Definition: what is literature, idle tales or the spiritual code of humanity? Genre of literary work

In this lesson we will learn what the concept of “literature” means.

“Well, what a pleasure it is to read a book,
in which there are no conversations or pictures?
"Alice in Wonderland"
L. Carroll

Topic: Introduction

Lesson: What is literature

A few words about what the Literature course is and how to use it. This course does not consist of individual lessons, but of lessons that represent a system of interconnected elements, general concepts. For this purpose, there is a common dictionary; in each lesson there are links both to the texts and to their location on the network and a navigation system that allows you to return from one lesson to another, obtain the necessary information, get compressed form a note with a plan and abstract of the lesson, also receive lists of additional literature for the lesson and assignments for this lesson. This message must be constantly present in our subconscious, because from any of the lessons that you entered by chance, you should be able to go to another lesson through the dictionary, through notes, through assignments, or through any other link that you see.

The answer “literature is books” is correct, but not entirely accurate. If we look into the dictionary and look up the word “literature”, we will see different and contradictory answers. The most sensible answer is in the school etymological dictionary. It says that the word “literature” arose in the 18th century and is based on the Latin root litera - this is a clay, stone or metal image of a letter that was used for printing. The concept of “literature” appeared when printed books were published. It spread in the 19th century, and reached Russia in the 20th century. Before this, the concept of “literature” was used, which clearly emphasized the importance of literature. Another word used was also fiction (French origin), a concept related to fiction. This term does not mean that deep meaning, like literature or literature. Fiction is reading for free time. This is reading that complements and does not give anything essential for life.

Having appeared in the 20th century and spread, the term “literature” never received a clear definition in dictionaries. Most often in dictionaries and encyclopedias you can find the following definition of literature: “everything that is written and has social significance.” But as far as social meaning is concerned, some misunderstanding arises, since such meaning may vary. Suppose a young man writes on the asphalt: “Masha, I love you.” For this young man and for Masha, this is undoubtedly literature, for everyone else - at their discretion. They may or may not consider it literature. You can find other types of texts written on fences, on asphalt, also texts written in electronic messages, and finally, words written in our memory.

Is this literature or not?

The definition of “literature” that we find in books or dictionaries confuses us because it does not observe the main rule, the rule that is clearly observed in mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, the rule of identity. So, there is no clear definition of literature, such as what mathematics, biology or physics are. Literature, as we find out, everyone calls something different. Literature is something with pictures and where there are conversations, or, conversely, something that is completely without pictures and there are no conversations. Everyone determines this for themselves.

In addition to the word “literature,” we must turn to the phenomenon called literature, since the meaning of the word and the phenomenon do not always coincide. The word “literature” was completely incomprehensible to the person who preceded the appearance of these very letters. This is the man who existed before literature, even earlier than ten thousand years ago. It was in those years that people began to convey, with the help of words, with the help of speech, those things, those thoughts, those feelings that allowed them to agree and explore the world together. Hunt animals, fight enemies, make friends and pass on experience from one generation to another. The first books appeared at a time when there was no other material for making them except stone. A Neanderthal who holds a stone in his hands is essentially holding the material from which the first books were made. These were stone tablets.

It was extremely difficult to carve texts on them. Only kings, leaders, sorcerers, and clergy could afford this. Therefore, the book itself turned out to be a sacred object, which around the 13th century BC. e., when King Moses lived, it served as the origin of the first book - the Bible.

Apparently, what begins the Bible is the first text that testifies to the appearance of literature. It says: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and empty, and darkness was over the deep, and the Spirit of God hovered over the waters.” If the fairy-tale Alice had read these words, she would have been able to revive in her imagination the conversations and pictures that Moses wanted to convey. But further, talking about the origin of the world, Moses all the time, just about what Alice dreamed of, says: “And God saw that it was good.” And then the very first book that exists in the history of our civilization begins with a blessing. What the Bible contained was a blessing. The Almighty Lord God blessed everything that exists. This is the first book, which was sacred and was perceived as a blessing from the Almighty. This is how literature arose and it existed only in oral form. For several thousand years, people memorized every word in the Bible.

