Traditional types of composition of a work of art. Chapter VI. Composition of a literary work. See what “Composition” is in other dictionaries

In literary studies, they say different things about composition, but there are three main definitions:

1) Composition is the arrangement and correlation of parts, elements and images of a work (components of an artistic form), the sequence of introducing units of the depicted and speech means of the text.

2) Composition is the construction of a work of art, the correlation of all parts of the work into a single whole, determined by its content and genre.

3) Composition - the construction of a work of art, a certain system of means of revealing, organizing images, their connections and relationships that characterize the life process shown in the work.

All these terrible literary concepts, in essence, have a rather simple decoding: composition is the arrangement of novel passages in a logical order, in which the text becomes integral and acquires internal meaning.

Just as, following instructions and rules, we assemble a construction set or a puzzle from small parts, so we assemble an entire novel from text passages, be it chapters, parts or sketches.

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The composition of a work can be external and internal.

External composition of the book

External composition (aka architectonics) is a breakdown of the text into chapters and parts, highlighting additional structural parts and an epilogue, introduction and conclusion, epigraphs and lyrical digressions. Another external composition is the division of the text into volumes (separate books with a global idea, a branching plot and a large number of heroes and characters).

External composition is a way of dosing information.

A novel text written on 300 pages is unreadable without a structural breakdown. At a minimum, he needs parts, at a maximum - chapters or meaningful segments, separated by spaces or asterisks (***).

By the way, short chapters are more convenient for perception - up to ten pages - after all, we, as readers, having overcome one chapter, no, no, let’s count how many pages are in the next - and then read or sleep.

Internal composition of the book

Internal composition, unlike external composition, includes many more elements and techniques for arranging text. All of them, however, come down to a common goal - to arrange the text in a logical order and reveal the author's intention, but they go towards it in different ways - plot, figurative, speech, thematic, etc. Let's analyze them in more detail.

1. Plot elements of the internal composition:

• prologue - introduction, most often - backstory. (But some authors use a prologue to take an event from the middle of the story, or even from the ending - an original compositional move.) The prologue is an interesting, but optional element of both external and external composition;
• exposition - the initial event in which the characters are introduced and a conflict is outlined;
• plot - events in which the conflict begins;
• development of actions - course of events;
• climax - the highest point of tension, a clash of opposing forces, the peak of the emotional intensity of the conflict;
• denouement - the result of the climax;
• epilogue - the summary of the story, conclusions about the plot and assessment of events, outlines for the future life of the characters. Optional element.

2. Figurative elements:

• images of heroes and characters - advance the plot, are the main conflict, reveal the idea and the author's intention. The system of characters - each individual image and the connections between them - is an important element of the internal composition;
• images of the setting in which the action develops are descriptions of countries and cities, images of the road and accompanying landscapes, if the heroes are on the way, interiors - if all the events take place, for example, within the walls of a medieval castle. Images of the setting are the so-called descriptive “meat” (the world of history), atmosphere (the feeling of history).

The figurative elements work mainly for the plot.

So, for example, the image of a hero is assembled from details - an orphan, without a family or tribe, but with magical power and a goal - to learn about his past, about his family, to find his place in the world. And this goal, in fact, becomes a plot goal - and a compositional one: from the search for the hero, from the development of the action - from progressive and logical progress - the text is formed.

And the same goes for images of the setting. They create the space of history, and at the same time limit it to certain boundaries - a medieval castle, a city, a country, a world.

Specific images complement and develop the story, making it understandable, visible and tangible, just like correctly (and compositionally) arranged household items in your apartment.

3. Speech elements:

• dialogue (polylogue);
• monologue;
• lyrical digressions (the author’s word that does not relate to the development of the plot or images of the characters, abstract reflections on a specific topic).

Speech elements are the speed of text perception. Dialogues are dynamic, and monologues and lyrical digressions (including descriptions of action in the first person) are static. Visually, a text that has no dialogue appears cumbersome, inconvenient, and unreadable, and this is reflected in the composition. Without dialogues, it is difficult to understand - the text seems drawn out.

