How the type of conflict in a play is classified in literature. The coexistence of several conflicts in fiction. Conflicts in foreign literature
Artistic conflict, or artistic collision (from the Latin collisio - collision), is the confrontation of multidirectional forces operating in a literary work - social, natural, political, moral, philosophical - which receives ideological and aesthetic embodiment in artistic structure works as opposition (opposition) of characters to circumstances, individual characters - or different aspects of one character - to each other, the very artistic ideas of the work (if they carry ideologically polar principles).
IN " The captain's daughter Pushkin’s conflict between Grinev and Shvabrin over their love for Masha Mironova, which forms the visible basis of the romantic plot itself, fades into the background before the socio-historical conflict - Pugachev’s uprising. The main problem Pushkin's novel, in which both conflicts are uniquely refracted, is a dilemma of two ideas about honor (the epigraph of the work is “Take care of honor from a young age”): on the one hand, the narrow framework of class-class honor (for example, the noble, officer oath of allegiance); on the other hand, universal
values of decency, kindness, humanism (fidelity to one’s word, trust in a person, gratitude for kindness done, desire to help in trouble, etc.). Shvabrin is dishonest even from the point of view of the noble code; Grinev rushes between two concepts of honor, one of which is imputed to his duty, the other is dictated natural feeling; Pugachev turns out to be above the feeling of class hatred towards a nobleman, which would seem completely natural, and meets the highest requirements of human honesty and nobility, surpassing in this respect the narrator himself, Pyotr Andreevich Grinev.
The writer is not obliged to present the reader with finished form future historical resolution of those depicted by him social conflicts. Often such a resolution of socio-historical conflicts reflected in a literary work is seen by the reader in a semantic context unexpected for the writer. If the reader acts as literary critic, he can determine both the conflict and the method of resolving it much more accurately and far-sightedly than the artist himself. Thus, N. A. Dobrolyubov, analyzing the drama of A. N. Ostrovsky “The Thunderstorm”, was able to consider the most acute social contradiction throughout Russia - the “dark kingdom”, where, amid general humility, hypocrisy and silence, “tyranny” reigns supreme, the ominous apotheosis of which is autocracy, and where even the slightest protest is a “ray of light”.
In epic and dramatic works conflict lies at the heart of the plot and is its driving force , determining the development of action.
Thus, in “The Song about the Merchant Kalashnikov...” by M. Yu. Lermontov, the development of the action is based on the conflict between Kalashnikov and Kiribeevich; in N.V. Gogol's work "Portrait" the action is based on the internal conflict in Chartkov's soul - the contradiction between the awareness of the high duty of the artist and the passion for profit.
The conflict of a work of art is based on vital contradictions, and their detection is the most important function of the plot. Hegel introduced the term “collision” with the meaning of a collision of opposing forces, interests, and aspirations.
The science of literature traditionally recognizes the existence of four types of artistic conflict, which will be discussed further. Firstly, a natural or physical conflict, when the hero enters into a struggle with nature. Secondly, the so-called social conflict, when a person is challenged by another person or society. In accordance with the laws art world such a conflict arises in the clash of heroes who are possessed by opposing and mutually exclusive life goals. And for this conflict to be sufficiently acute, sufficiently “tragic”, each of these mutually hostile goals must have its own subjective rightness, each of the heroes must, to some extent, evoke compassion. So Circassian (“ Prisoner of the Caucasus"A.S. Pushkin), like Tamara from M.Yu. Lermontov's poem "The Demon", comes into conflict not so much with the hero, but with society, and dies. Her “epiphany” costs her life. Either " Bronze Horseman“- the confrontation between a little man and a formidable reformer. Moreover, it is precisely the correlation of such themes that is characteristic of Russian literature of the 19th century. It should be emphasized that the unquestioning introduction of a character into a certain environment enveloping him, presupposing the supremacy of this environment over him, sometimes abolishes the problems of moral responsibility and personal initiative of a member of society, which were so essential for literature of the 19th century V. A variation of this category is a conflict between social groups or generations. Thus, in the novel “Fathers and Sons” I. Turgenev depicts the core social conflict of the 60s of the 19th century - the clash between liberal nobles and democratic commoners. Despite the title, the conflict in the novel is not of an ageist nature, but of an ideological nature, i.e. This is not a conflict between two generations, but essentially a conflict between two worldviews. The role of antipodes in the novel is played by Evgeny Bazarov (exponent of the idea of common democrats) and Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov (central defender of the worldview and lifestyle of the liberal