Similarities between the story and the novella. How does a novella differ from a short story?

Foreign critics do not find any difference between such literary concepts as story and novella. In the West, these terms are called synonyms. However, in Russia, the short story and the short story are considered independent genres that have special features. Before determining the difference between a novella and a short story, each of these literary phenomena should be examined in detail.

What is a story?

The story, as a genre of literature, originates from ancient times, where its ancestors were works of folklore: fairy tales, parables, stories passed on from mouth to mouth. Then, changing over time and, along with other prose genres, passing through certain historical stages, the story began to take shape as short work about an event in the life of one person.

Today the story is narrative literary genre characterized by brevity, richness artistic image, deep psychologism, short-term nature of the described event.

The plot of the story is focused on one important and interesting episode from the life of the main character. Your personal attitude and main idea the author, as a rule, shows through a detailed and expressive description of the appearance and character of the main characters and the hero himself, their thoughts and mental anguish. The narration is usually told in the first person. The narrator can be either the author himself or one of the heroes of the work.

What is a novella?

The short story, as a literary genre, arose during the Renaissance after the writing of the book “The Decameron” Giovanni Boccaccio. Then the main features of the novella were considered: the presence of an acute conflict in the plot, unexpected turns, disrupting the peaceful course of life of the protagonist.

Over time, the short story genre has changed, acquiring new features. Thus, the short stories of the Romantic era, written by Edgar Allan Poe, Novalis and Hoffmann, had a fantastic, mystical, fabulous content. Later, under the influence of Guy de Maupassant and Prosper Merimee, the short story began to be considered an exclusively realistic genre.

In Russia, the short story, as a literary genre, was able to take shape thanks to Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin. His work "" is considered to be the first Russian short story. Although the title contains the word “stories,” literary scholars and critics are still convinced that “The Stories of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin” refers specifically to short stories.

Later, the short story genre absorbed much of the physiological essay. So the short story became an essay-novel. Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol wrote wonderful essays and short stories, such as “ Nose", "" and others, which in their content were far from a short story in the classical sense.

Only in the 20th century was the short story genre inspired new life. The landmark works of this time are considered to be the short stories of Sigismund Krzhizhanovsky and Alexander Green.

Nowadays, the short story is a prose literary genre, which is characterized by: small volume, neutral style of depiction, action-packed, unexpected ending. The author's attention is focused not on the emotional experiences of the characters, but on the events occurring in the work. His goal is to show the situation objectively, without expressing his personal attitude, to achieve maximum intensity of passions and lead to an unpredictable end. The novella has only one storyline, any deviations from the main action are unacceptable. The number of actors is also limited. The appearance of new characters or mention of them is allowed only on the condition that the scenes with their participation will strengthen the overall dynamics of the plot.

So, having examined in detail the genres of short stories and short stories, we can highlight their common and distinctive features.

Common features of a short story and a short story

First of all, the short story and short story belong to the epic narrative genres.
Works of both genres should be small in volume and presented as briefly as possible. Although sometimes the volume of the story can reach several dozen pages.
The plots of novellas and short stories are limited to certain time frames.
The plots of the novel and short story have a clear structure, the main elements of which are the climax and denouement.
The plots of novellas and short stories highlight one specific event in the life of the main character.

The main differences between a novella and a short story

The story describes the events with greater artistic expression than in the novella.
The author of the story freely shows his personal attitude to what is happening in the work, the main characters, their thoughts and actions. For the author of a novel this is unacceptable. Main feature short stories are the absence of any authorial assessment.
In the story, the author strives to show the internal development of the main character and the motives of his actions. For a novella, the main thing is the dynamics of the plot and the severity of the conflict. The novella depicts the event without analyzing the psychology of the characters.
The severity of the conflict in the novella is more pronounced than in the story.
Very often the story carries hidden subtext. No other interpretations of the main plot are allowed in the novella.
A story may contain several subplots. There is only one in the story storyline.

