What is the difference between a novel and a story? Features of genres. What is a literary novel? Definition, characteristics and typology of the genre What a novel can be
Literary genres are groups of works distinguished within types of literature. Each of them has a certain set of stable properties. Many literary genres have their origins and roots in folklore. Genres that have emerged again in literary experience proper are the fruit of the combined activities of the founders and successors. Such, for example, is the lyric-epic poem that emerged in the era of romanticism.
Genres are difficult to systematize and classify (unlike types of literature), and stubbornly resist them. First of all, because there are a lot of them: each artistic culture has specific genres (Hokku, Tanka, Gazelle in the literature of Eastern countries). In addition, genres have different historical scope. Some exist throughout the entire history of verbal art (such as, for example, the ever-living fable from Aesop to S.V. Mikhalkov); others are correlated with certain eras (such, for example, as liturgical drama in the European Middle Ages). In other words, genres are either universal or historically local.
The picture is further complicated by the fact that the same word often denotes deeply different genre phenomena. Thus, the ancient Greeks thought of elegy as a work written in a strictly defined poetic meter - an elegiac distich (a combination of hexameter and pentameter) and performed in recitative to the accompaniment of a flute. And in the second half of the 18th century - early XIX V. The elegiac genre, thanks to T. Gray and V.A. Zhukovsky, began to be defined by the mood of sadness and melancholy, regret and melancholy.
Authors often designate the genre of their works arbitrarily, without conforming to the usual usage of words. So, N.V. Gogol called " Dead Souls"poem; "House by the Road" by A.T. Tvardovsky has the Subtitle "lyrical chronicle", "Vasily Terkin" - "a book about a fighter."
Consideration of genres is unimaginable without reference to the organization, structure, and form of literary works.
G.N. Pospelov distinguished between “external” genre forms (“a closed compositional and stylistic whole”) and “internal” (“specific genre content” as the principle of “imaginative thinking” and “cognitive interpretation of characters”). Having regarded external (compositional and stylistic) genre forms as content-neutral (in this, Pospelov’s concept of genres, as has been repeatedly noted, is one-sided and vulnerable), the scientist focused on the internal side of genres. He identified and characterized three supra-epochal genre groups, basing their differentiation on a sociological principle: the type of relationship between an artistically comprehended person and society, the social environment in a broad sense. “If works of national-historical genre content (meaning epics, epics, odes. - V.Kh.),” wrote G.N. Pospelov, “experience life in the aspect of the formation of national societies, if romantic works comprehend the formation of individual characters in private relations, then works of “ethological” genre content reveal the state of national society or some part of it.” (“Travels from St. Petersburg to Moscow” by A.N. Radishchev, “Who Lives Well in Rus'” by N.A. Nekrasov).
NOVEL
The novel, recognized as the leading genre of literature of the last two or three centuries, attracts the close attention of literary scholars and critics.
If in the aesthetics of classicism the novel was treated as a low genre, then in the era of romanticism it rose to the top as a reproduction of “everyday reality” and at the same time “a mirror of the world and<...>of his age", the fruit of a "quite mature spirit
Hegel: the novel lacks the “originally poetic state of the world” inherent in the epic; here there is a “prosaically ordered reality” and “a conflict between the poetry of the heart and the opposing prose of everyday relationships.” V. G. Belinsky, who called the novel an epic of private life: the subject of this genre is “the fate of a private person,” ordinary, “everyday life.”
