Stories - it's almost easy

In a short article, the definition of the word "story" will be considered. And, it seems, it seems that the form is small, although it is quite capacious, but the task itself seems to be far from trivial, as it seems at first glance. Well, let's start.

Definition

Encyclopedia defines the story as a short narrative form, aimed at a small amount and unambiguous unification of an artistic event. It would seem that everything is simple. Several pages of text, one important event, preferably the main character, perhaps a couple of additional, not so important, brief, but capacious smears of the literary brush. It seems that everything is taken into account. However, there is in this word something mysterious, deep, growing roots from distant times. So let's try to figure out the sources.

Origin of the form

Genetically, stories are tales, fables, anecdotes. What was the emergence of the cultivated phenomenon, grew out of the people's desire to decorate life, make it more understandable, interesting, to understand it, in the end. Indeed, in a fairy tale or epic, a simple man tried to express his natural craving for literature, which was born just with the advent of these ancient genres.

Novella

There is another important term for the understanding of the story, called a novel. The word, of course, comes from the European literary tradition. Russian literary scholars have been plagued with the separation of these two terms from each other, and they never agreed. Someone opposes them, someone identifies them. The meaning of this review is not in knowledge-based fabrications on this topic.

We are only interested in the fact that both genres are so similar that they allow us to add one more feature inherent in both. Time dependence of the content of the form. Each epoch added to the novel these or other nuances. For example, in the time of Romanticism, there was a touch of mysticism. With the arrival of realism, psychologism was added to the novel, as in the Russian story. It is in the literature that the definition of the form by modern trends is accompanied by a gradual change in the entire genre.

Development of the story

At first he was inseparable from the story. The same Gogol gave the definition of the story as its particular variety. Recognized master of the story Chekhov stressed the establishment of the limiting short form. And, it's not even about the number of pages. For example, his "Ionich" by volume is quite good for a good story. However, even here we find the ability to give one or two brief details about the character of the hero, his essence and even the sense of the character's existence.

Another form virtuoso - Nagibin - believed that not so much the selection of details as the speed of their filing, so that the reader almost instantly formed an image. With the speed of reading. Stories - this is not just a small form of narrative, it is the skill of point-feed material at a giant speed of reading, so that the picture appears almost immediately in the head.

Stylistic unity

A small volume of shape gives one more important feature. This is a stylistic unity. Usually the narrative comes from a particular person. It can be the author himself or the hero. Therefore, the unity of speech quite organically fits into the story. The author's definition of the stylistic orientation of his work is manifested in giving the hero certain features of expressing himself. For example, in the stories of Leskov, Zoshchenko, we come across characters speaking like no other. They are incredibly recognizable.

Time trends

As already mentioned, the story is characterized by the tide of time, literary epoch. So, Chekhov is characterized by subtext, unknown even in the middle of the XIX century. In the early twentieth century. Modernism, overwhelmed art, hooked and literature. Here you can recall the stories of Sologub, White. Further more. The artistic discovery of the "stream of consciousness" gave birth to such interesting and very often completely bizarre writers, like Kafka or Camus.

Do not forget about other areas. For example, the heroic Sholokhov. And of course, satire. Bulgakov, Zoshchenko and many others. Stories are a storehouse of interesting and useful, considering that original baggage, which was transferred to the genre as a legacy of fables, an anecdote, etc.

Future

The appearance of a huge amount of media content, as it is now fashionable to say, is frightening to say, gradually replacing literature in its original meaning for society. Now the child is watching the world, mostly through the camera lens. The reading became long and uninteresting. The game of imagination, spurred on by the printed page, goes into the background. Therefore, stories are an opportunity to avoid a paranoid glance into the future, where there is no place for mind games. Particularly pleasing in the context of the development of varieties of form. Fantasy, fantasy, everyday, psychological, satire and others. There is a hope that literature, as a cultural phenomenon, will not perish in a sea of media content.

Conclusion

This attempt is completed with a short prosaic form called "story". It was quite easy to define it, but to understand the real depth of the genre, its influence on literature, on the consciousness of a person, is much more difficult. Nevertheless, this form, with its deep historical roots, continues to exist in numerous works of real enthusiasts, which is an earthly bow. Readers are also advised not to forget that imagination is more important than a media semi-finished product.