Although in Russian literary criticism the short story is distinguished as an independent literary genre, Russian writers it is rarely addressed, giving preference to the story. Many Russian critics are unanimous with Western colleagues that the short story and the short story are so close, and their differences are not so significant, to consider the short story an independent genre. They equate a short story with a story, or consider a short story to be one of the varieties of a story.

Prose- oral or written language without division into commensurate segments - poetry; in contrast to poetry, its rhythm is based on the approximate correlation of syntactic structures (periods, sentences, columns). Sometimes the term is used as a contrast fiction in general, scientific or journalistic literature, that is, not related to art.

Literary genres in prose

Despite the fact that the concept of genre determines the content of a work, and not its form, most genres gravitate towards either poetic writing (poems, plays) or prose (novels, stories). This division, however, cannot be taken literally, since there are many examples when works various genres written in a form unusual for them. Examples of this are novels and short stories by Russian poets, written in poetic form: “Count Nulin”, “House in Kolomna”, “Eugene Onegin” by Pushkin, “Treasurer”, “Sashka” by Lermontov. In addition, there are genres that are equally often written both in prose and in poetry (fairy tale).

In number literary genres, traditionally classified as prose, include:

Novel- large in volume narrative work with a complex and developed plot. The novel involves a detailed narrative about the life and personality development of the main character (heroes) during a crisis, non-standard period of life.

Epic- an epic work of monumental form, distinguished by national issues. Epic is a generic designation for large epic and similar works:

1) An extensive narrative in poetry or prose about outstanding national historical events.
2) A complex, long history of something, including a number of major events.

The emergence of the epic was preceded by the circulation of epic songs of a semi-lyrical, semi-narrative nature, caused by the military exploits of the clan, tribe and dedicated to the heroes around whom they were grouped. These songs formed into large poetic units - epics - captured by the integrity of personal design and construction, but only nominally associated with one or another author.

Tale- genus epic work, close to a novel, depicts some episode from life; It differs from the novel in the less completeness and breadth of pictures of everyday life and morals. This genre does not have a stable volume and occupies an intermediate place between the novel, on the one hand, and the story or short story, on the other, gravitates towards newsreel story, reproducing the natural course of life. In foreign literary criticism, the specifically Russian concept of “story” correlates with “ short novel"(English: short novel or novella).

In Russia the first thirds of the XIX century, the term “story” corresponded to what is now called “story”. The concept of a story or short story was not known at that time, and the term “story” meant everything that did not reach the volume of a novel. A story was also called a short story about an incident, sometimes anecdotal (“The Stroller” by Gogol, “The Shot” by Pushkin).

The plot of a classic story (as it developed in the second half of the 19th century) usually centers around a protagonist, whose identity and fate are revealed within a few events. Side plot lines in a story (unlike a novel), as a rule, are absent; the narrative chronotope is concentrated on a narrow period of time and space.

Sometimes the author himself characterizes the same work in different genre categories. Thus, Turgenev first called “Rudin” a story, and then a novel. The titles of stories are often associated with the image of the main character (“ Poor Lisa"N. M. Karamzin, "René" by R. Chateaubriand, "Netochka Nezvanova" by F. M. Dostoevsky) or with a key element of the plot ("The Hound of the Baskervilles" by A. Conan-Doyle, "The Steppe" by A. P. Chekhov, " Uyezdnoye" E.I. Zamyatina and others).

Novella(Italian novella - “news”) is a literary short narrative genre, comparable in volume to a story (which sometimes gives rise to their identification), but differing from it in genesis, history and structure. The author of the stories is usually called a short story writer, and the collection of stories is called a short story.

Novella - more short form literary prose than a story or novel. Goes back to folklore genres oral retelling in the form of legends or instructive allegories and parables. Compared to more developed narrative forms, stories have few characters and one plot line (rarely several) with the characteristic presence of a single problem.