Rice. 7. Bible on parchment

Writing was invented much later, and inscriptions carved on stone were transferred to parchment. Books were written on parchment, which appeared already at the second stage of the appearance of literature. If the XIII century BC. e. We can consider the time of the emergence of literature, then literature in its modern sense appears already in the 1st century AD. e. It appears at the very moment when another biblical author (the author of another part of the Bible - the New Testament), John the Theologian, in his Gospel (the Gospel is good news) begins with the words: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” It is quite obvious that the word begins to separate from the object that it expresses. In any case, John already understands that there is some distance between the word and the object it expresses. This moment is dated quite accurately - between 85 and 95 AD - the moment of the beginning of the second stage of the emergence of modern literature.

The word and the thing that this word expresses begin to be thought of separately from each other. The book begins to live its own life. Fierce disputes begin around the Gospel and around all the books of the New Testament, which of them are correct and which are heretical. Four Exemplary Signs of the Gospel and More a large number of The unrecognized gospels, those about which scientists and theologians argue and cannot come to terms with the fact that some non-canonical, unrecognized gospel churches are historically more accurate and more plausible. But this is a different attitude towards literature and this is a different literature that exists in handwritten form.

The third stage is associated with the advent of printing. Thanks to the fact that books have appeared that are accessible to small children, to you and me, literature is no longer the lot of selected kings who can afford stone tablets, and not the lot of individual sages who are able to write down some texts on very expensive parchment in a very expensive way. The book becomes widespread and it begins to be published in hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, and then millions of copies. And when a mass-produced book appears, the meaning of what we mean by the concept of “literature” changes along with it. Literature is something about which you and I can argue, agree or disagree. A book is something that is not a sacred attribute, but an ordinary, familiar phenomenon of our life.

The fourth stage begins when the shift paper book comes eBook. This is the stage that we are now experiencing; before our eyes, a shift in history and the entire world culture is taking place. People are switching from paper to electronic media. This means that the book has ceased to bear the imprint of holiness, preserved from the times of stone tablets, parchment, and printing. Every person who uses the Internet feels within equally both reader and author. This crushing decline in the authority of the word, in which the printed word ceased to be a source of truth, has led to the fact that modern man treats literature approximately the same way as Neolithic man treated it ten thousand years ago. But modern man there is this right, the right to encroach on the authority of a book, the right to doubt that the book contains a final and irrevocable statement of the truth.

We see four stages in the development of literature, from the moment of its origin in the 13th century BC. e., when the stone book served as the basis for the oral book. We see the second stage, which arose in the 1st century, when the culture of the stone sacred book, which was transmitted orally, was replaced by a book copied by hand on parchment. We see the third stage, when printing spread in the 15th-16th centuries, and books on paper became available to everyone. The fourth stage, which is born before our eyes, when the stone, parchment, and printed books are replaced by an electronic book. And all this covers a variety of phenomena. You will see stone tablets in pictures on the Internet; the texts of stone tablets are deciphered and posted in the public domain. For thousands of years these sacred books were the preserve of the sages. Today, with the click of a button, you become the owner of knowledge that was available only to select people in past times.

This allows us to say that we did not find a definition of the word “literature” in the books. And this is much more important and interesting than if we could, with a slight press of a button, find an accurate, comprehensive definition of literature. You and I are engaged in living literature, which continues to develop, which changes before our eyes.

Homework boils down to the fact that you must read the last four lines of the poem “Prophet” by A.S. Pushkin, record it on video or on an audio file, which you will send to us. And in a few lines, maybe in two or three sentences, write what meaning you put into these four lines. The fact is that Pushkin has two very different and fundamentally opposite interpretations. The Lord could bless the prophet by sending him to preach, but the Lord could also place a curse on the prophet by sending him to preach. And if the Lord blesses the prophet, he infuses him with soul and joy, and if the Lord curses him, he infuses him with grief. Here are two ending options that we could offer, but you can and should have your own options, your own readings of Pushkin. How do you understand the ending of Pushkin's prophet? Those of you who send us the most interesting, best video files will be invited to the studio and take part in our future video lessons.

So, the first word that we tried to explain in order to learn to understand the meaning of our subject turned out to be extremely interesting and useful, since we did not find a clear and definite interpretation. But we found something else, an opportunity not so much to study literature, but to master it, relive it, we got the opportunity to add conversations and pictures to those dead stones that literature is becoming for us these days.

We come to the conclusion that literature is a way of verbally formalizing human interaction. That is, further we will not study literature, but master it.