A monologue text - like a bulky sideboard in a small room - relies on many details (and contains even more), which are sometimes difficult to understand. Ideally, in order not to burden the composition of the chapter, monologue (and any descriptive text) should take no more than two or three pages. And in no case are there ten or fifteen, just few people will read them - they will skip them, look diagonally.

Dialogue, on the other hand, is emotional, easy to understand, and dynamic. At the same time, they should not be empty - just for the sake of dynamics and “heroic” experiences, but informative, and revealing the image of the hero.

4. Inserts:

• retrospective - scenes from the past: a) long episodes revealing the image of the characters, showing the history of the world or the origins of the situation, can take several chapters; b) short scenes (flashbacks) - from one paragraph, often extremely emotional and atmospheric episodes;
• short stories, parables, fairy tales, tales, poems are optional elements that interestingly diversify the text (a good example of a compositional fairy tale is Rowling’s “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”); chapters of another story with the composition “a novel within a novel” (“The Master and Margarita” by Mikhail Bulgakov);
• dreams (dreams-premonitions, dreams-predictions, dreams-riddles).

Insertions are extra-plot elements, and if you remove them from the text, the plot will not change. However, they can frighten, make you laugh, disturb the reader, suggest the development of the plot if there is a complex series of events ahead. The scene should flow logically from the previous one, each next chapter should be connected with the events of the previous one (if there are several plot lines, then the chapters are held together by events lines);

— arrangement and design of text in accordance with the plot (idea)– this is, for example, the form of a diary, a student’s course work, a novel within a novel;

— theme of the work- a hidden, cross-cutting compositional device that answers the question - what is the story about, what is its essence, what main idea does the author want to convey to readers; in practical terms, it is decided through the choice of significant details in key scenes;

— motive- these are stable and repeating elements that create cross-cutting images: for example, images of the road - the motive of travel, the adventurous or homeless life of the hero.

Composition is a complex and multi-layered phenomenon, and it is difficult to understand all its levels. However, you need to understand it in order to know how to structure the text so that it is easily perceived by the reader. In this article we talked about the basics, about what lies on the surface. And in the following articles we will dig a little deeper.

Stay tuned!

Daria Gushchina
writer, science fiction author
(VKontakte page

Composition is the structure, arrangement and relationship of the constituent parts of the text, determined by its content, issues, genre and purpose.

The composition of a text is a way of constructing it, connecting its parts, facts, and images.

The famous Roman scientist Marcus Fabius Quintilian is credited with developing the theory of speech composition. Quintilian identified eight parts in the speaker's speech. The composition of the speech he developed became part of the practice of later rhetoric.

So, eight parts of the composition according to Quintilian.

1. Appeal. Its purpose is to attract the attention of the audience and endear it to the speaker.

2. Naming the topic. The speaker names what he will talk about, primes the audience for the subject, forces them to remember what they know, and prepares them to delve into the subject.

3. Narration consists of a description of the history of the subject (how the question that needs to be resolved arose, and how the matter itself developed).

4. Description. A story about what things are like at the moment.

5. Proof consists of logical arguments justifying the solution to a problem.

6. Refutation. Proof by contradiction. A different point of view on the subject is allowed, which the speaker refutes.

7. Appeal. Appeal to the feelings of listeners. The goal is to evoke an emotional response from the audience. It ranks second to last in speech structure because people are generally more likely to make judgments based on emotion rather than logic.

8. Conclusion. A brief summary of everything said and conclusions on the case under discussion.

• linear composition is a sequential presentation of facts and events and is usually built on a chronological basis (autobiography, report);

• stepped - involves an accentuated transition from one position to another (lecture, report),

• parallel - is based on a comparison of two or more provisions, facts, events (for example, school essays, the topics of which are

“Chatsky and Molchalin”, “Onegin and Lensky”, “Larina’s Sisters”

• discrete - involves the omission of certain moments in the presentation of events. This complex type of organization is characteristic of literary texts. (For example, such a decision is often at the heart of detective stories);

• ring composition – contains a repetition of the beginning and ending of the text. This type of structure makes it possible to return to what has already been said in the beginning at a new level of understanding the text.