The relationship between the terms “story” and “short story” has not received an unambiguous interpretation in Russian and earlier Soviet literary criticism. Most languages do not know the difference between these concepts at all. B.V. Tomashevsky calls the story a specifically Russian synonym for the international term “short story.” Another representative of the school of formalism, B. M. Eikhenbaum, proposed to separate these concepts on the basis that the short story is plot-based, and the story is more psychological and reflexive, closer to a plotless essay. The action-packed nature of the novella was also pointed out by Goethe, who considered it to be the subject of “an unheard-of event that has happened.” With this interpretation, the short story and the essay are two opposite aspects of the story.
Using the example of the work of O. Henry, Eikhenbaum identified the following features of the short story in its purest, “unclouded” form: brevity, sharp plot, neutral style of presentation, lack of psychologism, unexpected denouement. A story, in Eikhenbaum’s understanding, does not differ from a short story in volume, but differs in structure: characters or events are given detailed psychological characteristics, the visual and verbal texture comes to the fore.

The distinction between a short story and a short story, proposed by Eikhenbaum, received certain, although not universal, support in Soviet literary criticism. Authors of short stories are still called short story writers, and “a set of small-scale epic genres” are called short stories. The distinction between terms, unknown to foreign literary studies, also loses its meaning in relation to experimental prose of the 20th century (for example, short prose Gertrude Stein or Samuel Beckett).
The typical structure of a classic short story: beginning, climax, denouement. The exhibition is optional. More romance early XIX centuries, the unexpected “falcon” turn (the so-called pointe) in the novella was appreciated, which corresponds in Aristotle’s poetics to the moment of recognition, or peripeteia. In this regard, Viktor Shklovsky noted that the description of a happy mutual love does not create a novella; a novella requires love with obstacles: “A loves B, B does not love A; when B fell in love with A, then A no longer loves B.”

Story- a small epic genre form of fiction - small in terms of the volume of life phenomena depicted, and hence in terms of the volume of its text.

The stories of one author are characterized by cyclization. In the traditional writer-reader relationship model, the story is typically published in a periodical; The works accumulated over a certain period are then published as a separate book as a collection of short stories.

Short story/short story and novella/novel

To mid-19th centuries, the concepts of story and story in Russia were not really distinguished. Any small narrative form was called a story, any large form was called a novel. Later, the idea prevailed that a story differs from a short story in that the plot in it focuses not on one central event, but on a whole series of events covering a significant part of the life of the hero, and often several heroes. The story is calmer and more leisurely than a short story or short story.

It is generally accepted that an individual short story as a whole is not characterized by wealth artistic paints, an abundance of intrigue and interweaving in events - in contrast to a story or novel, which can describe many conflicts and wide circle various problems and actions. At the same time, H. L. Borges pointed out that after the novelistic revolution turn of the XIX century and 20th centuries a story is able to convey everything that a novel does, without requiring excessive amounts of time and attention from the reader.

For Edgar Allan Poe, a novella is fictional story, which can be read in one sitting; for H.G. Wells - in less than an hour. Nevertheless, the distinction between a short story and other “small forms” from a novel based on the criterion of volume in to a large extent conditionally. So, for example, “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” is usually defined as a story (a day in the life of one character), although in length this text is closer to a novel. On the contrary, small works by René Chateaubriand or Paolo Coelho with love entanglements and intrigues are considered novels.

Some of Chekhov's stories, despite their small volume, are a kind of mini-novels. For example, in the textbook story “Ionych,” the author “managed to condense, without loss, the grandiose volume of the entire human life, in all its tragicomic completeness, into 18 pages of text.” In terms of compressing material, Leo Tolstoy advanced almost further than all the classics: in short story"Alyosha Pot" whole human life told in just a few pages.

Essay- a prose composition of small volume and free composition, expressing individual impressions and considerations on a specific occasion or issue and obviously not claiming to be a definitive or exhaustive interpretation of the subject.