MM. Bakhtin: the hero of the novel is shown “not as ready-made and unchanging, but as becoming, changing, educated by life”; this person “should not be “heroic” either in the epic or tragic sense of the word; the romantic hero combines both positive and negative traits, both low and high, both funny and serious.” At the same time, the novel captures the “living contact” of a person “with an unready, becoming modernity (unfinished present).” And it “more deeply, significantly, sensitively and quickly” than any other genre “reflects the formation of reality itself.” The main thing is that the novel (according to Bakhtin) is capable of revealing in a person not only the properties determined in behavior, but also unrealized possibilities, a certain personal potential
In the novel, there is invariably present and almost dominates - as a kind of “super-theme” - artistic comprehension (to use the famous words of A.S. Pushkin) “human independence”, which constitutes (let us add to the poet) “the guarantee of his greatness”, and the source of sad falls, life dead ends and disasters. The ground for the formation and consolidation of the novel, in other words, arises where there is interest in a person who has at least relative independence from institutions social environment
The novels widely depict situations of the hero’s alienation from his surroundings, emphasizing his lack of roots in reality, homelessness, everyday wandering and spiritual wandering. Evgeny Onegin (“A stranger to everything, not bound by anything,” Pushkin’s hero laments about his fate in a letter to Tatyana), Raskolnikov from F.M. Dostoevsky
in novels, a significant role is played by heroes whose independence has nothing to do with the solitude of consciousness, alienation from the environment, and reliance only on themselves. Among the novel characters we find those who, using the words of M.M. Prishvin about himself can rightfully be called “a figure of communication and communication.” This is Natasha Rostova, “overflowing with life.” In a number of novels (especially persistently in the works of Charles Dickens and Russian literature of the 19th century), a person’s spiritual contacts with the reality close to him and, in particular, family ties (“ Captain's daughter"A.S. Pushkin). The heroes of such works perceive and think of the surrounding reality not so much as alien and hostile to themselves, but as friendly and akin. They are characterized by what M.M. Prishvin called “kindred attention to the world.”
The theme of the house is also heard in the novels of our century: in J. Galsworthy ("The Forsyte Saga" and subsequent works), M.A Bulgakov (" White Guard"), M.A. Sholokhova (" Quiet Don"),
This genre is able to include the features of an epic into its sphere, capturing not only the private lives of people, but also events of a national-historical scale ("The Parma Monastery" by Stendhal). Novels are able to embody the meanings characteristic of a parable. According to O.A. Sedakova, “in the depths of the “Russian novel” usually lies something similar to a parable.”
There is no doubt that the novel is involved in the traditions of hagiography. The hagiographic principle is very clearly expressed in Dostoevsky’s works. Leskovsky's "Soboryan" can rightfully be described as a novel-life.
Novels often acquire the features of a satirical description of morality, such as, for example, the works of O. de Balzac, W.M. Thackeray
The novel, as can be seen, has a dual content: firstly, it is specific to it (the “independence” and evolution of the hero, revealed in his private life), and secondly, it came to him from other genres. The conclusion is valid; the genre essence of the novel is synthetic. This genre is capable of combining, with effortless freedom and unprecedented breadth, the substantive principles of many genres, both funny and serious. Apparently, there is no genre principle from which the novel would remain fatally alienated.
The novel as a genre, prone to synthetics, is sharply different from others that preceded it, which were “specialized” and operated in certain local “areas” of artistic comprehension of the world. He (like no other) turned out to be able to bring literature closer to life in its diversity and complexity, inconsistency and richness. The novel's freedom to explore the world has no boundaries. And writers from different countries and eras use this freedom in a variety of ways.
In the centuries-old history of the novel, two types of it are clearly visible. These are, firstly, works of acute events, based on external action, the heroes of which strive to achieve some local goals. These are adventurous novels, in particular picaresque, knightly, “career novels,” as well as adventure and detective stories. Their plots are numerous concatenations of event nodes (intrigues, adventures, etc.), as is the case, for example, in A. Dumas.
Secondly, these are novels that have prevailed in literature over the last two or three centuries, when one of the central problems of social thought, artistic creativity and culture as a whole became the spiritual independence of man. Here internal action successfully competes with external action: the eventfulness is noticeably weakened, and the consciousness of the hero in its diversity and complexity comes to the fore.
One of the most important features of the novel and related stories (especially in the 19th-20th centuries) is the close attention of the authors to the microenvironment surrounding the heroes, the influence of which they experience and which they influence in one way or another.