1. Korovina V.Ya., Zhuravlev V.P., Korovin V.I. Literature. 9th grade. M.: Education, 2008.

2. Ladygin M.B., Esin A.B., Nefedova N.A. Literature. 9th grade. M.: Bustard, 2011.

3. Chertov V.F., Trubina L.A., Antipova A.M. Literature. 9th grade. M.: Education, 2012.

1. What is literature?

2. What terms were used to replace the concept of “literature”?

3. Describe the stages of development of literature.

4. * Reflect on what the future development of literature will be.

Literature is One of the main types of art is the art of words. The term “literature” also refers to any works of human thought, enshrined in the written word and possessing social significance; literature is distinguished between technical, scientific, journalistic, reference, epistolary, etc. However, in the usual and more strict sense, literature refers to works of artistic writing.

The term literature

The term "literature"(or, as they used to say, " belles lettres») arose relatively recently and began to be widely used only in the 18th century (displacing the terms “poetry” and “poetic art”, which now denote poetic works).

It was brought to life by printing, which, having appeared in the middle of the 15th century, relatively quickly made the “literary” (i.e., intended for reading) form of existence of the art of words the main and dominant one; used to be art words existed primarily for hearing, for public performance and were understood as the skillful implementation of a “poetic” action by means of a special “poetic language” (“Poetics” of Aristotle, ancient and medieval aesthetic treatises of the West and East).

Literature (the art of words) arose on the basis of oral folk literature in ancient times - during the formation of the state, which necessarily gave rise to a developed form of writing. However, literature is not initially distinguished from writing in the broad sense of the word. In the most ancient monuments (the Bible, the Mahabharata or the Tale of Bygone Years), elements of verbal art exist in inseparable unity with elements of mythology, religion, the beginnings of natural and historical sciences, various kinds of information, moral and practical instructions.

The syncretic nature of the early literary monuments(see) does not deprive them of aesthetic value, because The religious-mythological form of consciousness reflected in them was close in structure to the artistic one. Literary heritage ancient civilizations- Egypt, China, Judea, India, Greece, Rome, etc. - forms a kind of foundation of world literature.

History of literature

Although the history of literature goes back several thousand years, it in its own sense - as a written form of the art of words - is formed and realizes itself with the birth of “civil”, bourgeois society. Verbal and artistic creations of past times also acquire a specifically literary existence in this era, experiencing a significant transformation in a new - not oral, but readerly perception. At the same time, the destruction of the normative “poetic language” occurs - literature absorbs all the elements of national speech, its verbal “material” becomes universal.

Gradually in aesthetics (in the 19th century, starting with Hegel), the purely meaningful, spiritual originality of literature comes to the fore, and it is recognized primarily among other (scientific, philosophical, journalistic) types of writing, and not other types of art. By the middle of the 20th century, however, a synthetic understanding of literature was affirmed as one of the forms of artistic exploration of the world, as a creative activity that belongs to art, but at the same time is a type of artistic creativity that occupies a place in the art system special place; this distinctive position of literature is captured in the commonly used formula “literature and art.”

Unlike other types of art (painting, sculpture, music, dance), which have a directly objective-sensual form, created from any material object (paint, stone) or from action (body movement, sound of a string), literature creates its form from words, from language, which, having a material embodiment (in sounds and indirectly in letters), is truly comprehended not in sensory perception, but in intellectual understanding.

Form of literature

Thus, the form of literature includes an objective-sensory side - certain complexes of sounds, the rhythm of verse and prose (and these moments are also perceived when reading “to oneself”); but this directly sensual side literary form acquires real value only in its interaction with the actual intellectual, spiritual layers of artistic speech.

Even the most elementary components of form (epithet or metaphor, narrative or dialogue) are acquired only through the process of understanding (and not direct perception). Spirituality, which permeates literature, allows it to develop its universal, in comparison with other types of art, possibilities.

The subject of art is human world, diverse human attitudes to reality, reality from a human point of view. However, it is precisely in the art of the word (and this constitutes its specific sphere, in which theater and cinema adjoin literature) that man, as a bearer of spirituality, becomes the direct object of reproduction and comprehension, the main point of application of artistic forces. The qualitative originality of the subject of literature was noticed by Aristotle, who believed that the plots of poetic works are connected with the thoughts, characters and actions of people.

But only in the 19th century, i.e. in a predominantly “literary” era artistic development, this specificity of the subject was fully realized. “The object corresponding to poetry is the infinite realm of the spirit. For the word, this most malleable material, directly belonging to the spirit and most capable of expressing its interests and motives in their inner vitality - the word should be used primarily for such expression as it is most suitable, just as in other arts this happens with stone, paint , sound.

