How great works of literature were created. In what works of Russian literature are images of historical figures created and in what ways can they be compared with Tolstoy’s assessment of real historical figures? What literary works were created and were

Perhaps the works of Alexander Sergeevich most often attracted attention. The novel “Eugene Onegin” inspired the brilliant composer P.I. Tchaikovsky to create the opera of the same name. Libretto, which only in general terms resembles the original source, Konstantin Shilovsky. From the novel, only the love story of 2 couples remained - Lensky and Olga, Onegin and Tatyana. Onegin’s mental turmoil, which caused him to be included in the list of “superfluous people,” is excluded from the plot. The opera was first staged in 1879 and since then has been included in the repertoire of almost every Russian opera house.

One cannot help but recall the story “The Queen of Spades” and created by P.I. Tchaikovsky based on it in 1890. The libretto was written by the composer’s brother, M.I. Tchaikovsky. Pyotr Ilyich personally wrote the words for Yeletsky’s arias in Act II and Liza’s in Act III.

The story “The Queen of Spades” was translated into French by Prosper Merimee and became the basis of an opera written by composer F. Halévy.

Pushkin's drama "Boris Godunov" formed the basis of the great opera written by Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky in 1869. The premiere of the performance took place due to obstacles only 5 years later. The public's ardent enthusiasm did not help - the opera was removed from the repertoire several times for censorship reasons. Obviously, the genius of both authors highlighted too clearly the problem of the relationship between the autocrat and the people, as well as the price that has to be paid for power.

Here are a few more works by A.S. Pushkin, which became the literary basis of the operas: “The Golden Cockerel”, “The Tale of Tsar Saltan” (N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov), “Mazeppa” (P.I. Tchaikovsky), “The Little Mermaid” (A.S. Dargomyzhsky), “Ruslan and Lyudmila” (M.I. Glinka), “Dubrovsky” (E.F. Napravnik).

M.Yu. Lermontov in music

Based on Lermontov’s poem “The Demon,” the famous literary critic and researcher of his work P.A. Viskovatov wrote the libretto for the opera by the famous composer A.G. Rubinstein. The opera was written in 1871 and staged at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg in 1875.

A.G. Rubinstein wrote music for another work by Lermontov: “Song about the merchant Kalashnikov.” The opera entitled “Merchant Kalashnikov” was staged in 1880 at the Mariinsky Theater. The author of the libretto was N. Kulikov.

Mikhail Yuryevich’s drama “Masquerade” became the basis for the libretto of the ballet “Masquerade” by A.I. Khachaturyan.

Other Russian writers in music

The drama “The Tsar's Bride” by the famous Russian poet L.A. Meya formed the basis of Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera, written at the end of the 19th century. The action takes place at the court of Ivan the Terrible and bears pronounced features of that era.

Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera “The Pskov Woman” is also dedicated to the theme of royal tyranny and lawlessness of his subjects, the struggle of the free city of Pskov against conquest by Ivan the Terrible, the libretto for which the composer himself wrote based on the drama by L.A. Meya.

Rimsky-Korsakov also wrote music for the opera “The Snow Maiden” based on the fairy tale by the great Russian playwright A.N. Ostrovsky.

Opera based on the fairy tale by N.V. Gogol's "May Night" was written by Rimsky-Korsakov based on the composer's own libretto. Another work of the great writer, “The Night Before Christmas,” became the literary basis of the opera by P.I. Tchaikovsky "Cherevichki".

In 1930, Soviet composer D.D. Shostakovich wrote the opera “Katerina Izmailova” based on the story by N.S. Leskova "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District". Shostakovich's innovative music provoked a barrage of harsh, politically motivated criticism. The opera was removed from the repertoire and restored only in 1962.

Genre is a type of literary work. There are epic, lyrical, dramatic genres. There are also lyric epic genres. Genres are also divided by volume into large (including Romani and epic novels), medium (literary works of “medium size” - stories and poems), small (short story, novella, essay). They have genres and thematic divisions: adventure novel, psychological novel, sentimental, philosophical, etc. The main division is related to the types of literature. We present to your attention the genres of literature in the table.