So, for example, the incomplete repetition of the beginning in A. Blok’s poem “Night, street, lantern, pharmacy” makes it possible to comprehend what the poet said as a vital contradiction to the words “And everything will repeat as before” at the end of the text.);

• contrasting - based on a sharp contrast between two parts of the text.

Genre types of composition

Depending on the genre of the text, it can be:

• tough- mandatory for all texts of the genre (certificates, information notes, statements, memos);
• variable- the approximate order of arrangement of parts of the text is known, but the author has the opportunity to vary it (textbook, answer in class, letter);
• non-rigid— presupposing sufficient freedom for the author, despite the fact that he is guided by existing examples of the genre (story, essay, essay);

In the texts:

• built on the basis of combining elements, a linear, stepped, parallel, concentric composition is used,
• in literary texts its organization is often more complex - it builds the time and space of a work of art in its own way.

Our short presentation on this topic

Materials are published with the personal permission of the author - Ph.D. O.A. Mazneva (see “Our Library”)

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

Literary theory gives different definitions of composition, one of them is this: composition is the construction of a work of art, the arrangement of its parts in a certain sequence.

Composition is the internal organization of a text. Composition is about how the elements of the text are arranged, reflecting the different stages of development of the action. The composition depends on the content of the work and the author’s goals.

Stages of action development (composition elements):

Elements of composition– reflect the stages of development of the conflict in the work:

Prologue – introductory text that opens the work, preceding the main story. As a rule, thematically related to the subsequent action. It is often the “gateway” of a work, that is, it helps to penetrate the meaning of the subsequent narrative.

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

The beginning of the action is an event that becomes the beginning of an action. The beginning either reveals an existing contradiction, or creates, “knots” conflicts. The plot of “Eugene Onegin” is the death of the protagonist’s uncle, which forces him to go to the village and take over his inheritance. In the story about Harry Potter, the plot is an invitation letter from Hogwart, which the hero receives and thanks to which he learns that he is a wizard.

Main action, development of actions - events committed by the characters after the beginning and preceding the climax.

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

Denouement- the outcome of the conflict. This is the final moment in creating an artistic conflict. The denouement is always directly related to the action and, as it were, puts the final semantic point in the narrative. The denouement can resolve the conflict: for example, in “The Three Musketeers” it is the execution of Milady. The final outcome in Harry Potter is the final victory over Voldemort. However, the denouement may not eliminate the contradiction; for example, in “Eugene Onegin” and “Woe from Wit” the heroes remain in difficult situations.

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

Lyrical digression– the author’s deviation from the plot, the author’s lyrical insertions that have little or nothing to do with the theme of the work. A lyrical digression, on the one hand, slows down the development of the action, on the other hand, it allows the writer to openly express his subjective opinion on various issues that are directly or indirectly related to the central theme. Such, for example, are the famous lyrical

Types of composition

TRADITIONAL CLASSIFICATION:

Direct (linear, sequential)– the events in the work are depicted in chronological order. “Woe from Wit” by A.S. Griboedov, “War and Peace” by L.N. Tolstoy.

Ring – the beginning and end of the work echo each other, often completely coinciding. In “Eugene Onegin”: Onegin rejects Tatiana, and at the end of the novel, Tatiana rejects Onegin.

Mirror - a combination of repetition and contrast techniques, as a result of which the initial and final images are repeated exactly the opposite. One of the first scenes of L. Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” depicts the death of a man under the wheels of a train. This is exactly how the main character of the novel takes her own life.

A story within a story - The main story is told by one of the characters in the work. M. Gorky’s story “The Old Woman Izergil” is constructed according to this scheme.

CLASSIFICATION OF A. BESINA(based on the monograph “Principles and Techniques of Analysis of a Literary Work”):

Linear – the events in the work are depicted in chronological order.

Mirror – the initial and final images and actions are repeated exactly the opposite way, opposing each other.

Ring – the beginning and ending of the work echo each other and have a number of similar images, motifs, and events.

Retrospection – During the narration, the author makes “digressions into the past.” V. Nabokov’s story “Mashenka” is built on this technique: the hero, having learned that his former lover is coming to the city where he now lives, looks forward to meeting her and remembers their epistolary novel, reading their correspondence.