From this side, the main task of poetry will be to promote awareness of the forces of spiritual life and, in general, of everything that rages in human passions and feelings or calmly passes before the contemplating gaze - the all-encompassing kingdom of human actions, deeds, destinies, ideas, all vanity this world and the entire divine world order" (Hegel G. Aesthetics).

Every work of art is an act of spiritual and emotional communication between people and at the same time new item, a new phenomenon created by man and containing some kind of artistic discovery. These functions - communication, creation and cognition - are equally inherent in all forms artistic activity, but different types of art are characterized by the predominance of one or another function. Due to the fact that the word, language is the reality of thought, in the formation of verbal art, in promoting literature to a special place, and in the 19-20 centuries even to central place Among the ancient arts, the main historical trend in the development of artistic activity was most fully expressed - the transition from sensory-practical creation to meaning-creation.

Place of literature

The flourishing of literature is in a certain connection with the rise of the cognitive-critical spirit characteristic of the New Age. Literature stands, as it were, on the verge of art and mental and spiritual activity; That is why certain literary phenomena can be directly compared with philosophy, history, and psychology. She is often called " artistic research"or "human studies" (M. Gorky) for the problematic, analytical, pathos of self-knowledge of a person to the innermost depths of his soul. In literature, more than in the plastic arts and music, the artistically recreated world appears as a meaningful world and raised to a high level of generalization. Therefore it is the most ideological of all the arts.

Literary, images

Literary, the images of which are not directly tangible, but arise in the human imagination, is inferior to other arts in terms of the power of feelings and impact, but wins from the point of view of an all-encompassing penetration into the “essence of things.” At the same time, the writer, strictly speaking, does not talk or reflect on life, as, for example, a memoirist and philosopher do; he creates, he creates art world just like a representative of any art. Process of creation literary work, its architectonics and individual phrases are associated with almost physical stress and in this sense, it is related to the activities of artists working with the stubborn matter of stone, sound, and the human body (in dance, pantomime).

This bodily-emotional tension does not disappear in the finished work: it is transmitted to the reader. Literature appeals to the maximum extent to the work of aesthetic imagination, to the effort of reader co-creation, for the artistic being represented by a literary work can only be revealed if the reader, starting from a sequence of verbal-figurative statements, himself begins to restore, re-create this being (see .). L.N. Tolstoy wrote in his diary that when perceiving genuine art, “the illusion of what I do not perceive, but create” arises (“On Literature”). These words emphasize the most important aspect of the creative function of literature: the education of the artist in the reader himself.

The verbal form of literature is not speech in the proper sense: a writer, creating a work, does not “speak” (or “write”), but “acts out” speech, just as an actor on stage does not act in the literal sense of the word, but acts out an action. Artistic speech creates a sequence of verbal images of “gestures”; it itself becomes action, “being.” So, the minted verse " Bronze Horseman“seems to be erecting Pushkin’s unique Petersburg, and F.M. Dostoevsky’s intense, breathless style and rhythm of narration make the spiritual tossing of his heroes seem tangible. As a result, literary works bring the reader face to face with artistic reality, which can not only be comprehended, but... and experience, “live” in it.

Body of literary works created on specific language or within certain state boundaries, amounts to this or that national literature; the commonality of the time of creation and the resulting artistic properties allows us to talk about the literature of a given era; taken together, in their increasing mutual influence, national literatures form world, or world literature. Fiction of any era has enormous diversity.

First of all, literature is divided into two main types (forms) - poetry and prose, and also into three types - epic, lyric and drama. Despite the fact that the boundaries between genera cannot be drawn with absolute accuracy and there are many transitional forms, the main features of each genus are sufficiently defined. At the same time, in works of various kinds there is community and unity. In any work of literature, images of people appear - characters (or heroes) in certain circumstances, although in the lyrics these categories, like a number of others, have a fundamental originality.

The specific set of characters and circumstances appearing in a work is called a theme, and the semantic result of the work, growing from the juxtaposition and interaction of images, is called an artistic idea. Unlike a logical idea, an artistic idea is not formulated by an author’s statement, but is depicted and imprinted on all the details of the artistic whole. When analyzing artistic idea Two sides are often distinguished: understanding the life depicted and evaluating it. The evaluative (value) aspect, or “ideological-emotional orientation,” is called a tendency.