The thematic division of genres is rather arbitrary. There is no strict classification of genres by topic. For example, if they talk about the genre and thematic diversity of lyrics, they usually single out love, philosophical, and landscape lyrics. But, as you understand, the variety of lyrics is not exhausted by this set.

If you set out to study the theory of literature, it is worth mastering the groups of genres:

• epic, that is, prose genres (epic novel, novel, story, short story, short story, parable, fairy tale);
• lyrical, that is, poetic genres (lyric poem, elegy, message, ode, epigram, epitaph),
• dramatic – types of plays (comedy, tragedy, drama, tragicomedy),
• lyroepic (ballad, poem).

Literary genres in tables

Epic genres

• Epic novel

  Epic novel- a novel depicting folk life in critical historical eras. “War and Peace” by Tolstoy, “Quiet Don” by Sholokhov.

• Novel

  Novel– a multi-issue work depicting a person in the process of his formation and development. The action in the novel is full of external or internal conflicts. By topic there are: historical, satirical, fantastic, philosophical, etc. By structure: novel in verse, epistolary novel, etc.

• Tale

  Tale- an epic work of medium or large form, constructed in the form of a narrative about events in their natural sequence. Unlike the novel, in P. the material is presented chronically, there is no sharp plot, there is no cunning analysis of the feelings of the characters. P. does not pose tasks of a global historical nature.

• Story

  Story– small epic form, a small work with a limited number of characters. In R. most often one problem is posed or one event is described. The novella differs from R. in its unexpected ending.

• Parable

  Parable- moral teaching in allegorical form. A parable differs from a fable in that it draws its artistic material from human life. Example: Gospel parables, the parable of the righteous land, told by Luke in the play “At the Bottom.”

Lyrical genres

• Lyric poem

  Lyric poem- a small form of poetry, written either on behalf of the author or on behalf of a fictional lyrical character. Description of the inner world of the lyrical hero, his feelings, emotions.

• Elegy

  Elegy- a poem imbued with moods of sadness and sadness. As a rule, the content of elegies consists of philosophical reflections, sad thoughts, and grief.

• Message

  Message- a poetic letter addressed to a person. According to the content of the message, there are friendly, lyrical, satirical, etc. The message may be addressed to one person or group of people.

• Epigram

  Epigram- a poem that makes fun of a specific person. Characteristic features are wit and brevity.

• Oh yeah

  Oh yeah- a poem distinguished by solemnity of style and sublimity of content. Praise in verse.

• Sonnet

  Sonnet– a solid poetic form, usually consisting of 14 verses (lines): 2 quatrains (2 rhymes) and 2 tercet tercets

Dramatic genres

• Comedy

  Comedy- a type of drama in which characters, situations and actions are presented in funny forms or imbued with the comic. There are satirical comedies (“The Minor,” “The Inspector General”), high comedies (“Woe from Wit”) and lyrical ones (“The Cherry Orchard”).

• Tragedy

  Tragedy- a work based on an irreconcilable conflict in life, leading to the suffering and death of the heroes. William Shakespeare's play "Hamlet".

• Drama

  Drama- a play with an acute conflict, which, unlike the tragic one, is not so sublime, more mundane, ordinary and can be resolved one way or another. The drama is based on modern rather than ancient material and establishes a new hero who rebelled against circumstances.

