Novella is a literary genre, the art of a short story

Novella is a small narrative prose, a special literary genre, close to a short story, essay, essay. This work differs in a clearly delineated plot with a culmination and a finale. Another difference between the novel and the literary works of other genres is the limited number of characters. If in a novel or a story there are usually up to two dozen characters, there are only two or three in the story. The art of a short story is precisely to bring to the reader the content of a fairly broad topic, summarized in a condensed form.

Novella as a literary genre

Usually novels are combined by the author into small cycles, as was customary in one of the most famous novelists, the American writer O. Henry (William Sidney Porter). O'Henry's novels were divided into separate categories. For example, the cycle "Noble crook" was composed of short stories-short stories about two scammers named Andy Tucker and Jeff Peters, and the cycle "Business people" included several short stories about the adventures of criminal characters - "Leader of the Redskins", "Bolivar not carry Two ", " Soul mates " and others.

Russian novels

Russian writers, unlike French and American novelists, did not put the novel at the center of their creative work, but applied a short narrative from case to case. The work of Alexander Pushkin "The Tale of Belkin", written in 1830, is an example. However, the briefly stated topic does not mean that the narrative is less significant than a voluminous novel or story. Even such a fundamental writer as Dostoevsky, at the dawn of his work wrote novels ("Mistress", "Double").

Russian writers-novelists

Russian novels in the classical sense of this genre came from the pen of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, who in some cases wrote unfolded - "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka", and in others more succinctly - "Overcoat". And in that, and in another case the plot was fully revealed, and hence the artistic value of the work is unquestionable.

Russian writer-playwright Anton Pavlovich Chekhov wrote novels in a manner peculiar only to him, which can be defined as "Chekhov's". The bottom line is that the writer was able to put the whole life of a character in a short story, sometimes quite long and eventful. Selected novels of Chekhov with a limited volume look like mini-novels. In the story "Jonich" the writer managed to reflect human life in full, all its tragicomic content, on 15 pages. Similar examples of "compressed" creativity are also found in Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy, and one of them is a short story "Alyosha Gorshok."

Novella and the plot

Since the novel is a literary genre that involves the sharpness of the story, it can be used to write unusual works. If the story describes the unhurried development of events with a predictable end, then the novel necessarily contains elements of tension, mystery and spectacular final surprise. In the beginning and in the middle of the narrative, the neutral style dominates, the complete absence of psychologism, and then follows the ending, unexpected and often illogical. In the story or short story, on the contrary, the author tries to reveal the psychological nuances of the narrative, much attention is paid to the nature of the character, his deep essence.

Writer and scientist Edgar Allan Poe

Novella is also a literary genre that is ideal for "dark" stories, detective stories and cemetery horrors. Outstanding writer-novelist deservedly recognized American Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849). The genres in which the writer worked were unique and extremely unusual: literary mystification, horror literature. Edgar Poe was not only a writer. His pen also belongs to the study book "The first book of a conchologist." This is the work of a mature scientist, devoted to the study of shells of mollusks. Based on the research, a complete illustrated guide to conchology was created.

The writer, poet, scientist Edgar Po wrote for his short life about a hundred short stories, each of which can be considered a masterpiece of literary art, despite the unusual content. This is the "Golden Beetle", "Murder on the Street Morgue," "Raven." Edgar Po's poetic works did not receive the proper recognition during his lifetime. As the poet James Lowell figuratively remarked, By talented hewed a heap of poetic stones, but they still remained on the site, the foundation of them was not built.

Here are some short stories by Edgar Poe, elected:

• Year 1832 - "Bon Bon", "Without breath," "Merzengerstein," "On the walls of Jerusalem."
• Year 1833 - "Folio Club", "buried alive", "Manuscript in a Bottle", "Four Beasts in One".
• Year 1835 - "King of Plague", "Shadow", "Morella", "Pages from the life of a celebrity", "Berenika."

Novella is a literary genre that combines almost all the possibilities of prose, which has a great potential for expressing the creative thought of the writer.