Literary work

A literary work is a complex interweaving of specific “figurative” statements- the smallest and simplest verbal images. Each of them puts before the reader’s imagination a separate action, movement, which together represent the life process in its emergence, development and resolution. The dynamic nature of verbal art, in contrast to the static nature of fine art, was first illuminated by G.E. Lessing (“Laocoon, or On the Boundaries of Painting and Poetry,” 1766).

The individual elementary actions and movements that make up a work have a different character: these are external, objective movements of people and things, and internal, emotional movements, and “speech movements” - replicas of the characters and the author. The chain of these interconnected movements represents the plot of the work. Perceiving the plot as you read, the reader gradually comprehends the content - action, conflict, plot and motivation, theme and idea. The plot itself is a content-formal category, or (as they sometimes say) the “internal form” of the work. The “internal form” refers to the composition.

The form of the work in the proper sense is artistic speech, sequence of phrases, which the reader perceives (reads or hears) directly and directly. This does not mean that artistic speech is a purely formal phenomenon; it is entirely meaningful, because it is in it that the plot and thereby the entire content of the work (characters, circumstances, conflict, theme, idea) are objectified.

When considering the structure of a work, its various “layers” and elements, it is necessary to realize that these elements can only be identified through abstraction: in reality, each work is an indivisible living whole. Analysis of a work, based on a system of abstractions, separately exploring various aspects and details, should ultimately lead to the knowledge of this integrity, its unified content-formal nature (see).

Depending on the originality of the content and form, the work is classified as one genre or another (for example, epic genres: epic, story, novel, short story, short story, essay, fable, etc.). In each era, diverse genre forms develop, although those most consistent with the general character of a given time come to the fore.

Finally, in the literature there are various creative methods and styles. A certain method and style are characteristic of the literature of an entire era or movement; on the other hand, everyone great artist creates his own individual method and style within the framework of a creative direction close to him.

Literature is studied by various branches of literary criticism. Current literary process constitutes the main subject of literary criticism

The word literature comes from Latin litteratura - written and from littera, which translated means - letter.

Definition of the term "Literature"

It is possible to say what literature is only on the basis of a broad study of human history. One should not think that this word means some single, once and for all defined phenomenon. The history of human culture shows that what we call literature arose from phenomena that, from our modern point of view, barely resemble literature. These phenomena have evolved and changed as the form of human existence has evolved and changed. The primitive song of primitive man, sometimes a little meaningful selection of sounds in time with the labor process, is already the root of literature and from it music and poetry develop. Games and round dances among ancient peoples, which accompanied their festivities, associated either with the beginning or end of field work, or with war or hunting, or with family events such as weddings or funerals, are both the beginning of literature and the beginning of cult (religion).

Only through a historical study of the life of human society is it revealed what literature was like at different times. Every century has its own definition of literature. Literature refers to the verbal activity of man. Language or speech is a way of transmitting thoughts from person to person. To preserve speech, it is written down, printed, and memorized. This will already be a literary work. Literary works taken together form literature. is the art of words, one of the main types of art. This term refers to any works of human thought recorded in writing. Therefore, literature is distinguished as technical, scientific, reference, fiction, journalistic, documentary, memoir, and educational. In the usual and at the same time more strict sense, literature refers to those enshrined in the written word. works of art. Unlike painting, sculpture, music, dance, which have an objective-sensual form from some matter (paint, stone, etc.) or from action (the sound of a string, the movement of a body), literature creates its form from words, from language, which, embodied in sounds and letters, is comprehended not in sensory perception, but in intellectual understanding. It is in the art of words that a person, as a bearer of spirituality, becomes an object of reproduction and comprehension from various points of view, the main point of application of artistic forces even when it is not about him directly, but about the world around him.

Literature - written works of social significance (for example, fiction, scientific literature, epistolary literature). More often, literature is understood as artistic literary production (fiction; equivalent in the 19th century - “beautiful literature”). In this sense, literature is a phenomenon of art (“the art of words”), aesthetically expressive public consciousness and in turn shaping it.

The material carrier of imagery in literature - speech - allows it to unusually broadly master and actively interpret life processes in all their complexity, including the inner world of people and their communication, embodied in statements (monologue and dialogue).