Lyric epic genres

(intermediate between epic and lyric)

• Poem

  Poem- an average lyric-epic form, a work with a plot-narrative organization, in which not one, but a whole series of experiences are embodied. Features: the presence of a detailed plot and at the same time close attention to the inner world of the lyrical hero - or an abundance of lyrical digressions. Poem “Dead Souls” by N.V. Gogol

• Ballad

  Ballad- a medium lyric-epic form, a work with an unusual, intense plot. This is a story in verse. A story, told in poetic form, of a historical, mythical or heroic nature. The plot of a ballad is usually borrowed from folklore. Ballads “Svetlana”, “Lyudmila” V.A. Zhukovsky

Old Russian literature represents a historically logical initial stage in the development of all Russian literature as a whole, and includes literary works of the ancient Slavs, written from the 11th to the 17th centuries. The main prerequisites for its appearance can be considered various forms of oral creativity, legends and epics of pagans, etc. The reasons for its emergence are associated with the formation of the ancient Russian state of Kievan Rus, as well as with the baptism of Rus'; it was they who gave impetus to the emergence of Slavic writing, which began to contribute to a more accelerated cultural development of the East Slavic ethnos.

The Cyrillic alphabet, created by the Byzantine enlighteners and missionaries Cyril and Methodius, made it possible to open Byzantine, Greek and Bulgarian books to the Slavs, mainly church books, through which Christian teaching was transmitted. But due to the fact that in those days there were not so many books, in order to distribute them there was a need to copy them; this was mainly done by church ministers: monks, priests or deacons. Therefore, all ancient Russian literature was handwritten, and at that time it happened that texts were not just copied, but rewritten and revised for completely different reasons: the literary tastes of readers changed, various socio-political permutations arose, etc. As a result, at the moment, various versions and editions of the same literary monument have been preserved, and it happens that it is quite difficult to establish the original authorship and a thorough textual analysis is required.

Most of the monuments of ancient Russian literature have reached us without the names of their creators; in essence, they are mostly anonymous, and in this regard, this fact makes them very similar to the works of oral ancient Russian folklore. Old Russian literature is distinguished by the solemnity and majesty of its writing style, as well as its traditional, ceremonial and repetitive nature of plot lines and situations, various literary devices (epithets, phraseological units, comparisons, etc.).

The works of ancient Russian literature include not only the ordinary literature of that time, but also the historical records of our ancestors, the so-called chronicles and chronicle narratives, notes from travelers, according to ancient circulation, as well as various lives of saints and teachings (biographies of people ranked as saints by the church) , essays and messages of an oratorical nature, business correspondence. All monuments of literary creativity of the ancient Slavs are characterized by the presence of elements of artistic creativity and emotional reflection of the events of those years.

Famous ancient Russian works

At the end of the 12th century, an unknown storyteller created a brilliant literary monument of the ancient Slavs, “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign,” which describes the campaign against the Polovtsians of Prince Igor Svyatoslavich from the Novgorod-Seversky Principality, which ended in failure and had sad consequences for the entire Russian land. The author is concerned about the future of all Slavic peoples and their long-suffering Motherland; past and current historical events are recalled.

This work is distinguished by the presence of characteristic features unique to it, there is an original processing of “etiquette”, traditional techniques, the richness and beauty of the Russian language surprises and amazes, the subtlety of rhythmic construction and special lyrical elation fascinate, the nationality of the essence and high civic pathos delight and inspire.

Epics are patriotic songs and tales, they tell about the life and exploits of heroes, describe events in the life of the Slavs in the 9th-13th centuries, express their high moral qualities and spiritual values. The famous epic “Ilya Muromets and the Nightingale the Robber,” written by an unknown storyteller, tells about the heroic exploits of the famous defender of ordinary Russian people, the mighty hero Ilya Muromets, whose meaning in life was to serve the fatherland and protect it from the enemies of the Russian land.

The main negative character of the epic is the mythical Nightingale the Robber, half man, half bird, endowed with a destructive “animal cry”, and is the personification of robbery in Ancient Rus', which brought a lot of troubles and evil to ordinary people. Ilya Muromets acts as a generalized image of an ideal hero, fighting on the side of good and defeating evil in all its manifestations. Of course, in the epic there is a lot of exaggeration and fairy-tale fiction, regarding the fantastic strength of the hero and his physical capabilities, as well as the destructive effect of the Nightingale-Rozboynik’s whistle, but the main thing in this work is the highest goal and meaning of life of the main character, the hero Ilya Muromets - to live and work peacefully on your native land, in difficult times, always be ready to come to the aid of the Fatherland.