nobility). The breath of the era, its typical features are palpable in the central images of the novel and in the historical background against which the action unfolds. The period of preparation for the peasant reform, the deep social contradictions of that time, the struggle social forces in the era of the 60s - this is what is reflected in the images of the novel, constituted its historical background and the essence of the main conflict. The third type of conflict traditionally identified in literary studies is internal or psychological, when a person’s desires conflict with his conscience. For example, the moral and psychological conflict of I. Turgenev’s novel “Rudin”, which originated in the author’s early prose. Thus, the confessional elegy “Alone, alone again I” can be considered an original preface to the formation of the storyline “Rudina”, defining the confrontation of the main character between reality and dreams, falling in love with being and dissatisfaction with his own fate, and a significant proportion of Turgenev’s poems (“To A.S.”, “Confession”, “Have you noticed, O my silent friend...”, “When so joyful, so tender...”, etc.) as a plot “blank” future novel. The fourth possible type of literary conflict is designated as providential, when a person opposes the laws of fate or some deity. For example, in the grandiose, sometimes difficult for the reader, “Faust”, everything is built on a global conflict - a large-scale confrontation between the genius of knowledge of Faust and the genius of evil Mephistopheles.
№9Composition of a literary work. External and internal composition.
Composition (from Latin composition - arrangement, comparison) - the structure of a work of art, determined by its content, purpose and largely determines its perception by the reader
A distinction is made between external composition (architectonics) and internal composition (narrative composition).
To the features external compositions include the presence or absence of:
1) dividing the text into fragments (books, volumes, parts, chapters, acts, stanzas, paragraphs);
2) prologue, epilogue;
3) attachments, notes, comments;
4) epigraphs, dedications;
5) inserted texts or episodes;
6) author’s digressions (lyrical, philosophical, historical) An author’s digression is an extra-plot fragment in a literary text that serves directly to express the thoughts and feelings of the author-narrator.
Internal
The composition of the narrative is the features of the organization of the point of view of what is depicted. When characterizing the internal composition, it is necessary to answer the following questions:
1) how the speech situation in the work is organized (who, to whom, in what form the speech is addressed, are there narrators and how many of them, in what order do they change and why, how does the speech situation organized by the author affect the reader);
2) how the plot is structured (linear composition, or retrospective, or with elements of a retrospective story, circular, plot framing; reportage type or memoir, etc.);
3) how the system of images is built (what is compositional center- one hero, two or group; how do the world of people relate (main, secondary, episodic, extra-plot / extra-scene; double characters, antagonist characters), the world of things, the world of nature, the world of the city, etc.);
4) how individual images are built;
5) which one compositional role play strong positions text - a literary work.
No. 10 Speech structure thin. works.
The narration could be:
FROM THE AUTHOR (objective form of narration, from the 3rd person): the apparent absence of any subject of narration in the work. This illusion arises because epic works the author does not directly express himself in any way - neither through statements on his own behalf, nor through the emotion of the tone of the story itself. Ideological and emotional comprehension is expressed indirectly - through combinations of details of the substantive imagery of the work.
ON BEHALF OF THE NARRATOR, BUT NOT THE HERO. The narrator expresses himself in emotional statements about the characters, their actions, relationships, and experiences. Usually, the author assigns this role to one of minor characters. The narrator's speech gives the main assessment of the characters and events in a literary work.
Example: “The Captain's Daughter” by Pushkin, where the narration is told from the perspective of Grinev.
The form of first-person narration is SKAZ. The narrative is constructed as an oral story of a specific narrator, equipped with his individual linguistic properties. This form allows you to show someone else's point of view, including one that belongs to another culture.
Another form is EPISTOLARY, i.e. letters from a hero or correspondence between several persons
The third form is MEMOIR, i.e. works written in the form of memoirs, diaries
Personification of narrative speech is a powerful, expressive tool.
№ 11 Character system like component literary work.
When analyzing epic and dramatic works, a lot of attention has to be paid to the composition of the character system, that is, the characters in the work. For the convenience of approaching this analysis, it is customary to distinguish between main, secondary and episodic characters. It would seem a very simple and convenient division, but in practice it often causes bewilderment and some confusion. The fact is that the category of a character (main, secondary or episodic) can be determined according to two different parameters.