In terms of volume and function, it borders, on the one hand, with scientific article And literary essay(with which an essay is often confused), on the other - with a philosophical treatise. The essayistic style is characterized by imagery, fluidity of associations, aphoristic, often antithetical thinking, an emphasis on intimate frankness and conversational intonation. Some theorists consider it as the fourth, along with epic, lyricism and drama, type of fiction.

The essay genre was not typical for Russian literature. Examples of the essayistic style are found in A. N. Radishchev (“Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow”), A. I. Herzen (“From the Other Shore”), F. M. Dostoevsky (“A Writer’s Diary”). At the beginning of the 20th century, V. I. Ivanov, D. S. Merezhkovsky, Andrei Bely, Lev Shestov, V. V. Rozanov turned to the essay genre, and later - Ilya Erenburg, Yuri Olesha, Viktor Shklovsky, Konstantin Paustovsky, Joseph Brodsky. Literary critical assessments modern critics, as a rule, are embodied in a variation of the essay genre.

Biography- an essay that sets out the history of the life and activities of a person. a description of a person's life, made by other people or by himself (autobiography). Biography is a source of primary sociological information that allows us to identify psychological type personality in its historical, national and social conditioning.

A biography recreates a person's history in connection with social reality, culture and way of life of his era. A biography can be scientific, artistic, popular, etc.

A story is a large literary form of written information in literary and artistic design. When recording oral retellings, the story became isolated as an independent genre in written literature.

The story as an epic genre

The distinctive features of the story are a small number of characters, little content, and one storyline. The story does not have intertwining events and cannot contain a variety of artistic colors.

Thus, a story is a narrative work, which is characterized by a small volume, a small number of characters and the short duration of the events depicted. This view epic genre goes back to the folklore genres of oral retelling, to allegories and parables.

In the 18th century, the difference between essays and stories was not yet defined, but over time, a story began to be distinguished from an essay by the conflict of the plot. There is a difference between the story of "large forms" and the story of "small forms", but often this distinction is arbitrary.

There are stories in which the characteristic features of a novel can be traced, and there are also small works with one plot line, which are still called a novel and not a story, despite the fact that all the signs point to this type of genre.

Novella as an epic genre

Many people believe that a short story is a certain type of story. But still, the definition of a short story sounds like a type of short prose work. The short story differs from the short story in its plot, which is often sharp and centripetal, in the rigor of its composition and volume.

A novella most often reveals a pressing problem or issue through one event. As a sample literary genre, the short story originated in the Renaissance - the most famous example is Boccaccio's Decameron. Over time, the novella began to depict paradoxical and unusual incidents.

The heyday of the short story as a genre is considered to be the period of romanticism. Famous writers P. Merimee, E.T.A. Hoffman and Gogol wrote short stories, the central line of which was to destroy the impression of familiar everyday life.

Novels that depicted fateful events and the play of fate with man appeared at the beginning of the 20th century. Writers such as O. Henry, S. Zweig, A. Chekhov, I. Bunin paid considerable attention to the short story genre in their work.

The story as an epic genre

Such prose genre, as a story, is an intermediate place between a short story and a novel. Initially, the story was a source of narration about some real, historical events (“The Tale of Bygone Years”, “The Tale of the Battle of Kalka”), but later it became a separate genre to reproduce the natural course of life.

The peculiarity of the story is that in the center of its plot there is always main character and his life is the revelation of his personality and the path of his destiny. The story is characterized by a sequence of events in which harsh reality is revealed.

A similar topic extremely relevant for such an epic genre. Famous stories are " Stationmaster"A. Pushkin, "Poor Liza" by N. Karamzin, "The Life of Arsenyev" by I. Bunin, "The Steppe" by A. Chekhov.