A lot of interesting things about the way of life, way of life, beliefs and traditions of the ancient Slavs can be learned from the epic “Sadko”; in the image of the main character (the merchant-guslar Sadko) all the best features and characteristics of the mysterious “Russian soul” are embodied, this is both nobility and generosity , and courage, and resourcefulness, as well as boundless love for the Motherland, a remarkable mind, musical and singing talent. In this epic, both fairy-tale-fantastic and realistic elements are surprisingly intertwined.

One of the most popular genres of ancient Russian literature is Russian fairy tales; they describe fantastic fictional plots, unlike epics, and in which there is necessarily a morality, some kind of obligatory teaching and guidance for the younger generation. For example, the fairy tale “The Frog Princess”, well known to everyone since childhood, teaches little listeners not to rush where there is no need, teaches kindness and mutual assistance and that a kind and purposeful person on the way to his dream will overcome all obstacles and difficulties and will definitely achieve what he wants .

Old Russian literature, consisting of a collection of the greatest historical handwritten monuments, is the national heritage of several peoples at once: Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian, and is the “beginning of all beginnings,” the source of all Russian classical literature and artistic culture in general. Therefore, every modern person who considers himself a patriot of his state and respects its history and the greatest achievements of his people is obliged to know her works and be proud of the great literary talent of his ancestors.

In what works of Russian literature are images of historical figures created and in what ways can they be compared with L. N. Tolstoy’s assessment of real historical figures?

The following images-characters can be used as a literary context: Emelyan Pugachev in the novel by A. S. Pushkin “The Captain's Daughter” and the poem of the same name by S.A. Yesenina, Ivan the Terrible in “Song about the Merchant Kalashnikov”, the imperial court and generals Kornilov, Denikin, Kaledin in the epic of M.A. Sholokhov’s “Quiet Don”, Stalin and Hitler in V. S. Grossman’s epic novel “Life and Fate” (two positions of the student’s choice).

When justifying your choice and comparing the characters in a given direction of analysis, note that the image of Pugachev in A.S. Pushkin, like L. N. Tolstoy’s Napoleon, is subjective, not so much historically specific as subordinate to the author’s idea - to show the tragedy of the “people's king,” which is the product of “Russian rebellion, senseless and merciless.” The impostor is poeticized by the author: he is kind, humane, and fair, unlike his guys.

Point out that the depiction of Pugachev in “The Captain’s Daughter” and Napoleon in the epic “War and Peace” is determined by the writer’s task: for L.N. Tolstoy it is the debunking of Napoleonism, for A.S. Pushkin - poeticization of the image of the “counselor”. Both are characterized by unique personal qualities, military genius, and ambition. Pugachev’s willfulness is manifested in his statement: “Execute like this, execute like this, favor like this: this is my custom...” Despite all the differences in the positions of the impostor and the French emperor, both are shown not only as historical figures, but also as people in their relationships with the people and servants. Rise and fall also distinguish the nature of their fate.

Tell us how in the depiction of Ivan the Terrible by M. Yu. Lermontov in “The Song about the Merchant Kalashnikov,” the prevailing attitude is towards stylization of folk epic works, and therefore towards idealization. Like the French emperor, the Russian tsar is self-willed: if he wants, he executes, if he wants, he has mercy. The injustice of the tsar’s decision regarding the fate of Kalashnikov is compensated by his unquestioned authority among the people.

Remember that in V. S. Grossman’s novel “Life and Fate” Stalin and Hitler appear only as weak-willed slaves of time, hostages of the circumstances they themselves created. Hitler himself gave birth to the magic wand of ideology and believed in it himself. A comparison of grotesquely reduced images of the rulers of two great nations gives the author the opportunity to compare Hitlerism and Stalinism, which must be condemned and overcome.