The first is the degree of participation in the plot and, accordingly, the amount of text that this character is given.
The second is the degree of importance of this character for revealing sides artistic content. It’s easy to analyze in cases where these parameters coincide: for example, in Turgenev’s novel “Fathers and Sons” Bazarov - main character in both respects, Pavel Petrovich, Nikolai Petrovich, Arkady, Odintsova are secondary characters in all respects, and Sitnikov or Kukshina are episodic.
In some art systems we encounter such an organization of the system of characters that the question of their division into main, secondary and episodic ones loses all meaningful meaning, although in a number of cases differences between individual characters remain in terms of plot and volume of text. It’s not for nothing that Gogol wrote about his comedy “The Inspector General” that “every hero is here; the flow and progress of the play produces a shock to the whole machine: not a single wheel should remain rusty and not included in the work.” Continuing further by comparing the wheels in the car with the characters in the play, Gogol notes that some heroes can only formally prevail over others: “And in the car, some wheels move more noticeably and more powerfully, they can only be called the main ones.”
Quite complex compositional and semantic relationships can arise between the characters of a work. The simplest and most common case is the opposition of two images to each other. According to this principle of contrast, for example, the system of characters in Pushkin’s “Little Tragedies” is built: Mozart - Salieri, Don Juan - the Commander, the Baron - his son, the priest - Walsingham. A somewhat more complex case is when one character is opposed to all the others, as, for example, in Griboedov’s comedy “Woe from Wit,” where even quantitative relationships are important: it was not for nothing that Griboedov wrote that in his comedy “there are twenty-five fools for one smart person" Much less often than opposition, the technique of a kind of “doubleness” is used, when characters are compositionally united by similarity; a classic example is Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky in Gogol.
Often the compositional grouping of characters is carried out in accordance with the themes and problems that these characters embody.
№ 12 Character, character, hero, character, type, prototype and literary hero.
Character(character) – in prose or dramatic work artistic image a person (sometimes fantastic creatures, animals or objects), who is both the subject of the action and the object of the author’s research.
Hero. Central character, the main one for the development of action is called the hero of a literary work. Heroes who enter into an ideological or domestic conflict with each other are the most important in the character system. In a literary work, the relationship and role of the main, secondary, episodic characters(as well as off-stage characters in dramatic work) are determined by the author's intention.
Character- a personality type formed by individual traits. The set of psychological properties that make up the image literary character, is called character. Incarnation in a hero, a character of a certain life character.
Type(imprint, form, sample) is the highest manifestation of character, and character (imprint, distinctive feature) is the universal presence of a person in complex works. Character can grow from type, but type cannot grow from character.
Prototype- a specific person who served the writer as the basis for creating a generalized image-character in a work of art.
Literary hero- This is the image of a person in literature. Also in this sense the concepts “actor” and “character” are used. Often, only the more important characters (characters) are called literary heroes.
Literary heroes are usually divided into positive and negative, but this division is very arbitrary.
Actor a work of art - a character. As a rule, the character takes an active part in the development of the action, but the author or someone from literary heroes. There are main and secondary characters. In some works the focus is on one character (for example, in Lermontov’s “Hero of Our Time”), in others the writer’s attention is drawn to a whole series of characters (“War and Peace” by L. Tolstoy).
13.The image of the author in a work of art.
The image of the author is one of the ways to realize the author’s position in an epic or lyric epic work; a personified narrator, endowed with a number of individual characteristics, but not identical to the writer’s personality. The author-narrator always occupies certain spatio-temporal and evaluative-ideological positions in the figurative world of the work; he, as a rule, is opposed to all the characters as a figure of a different status, a different spatio-temporal plane. A significant exception is the image of the author in the novel in verse “Eugene Onegin” A.S. Pushkin, either declaring his closeness to the main characters of the novel, or emphasizing their fictionality. The author, unlike the characters, can neither be a direct participant in the events described, nor the object of the image for any of the characters. (Otherwise, we may not be talking about the image of the author, but about the hero-narrator, like Pechorin from “A Hero of Our Time” by M. Yu. Lermontov.) Intraproducts plot plan appears to be a fictional world, conditional in relation to the author, who determines the sequence and completeness of the presentation of facts, the alternation of descriptions, reasoning and stage episodes, the transmission of direct speech of characters and internal monologues.
