Types of literary genres in form. Element of the form of a literary work

Content and form are concepts long established by philosophical thinking, with the help of which, not only in works of art, but in all phenomena of life, two aspects of their existence are distinguished: in the most general sense, these are their activity and their structure. The content of a literary work is always a fusion of what is depicted and expressed by the writer.

The content of a literary work is life as it is understood by the writer and correlated with his idea of ​​the ideal of beauty. The figurative form of disclosure of the content is the life of the characters, as it is generally presented in the works, - the professor notes. G. N. Pospelov. The content of the work belongs to the sphere of spiritual life and activity of people, while the form of the work is a material phenomenon: directly - this is the verbal structure of the work - artistic speech, which is pronounced aloud or “to oneself”. The content and form of a literary work is a unity of opposites. The spirituality of the ideological content of the work and the materiality of its form - this is the unity of opposite spheres of reality. Content, in order to exist, must have a form; the form has meaning and meaning when it serves as a manifestation of the content. Hegel wrote very convincingly about the unity of content and form in art: “A work of art that lacks the proper form is not, precisely for this reason, a genuine, i. that in content his works are good (or even excellent), but they lack proper form. Only those works of art in which content and form are identical and are true works of art.

Ideological - artistic unity of the content and form of the work are formed on the basis of the primacy of content. No matter how great the writer's talent is, the significance of his works is primarily due to their content. The purpose of their figurative form and all genre, compositional and linguistic elements is to complete a bright and artistic accurate transmission of content. Any violation of this principle, this unity of artistic creativity, has a negative effect on a literary work, reduces its value. The dependence of form on content does not, however, make it something of secondary importance. The content is revealed only in it, because of this, the completeness and clarity of its disclosure depends on the degree of compliance of the form with the content.

Speaking about content and form, one must remember about their relativity and correlation. It is impossible to reduce the content of the work only to the idea. It is the unity of the objective and the subjective, embodied in a work of art. Therefore, when analyzing a work of art, it is impossible to consider its idea outside the figurative form. The idea, which in a work of art acts as a process of cognition, comprehension of reality by the artist, should not be reduced to conclusions, to a program of action, which is only part of the subjective content of the work.

The holistic character of the work is given not by the hero, but by the unity of the problem posed in it, the unity of the theme disclosed.