Summarizing what has been said, note that Tolstoy’s Napoleon is a small man in a gray frock coat with a “fat chest”, “round belly”, trembling calf of his left leg, Grossman’s Stalin is a pockmarked, dark-faced man in a long overcoat (“Shtrum was outraged that Stalin’s name was overshadowed Lenin, his military genius was contrasted with the civilian mindset of Lenin’s mind”). These arbiters of destinies do not realize the strength of the people's spirit.

S. Grossman, following Tolstoy's traditions, orients the reader to comprehend historical patterns. Raised to unprecedented heights, idols then become victims of their own people.

Searched here:

• what works contain historical figures
• name another work of literature in which the image of a king was created
• a Russian work in which the image of the sovereign is created

Homer or Virgil's Aeneid) as non-fiction fiction. In Russia, back in the 1820s, critics agreed that the best examples of Russian prose were “History of the Russian State” by Karamzin and “An Experience in the Theory of Taxes” by Nikolai Turgenev. By separating the fiction of other periods from religious, philosophical, scientific, and journalistic literature, we project our modern ideas into the past.

Nevertheless, literature has a number of universal properties, unchanged in all national cultures and throughout human history, although each of these properties is associated with certain problems and reservations.

• Literature includes author's texts (including anonymous, that is, those in which the author is unknown for one reason or another, and collective, that is, written by a group of people - sometimes quite numerous, if we are talking, for example, about an encyclopedia, but still definite). The fact that the text belongs to a certain author, was created by him, is important in this case not from a legal point of view (cf. copyright) and not from a psychological point of view (the author is a living person, information about whom the reader can try to extract from the text being read), but because that the presence of a certain author in a text provides completeness to this text: the author puts the last point, and after that the text begins to exist on its own. The history of culture knows types of texts that exist according to other rules - for example, folklore: due to the lack of authorship, the text itself is not completely fixed, and the one who once again retells or rewrites it is free to make changes to it, sometimes quite significant. Certain records of such a text may be associated with the name of the writer or scientist who made such a record (for example, “Folk Russian Tales” by Afanasyev), however, such a literary fixation of a non-literary text does not negate the possibility of the existence of other versions of it, and the author of such a record belongs to this particular one the record, not the tale itself.
• Another property is connected with the previous property: literature includes written texts and does not include oral ones. Oral creativity historically precedes writing and, unlike writing, was previously not amenable to fixation. Folklore has always been oral (until the 19th century, when written forms began to appear - for example, maiden albums). Modernity knows, however, transitional and borderline cases. Thus, in national cultures that made a big leap in development in the 20th century, storytellers who were engaged in oral (poetic, on the verge of song) creativity were preserved or are being preserved - before, such songs would have gone into folklore and existed in it, changing and developing in the mouths of others performers, however, in modern times, the works of, for example, Dzhambula were subject to written recording immediately after their creation and therefore exist as literary works. Another way of transforming oral creativity into writing is the so-called “literary recording”: for example, the memoirs of the mother of Zoya and Alexander Kosmodemyansky, repeatedly published as a separate book, were recorded from her words and turned into a literary text by the writer Frida Vigdorova who interviewed her.
• Literature includes texts whose material is exclusively the words of the human language, and does not include synthetic and syncretic texts, that is, those in which the verbal component cannot be separated from the musical, visual or any other. A song or an opera is not itself a part of literature. If the song was written by a composer based on an existing text written by a poet, then the problem does not arise; in the 20th century, however, the ancient tradition, according to which the same author simultaneously creates verbal text and music and (as a rule) performs the resulting work himself, became widespread again. The question of how legitimate it is to extract only the verbal component from the resulting synthetic work and consider it as an independent literary work remains debatable. In a number of cases, synthetic works are still perceived and qualified as literary if there are relatively few non-verbal elements in them (for example, the famous “squiggle” in “The Adventures of Tristram Shandy” by Laurence Sterne or the drawings in the famous children’s book “The Magic Chalk” by Shinken Hopp) ) or their role is fundamentally subordinate (like the role of formulas in mathematical, chemical, physical literature, even if they occupy most of the text). Sometimes, however, the place of additional visual elements in a literary text is so great that considering it as purely literary from a scientific point of view is already a stretch: the most famous of such texts is Saint-Exupery’s fairy tale “The Little Prince”, an important part of which are the author’s drawings.

