something that happened to someone. A sketch is just a short and static description of a human character, place, time, etc. In sketches describing a person, his life path, - the hero, so to speak, is constant. That is, for example, if it contains a description of any period of time, and we are shown the sequence of the hero’s actions - from morning to evening - it is assumed that this hero remains unchanged every morning, every day and every evening. And in in this case, if there is any action in such a sketch, then it is intended only to determine the character of the hero, and not to develop it: the hero does not receive anything new, does not learn from the situations that are sent to him, nor doesn't change one iota. Any incident described in the sketch is regarded only as an example of the hero’s behavior, and not as something that changed his life and prompted him to take any decisive actions and actions, as happens in the story. It is assumed that after some time, the hero, placed within the same circumstances, will react and behave in exactly the same way, regardless of how many times this is repeated. The story is dynamic, not static: the same things simply cannot happen again. The character of the hero must change and does change, even if not radically.

A short story differs from a short story not only in length, but also in many other ways, although both genres involve changes in the character of the heroes with one difference, that the short story has such space and time that contribute to a larger set of events and various effects. Edgar Allan Poe viewed the story as a kind of conductor of one “strong and unique effect”: “If the author’s desire is not expressed in the search and creation of this effect on the audience, then it has already failed. This intention, explicit or hidden, must be evident throughout the structure of the story.” This famous saying of Poe must, of course, be taken into account, but on the other hand, we cannot say with complete confidence that in any well-developed story this degree of total unity of everything must necessarily be present - what we have defined as “the harmony of all principles.” ”, - but in any case, this is not required at all in a good short story.

A good storyteller should not constantly develop and expand the list of minor characters and be clever with extra-plot lines, while a good novelist is inclined to change his point of view, describe the same events from different angles, constantly pushing the reader to important details. The narrator tries to stick to one single point point of view, in order to focus entirely on the issues of your story.

A good storyteller will never omit any of the technical devices of storytelling (plot, point of view, main theme, style of language, expression, symbolism) that a novelist can do. In the story, everything is interconnected extremely closely. main topic in a successful story is inseparably linked to the actions of the characters, but it cannot be guessed in all other aspects of the story, even in the language used. In terms of the importance of language and the relationship between sound and meaning, a story is comparable to poetry. For example, the poetic metaphor of light and death in Hemingway’s story “A Clean, Well-Light Place” echoes Shakespeare’s sonnets in the richness of their language and symbolism of the conflict between good and evil. In general, it should be noted that language in a story is of paramount importance. Language creates the style of writing, is responsible for the author's tone, is used to create a certain atmosphere and mood, foreshadows certain plot twists, and, of course, depends on the point of view from which the story is written.

A good story must necessarily contain a harmonious transition from the general to the particular, imperceptible at first glance, as well as an integral connection of all parts, each sentence with the previous one, which is rarely seen in a short story.

“Everything must work and interact. The previous must exaggerate the subsequent and be inseparable from it. - Emphasizes Rust Hills. “All this saves the reader time and brings out the essence.” javascript:void(1);

Based on materials from the literary workshop of Anastasia Ponomareva

The story is great literary form written information in literary and artistic design. When recording oral retellings, the story became isolated as an independent genre in written literature.

The story as an epic genre

The distinctive features of the story are a small number of characters, little content, and one storyline. The story does not have intertwining events and cannot contain a variety of artistic colors.

Thus, a story is a narrative work, which is characterized by a small volume, a small number of characters and the short duration of the events depicted. This type of epic genre dates back to folklore genres oral retelling, allegories and parables.

In the 18th century, the difference between essays and stories was not yet defined, but over time, a story began to be distinguished from an essay by the conflict of the plot. There is a difference between the story of "large forms" and the story of "small forms", but often this distinction is arbitrary.

There are stories that trace character traits novel, and also there are small works with one storyline, which are still called a novel and not a story, despite the fact that all the signs point to this type of genre.

Novella as an epic genre

Many people believe that a short story is a certain type of story. But still, the definition of a short story sounds like a kind of small prose work. The short story differs from the short story in its plot, which is often sharp and centripetal, in the rigor of its composition and volume.

The novella most often reveals acute problem or a question through one event. As an example of a literary genre, the short story arose during the Renaissance - the most famous example is "The Decameron" by Boccaccio. Over time, the novella began to depict paradoxical and unusual incidents.

The heyday of the short story as a genre is considered to be the period of romanticism. Famous writers P. Merimee, E.T.A. Hoffman and Gogol wrote short stories, the central line of which was to destroy the impression of familiar everyday life.

Novels that depicted fateful events and the play of fate with man appeared at the beginning of the 20th century. Writers such as O. Henry, S. Zweig, A. Chekhov, I. Bunin paid considerable attention to the short story genre in their work.

The story as an epic genre

Such prose genre, as a story, is an intermediate place between a short story and a novel. Initially, the story was a source of narration about any real, historical events(“The Tale of Bygone Years”, “The Tale of the Battle of Kalka”), but later it became a separate genre to reproduce the natural course of life.

The peculiarity of the story is that in the center of its plot there is always main character and his life is the revelation of his personality and the path of his destiny. The story is characterized by a sequence of events in which harsh reality is revealed.

And such a topic is extremely relevant for such an epic genre. Famous stories are " Stationmaster"A. Pushkina," Poor Lisa"N. Karamzin, "The Life of Arsenyev" by I. Bunin, "The Steppe" by A. Chekhov.

The importance of artistic detail in storytelling

For a full disclosure of the writer’s intention and for a complete understanding of the meaning literary work artistic detail is very important. This could be a detail of an interior, a landscape or a portrait; the key point here is that the writer emphasizes this detail, thereby drawing the attention of readers to it.

This serves as a way to highlight some psychological trait of the main character or mood that is characteristic of the work. It is noteworthy that the important role artistic detail is that it alone can replace many narrative details. In this way, the author of the work emphasizes his attitude towards the situation or person.

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