Full name:
Similar names: Romanus, Romano, Raman
Church name:
Meaning: Roman, from Rome, Roman
Patronymic: Romanovich, Romanovna
The meaning of the name Roman - interpretation
Sonorous and beautiful male name The novel is translated from ancient Greek as “strong”, “strong”. In Latin it has a different interpretation and literally means “Roman”. Today, like many years ago, this name belongs to the category of favorite, popular and fashionable. You can often hear endearing forms: Romochka, Romchik, Chamomile, Romushka, etc. Its owners are mysterious men who have the talent to easily convince other people. They are reasonable, patient and organized, and are distinguished by high intelligence.
Name Roman in other languages
Astrology named after Roman
Favorable day: Saturday
Years later
Romchik is a cheerful and active kid who does not tolerate monotony. He tries to be obedient, but lack of perseverance is often the main reason for bad behavior. Easy-going, generous, good-natured towards the children around him.
Nature gives these children an inquisitive nature and irrepressible energy, which is why they often become participants in interesting adventures. It is difficult for Roma to concentrate on one activity - during the day he is able to do several different things, switching from one to another with lightning speed.
In the future, a child with this name may turn into a disorganized man. To prevent this from happening, parents from childhood should accustom him to a proper daily routine, which includes not only entertainment, but also doing useful things around the house.
A young man named Roman loves adventure, monotony and routine fill him with melancholy. As a teenager, he stands out among his peers for his wit and good sense of humor.
But despite the apparent openness, she rarely talks about her problems and lets other people into her inner world. As a teenager, Roman makes far-reaching plans, is not afraid of obstacles and boldly moves towards his intended goal.
Those around him are attracted to his love of life, a penchant for adventure and optimism. From a young age, Roma displays the traits of an active and enterprising man. By character type, Roman is a pronounced sanguine person. He can be greatly upset by the troubles encountered along the path of life.
As he grows up, noticeable changes occur in Roman's character. The impulsiveness characteristic of a teenager is replaced by calmness and prudence. The owner of this name becomes a balanced man who strives for stability in everything.
The ability to attract increased attention during a conversation remains an invariable quality. This allows Roman to skillfully manipulate other people. He can be called an ambitious, slightly vain and selfish person, hiding his shortcomings behind a mask of cordiality and goodwill. You can’t envy Roman’s enemy - towards the offender he becomes a vindictive and cruel person.
This man strives to achieve success in life, but often his good intentions are ruined due to a lack of willpower to complete what he started. He is able to easily give up fighting for what he wants halfway. But the problems that arise will not be able to plunge him into despondency - Roman treats all adversities with humor.
Roman's character
Roma is a cheerful person, but he doesn’t show his good nature with everyone. The positive features that characterize his nature include limitless patience and the desire for self-organization. Roman is an objective and sociable person; he takes responsibility for the tasks assigned to him.
Knows how to win people over, has good intuition, which makes it easy to recognize deception or avoid unpleasant situations. Roman is a polite, courteous person, loves traveling in the company of friends, tends to empathize with other people and provide all possible assistance.
A man named Roman is described by many people as a frivolous and talkative person. His negative traits include excessive impulsiveness. Being carried away by a new task, he often does not complete it, switching to another, more interesting activity.
Roman skillfully hides the rage of his nature under a mask of indifference; he can rejoice at the failures of others. In situations where his plans are hampered by unforeseen circumstances, he becomes aggressive. He is vindictive, does not forget the insults inflicted on him earlier. He can take revenge in a sophisticated way, knows how to skillfully lead intrigues, skillfully confusing the enemy.
Roman's fate
Everyone who is lucky enough to bear this name has good intuition, which allows them to avoid many troubles presented by fate. Good intelligence is the key to a man’s ability to find himself in a profession and achieve certain success. He treats everything that interferes with the conduct of business with undisguised negativity. The novel does not accept generally accepted moral standards, which are driven into boundaries. In the fate of the bearer of the name, a special role is played by vulnerability and touchiness, which he tries to hide. If a person dear to him commits betrayal, this act can knock Roman out of his successful life rut for a long time.
Career,
business
and money
Marriage
and family
Sex
and love
Health
Hobbies
and hobbies
Career, business and money
Money is an excellent incentive for Roman to develop and improve his business. Work that is highly paid brings him pleasure.