The presence of the author’s image is indicated by personal and possessive pronouns first person, personal forms of verbs, as well as various kinds of deviations from plot action, direct assessments and characteristics of characters, generalizations, maxims, rhetorical questions, exclamations, appeals to an imaginary reader and even to characters: “It is very doubtful that the readers will like the hero we have chosen. The ladies will not like him, this can be said in the affirmative...” (N.V. Gogol, “Dead Souls”).
Being outside the plot action, the author can handle both space and time quite freely: freely move from one place to another, leave the “actual present” (action time), or delving into the past, giving the background of the characters (the story about Chichikov in the 11th Chapter “Dead Souls”), or looking ahead, demonstrating his omniscience with messages or hints about the immediate or distant future of the heroes: “... It was a redoubt that did not yet have a name, which later received the name of the Raevsky redoubt, or the Kurgan battery. Pierre did not pay much attention to this redoubt. He didn’t know that this place would be more memorable for him than all the places on the Borodino Field” (L.N. Tolstoy, “War and Peace”).
In literature, the second gender. 19th–20th centuries subjective narration with the image of the author is rare; it has given way to an “objective”, “impersonal” narration, in which there are no signs of a personalized author-narrator and author's position expressed indirectly: through the system of characters, plot development, with the help of expressive details, speech characteristics of characters, etc. P.
14. Poetics of the title. Title types.
Title- this is an element of text, and a completely special one, “pushed out”, it occupies a separate line and usually has a different font. The title is impossible not to notice - like a beautiful hat, for example. But, as S. Krzhizhanovsky figuratively wrote, the title is “not a hat, but a head, which cannot be attached to the body from the outside.” Writers always take the titles of their works very seriously; sometimes they rework them many times (you probably know the expression “title pain”). Changing the title means changing something very important in the text...
By the title alone you can recognize the author or the direction to which he belongs: the name “Dead Moon” could only be given to the collection by hooligan futurists, but not by A. Akhmatova, N. Gumilyov or Andrei Bely.
Without a title, it’s completely unclear what it’s about. we're talking about in one poem or another. Here's an example. This is the beginning of B. Slutsky’s poem:
Didn't knock me off my feet. I scribbled with a pen,
Like a swallow, like a bird.
And you can’t cut it out with an axe.
You will not forget and you will not forgive.
And some new seed
You grow carefully in your soul.
Who... "didn't knock you off your feet"? It turns out that it's someone else's line. That's the name of the poem. Anyone who reads the title perceives the beginning of the poem with completely different eyes.
In poetry, all the facts of language and any “little things” of form become significant. This also applies to the title - and even if it... is not there. The absence of a title is a kind of signal: “Attention, now you will read a poem in which there are so many different associations that they cannot be expressed in one word...” The absence of a title indicates that a text rich in associations is expected, elusive to define.
Subject-descriptive titles - titles that directly designate the subject of the description, reflecting the content of the work in a concentrated form.
Figurative and thematic- titles of works that indicate the content of what is to be read, not directly, but figuratively, through the use of a word or combination of words in figurative meaning, using specific types of tropes.
Ideological and characteristic- titles of literary works, indicating the author’s assessment of what is being described, the author’s main conclusion, the main idea of the entire artistic creation.
Ideological and thematic, or polyvalent titles - those titles that indicate both the theme and the idea of the work.
The most important function of the plot is to reveal life’s contradictions, that is, conflicts (in Hegel’s terminology, collisions).
Conflict- a confrontation of contradiction either between characters, or between characters and circumstances, or within character, underlying the action. If we are dealing with a small epic form, then the action develops on the basis of one single conflict. In works of large volume, the number of conflicts increases.
Conflict- the core around which everything revolves. The plot least of all resembles a solid, unbroken line connecting the beginning and end of an event series.
Stages of conflict development- main plot elements:
Exposition – plot – development of action – climax – denouement
Exposition(Latin – presentation, explanation) – a description of the events preceding the plot.
Main functions: Introducing the reader to the action; Presentation of characters; Picture of the situation before the conflict.
The beginning– an event or group of events directly leading to a conflict situation. It can grow out of exposure.
Development of action- the entire system of sequential deployment of that part of the event plan from beginning to end that guides the conflict. It can be calm or unexpected turns (vicissitudes).
Climax- the moment of the highest tension of the conflict is decisive for its resolution. After which the development of the action turns to the denouement.