We will begin with the philosophical substantiation of the allocation of content and form in the artistic whole. The categories of content and form, excellently developed back in Hegel's system, have become important categories of dialectics and have been repeatedly successfully used in the analysis of a wide variety of complex objects. The use of these categories in aesthetics and literary criticism also forms a long and fruitful tradition. Nothing prevents us, therefore, from applying philosophical concepts that have proven themselves so well to the analysis of a literary work; moreover, from the point of view of methodology, this will only be logical and natural. But there are also special reasons to begin the division of a work of art with the allocation of content and form in it. A work of art is not a natural phenomenon, but a cultural one, which means that it is based on a spiritual principle, which, in order to exist and be perceived, must certainly acquire some material embodiment, a way of existing in a system of material signs. Hence the naturalness of defining the boundaries of form and content in a work: the spiritual principle is the content, and its material embodiment is the form.
We can define the content of a literary work as its essence, spiritual being, and the form as a way of existence of this content. The content, in other words, is the “statement” of the writer about the world, a certain emotional and mental reaction to certain phenomena of reality. Form is the system of means and methods in which this reaction finds expression, embodiment. Simplifying somewhat, we can say that the content is what the writer said with his work, and the form is how he did it.
The form of a work of art has two main functions. The first is carried out within the artistic whole, so it can be called internal: it is a function of expressing content. The second function is found in the impact of the work on the reader, so it can be called external (in relation to the work). It consists in the fact that the form has an aesthetic impact on the reader, because it is the form that acts as the bearer of the aesthetic qualities of a work of art. The content itself cannot be beautiful or ugly in a strict, aesthetic sense - these are properties that arise exclusively at the level of form.
From what has been said about the functions of form, it is clear that the question of conventionality, which is so important for a work of art, is solved differently in relation to content and form. If in the first section we said that a work of art in general is a convention in comparison with primary reality, then the measure of this convention is different for form and content. Within a work of art, the content is unconditional; in relation to it, the question “why does it exist?” Like the phenomena of primary reality, in the artistic world the content exists without any conditions, as an immutable given. Nor can it be a conditionally fantasy, arbitrary sign, by which nothing is meant; in the strict sense, the content cannot be invented - it directly comes to the work from the primary reality (from the social being of people or from the consciousness of the author). On the contrary, the form can be arbitrarily fantastic and conditionally implausible, because something is meant by the conditionality of the form; it exists "for something" - to embody the content. Thus, Shchedrin's city of Foolov is a creation of the author's pure fantasy, it is conditional, since it never existed in reality, but autocratic Russia, which became the theme of the "History of a City" and embodied in the image of the city of Foolov, is not a convention or fiction.
Let us note to ourselves that the difference in the degree of conventionality between content and form gives clear criteria for attributing one or another specific element of a work to form or content - this remark will come in handy more than once.
Modern science proceeds from the primacy of content over form. In relation to a work of art, this is true as for a creative process (the writer looks for the appropriate form, even for a vague, but already existing content, but in no case vice versa - he does not first create a “ready-made form”, and then pours some content into it) , and for the work as such (features of the content determine and explain to us the specifics of the form, but not vice versa). However, in a certain sense, namely in relation to the perceiving consciousness, it is the form that is primary, and the content secondary. Since sensory perception is always ahead of the emotional reaction and, moreover, the rational comprehension of the subject, moreover, it serves as the basis and basis for them, we perceive in the work first its form, and only then and only through it - the corresponding artistic content.
From this, by the way, it follows that the movement of the analysis of a work - from content to form or vice versa - is of no fundamental importance. Any approach has its justifications: the first is in the defining nature of the content in relation to the form, the second is in the patterns of the reader's perception. Well said about this A.S. Bushmin: “It is not at all necessary ... to start research from the content, guided only by the one thought that the content determines the form, and not having other, more specific reasons for this. Meanwhile, it was precisely this sequence of consideration of a work of art that turned into a forced, hackneyed, boring scheme for everyone, having become widespread in school teaching, and in textbooks, and in scientific literary works. The dogmatic transfer of the correct general proposition of literary theory to the methodology of the concrete study of works gives rise to a dull pattern. Let us add to this that, of course, the opposite pattern would not be any better - it is always mandatory to start the analysis from the form. It all depends on the specific situation and specific tasks.
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* Bushmin A.S. The Science of Literature. M., 1980. S. 123–124.