A man with this name achieves success in professions that involve communicating with people. Analytical skills allow Roman to become a good engineer, designer, architect, and bank employee.
Marriage and family
Independent, preferring to enjoy the attention of numerous girls, Roman is in no hurry to get married. But if strong love happens in his life, he is able to forget about his principles and lead his chosen one down the aisle at a fairly young age. Usually such families quickly fall apart.
To save the marriage, Roman's wife needs to make a lot of effort: forget about her ambitions and turn into a patient angel. She also has to come to terms with her husband’s love of love, which leads to frequent intrigues on the side. In marital relationships, Roman is the leader; all household members must obey his instructions unquestioningly.
Sex and love
Roman is a passionate, impulsive, temperamental man. But in intimate matters, he cares more about his own satisfaction, forgetting about his partner. In sex, he strives for variety and loves experiments. For Roman, sexual intercourse is an opportunity to gain moral and physical release. When choosing a life partner, this man pays special attention to her sexuality and visual attractiveness.
If the passion for his wife fades away, he easily finds a replacement for her in the form of another woman. Roman is popular among representatives of the opposite sex. He belongs to the category of amorous men, spoiled by the attention of ladies. He gives preference to women who are ready to completely obey him and give themselves without reserve.
Health
Respiratory diseases are frequent companions of little Roma. If colds are left untreated, they can later trigger asthma. Another problem of young years is diathesis. Parents should be selective about their child's menu.
In contrast to childhood sickness, adult Roman has enviable health. Its only weak point is the organs of the gastrointestinal tract; digestive problems are often observed.
Interests and hobbies
A man with this name loves sports very much and cannot imagine his life without physical activity. As usual, he prefers to practice karate, wrestling or rugby.
Unusual hobbies include his attempts to understand the world around him in all its colors. To do this, he mainly reads useful books and communicates with interesting people.
New times; unlike the folk epic, where the individual and the folk soul are inseparable, in the novel the life of the individual and social life appear as relatively independent; but the “private” inner life of the individual is revealed in him “epicly,” that is, with the revelation of its generally significant and social meaning. A typical novel situation is a clash in the hero of the moral and human (personal) with natural and social necessity. Since the novel develops in modern times, where the nature of the relationship between man and society is constantly changing, its form is essentially “open”: the main situation is each time filled with specific historical content and is embodied in various genre modifications. Historically, the first form is considered to be the picaresque novel. In the 18th century two main varieties are developing: the social novel (G. Fielding, T. Smollett) and the psychological novel (S. Richardson, J. J. Rousseau, L. Stern, I. V. Goethe). Romantics create a historical novel (W. Scott). In the 1830s. The classical era of the socio-psychological novel of critical realism of the 19th century begins. (Stendhal, O. Balzac, C. Dickens, W. Thackeray, G. Flaubert, L. N. Tolstoy, F. M. Dostoevsky). Among the world famous writers of the 20th century. novelists: R. Rolland, T. Mann, M. Proust, F. Kafka, J. Joyce, J. Galsworthy, W. Faulkner, García Márquez, V. V. Nabokov, M. A. Sholokhov, A. I. Solzhenitsyn . See also "New Novel".
Big Encyclopedic Dictionary. 2000 .