Fiction as an art form arises on the basis of mythology and oral and poetic folk art. Fiction preserves, accumulates and transmits aesthetic, moral, philosophical, and social values ​​from generation to generation. Literature is a dynamic system of literary genres (epic, lyric, drama), genres, motifs, plots, images, verse and prose forms, figurative language, and composition techniques that has been developing over thousands of years. There are types of written works that are related to fiction - memoirs, epistolary, documentary literature. The most ancient works were written in verse; prose is a relatively later area of ​​fiction. Only in the 18-19 centuries. these two areas were equal in value. For the 20th century characteristic connections between fiction and other predominantly new types of art - cinema, radio, television. The work of outstanding figures of fiction marks the most important phases in the development of world and national culture.

Literature is studied by philology, mainly literary criticism.

A literary genre is a group of literary works that have common historical development trends and are united by a set of properties in their content and form. Sometimes this term is confused with the concepts of “type” and “form”. Today there is no single clear classification of genres. Literary works are divided according to a certain number characteristic features.

History of genre formation

The first systematization of literary genres was presented by Aristotle in his Poetics. Thanks to this work, the impression began to emerge that the literary genre is a natural, stable system that requires the author to fully comply with the principles and canons a certain genre. Over time, this led to the formation of a number of poetics that strictly prescribed to authors exactly how they should write a tragedy, ode or comedy. For many years these requirements remained unshakable.

Decisive changes in the system of literary genres began only towards the end of the 18th century.

At the same time literary works aimed at artistic exploration, in their attempts to distance themselves as much as possible from genre divisions, gradually came to the emergence of new phenomena unique to literature.

What literary genres exist

To understand how to determine the genre of a work, you need to familiarize yourself with existing classifications and the characteristic features of each of them.

Below is an approximate table for determining the type of existing literary genres

Division of genres by content

Classification literary trends based on content includes comedy, tragedy and drama.

Comedy is a type of literature, which provides a humorous approach. Varieties of comic direction are:

There are also comedy of characters and sitcoms. In the first case, the source of humorous content is internal features characters, their vices or shortcomings. In the second case, comedy manifests itself in current circumstances and situations.

Tragedy - dramatic genre with an obligatory catastrophic outcome, the opposite of the comedy genre. Typically, tragedy reflects the deepest conflicts and contradictions. The plot is of the most intense nature. In some cases, tragedies are written in poetic form.

Drama is a special type of fiction, where the events taking place are conveyed not through their direct description, but through monologues or dialogues of the characters. Drama as a literary phenomenon existed among many peoples, even at the level of works of folklore. Initially in Greek this term meant a sad event affecting one specific person. Subsequently, drama began to represent a wider range of works.

The most famous prose genres

The category of prose genres includes literary works of various lengths, written in prose.

Novel

A novel is a prose literary genre that involves a detailed narrative about the fate of the heroes and certain critical periods of their lives. The name of this genre originates in the 12th century, when knightly stories arose “in the folk Romance language” as the opposite of Latin historiography. The short story began to be considered a plot type of novel. IN late XIX- at the beginning of the 20th century such concepts as detective novel appeared in literature, women's novel, fantasy novel.

Novella

A short story is a type of prose genre. Her birth was caused by the famous collection "The Decameron" by Giovanni Boccaccio. Subsequently, several collections based on the model of the Decameron were published.

The era of romanticism introduced elements of mysticism and phantasmagorism into the short story genre - examples include the works of Hoffmann and Edgar Allan Poe. On the other hand, the works of Prosper Merimee bore the features of realistic stories.

Novella as short story with a sharp plot became characteristic genre For American literature.

Characteristics the novellas are:

1. Maximum brevity of presentation.
2. The poignancy and even paradoxical nature of the plot.
3. Neutrality of style.
4. Lack of descriptiveness and psychologism in the presentation.
5. An unexpected ending, always containing an extraordinary turn of events.

Tale

A story is prose of a relatively small volume. The plot of the story, as a rule, is in the nature of reproducing natural life events. Usually the story reveals the fate and personality of the hero against the backdrop of current events. A classic example is “Tales of the late Ivan Petrovich Belkin” by A.S. Pushkin.

Story

A story is called a small form prose work, which originates from folklore genres- parables and fairy tales. Some literary experts as a type of genre review essays, essays and short stories. Usually the story is characterized by a small volume, one plot line and a small number of characters. Stories are characteristic of literary works of the 20th century.

Play

A play is a dramatic work that is created for the purpose of subsequent theatrical production.

The structure of the play usually includes phrases from the characters and the author's remarks describing the environment or the actions of the characters. At the beginning of the play there is always a list of characters With brief description their appearance, age, character, etc.

