What is the grotesque in literature?

Grotesque in literature first appears in the Renaissance, for which was characterized by "carnival" culture and the use of bizarre images, known since the era of the ancient era. First the plot of works with such elements was based on a combination of opposites - death and birth, low and high feelings, disgrace and beauty. And in the later developed romantic grotesque, the criterion is the crying dissonance, which expresses the tragic incompatibility of objective reality and ideal, the automation and mortification of life, and the distortion of its most important features.

Often the grotesque in literature becomes a special and unprecedented world, opposed to gray reality and ordinary everyday life. To a certain extent, it borders on fantasy, as writers and poets resort to the use of mythical and fairy-tale images, the animation of non-living objects and the imparting of human character to animals. Grotesque in literature is observed in works of various genres - in fairy tales, novels, novels.

One of the brightest examples of this direction is the tale "The Bear in the Voivodeship" written by Saltykov-Shchedrin, where an ignorant official hides under the image of an animal about to "ruin" universities and print shops. And in relation to not glittering mind the mayor applies the phrase "stuffed head", associated with the gluttony of a representative of the authorities. Similar methods apply and Bulgakov in the sensational novel "Master and Margarita", where readers notice the bizarre combination of the life of Muscovites with the mystical image of Woland.

Creativity Gogol

Natural relations and connections in works become illogical, which is especially noticeable in Gogol's novel The Nose. Thus, the writer describes the disappearance of Kovalev's nose, his flight from the "master" and his subsequent inexplicable return to the place. Analyzing the grotesque in literature, examples of which are inherent in other works of the writer, one can distinguish the contact of incompatible phenomena, and the contrast between high and low feelings is often colored in comic tones.

This is clearly seen in the work "The Old-World Landlords," where he associates food with the natural way of life, and deep individualized feelings - with higher human abilities. For "Overcoat" is characterized by a traditional motive of automation, where each person is forced to obey the instructions of the authorities. This situation is an integral part of the image of Akaky Akakiyevich, who, despite his comic nature, remains an unhappy man.

Creativity of Soviet writers

The works of literature, written by Gogol, influenced the work of other writers of the 60-70s of the XX century. A similar vision is characteristic of the prose of Daniel and Sinyavsky, which contains paraphrases of some Gogolian themes. In addition, in the work "Cap" written by Voinovich, the attentive reader will find practically direct quoting of the sayings that have already been mentioned in the story "Overcoat".

Thanks to grotesque poetics, late writers who lived in the middle of the twentieth century expressed the phantasmagoric, ugly and unnatural nature of the Soviet social order. In the 1970s, there was a significant gap between the socio-ideological language of party workers and real historical tragedies, which could not but affect the creative work of courageous people. Grotesque was widely used in the literature by V. Maramzin, I. Guberman, A. Zinoviev, V. Aksenov, Yu. Aleshkovsky, A. Galich, however, due to the inconsistency of the subjects of their works with Soviet ideological guidelines, these authors were forced to emigrate.