Synonyms:See what "ROMAN" is in other dictionaries:
Novel- Novel … Dictionary of Lemko language
Novel. History of the term. The problem of the novel. The emergence of the genre. From the history of the genre. Conclusions. The novel as a bourgeois epic. The fate of the theory of the novel. Specificity of the novel form. The birth of a novel. The novel's conquest of everyday reality... Literary encyclopedia
A, husband. Report: Romanovich, Romanovna; unfold Romanych.Derivatives: Romanka; Romakha; Chamomile; Romanya; Roma; Romasya; Romulus.Origin: (Lat. Romanus Roman; Roman.)Name days: January 18, February 11, February 16, March 2, March 29, May 15, June 5, June 13,... ... Dictionary of personal names
Cm … Synonym dictionary
Lecapinus Ρωμανός Α΄ Λακαπήνος Coin of Romanus I Lecapinus ... Wikipedia
Novel- THE NOVEL is one of the freest literary forms, suggesting a huge number of modifications and embracing several main branches of the narrative genre. In new European literature, this term is usually used to describe some... ... Dictionary of literary terms
ROMAN, romance, husband. (French roman). 1. A large narrative work, usually in prose, with a complex and developed plot. Read novels. Get involved in novels. “Hopeless love is only in novels.” Chekhov. Everyday novel... ... Ushakov's Explanatory Dictionary
- (French). 1) the so-called, first of all, everything is written. in Roman language. 2) the most popular type of epic works, which contains a story from the life of some social stratum, characterizing the outstanding features of its life and people.... ... Dictionary of foreign words of the Russian language
Novel- Novel ♦ Roman A literary genre that has only two restrictions - it must be narrative and based on fiction. A novel is a fictional story, presented as if everything actually happened exactly like this, or, conversely,... ... Sponville's Philosophical Dictionary
Novel- (French roman), literary genre: an epic work of large form, in which the narrative is focused on the fate of an individual in her relation to the world around her, on the formation and development of her character and self-awareness. Roman epic... ... Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary
Books
- Roman Zlotnikov (set of 11 books), Roman Zlotnikov. "Special Russian Project" is a series of the best books in Russian fantasy. All books are read in one breath...
- Roman Glushkov. Series "Russian fiction" (set of 9 books), Roman Glushkov. The "Russian Science Fiction" series publishes the best novels by contemporary Russian science fiction writers. The presented set includes the best works of the writer Roman...
The novel is one of the leading genres of modern literature. Despite the fact that it appeared in the eighteenth century, the peak of its popularity falls directly on the new and modern times. Perhaps this is explained by the fact that in the modern world, novelistic issues, often dedicated to the fate of individuals, encounter fewer obstacles and restrictions than in previous eras.
If you answer the question of what a novel is, you can find two definitions. On the one hand, this is an epic work, exceeding several hundred pages in length. On the other hand, it is a work that tells about the destinies of individuals who are looking for their purpose in the world. Moreover, given that there are both novels in verse and lyric-epic novels, the second definition is closer to the truth. Works in this genre tend to depict modernity, either directly or indirectly. In the second case, the novel may take place in an alternative universe or in the past, but its problems will still refer us to the world of the present.
It is impossible to talk about what a novel is without mentioning its forms. Since there are many different works of this genre, their classification was adopted depending on some specific features. The most common forms of the novel include the following:
Adventure novel. In it, the plot revolves around the adventures of heroes who find themselves in various specific situations.
Well-known epics fall into this category. In such works, the author, as a rule, refers to a specific era and seeks to depict the fate of a particular class of people.
Psychological novel. In it, the reflections and experiences of the main character (who, as a rule, is alone) come to the fore. An effective plot line may be practically absent.
Satirical novel. As the name suggests, this form of novel satirizes various social phenomena.
Realistic novel. Works of this variety are aimed at an objective reflection of the surrounding reality.
Fantastic novel. This also includes works in the fantasy genre. In novels of this form, the author creates his own world in which the action takes place. This could be some parallel reality or a distant mechanized future.
Journalistic novel. It is a work of journalism, created with the help and equipped with a plot.
So, the answers to the question of what a novel is can be extensive and varied, nevertheless, works of this genre are quite easy to distinguish from all other prose. As a rule, novels have a large length, and the characters in them develop throughout the plot. Many of them cover a wide range of issues that in one way or another relate to the modern world. Therefore, when discussing what a novel is, one should remember that this genre is inseparable from the time in which its author lived and created. And then it becomes clear that the novel is an artistic reflection of reality.
Roman (French roman, German Roman; English novel/romance; Spanish novela, Italian romanzo), the central genre of European literature of the New Age, a fictional, in contrast to the neighboring genre of the story, an extensive, plot-branched prose narrative ( despite the existence of compact, so-called “little novels” (French le petit roman), and novels in verse, for example, the “novel in verse” “Eugene Onegin”).