From all that has been said, a clear conclusion suggests itself that both form and content are equally important in a work of art. The experience of the development of literature and literary criticism also proves this position. Belittling the meaning of content or completely ignoring it leads in literary criticism to formalism, to meaningless abstract constructions, leads to oblivion of the social nature of art, and in artistic practice, guided by this kind of concept, it turns into aestheticism and elitism. However, the neglect of the art form as something secondary and, in essence, optional has no less negative consequences. Such an approach actually destroys the work as a phenomenon of art, forces us to see in it only this or that ideological, and not ideological and aesthetic phenomenon. In creative practice, which does not want to reckon with the enormous importance of form in art, flat illustrativeness, primitiveness, the creation of “correct”, but emotionally unexperienced declarations about a “relevant”, but artistically unexplored topic, inevitably appear.
Highlighting the form and content in the work, we thereby liken it to any other complexly organized whole. However, the relationship between form and content in a work of art has its own specifics. Let's see what it consists of.
First of all, it is necessary to firmly understand that the relationship between content and form is not a spatial relationship, but a structural one. The form is not a shell that can be removed to open the nut kernel - the content. If we take a work of art, then we will be powerless to “point the finger”: here is the form, but the content. Spatially they are merged and indistinguishable; this unity can be felt and shown at any “point” of a literary text. Let's take, for example, that episode from Dostoevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov, where Alyosha, when asked by Ivan what to do with the landowner who baited the child with dogs, answers: "Shoot!". What is this "shoot!" content or form? Of course, both are in unity, in fusion. On the one hand, it is part of the speech, verbal form of the work; Alyosha's remark occupies a certain place in the compositional form of the work. These are formal points. On the other hand, this "shoot" is a component of the hero's character, that is, the thematic basis of the work; the replica expresses one of the turns of the moral and philosophical searches of the characters and the author, and of course, it is an essential aspect of the ideological and emotional world of the work - these are meaningful moments. So in one word, fundamentally indivisible into spatial components, we saw content and form in their unity. The situation is similar with the work of art in its entirety.
The second thing to note is the special connection between form and content in the artistic whole. According to Yu.N. Tynyanov, relations are established between the artistic form and the artistic content, unlike the relations of “wine and glass” (glass as form, wine as content), that is, relations of free compatibility and equally free separation. In a work of art, the content is not indifferent to the specific form in which it is embodied, and vice versa. Wine will remain wine, whether we pour it into a glass, a cup, a plate, etc.; content is indifferent to form. In the same way, milk, water, kerosene can be poured into a glass where there was wine - the form is “indifferent” to the content that fills it. Not so in a work of art. There, the connection between formal and substantive principles reaches its highest degree. Perhaps this is best manifested in the following regularity: any change in form, even seemingly small and private, is inevitable and immediately leads to a change in content. Trying to find out, for example, the content of such a formal element as poetic meter, versifiers conducted an experiment: they “transformed” the first lines of the first chapter of “Eugene Onegin” from iambic to choreic. It turned out this:

Uncle of the most honest rules,
He was not jokingly sick,
Made me respect myself
Couldn't think of a better one.

The semantic meaning, as we see, remained practically the same, the changes seemed to concern only the form. But it can be seen with the naked eye that one of the most important components of the content has changed - the emotional tone, the mood of the passage. From epic-narrative, it turned into playful-superficial. And if we imagine that the entire "Eugene Onegin" was written in chorea? But such a thing is impossible to imagine, because in this case the work is simply destroyed.
Of course, such an experiment on form is a unique case. However, in the study of a work, we often, completely unaware of this, perform similar "experiments" - without directly changing the structure of the form, but only without taking into account one or another of its features. So, studying in Gogol's "Dead Souls" mainly Chichikov, landlords, and "individual representatives" of the bureaucracy and the peasantry, we study hardly a tenth of the "population" of the poem, ignoring the mass of those "minor" heroes who, in Gogol, are just not secondary , but are interesting to him in themselves to the same extent as Chichikov or Manilov. As a result of such an “experiment on form”, our understanding of the work, that is, its content, is significantly distorted: after all, Gogol was not interested in the history of individuals, but in the way of national life, he created not a “gallery of images”, but an image of the world, a “way of life”.
Another example of the same kind. In the study of Chekhov's story "The Bride", a fairly strong tradition has developed to consider this story as unconditionally optimistic, even "spring and bravura"*. V.B. Kataev, analyzing this interpretation, notes that it is based on "reading not completely" - the last phrase of the story in its entirety is not taken into account: "Nadya ... cheerful, happy, left the city, as she thought, forever." “The interpretation of this “as I thought,” writes V.B. Kataev, - very clearly reveals the difference in research approaches to Chekhov's work. Some researchers prefer, interpreting the meaning of "The Bride", to consider this introductory sentence as if it does not exist"**.
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* Ermilov V.A. A.P. Chekhov. M., 1959. S. 395.
** Kataev V.B. Chekhov's prose: problems of interpretation. M, 1979. S. 310.