The whole play is divided into large parts - acts or actions. Each action, in turn, is divided into smaller elements - scenes, episodes, pictures.

The plays of J.B. have won great fame in world art. Moliere (“Tartuffe”, “The Imaginary Invalid”) B. Shaw (“Wait and see”), B. Brecht (“The Good Man from Szechwan”, “The Threepenny Opera”).

Description and examples of individual genres

Let's look at the most common and significant examples of literary genres for world culture.

Poem

A poem is a large piece of poetry that has a lyrical plot or describes a sequence of events. Historically, the poem was “born” from the epic

In turn, a poem can have many genre varieties:

1. Didactic.
2. Heroic.
3. Burlesque,
4. Satirical.
5. Ironic.
6. Romantic.
7. Lyrical-dramatic.

Initially, the leading themes for the creation of poems were world historical or important religious events and themes. An example of such a poem would be Virgil's Aeneid., “The Divine Comedy” by Dante, “Jerusalem Liberated” by T. Tasso, “ Lost heaven"J. Milton, Voltaire's Henriad, etc.

At the same time, a romantic poem was also developing - “The Knight in the Leopard’s Skin” by Shota Rustaveli, “The Furious Roland” by L. Ariosto. This type of poem to a certain extent echoes the tradition of medieval chivalric novels.

Over time, moral, philosophical and social themes began to take center stage (“Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” by J. Byron, “The Demon” by M. Yu. Lermontov).

IN XIX-XX centuries the poem begins more and more become realistic(“Frost, Red Nose”, “Who Lives Well in Rus'” by N.A. Nekrasov, “Vasily Terkin” by A.T. Tvardovsky).

Epic

An epic is usually understood as a set of works that are united by a common era, nationality, and theme.

The emergence of each epic is conditioned by certain historical circumstances. As a rule, an epic claims to be an objective and authentic account of events.

Visions

This peculiar narrative genre, When the story is told from a person's point of view ostensibly experiencing a dream, lethargy, or hallucination.

1. Already in the era of antiquity, under the guise of real visions, fictitious events began to be described in the form of visions. The authors of the first visions were Cicero, Plutarch, and Plato.
2. In the Middle Ages, the genre began to gain momentum in popularity, reaching its peak with Dante in his “Divine Comedy,” which in its form represents an expanded vision.
3. For some time, visions were an integral part of church literature in most European countries. The editors of such visions were always representatives of the clergy, thus gaining the opportunity to express their personal views, supposedly on behalf of higher powers.
4. Over time, new acute social satirical content was put into the form of visions (“Visions of Peter the Plowman” by Langland).

In more modern literature the genre of visions began to be used to introduce elements of fantasy.

Types of literature can be distinguished both by the content of texts and by their purpose, and it is difficult to fully comply with the principle of unity of basis when classifying literature. Moreover, such a classification can be misleading, combining completely dissimilar and truly different phenomena. Often typologically different texts from the same era are much closer to each other than typologically identical texts different eras and cultures: Plato's Dialogues, which form the basis of European philosophical literature, have much more in common with other monuments of ancient Greek literature (say, with the dramas of Aeschylus) than with the works of such modern philosophers as Hegel or Russell.

The fate of some texts is such that during their creation they gravitate toward one type of literature, and subsequently move towards another: for example, Daniel Defoe’s “The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe” is read today more like a work of children’s literature, but meanwhile they were written not even just as a work of fiction for adults, but as a pamphlet with a significant journalistic role. Therefore, the general list of main types of literature can only be approximately indicative, and the specific structure literary space can only be established in relation to a given culture and this period time. For applied purposes, however, these difficulties are not of fundamental importance, so the practical needs of the book trade and libraries are satisfied by fairly extensive, although superficial in approach, library and bibliographic classification systems.

Fiction- a type of art that uses words and structures of natural (written human) language as the only material. The specificity of fiction is revealed in comparison, on the one hand, with types of art that use other material instead of verbal and linguistic (music, art) or along with it (theater, cinema, song), on the other hand - with other types of verbal text: philosophical, journalistic, scientific, etc. In addition, fiction, like other forms of art, unites authored (including anonymous) works, in contrast to works of folklore that are fundamentally authorless.

Documentary prose- a type of literature characterized by the construction storyline based exclusively on real events, with rare inclusions of fiction. Documentary prose includes biographies of outstanding people, histories of certain events, regional descriptions, investigations of high-profile crimes.