In contrast to the classical epic, the novel is focused on depicting the historical present and the destinies of individuals, ordinary people searching for themselves and their purpose in a this-worldly, “prosaic” world that has lost its pristine stability, integrity and sacredness (poetry). Even if in a novel, for example, in a historical novel, the action is transferred to the past, this past is always assessed and perceived as immediately preceding the present and correlated with the present.
The novel, as an open to modernity, formally not ossified, emerging genre of literature of the New and Contemporary times, cannot be exhaustively defined in universalist terms theoretical poetics, but can be characterized in the light of historical poetics, exploring the evolution and development of artistic consciousness, the history and prehistory of artistic forms. Historical poetics takes into account both the diachronic variability and diversity of the novel, and the convention of using the word “novel” itself as a genre “label”. Not all novels, even exemplary novels from a modern point of view, were defined by their creators and the reading public as “novels.”
Initially, in the 12th-13th centuries, the word roman meant any written text in Old French, and only in the second half of the 17th century. partially acquired its modern semantic content. Cervantes, the creator of the paradigmatic novel of the New Age “Don Quixote” (1604-1615), called his book “history”, and used the word “novela” for the title of the book of stories and short stories “Edifying Novels” (1613).
On the other hand, many works that critics of the 19th century - the heyday of the realistic novel - after the fact called “novels” are not always such. A typical example is the poetic and prose pastoral eclogues of the Renaissance, which turned into “pastoral novels”, the so-called “folk books” of the 16th century, including the parody pentateuch of F. Rabelais. Fantastic or allegorical satirical narratives dating back to the ancient “Menippean satire”, such as “Critikon” by B. Gracian, “The Pilgrim’s Progress” by J. Bunyan, “The Adventures of Telemachus” by Fenelon, satires by J. Swift, “philosophical tales” are artificially classified as novels. Voltaire, “poem” by N.V. Gogol “Dead Souls”, “Penguin Island” by A. France. Also, not all utopias can be called novels, although at the border of utopia and novel at the end of the 18th century. the genre of utopian novel arose (Morris, Chernyshevsky, Zola ), and then its antipodean counterpart, a dystopian novel (“When the Sleeper Awakens” by H. Wells, “We” by Evg. Zamyatin).
The novel, in principle, is a borderline genre, associated with almost all adjacent types of discourse, both written and oral, easily absorbing foreign genre and even foreign verbal structures: document-essays, diaries, notes, letters ( epistolary novel), memoirs, confessions, newspaper chronicles, plots and images of folk and literary fairy tale, national and sacred tradition (for example, gospel images and motifs in the prose of F. M. Dostoevsky). There are novels in which the lyrical principle is clearly expressed, in others the features of farce, comedy, tragedy, drama, and medieval mystery are discernible. It is natural for the concept (V. Dneprov) to emerge, according to which the novel is the fourth - in relation to epic, lyricism and drama - type of literature.
A novel is a multilingual, multifaceted and multi-perspective genre that represents the world and people in the world from a variety of points of view, including multi-genre ones, and includes other genre worlds as the object of the image. The novel preserves in its meaningful form the memory of myth and ritual (the city of Macondo in the novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude” by G. García Márquez). Therefore, being “the standard-bearer and herald of individualism” (Vyach. Ivanov), the novel in a new form (in the written word) simultaneously strives to resurrect the primitive syncretism of word, sound and gesture (hence the organic birth of cinema and television novels), to restore the original unity of man and of the universe.
The problem of the place and time of birth of the novel remains debatable. According to both the extremely broad and extremely narrow interpretation of the essence of the novel - an adventure narrative focused on the destinies of lovers striving for union - the first novels were created in Ancient India and, regardless of that, in Greece and Rome in the 2nd-4th centuries. The so-called Greek (Hellenistic) novel - chronologically the first version of the “adventurous novel of trial” (M. Bakhtin) lies at the origins of the first stylistic line of development of the novel, which is characterized by “monolinguality and monostylism” (in English-language criticism, narratives of this kind are called romance).
The action in “romance” takes place in “adventurous time”, which is removed from real (historical, biographical, natural) time and represents a kind of “gap” (Bakhtin) between the starting and ending points of the development of the cyclic plot - two moments in the lives of the heroes -lovers: their meeting, marked by a sudden outbreak of mutual love, and their reunion after separation and each of them overcoming various kinds of trials and temptations.