This is the “unconscious experiment” that was discussed above. “Slightly” the structure of the form is distorted – and the consequences in the field of content are not long in coming. There is a “concept of unconditional optimism, “bravura” of Chekhov’s work of recent years”, while in reality it represents “a delicate balance between truly optimistic hopes and restrained sobriety in relation to the impulses of those very people about whom Chekhov knew and told so many bitter truths” .
In the relationship between content and form, in the structure of form and content in a work of art, a certain principle, a regularity, is revealed. We will talk in detail about the specific nature of this regularity in the section “Comprehensive consideration of a work of art”.
In the meantime, we note only one methodological rule: For an accurate and complete understanding of the content of a work, it is absolutely necessary to pay as close attention as possible to its form, down to its smallest features. In the form of a work of art there are no "little things" that are indifferent to the content; According to a well-known expression, “art begins where “a little bit” begins.

ART FORM

ART FORM

Recreation of objective and subjective reality in the expressive means of art. In art, there is a constant renewal of the formal apparatus. At the same time, there is a certain adherence to traditionalism here. Along with innovations, following the passions of artists, spectators, readers, listeners, it pursues a kind of the most universal forms, valuable in a number of parameters - capacity, concentration, elegance, sophistication, etc. For example, since the time of I.S. Bach's forms of fugues, polyphonic cycles, etc. have been preserved almost unchanged.
Among the "traditional" forms in various types of art are: in literature (poetry and prose) the form of a sonnet, a romance (Spanish romance of the 17th century), an elegy, an ode, a story (the so-called small forms), a story, a novel , a multi-volume literary cycle (J. Joyce, J. Galsworthy and others). In the visual arts, there is no less variety: pictorial watercolors and large paintings, graphic miniatures and large-scale mosaics, portraits, caricatures, etc. In cinema and theater: short films and huge serials, small plays for one or two actors and large-scale opuses such as tetralogy. Many forms are also traditional for music: sonata, partita, symphony, concertos for a variety of instruments, including orchestral concertos.
H.f. can be understood in two ways. In the narrow interpretation of H.f. is , subdivided into parts, . So, in music, the sonata is usually written in the form of the so-called. sonata allegro, which includes, like, three parts: an exposition of thematic material, its development and reprise. Each of the parts can be considered in more detail - up to the level of analysis of the smallest trace elements. Continuing the illustration on the musical material, we can say that even such a "smallest" music as pitch, the critic has the right to consider from the point of view. its function in relation to the artistic intent of the work. The division of form into micro- and macrolevels is necessary for a professional analysis of the "building material" of art and the principles of its formation.
In a broad sense, H.f. is a means (or a set of means) with the help of which a work of art is “formed”. The art of form creation (excluding only professional creative art) is always the art of forming new content.
The artistry of form is the biggest mystery in the entire phenomenology of art.
The future of H.f. can be associated with a spatio-temporal characteristic (ultimate compression - hypergrowth, hyperbolization of monumentalism - microminiaturization, extreme brevity - seriality), with increased expressiveness and figurativeness, sometimes to their complete merger, with an increase in the role of symbolization. The future of form creation largely determines the future of art itself.

Philosophy: Encyclopedic Dictionary. - M.: Gardariki. Edited by A.A. Ivina. 2004 .

See what "ART FORM" is in other dictionaries:

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FORM, forms, wives. (Latin forma). 1. External view, external outlines of the object. The earth is spherical. Give it a curved shape. House in the shape of a cube. “White, bizarrely shaped clouds appeared on the horizon in the morning.” L. Tolstoy. || only many. Outline... ... Explanatory Dictionary of Ushakov

art form- see art form... Terminological dictionary-thesaurus on literary criticism

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Spoken word (translated from English: a spoken word) is a form of literary, and sometimes oratory, an artistic performance in which text, poems, stories, essays are said more than sung. The term is often used (especially ... ... Wikipedia

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Literary criticism began to talk and argue about what the form and content of a work are. But today the doctrine of the form and content of a work is one of the key ones in the system. In jurisprudence, this theory makes it possible to distinguish between protected and unprotected elements of a work.