The number of climaxes can be large. It depends on the storylines.
Denouement– an event that resolves a conflict. Most often, the ending and denouement coincide. When open final the denouement may recede. The denouement, as a rule, is juxtaposed with the beginning, echoing it with a certain parallelism, completing a certain compositional circle.
Conflict classification:
Solvable (limited by the scope of the work)
Unsolvable (eternal, universal contradictions)
Types of conflicts:
A) human and nature;
b) person and society;
V) people and culture
Ways to implement conflict in various kinds literary works:
Often the conflict is fully embodied and exhausted in the course of the events depicted. It arises against the background of a conflict-free situation, escalates and resolves as if before the eyes of the readers. This is the case in many adventure and detective novels. This is the case in most of the literary works of the Renaissance: in the short stories of Boccaccio, comedies and some tragedies of Shakespeare. For example, the emotional drama of Othello is entirely focused on the period of time when Iago weaved his devilish intrigue. The evil intent of the envious person is the main and only reason for the suffering of the protagonist. The conflict of the tragedy "Othello", for all its depth and tension, is transitory and local.
But it also happens differently. In a number of epic and dramatic works, events unfold against a constant background of conflict. The contradictions to which the writer draws attention exist here both before the events depicted begin, and during their course, and after their completion. What happened in the lives of the heroes acts as a kind of addition to the already existing contradictions. These can be both resolvable and unresolvable conflicts (Dostoevsky's "The Idiot", Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard") Stable conflict situations are inherent in almost most of the plots of realistic literature of the 19th-20th centuries.
The conflict is in literature - a clash between characters or between characters and the environment, a hero and fate, as well as a contradiction within the consciousness of a character or the subject of a lyrical statement. In a plot, the beginning is the beginning, and the denouement is the resolution or statement of the intractability of the conflict. Its character determines the originality of the aesthetic (heroic, tragic, comic) content of the work. The term “conflict” in literary criticism has supplanted and partially replaced the term “collision”, which G.E. Lessing and G.W.F. Hegel used to designate acute clashes, primarily characteristic of drama. Modern theory literature considers collisions to be either a plot form of conflict manifestation, or its most global, historically large-scale variety. Large works, as a rule, have many conflicts, but a certain main conflict, for example, in “War and Peace” (1863-69) by L.N. Tolstoy there is a conflict between the forces of good and the unity of people with the forces of evil and disunity, which, according to the writer, is positively resolved by life itself, its spontaneous flow. The lyrics are much less conflicting than the epic.A. G. Ibsen's experience prompted B. Shaw to reconsider the classical theory of drama. the main idea his essay "The Quintessence of Ibsenism" (1891) is that at the core modern play there should be a “discussion” (disputes between characters on issues of politics, morality, religion, art, serving as an indirect expression of the Angora’s beliefs) and a “problem”. In the 20th century, philosophy and aesthetics based on the concept of dialogue developed.
In Russia, these are primarily the works of M.M. Bakhtin. They also prove that statements about the universality of the conflict are too categorical. At the same time, totalitarian culture gave birth to the so-called “conflict-free theory” in the USSR in the 1940s, according to which in socialist reality the basis for real conflicts disappears and they are replaced by “conflicts between good and better.” This had a disastrous effect on post-war literature. But the massive criticism of the “theory of non-conflict”, inspired by J.V. Stalin in the early 1950s, was even more official. The latest theory In literature, the concept of conflict seems to be one of the discredited ones. The opinion is expressed that the associated concepts of exposition, plot, development of action, climax, denouement are fully applicable only to crime literature and only partially to drama, but the basis of the epic is not a conflict, but a situation (in Hegel, the situation develops into a collision) . However, there are different types conflicts. Along with those that are expressed in collisions and arise from randomly developing situations, literature reproduces the persistent conflict of existence, which often does not manifest itself in direct clashes between characters. Among the Russian classics, A.P. Chekhov constantly brought out this conflict - not only in plays, but also in stories and tales.
With the phenomenon called conflict (from the Latin conflictus - collision), i.e. an acute contradiction that finds its way out and resolution in action, struggle, we are in Everyday life We meet all the time. Political, industrial, family and other types social conflicts of different scales and levels, which sometimes take away a huge amount of physical, moral and emotional strength from people, overwhelm our spiritual and practical world - whether we want it or not.