The interval between the first meeting and the final reunion is filled with such events as an attack by pirates, the kidnapping of a bride during a wedding, a storm at sea, a fire, a shipwreck, a miraculous rescue, the false news of the death of one of the lovers, imprisonment on false charges of another, a death threat execution, the ascension of another to the heights of earthly power, an unexpected meeting and recognition. The artistic space of the Greek novel is an “alien”, exotic world: events take place in several Middle Eastern and African countries, which are described in sufficient detail (the novel is a kind of guide to an alien world, a replacement for geographical and historical encyclopedias, although it also contains a lot of fantastic information ).
A key role in the development of the plot in an ancient novel is played by chance, as well as various kinds of dreams and predictions. The characters and feelings of the characters, their appearance and even their age remain unchanged throughout the development of the plot. The Hellenistic novel is genetically connected with myth, with Roman legal proceedings and rhetoric. Therefore, in such a novel there are many discussions on philosophical, religious and moral topics, speeches, including those made by the heroes in court and built according to all the rules of ancient rhetoric: the adventurous love plot of the novel is also a judicial “incident”, the subject of its discussion from both sides diametrically opposed points of view, pro and contra (this contraversity, the pairing of opposites will remain as a genre feature of the novel at all stages of its development).
In Western Europe, the Hellenistic novel, forgotten throughout the Middle Ages, was rediscovered during the Renaissance by the authors of late Renaissance poetics, created by admirers of the also rediscovered and read Aristotle. Trying to adapt Aristotelian poetics (which says nothing about the novel) to the needs of modern literature with its rapid development of various kinds of fictional narratives, neo-Aristotelian humanists turned to the Greek (as well as the Byzantine) novel as an ancient example-precedent, focusing on which to create plausible narration (truthfulness, reliability - a new quality prescribed in humanistic poetics to novel fiction). The recommendations contained in the neo-Aristotelian treatises were largely followed by the creators of pseudo-historical adventure-love novels of the Baroque era (M. de Scuderi and others .) .
The plot of the Greek novel is not only exploited in popular literature and culture of the 19th and 20th centuries. (in the same Latin American television novels), but can also be seen in the plot collisions of “high” literature in the novels of Balzac, Hugo, Dickens, Dostoevsky, A. N. Tolstoy (trilogy “Sisters”, “Walking in the Torments”, “The Eighteenth Year”) , Andrei Platonov (“Chevengur”), Pasternak (“Doctor Zhivago”), although they are often parodied (“Candide” by Voltaire) and radically rethought (the purposeful destruction of the mythology of the “sacred wedding” in the prose of Andrei Platonov and G. García Márquez ).
But we cannot reduce the novel to a plot. A truly novel hero is not exhausted by the plot: he, as Bakhtin puts it, is always either “more than the plot or less than his humanity.” He is not only and not so much an “external man”, realizing himself in action, in deed, in a rhetorical word addressed to everyone and no one, but as an “internal man”, aimed at self-knowledge and confessional and prayerful appeal to God and a specific “other”: such a person was discovered by Christianity (the Epistles of the Apostle Paul, “Confessions” of Aurelius Augustine), which prepared the ground for the formation of the European novel.
The novel, as a biography of an “inner man,” began to take shape in Western European literature in the form of a poetic and then a prosaic knightly novel in the 12th and 13th centuries. - the first narrative genre of the Middle Ages, perceived by authors and educated listeners and readers as fiction, although according to tradition (also becoming the subject of a parody game) it was often passed off as the works of ancient “historians”. At the heart of the plot collision of the knightly novel is the indestructible confrontation between the whole and the individual, the knightly community (the mythical chivalry of the times of King Arthur) and the hero-knight, who stands out among others for his merits, and - according to the principle of metonymy - is the best part of the knightly class. In the knightly feat destined for him from above and in the loving service of the Eternal Femininity, the hero-knight must rethink his place in the world and in society, divided into classes, but united by Christian, universal values. The knightly adventure is not just a test of the hero’s self-identity, but also a moment of his self-knowledge.