Memoirs- notes from contemporaries, telling about events in which the author of the memoirs took part or which are known to him from eyewitnesses. Important Feature memoirs is to focus on the “documentary” nature of the text, which claims to be authentic to the reconstructed past.

Scientific literature- a set of written works that were created as a result of research, theoretical generalizations made within the framework of scientific method. Scientific literature is intended to inform scientists and specialists about the latest achievements of science, as well as to consolidate priority on scientific discoveries. As a general rule, a scientific work is not considered complete unless it has been published. The first scientific works were created in various genres: in the form of treatises, discussions, teachings, dialogues, travels, biographies, and even in poetic forms. Currently forms scientific literature are standardized and consist of monographs, reviews, articles, reports (including their abstracts), abstracts, abstracts and reviews. Currently, many countries have a mechanism for certification of scientific literature, supported by the government or public scientific organizations. In Russia, for example, such certification is carried out by the Higher Attestation Commission (VAK).

Among the main requirements for publishing scientific literature is its mandatory review. As part of this process, the publisher or editor of a scientific journal, before publishing a new scientific work submits it to several (usually two) reviewers considered experts in the field. The review process is designed to exclude publications within the scientific literature of materials that contain gross methodological errors or outright falsifications. Since the beginning of the 20th century, there has been a regular exponential increase in the volume of published scientific literature. In this regard, one of the most important carriers of scientific literature at present is periodicals, mainly peer-reviewed scientific journals. Since the end of the 20th century, there has been a trend towards the transition of these magazines from paper to electronic media, in particular to the Internet.

Popular science literature- literary works about science, scientific achievements and scientists, intended for wide range readers. Popular science literature is aimed both at specialists from other fields of knowledge and at untrained readers, including children and adolescents. Unlike scientific literature, works of popular science literature are not reviewed or certified. Popular scientific literature includes works about the foundations and individual problems of fundamental and applied sciences, biographies of scientists, descriptions of travel, etc., written in various genres. The best popular writings promote the achievements of advanced science in a form that is most accessible to the readers for whom they are intended. The first in Europe were written in poetic form popular work about science - “On the Nature of Things” by Lucretius Cara and “Letter on the Benefits of Glass” by M. V. Lomonosov. From the conversations arose “The History of a Candle” by M. Faraday and “The Life of a Plant” by K. A. Timiryazev. There are popular works written in the form of a nature calendar, sketches, essays, “intellectual” adventures, etc.

Reference literature. Supporting literature used to obtain the most general, unambiguous information on a particular issue.

Main types of reference literature:

Dictionaries that organize information according to words and expressions that are basic for a given area of ​​knowledge (or for the entire language as a whole), most often in alphabetical order;

Directories in which information is organized in some other way, in accordance with the own structure of a given field of knowledge (for example, a medical directory - by the location of diseases or the nature of symptoms);

Encyclopedias are the most comprehensive and systematic collections of information on a given field of knowledge.

Ideally, reference publications should contain only facts considered objectively established and adequately reflect the currently existing level of human knowledge. However, in practice it is impossible to completely separate facts from interpretations and implicit, implied assumptions, so one or another degree of bias is present in any reference publication. In some cases, this share is quite large and is deliberately introduced into the reference publication: this is, in particular, the majority of reference publications Soviet era, especially when it comes to humanitarian knowledge, even short dictionary entries turn out to be ideologically colored in them.

This also applies to the selection of material: so, in literary encyclopedias, published in the USSR, there was a place for purely minor writers of socialist and communist orientation, but there were no very significant authors known for their negative attitude towards the Soviet system. Even after a short time it becomes impossible to use such publications as reference books: too much effort has to be spent on separating facts from interpretations; however, it is precisely this ideological coloring that makes reference publications especially interesting as historical evidence, a monument of their era.

Educational literature, divided mainly into textbooks themselves and collections of problems (exercises), has a lot in common with reference literature: like reference literature, educational literature deals with that part of knowledge on a particular issue that is considered more or less generally accepted. However, the purpose educational literature other: to present this part of knowledge systematically and consistently so that the recipient of the text has a fairly complete and clear idea about it and masters a number of skills that are in demand in this part of knowledge, be it the ability to solve equations or correctly place punctuation marks. This pragmatic task determines the structural features educational texts: repetitions, pick-ups, test questions and assignments, etc.

Technical literature- this is literature related to the field of technology and production (product catalogs, operating, maintenance and repair instructions, parts catalogs, patents, etc.).