Default – the reader learns about the event that happened earlier than the others at the end of the work. So, in “The Snowstorm” by A.S. Pushkin, the reader learns about what happened to the heroine during her flight from home only during the denouement.

Free – mixed actions. In such a work one can find elements of a mirror composition, techniques of omission, retrospection and many other compositional techniques aimed at retaining the reader’s attention and enhancing artistic expressiveness.

Composition in literature is the process of constructing a work of art, the distribution of its parts according to a certain system and established sequence. But the composition should not be considered as a sequence of chapters, scenes, etc. Composition is an integral system of certain methods and forms of artistic representation, determined by the content of the work. In other words, composition is the construction, arrangement and relationship of parts, episodes, characters, as well as means of artistic expression in a literary work. The composition connects all the elements of the work and subordinates them to the author's idea.

Due to the means and techniques of composition, the meaning of what is depicted deepens. Among the elements of the composition: description and narration, dialogues and monologues of characters, a system of images, author's digressions and characteristics, landscape, portrait, plot and plot of the story. Depending on the genre, the work has its own specific methods of depiction. Each work has its own unique composition. Some traditional genres have compositional canons.

Prose works are distinguished by a wide variety of compositional techniques:

1) Linear composition is characterized by the sequential development of events and the gradual discovery of the psychological motivations for the actions of the heroes. As an example, consider the novel “An Ordinary Story” by I.A. Goncharova;

2) A ring composition is when the action ends in the same place where it began - the story “The Captain's Daughter” by A.S. Pushkin;

3) Reverse composition (the work opens with the last event, which is gradually explained to the reader). Example: the novel “What is to be done?” N.G. Chernyshevsky;

4) Mirror composition (symmetrical images, episodes - the novel in verse “Eugene Onegin” by A.S. Pushkin);

6) Dotted composition (recognizable by the intermittency in the description of ongoing events and psychological motivations; the narrative in the work ends unexpectedly, intriguing the reader; the next chapter begins with a different episode). Example: the novel “Crime and Punishment” by F.M. Dostoevsky.

Together with the article “What is composition in literature?” read:

Any literary creation is an artistic whole. Such a whole can be not only one work (poem, story, novel...), but also a literary cycle, that is, a group of poetic or prose works united by a common hero, common ideas, problems, etc., even a common place of action (for example , a cycle of stories by N. Gogol “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka”, “Belkin’s Stories” by A. Pushkin; M. Lermontov’s novel “A Hero of Our Time” is also a cycle of individual short stories united by a common hero - Pechorin). Any artistic whole is, in essence, a single creative organism that has its own special structure. As in the human body, in which all independent organs are inextricably linked with each other, in a literary work all elements are also independent and interconnected. The system of these elements and the principles of their interrelation are called COMPOSITION:

COMPOSITION(from Lat. Сompositio, composition, composition) - construction, structure of a work of art: selection and sequence of elements and visual techniques of the work, creating an artistic whole in accordance with the author's intention.

TO composition elements A literary work includes epigraphs, dedications, prologues, epilogues, parts, chapters, acts, phenomena, scenes, prefaces and afterwords of “publishers” (extra-plot images created by the author’s imagination), dialogues, monologues, episodes, inserted stories and episodes, letters, songs ( for example, Oblomov's Dream in Goncharov's novel "Oblomov", a letter from Tatyana to Onegin and Onegin to Tatyana in Pushkin's novel "Eugene Onegin", the song "The Sun Rises and Sets..." in Gorky's drama "At the Lower Depths"); all artistic descriptions - portraits, landscapes, interiors - are also compositional elements.