The importance of artistic detail in storytelling

For a full disclosure of the writer’s intention and for a complete understanding of the meaning literary work artistic detail is very important. This could be a detail of an interior, a landscape or a portrait; the key point here is that the writer emphasizes this detail, thereby drawing the attention of readers to it.

This serves as a way to highlight some psychological trait the main character or mood that characterizes the work. It is noteworthy that important role artistic detail is that it alone can replace many narrative details. In this way, the author of the work emphasizes his attitude towards the situation or person.

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The story and novella belong to the narrative epic genre and have some common characteristic features: small volume, clearly defined plot, dynamic development of action with a pronounced climax and denouement. However, the novella also has distinctive genre features, allowing it to be distinguished from a number of works modern prose into an independent literary form.

Definition

Novella– small in volume prose work, which is characterized by a sharp plot with an unexpected outcome, brevity and a neutral style of presentation, as well as the absence of a pronounced author's position in relation to literary heroes.

Story- a type of works of the epic genre, which are characterized by a narration of events from the life of the main character, revealing the psychological aspect of his actions or state of mind.

Comparison

The novella is distinguished by its emphasized brevity of the narrative. It does not allow direct author's assessment actions literary characters or conditions that determine the development of the events described.

In the story, such an assessment is indirectly expressed in portrait characteristics and copyright disclaimers. It is necessary to reveal a topic that is often associated with identifying psychological factors that are fundamentally important for understanding the mental state of the protagonist. His behavior in an unusual life situation forms the basis of the plot of the story. The plot action is limited to a narrow time frame and tied to a specific place of events.

There is no psychologism in the novella. The most important thing in it is the extraordinary event that sets the dynamic tension of the plot. The focus of the reader's attention is not so much on the hero, but on what happens to him. The novelist does not seek to create a deep subtext of the main content of his small work. His task is to add spice to the plot and achieve the utmost intensity of the narrative at the climax.

With a limited number of characters in a story, a subplot can develop. In a short story, the plot cannot have a branched structure. Event-wise, it is connected only with what happens to the main character. Other characters appear extremely rarely in the story: as a rule, only if an additional episode with their participation enhances the dynamics of the action.

Conclusions website

In the novella the sharpness of the plot is expressed in to a greater extent than in the story.
The short story is characterized by a neutral style of presentation, while the story uses the author's assessment characteristic characters or events.
In the story, the action reveals the motivation for the hero's actions. The novella depicts the action itself and lacks techniques psychological analysis character behavior.
The story may have hidden subtext that is important for implementation author's intention. The novel does not allow ambiguity in interpretations of the main theme.

Novella and short story - these two literary concepts almost identical. However, this is only at first glance. Valid in European tradition the concept of a short story is often used as a synonym for a story. However, in Russian literary criticism, the short story and the short story, although they have common features, however, are quite clearly separated. Let's look at the difference between a story and a novella in more detail.

So what is a story? This small form epic prose, which is characterized by the unity of the artistic event. What is a novella? This is also a small form of epic prose; it is characterized by an unpredictable, unexpected ending. As we can see from the definitions presented, a short story and a short story are united by a small volume. Some literary scholars classify the short story as a type of short story. However, there are some differences between the story and the novella.

First of all, the main place in the story is occupied by the author's narration, various descriptions, starting from landscape sketches and ending psychological state hero. In addition, the story, as a rule, clearly expresses the position of the author, his subjective assessment of the events described. The story describes an incident that could happen to any person. A character in a story may be given detailed characteristics. The short story as a genre is more common in Russian literature.

What is the difference between a novella and a short story? The novella is not characterized by psychologism. In the novel you will not find descriptions, ratings or other characteristics. The author of the novel puts an unusual, extraordinary plot at the forefront. And if the story is turned to the contemplative side human existence, then the short story is an active one.

So, the main difference between a story and a short story is the artistry of what is depicted. This is achieved not through a tense plot and the unusual nature of what is happening (as in a short story), but through all kinds of descriptions.