It often happens like this: we strive to avoid certain conflicts, remove them, “defuse” them, or at least soften their effect - but in vain! The emergence, development and resolution of conflicts depend not only on us: in every clash of opposites, at least two parties participate and fight, expressing different, and even mutually exclusive interests, pursuing goals that contradict each other, committing multidirectional and sometimes hostile actions. The conflict finds expression in the struggle between new and old, progressive and reactionary, social and antisocial; contradictions life principles and positions of people, social and individual consciousness, morality, etc.
A similar thing happens in literature. The development of the plot, the clash and interaction of characters taking place in constantly changing circumstances, the actions performed by the characters, i.e., in other words, the entire dynamics of the content of a literary work is based on artistic conflicts, which are ultimately a reflection and generalization of the social conflicts of reality. Without the artist’s understanding of current, burning, socially significant conflicts true art the word doesn't exist.
Artistic conflict, or artistic collision (from the Latin collisio - collision), is the confrontation of multidirectional forces acting in a literary work - social, natural, political, moral, philosophical - which receives ideological and aesthetic embodiment in the artistic structure of the work as opposition (opposition) of characters circumstances, individual characters - or different aspects of one character - to each other, the very artistic ideas of the work (if they carry ideologically polar principles).
The artistic fabric of a literary work at all its levels is permeated with conflict: speech characteristics, the actions of the characters, the relationship of their characters, artistic time and space, the plot-compositional structure of the narrative contain conflicting pairs of images, related friend with each other and forming a kind of “network” of attractions and repulsions - the structural backbone of the work.
In the epic novel “War and Peace,” the Kuragin family (together with Scherer, Drubetsky, etc.) is the embodiment of high society - a world organically alien to Bezukhov, Bolkonsky, and Rostov. With all the differences between the representatives of these three beloved by the author noble families They are equally hostile to pompous officialdom, court intrigue, hypocrisy, falsehood, self-interest, spiritual emptiness, etc., flourishing at the imperial court. That is why the relationships between Pierre and Helen, Natasha and Anatole, Prince Andrei and Ippolit Kuragin, etc. are so dramatic and fraught with insoluble conflicts.
In a different semantic plane, the hidden conflict unfolds in the novel between the wise people's commander Kutuzov and the vain Alexander I, who mistook the war for a parade of a special kind. However, it is not at all by chance that Kutuzov loves and singles out Andrei Bolkonsky among the officers subordinate to him, and Emperor Alexander does not hide his antipathy towards him. At the same time, it is no coincidence that Alexander (like Napoleon in his time) “notices” Helen Bezukhova, honoring her with a dance at a ball on the day of the invasion of Napoleonic troops into Russia. Thus, tracing the chains of connections, “links” between the characters of Tolstoy’s work, we observe how all of them - with varying degrees of obviousness - are grouped around two semantic “poles” of the epic, forming the main conflict of the work - the people, the engine of history, and the king, "slave of history." In the author's philosophical and journalistic digressions, this highest conflict of the work is formulated with purely Tolstoyan categoricalness and directness. It is obvious that in terms of the degree of ideological significance and universality, in terms of its place in the artistic and aesthetic whole of the epic novel, this conflict is comparable only to the military conflict depicted in the work, which was the core of all events Patriotic War 1812. All the rest, private conflicts that reveal the plot and plot of the novel (Pierre - Dolokhov, Prince Andrei - Natasha, Kutuzov - Napoleon, Russian speech - French, etc.), are subordinated to the main conflict of the work and constitute a certain hierarchy artistic conflicts.
Each literary work develops its own special multi-level system of artistic conflicts, which ultimately expresses the author’s ideological and aesthetic concept. In this sense, the artistic interpretation of social conflicts is more capacious and meaningful than their scientific or journalistic reflection.
In Pushkin’s “The Captain’s Daughter,” the conflict between Grinev and Shvabrin over their love for Masha Mironova, which forms the visible basis of the romantic plot itself, recedes into the background before the socio-historical conflict - Pugachev’s uprising. The main problem of Pushkin’s novel, in which both conflicts are refracted in a unique way, is the dilemma of two ideas about honor (the epigraph of the work is “Take care of honor from a young age”): on the one hand, the narrow framework of class-class honor (for example, the noble, officer oath of allegiance) ; on the other hand, the universal human values of decency, kindness, humanism (fidelity to one’s word, trust in a person, gratitude for good done, the desire to help in trouble, etc.). Shvabrin is dishonest even from the point of view of the noble code; Grinev rushes between two concepts of honor, one of which is imputed to his duty, the other is dictated by natural feeling; Pugachev turns out to be above the feeling of class hatred towards a nobleman, which would seem completely natural, and meets the highest requirements of human honesty and nobility, surpassing in this respect the narrator himself, Pyotr Andreevich Grinev.