When creating a work, the author himself chooses layout principles, “assemblies” of these elements, their sequences and interactions, using special compositional techniques. Let's look at some principles and techniques:

• the action of the work can begin from the end of events, and subsequent episodes will restore the time course of the action and explain the reasons for what is happening; this composition is called reverse(this technique was used by N. Chernyshevsky in the novel “What is to be done?”);
• the author uses composition framing, or ring, in which the author uses, for example, repetition of stanzas (the last repeats the first), artistic descriptions (the work begins and ends with a landscape or interior), the events of the beginning and ending take place in the same place, the same characters participate in them, etc. .d.; This technique is found both in poetry (Pushkin, Tyutchev, A. Blok often resorted to it in “Poems about a Beautiful Lady”) and in prose (“Dark Alleys” by I. Bunin; “Song of the Falcon”, “Old Woman Izergil” M. Gorky);
• the author uses the technique retrospections, that is, the return of the action to the past, when the reasons for the narrative taking place at the present moment were laid (for example, the author’s story about Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov in Turgenev’s novel “Fathers and Sons”); Often, when using flashback, an inserted story of the hero appears in a work, and this type of composition will be called "a story within a story"(Marmeladov’s confession and Pulcheria Alexandrovna’s letter in “Crime and Punishment”; chapter 13 “The Appearance of the Hero” in “The Master and Margarita”; “After the Ball” by Tolstoy, “Asya” by Turgenev, “Gooseberry” by Chekhov);
• often the organizer of the composition is the artistic image, for example, the road in Gogol’s poem “Dead Souls”; pay attention to the scheme of the author's narration: Chichikov's arrival in the city of NN - the road to Manilovka - Manilov's estate - the road - arrival at Korobochka - the road - a tavern, meeting with Nozdryov - the road - arrival at Nozdryov - the road - etc.; it is important that the first volume ends on the road; Thus, the image becomes the leading structure-forming element of the work;
• the author can preface the main action with exposition, which will be, for example, the entire first chapter in the novel “Eugene Onegin,” or he can begin the action immediately, sharply, “without acceleration,” as Dostoevsky does in the novel “Crime and Punishment” or Bulgakov in “ The Master and Margarita";
• the composition of the work may be based on symmetry of words, images, episodes(or scenes, chapters, phenomena, etc.) and will appear mirror, as, for example, in A. Blok’s poem “The Twelve”; a mirror composition is often combined with a frame (this principle of composition is characteristic of many poems by M. Tsvetaeva, V. Mayakovsky, etc.; read, for example, Mayakovsky’s poem “From Street to Street”);
• the author often uses the technique compositional "gap" of events: breaks off the narrative at the most interesting point at the end of the chapter, and a new chapter begins with a story about another event; for example, it is used by Dostoevsky in Crime and Punishment and Bulgakov in The White Guard and The Master and Margarita. This technique is very popular among the authors of adventure and detective works or works where the role of intrigue is very large.

Composition is form aspect literary work, but its content is expressed through the features of the form. The composition of a work is an important way of embodying the author's idea. Read A. Blok’s poem “The Stranger” in full for yourself, otherwise our reasoning will be incomprehensible to you. Pay attention to the first and seventh stanzas, listening to their sound:

The first stanza sounds sharp and disharmonious - due to the abundance of [r], which, like other disharmonious sounds, will be repeated in the following stanzas up to the sixth. It is impossible to do otherwise, because Blok here paints a picture of disgusting philistine vulgarity, a “terrible world” in which the Poet’s soul suffers. This is how the first part of the poem is presented. The seventh stanza marks the transition to a new world - Dreams and Harmony, and the beginning of the second part of the poem. This transition is smooth, the accompanying sounds are pleasant and soft: [a:], [nn]. So in the construction of the poem and using the technique of the so-called sound recording Blok expressed his idea of ​​​​the opposition of two worlds - harmony and disharmony.

The composition of the work can be thematic, in which the main thing is to identify the relationships between the central images of the work. This type of composition is more characteristic of lyrics. There are three types of such composition:

• sequential, which is a logical reasoning, a transition from one thought to another and a subsequent conclusion at the end of the work (“Cicero”, “Silentium”, “Nature is a sphinx, and therefore it is truer...” by Tyutchev);
• development and transformation of the central image: the central image is examined by the author from various angles, its striking features and characteristics are revealed; such a composition assumes a gradual increase in emotional tension and a culmination of experiences, which often occurs at the end of the work (“The Sea” by Zhukovsky, “I came to you with greetings...” by Fet);
• comparison of 2 images that entered into artistic interaction(“The Stranger” by Blok); such a composition is based on the reception antitheses, or oppositions.