The main thesis of the doctrine of the form and content of a work as an object of copyright is as follows:

Copyright protects the form of a work, but not its content.

What is the form and content of a work?

• in a scientific article, the content will include theories, concepts, hypotheses, facts underlying the reasoning;
• in an architectural project, the content can be attributed to the initially set task (area, number of storeys, purpose of the building), the style chosen by the architect (baroque, classicism, etc.), the semantic and symbolic meaning of the object (for example, a monument);
• in photography, the content is the subject, the mood that the photographer wanted to convey, and the ideas that he wanted to convey to the public.

The same ideas, the same concepts, methods and methods can form the basis of a whole series of works and even works of an entire era. The clearest example is biblical stories in the works of the Renaissance. The content has no clear boundaries, it is in the "depth" of the work. The content of the work depends on the subjective perception of the reader or viewer. Content answers the question: What did the author mean?

The external form of the work is the language in which the work is written. In a literary work, the external form is the text itself, in a pictorial work it is the image itself. The external form can be copied without any intellectual effort, incl. without human intervention, technical means.

inner form is a system of images, artistic means with which a work is written. In a sense, the inner form is the link between the outer form and the content, but the inner form is protected by copyright. It is impossible to copy the internal form without using the external one without the application of intellectual labor.

The external form of the works is completely different, we will not find a single repeating word, because. passages are written in different languages. However, the internal form and content of the work are the same. The translator strives to preserve the internal form of the work and convey the content of the work through it. The content will be the idea that John Donne wanted to convey to the reader with these words.

What is the expression form of a work?

• written
• oral
• pictorial
• volume-spatial
• audiovisual (sound and video recording)

The significance of the form of expression of a work lies in the fact that copyright arises from the moment the work is first expressed in any objective form. You can read more about this in the Form and Content of a Work in Literary Criticism.
2. Doctor of Law, Professor E.P. Gavrilov "Copyright and the content of the work."

In art, everything becomes content, every element of form. Poets do not get tired of looking for new ways of expressing meaning - unusual, vivid, memorable. And what is the first thing that “strikes you” when we open a book of poetry? - Of course, the type and arrangement of the lines: couplets or quatrains, long lines or short ones, a “ladder” (like V. Mayakovsky) or something completely unusual ...

Back in the 17th century, Simeon Polotsky, one of the founders of Russian poetry and dramaturgy, wrote poems in the form of a cross; not a trick, but another opportunity to convey, to clarify the meaning the poet needs.

Read a poem by the 19th century poet A. Apukhtin.

The path of life is paved by barren steppes,

And wilderness, and darkness ... no hut, no bush ...

Sleeping heart; chained

Both mind and mouth

And the distance is before us

And suddenly the road will not seem so hard,

I want to sing and think again,

There are so many stars in the sky

The blood is flowing so fast...

Dreams, anxiety.

Oh, where are those dreams? Where are the joys, sorrows,

Shining brightly for us for so many years?

From their lights in the foggy distance

A faint light is visible...

And they disappeared...

Why do you think the poet needed such an unusual, immediately conspicuous form of line arrangement? What would you name this figure? Does she remind you of anything? Does the form of a poem affect its meaning?

It can be assumed that A.N. Apukhtin arranged the lines of his poem in a cone so that this form would remind the reader of a funnel into which a lot is poured, but little comes out, or an hourglass through which not sand, but Time itself, pours...

In the text, these meanings are expressed very weakly: the words are empty (distance), disappeared (dreams), they are not. Agree that these words are very general, that is, “none”, the reader may not perceive all their importance for understanding the meaning of the poem. The poet, obviously, feels this himself - and helps the reader by creating a visual image of a funnel or an hourglass. Our explanations are not the final and not the only possible interpretation of this poem. You can offer your own by arguing with us or clarifying our observations. But in any case: notice how important it is to be able to “read” the form in order to understand the meaning.

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