The writer is not obliged to present the reader in a ready-made form with the future historical resolution of the social conflicts he depicts. Often such a resolution of socio-historical conflicts reflected in a literary work is seen by the reader in a semantic context unexpected for the writer. If the reader acts as a literary critic, he can identify both the conflict and the method of its resolution much more accurately and far-sightedly than the artist himself. Thus, N.A. Dobrolyubov, analyzing the drama of A.N. Ostrovsky “The Thunderstorm”, was able to consider, behind the socio-psychological collision of the patriarchal merchant-bourgeois life, the most acute social contradiction of all of Russia - the “dark kingdom”, where, among general obedience, hypocrisy and voicelessness “tyranny” reigns supreme, the ominous apotheosis of which is autocracy, and where even the slightest protest is a “ray of light.”
Literary piece of art, prosaic or lyrical is not important, can do without many traditional signs artistry. It would seem that the basis of a work is always a plot, but look at the experimental literature of modernism - the author, quite bold and confident in his own strengths as an artist of words, discards the plot without thinking or reduces it to a minimum.
An example of this is the texts of Virginia Woolf or James Joyce. Describe 40 pages in one second? Easily. This means that it is impossible to talk about the plot as the fundamental force of an artistic literary work. Maybe then the basis lies literary language, the instrument with which the author conveys this or that idea to his reader? But then how can we explain that works that are written very simply or even in downright bad style are extremely popular?
Actually the answer is simple. At the heart of any literary work is conflict.
Conflict in literature is a fairly broad concept. There is a classic understanding of conflict. In this case, it is perceived as a confrontation between good and evil, sublime and base, spiritual and carnal. These phenomena and functions are embodied by the heroes of the work or the “voice of the author,” that is, those judgments of the all-seeing author-storyteller that lie outside the plot, but comment on it and explain it.
There are also more complex conflicts, for example, the conflict between the author’s personality and the real outside world, which does not suit him one way or another. Such works cannot be considered outside of this conflict, because they will simply lose their meaning. An example is the work of the Dadaists - poets of the most experimental type. They wrote meaningless strings of words and sounds, symbolizing the madness of a world caught in war. If the works of the Dadaists are deprived of this common conflict for them - the conflict of the human soul in need of an orderly world, and an insane planet captured by bloodshed, then the set of words and sounds that embody the idea tied to the antagonism of these concepts will become a meaningless set of words and sounds.
A work needs conflict as a justification for the very existence of this work, its ideological core.
Types of conflicts
The type of conflict in the literature is distinguished by who is involved in the conflict. According to the oppositions “an aspect of personality is another aspect of the same personality,” “personality is another personality,” “personality is environment,” “personality is circumstances, fate, etc.”
Internal conflict
Internal conflict in a literary work is a conflict based on the opposition “an aspect of personality - another aspect of personality.” Quite a popular conflict in Russian literary classics. An example is Maxim Gorky’s epic novel “The Life of Klim Samgin.” Throughout the entire narrative, the title character fluctuates between unwillingness to participate in revolutionary movements the late 19th and early 20th centuries for the reason that the ideologies of these times are anti-individualistic (and he is an extreme individualist) and between the desire to evoke respect and admiration, which is easily achieved by taking part in the uprising. He experiences both rejection of what is happening and morbid interest. More famous example- this is Raskolnikov from Dostoevsky's novel Crime and Punishment. There, the intellectual position put forward by the hero, claiming exclusive rights, comes into conflict strong personality(the right to kill) and his moral feeling is guilt.