All three of these criteria are not fully satisfied by some ancient texts, traditionally understood as literary, for example, “Iliad” and “Odyssey”: it is likely that Homer as the single author of these two poems never existed, and the texts of these two poems were formed from ancient Greek folklore performed by storytellers in the form of songs. However, the written recording of these texts in their final form took place so long ago that such a traditional approach can be considered justified.

One more criterion should be added, which relates not to the structure of literary texts, but to their function.

• Literature includes texts that themselves have social meaning (or are designed to have one). This means that private and official correspondence, personal diaries, school essays, etc. are not considered literature. This criterion seems simple and obvious, but in fact it also causes a number of difficulties. On the one hand, personal correspondence can become a fact of literature (fiction or scientific) if it is conducted by significant authors: it is not without reason that collected works of both writers and scientists include a section on letters, and these letters sometimes contain important and valuable information for literature and science; the same applies to the school essays of future writers, scientists, politicians: they can be retroactively drawn into the space of literature, shedding unexpected light on the subsequent work of their authors (for example, a fairy tale written on a school assignment by 14-year-old Saint-Exupery reveals amazing echoes of “The Little Prince”). Moreover, in some cases, writers, philosophers, and publicists purposefully turn private correspondence or a diary into a fact of literature: they write them with an outside reader in mind, publicly perform excerpts, publish them, etc.; Well-known examples of such personal in form, but public in purpose texts are the letters of Russian writers of the 1820s who were part of the literary society "Arzamas", and in modern Russian literature - the correspondence of Vyacheslav Kuritsyn and Alexei Parshchikov, the diary of Sergei Yesin, etc. On the other hand, the status of the artistic work of amateur authors, whose texts remain the property of themselves and a narrow circle of their friends and acquaintances, remains problematic: is it legitimate to consider as a literary phenomenon a poetic greeting composed by a group of employees for the birthday of their boss? New difficulties in this regard arose with the advent of the Internet and the spread of free publishing sites, where anyone can publish their works. Modern scientists (for example, the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu and his followers) are trying to describe the social mechanisms that define literature, art, science and distinguish them from amateurish activities of any kind, but the schemes they propose are not generally accepted and remain the subject of heated debate.

Main types of literature[ | ]

Types of literature can be distinguished both by the content of texts and by their purpose, and it is difficult to fully comply with the principle of unity of basis when classifying literature. In addition, such a classification can be misleading, combining dissimilar and completely different phenomena. Often, typologically different texts from the same era are much closer to each other than typologically identical texts from different eras and cultures: Plato’s Dialogues, which underlie European philosophical literature, have much more in common with other monuments of ancient Greek literature (say, with the dramas of Aeschylus) than with the works of such modern philosophers as Hegel or Russell. The fate of some texts is such that during their creation they gravitate toward one type of literature, and subsequently move towards another: for example, “The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe,” written by Daniel Defoe, are read today rather as a work of children’s literature, and between Therefore, they were written not just as a work of fiction for adults, but as a pamphlet with a significant role of journalistic origin. Therefore, a general list of the main types of literature can only be approximately indicative, and the specific structure of the literary space can only be established in relation to a given culture and a given period of time. For applied purposes, however, these difficulties are not of fundamental importance, so the practical needs of the book trade and libraries are satisfied by fairly extensive, although superficial in approach, library and bibliographic classification systems.

Fiction[ | ]

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

Documentary prose[ | ]

Literature on psychology and self-development[ | ]

Literature on psychology and self-development is literature that gives advice on developing abilities and skills, achieving success in personal life and work, building relationships with others, raising children, etc.

There are also other types of literature: spiritual, religious literature, advertising literature, separated into a separate type (leaflet, brochure, advertising brochure, etc.), and other types, as well as industry groups.