Fiction, adventure as a test of self-identity and as a path to self-knowledge of the hero, a combination of motives of love and heroism, the interest of the author and readers of the novel in the inner world of the characters - all these are characteristic genre signs of a knightly novel, “reinforced” by the experience of the “Greek”, which is similar to it in style and structure. novel, at the end of the Renaissance will turn into a novel of the New Age, parodying the knightly epic and at the same time preserving the ideal of knightly service as a value guide (Don Quixote by Cervantes).
The cardinal difference between a novel of the New Age and a medieval novel is the transfer of events from a fairy-tale-utopian world (the chronotope of a chivalric novel is “a wonderful world in adventurous time,” according to Bakhtin) into a recognizable “prosaic” modernity. One of the first (along with the Cervantes novel) genre varieties of the new European novel is oriented towards modern, “low” reality - the picaresque novel (or picaresque), which developed and flourished in Spain in the second half of the 16th - first half of the 17th century. (“Lazarillo from Tormes”, Mateo Aleman, F. de Quevedo. Genetically, picaresque is associated with the second stylistic line of development of the novel, according to Bakhtin (cf. the English term novel as the opposite of romance). It is preceded by the “lower” prose of antiquity and the Middle Ages, and not formed in the form of an actual novel narrative, which includes “The Golden Ass” of Apuleius, “Satyricon” of Petronius, menippeia of Lucian and Cicero, medieval fabliaux, schwanks, farces, soti and other humorous genres associated with the carnival (carnivalized literature, on the one hand , contrasts the “inner man” with the “outer man”, on the other hand, with man as a socialized being (the “official” image of man, according to Bakhtin) with a natural, private, everyday man. The first example of the picaresque genre is the anonymous story “The Life of Lazarillo from Tormes” (1554 ) - is parodically focused on the genre of confession and is structured as a pseudo-confessional narrative on behalf of the hero, aimed not at repentance, but at self-praise and self-justification (Denis Diderot and “Notes from the Underground” by F. M. Dostoevsky). The ironic author, hiding behind the hero-narrator, stylizes his fiction as a “human document” (characteristically, all four surviving editions of the story are anonymous). Later, genuine autobiographical narratives (The Life of Estebanillo Gonzalez), already stylized as picaresque novels, will branch off from the picaresque genre. At the same time, picaresque, having lost its actual novelistic properties, will turn into an allegorical satirical epic (B. Gracian).
The first examples of the novel genre reveal a specific novelistic attitude towards fiction, which becomes the subject of an ambiguous game between the author and the reader: on the one hand, the novelist invites the reader to believe in the authenticity of the life he depicts, to immerse himself in it, to dissolve in the flow of what is happening and in the experiences of the characters, on the other - every now and then ironically emphasizes the fictionality, the creation of the novel's reality. “Don Quixote” is a novel in which the defining beginning is the dialogue between Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, the author and the reader, that runs through it. A picaresque novel is a kind of negation of the “ideal” world of novels of the first stylistic line - chivalric, pastoral, “Moorish”. “Don Quixote,” parodying the romances of chivalry, includes novels of the first stylistic line as objects of depiction, creating parodic (and not only) images of the genres of these novels. The world of Cervantes’s narrative is divided into “book” and “life,” but the boundary between them is blurred: Cervantes’s hero lives life like a novel, brings a conceived but unwritten novel to life, becoming the author and co-author of the novel of his life, while the author is under mask of the fake Arab historian Sid Ahmet Benengeli - becomes a character in the novel, without leaving his other roles at the same time - the author-publisher and the author-creator of the text: starting from the prologue to each of the parts, he is the interlocutor of the reader, who is also invited to join the game with the text of the book and the text of life. Thus, the “quixotic situation” unfolds in the stereometric space of the tragifarcical “novel of consciousness”, in the creation of which three main subjects are involved: Author - Hero - Reader. In Don Quixote, for the first time in European culture, the “three-dimensional” novel word was heard - the most striking sign of novelistic discourse.