Interpersonal conflict
It is also called a personal conflict. This is a type of conflict based on the opposition “personality - personality.” Enter into confrontation real people and groups of people. The most typical example of interpersonal conflict in literature is the familiar conflict between Chatsky, the “new man” and fresh ideas and reformist spirit and " Famusov society”, retrograde and self-absorbed. If we talk about the conflict between the two heroes, then this is the conflict between Onegin and Lensky - a duel for purely personal reasons. Separately among interpersonal conflicts is the conflict between “fathers and children.” A confrontation between generations, the cultural and ideological gap between which is prohibitively large. Such conflicts arise in eras of great social upheaval, when the course of life changes too quickly and radically. In addition to Turgenev’s novel of the same name, an example of such a contradiction is Dostoevsky’s novel “The Teenager,” in which the main character dreams of great wealth, since money is power, and the father rushes between extreme religiosity and noble altruism. Naturally, people with such different worldviews do not find common ground and conflict.
Extrapersonal conflict
This type of conflict is the most vague and ambiguous. The hero here does not contradict anyone in particular or himself. He comes into confrontation with fate, life circumstances, the system, perhaps with divine forces. An example of such a conflict can be considered the play “At the Depths” by Maxim Gorky. The heroes of the work are in constant conflict with their low social position and inevitably lose in this battle. Such conflicts are at the heart of fairy tales. Besides the fact that fairy tale hero there are real enemies (Koschei, the cannibal, the dragon - it doesn’t matter), there is also the concept of a series of tests, a certain path that must be passed. The path of a fairy-tale hero, on which he encounters various real enemies or simply obstacles like an impenetrable forest, is also a literary conflict.
More than one type of conflict may occur in one work. Even more than that, in good work, capable of holding the reader's attention, there are usually several types of conflicts. Let's look at the example of "Eugene Onegin". Interpersonal conflict, used to develop the storyline - this, as mentioned above, is a duel title character and the poet Lensky, with the subsequent murder of the latter. Internal conflict usually used to reveal inner world hero - these are Evgeniy’s feelings for Tatyana. The hero himself does not really understand what is going on in his heart. Extrapersonal conflict is Eugene as a product of the environment. He is a dandy, a playmaker, an aristocrat. He cannot do anything about these characteristics of his existence, although he is immensely bored with living like this.
In addition to the types of conflict in traditional literary criticism, there is a typology literary conflicts. There are much more types than types and it is much more difficult to classify works according to them.
Type of conflict in a literary work
To put it as simply as possible, the type of conflict is the soil on which it arose, the sphere of existence of the contradiction. The following types of literary conflicts are distinguished: psychological, social and everyday, love, symbolic, philosophical and ideological, there may be more of them, depending on the classification.
Psychological conflict- this is almost certainly also internal conflict. This type of conflict is often used in the literature of Romanticism and in the modern intellectual novel. For example, double life concierge from Muriel Barbery's novel The Elegance of a Hedgehog. The woman has a developed mind and a subtle artistic taste, but considers herself obligated to conform to the simple and rude image of a narrow-minded woman, since she left school at the age of 12 and worked all her life as a low-skilled worker.
Social and domestic conflict is a conflict public relations. For example, you can take early work Dostoevsky "Poor People". Makar Devushkin’s poverty collides with his desire to help an equally deprived creature - Varvara. As a result, he drives himself into an even more disastrous state, and is unable to help the girl. His good intentions are dashed by social injustice.
Love conflict are problems of interaction between two loving friend friend characters or confrontation between lovers and the rest of the world. This is, naturally, Romeo and Juliet.
Symbolic conflict is a conflict between the image and the real world. As an example, we can take Guillaume Apollinaire’s play “The Breasts of Thérèse.” Enters into conflict real world, where Teresa is a girl and a surreal world, where she lets out her breasts - Balloons into the sky and becomes a man - Teresius.
Philosophical conflict- conflict of worldviews. An example would be the worldview of the Karamazov brothers from work of the same name Dostoevsky. They argue about politics, God and humanity at every opportunity, as their views differ radically.
Ideological conflict is close to philosophical, but is aimed rather not at comprehending the essence of things, but at identifying oneself with a group. Especially popular in the literature of turning points. Thus, Russian prose writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries often resorted to ideological conflict to describe the pre-revolutionary years. Maxim Gorky in the story “The Song of the Falcon” allegorically contrasts the revolutionary (falcon) and the tradesman (snake). They will never understand each other, since the element of one is freedom, and the other is vegetation in the earth and dust.
Like types, there can be several types of conflicts in one work. But here you need to feel the fine line between a rich, versatile work that touches various topics, and superficial reading, which results when the author tries to use absolutely all literary resources known to him, regardless of expediency. In writing, taste and moderation are very important.
