Topic idea main idea. Artistic idea

The gasoline is yours, the ideas are ours

When analyzing literary work traditionally use the concept of “idea,” which most often means the answer to a question supposedly posed by the author.

The idea of ​​a literary work - This the main idea, summarizing the semantic, figurative, emotional content of a literary work.

Artistic idea works - this is content-semantic integrity work of art as a product of emotional experience and mastery of life by the author. This idea cannot be recreated by means of other arts and logical formulations; it is expressed throughout artistic structure work, the unity and interaction of all its formal components. Conventionally (and in a narrower sense), an idea stands out as the main thought, ideological conclusion and “life lesson” that naturally follows from a holistic comprehension of the work.

An idea in literature is a thought contained in a work. There are a great many ideas expressed in literature. Exist logical ideas And abstract ideas . Logical ideas are concepts that are easily conveyed without figurative means; we are able to perceive them with our intellect. Logical ideas are characteristic of nonfiction literature. Fictional novels and stories are characterized by philosophical and social generalizations, ideas, analyzes of causes and consequences, that is, abstract elements.

But there is also special kind very subtle, barely perceptible ideas of a literary work. Artistic idea is a thought embodied in figurative form. It lives only in figurative transformation and cannot be expressed in the form of sentences or concepts. The peculiarity of this thought depends on the disclosure of the topic, the author’s worldview, conveyed by the speech and actions of the characters, and on the depiction of pictures of life. It is in the combination of logical thoughts, images, all significant compositional elements. An artistic idea cannot be reduced to a rational idea that can be specified or illustrated. The idea of ​​this type is integral to the image, to the composition.

Forming an artistic idea is difficult creative process. In literature it is influenced personal experience, the writer’s worldview, understanding of life. An idea can be nurtured for years and decades, and the author, trying to realize it, suffers, rewrites the manuscript, and looks for suitable means of implementation. All themes, characters, all events selected by the author are necessary for a more complete expression of the main idea, its nuances and shades. However, it is necessary to understand that an artistic idea is not equal ideological plan, that plan that often appears not only in the writer’s head, but also on paper. Exploring non-fictional reality, reading diaries, notebooks, manuscripts, archives, literary scholars restore the history of the idea, the history of creation, but often do not discover the artistic idea. Sometimes it happens that the author goes against himself, yielding to the original plan for the sake of artistic truth, an internal idea.

One thought is not enough to write a book. If you know in advance everything you would like to talk about, then you should not contact artistic creativity. Better - to criticism, journalism, journalism.

The idea of ​​a literary work cannot be contained in one phrase and one image. But writers, especially novelists, sometimes struggle to formulate the idea of ​​their work. Dostoevsky about “The Idiot” he wrote: “The main idea of ​​the novel is to portray positively wonderful person" For such a declarative ideology Dostoevsky scolded, for example, Nabokov. Indeed, the phrase of the great novelist does not clarify why, why he did it, what the artistic and life basis his image. But here you can hardly take sides Nabokov, a down-to-earth second-line writer, never, unlike Dostoevsky who does not set himself creative super-tasks.

Along with the attempts of authors to determine the so-called main idea of ​​their work, opposite, although no less confusing, examples are known. Tolstoy to the question “what is “War and Peace”? answered as follows: ““War and Peace” is what the author wanted and could express in the form in which it was expressed.” Reluctance to translate the idea of ​​your work into the language of concepts Tolstoy demonstrated once again, speaking about the novel “Anna Karenina”: “If I wanted to say in words everything that I had in mind to express in a novel, then I would have to write the very one that I wrote first” (from a letter to N.Strakhov).

Belinsky very accurately pointed out that “art does not allow abstract philosophical, much less rational ideas: it allows only poetic ideas; and the poetic idea is<…>It’s not a dogma, it’s not a rule, it’s a living passion, pathos.”

V.V. Odintsov expressed his understanding of the category “artistic idea” more strictly: “Idea literary composition is always specific and is not directly derived not only from those lying outside it individual statements writer (facts of his biography, public life etc.), but also from the text - from replicas goodies, journalistic inserts, comments by the author himself, etc.”

2000 ideas for novels and stories

Literary critic G.A. Gukovsky also spoke about the need to distinguish between rational, that is, rational, and literary ideas: “By idea I mean not only a rationally formulated judgment, statement, not even just the intellectual content of a work of literature, but the entire sum of its content, constituting its intellectual function, its goal and task.” And he further explained: “To understand the idea of ​​a literary work means to understand the idea of ​​each of its components in their synthesis, in their systemic interconnection.<…>. At the same time, it is important to take into account the structural features of the work - not only the words-bricks from which the walls of the building are made, but the structure of the combination of these bricks as parts of this structure, their meaning.”

The idea of ​​a literary work is an attitude towards what is depicted, the fundamental pathos of the work, a category that expresses the author’s tendency (inclination, intention, preconceived thought) in the artistic coverage of a given topic. In other words, idea is the subjective basis of a literary work. It is noteworthy that in Western literary criticism, based on other methodological principles, instead of the category “artistic idea”, the concept of “intention”, a certain premeditation, the tendency of the author to express the meaning of the work is used.

The greater the artistic idea, the longer the work lives. The creators of pop literature who write outside of great ideas face very rapid oblivion.

V.V. Kozhinov called an artistic idea a semantic type of work that grows out of the interaction of images. An artistic idea, unlike a logical idea, is not formulated by an author’s statement, but is depicted in all the details of the artistic whole.

IN epic works the idea can be partly formulated in the text itself, as was the case in the narrative Tolstoy: “There is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness and truth.” More often, especially in lyric poetry, the idea permeates the structure of the work and therefore requires great analytical work. A work of art as a whole is much richer than the rational idea that critics usually isolate, and in many lyrical works isolating an idea is simply impossible, because it practically dissolves in pathos. Consequently, the idea of ​​a work should not be reduced to a conclusion or a lesson, and in general one should certainly look for it.

Subject(gr. thema literally means something underlying) - this is an object of knowledge. Subjects- these are those phenomena of life that are reflected in the work.

In ancient times, it was believed that the integrity of a literary work was determined by the unity of the main character. But Aristotle also drew attention to the fallacy of such a view, pointing out that the stories about Hercules remain different stories, although dedicated to one person, and the Iliad, which tells about many heroes, does not cease to be an integral work.

What gives a work its holistic character is not the hero, but the unity of the problem posed in it, the unity of the idea being revealed.

The subject of depiction in works of literature can be a variety of phenomena. human life, natural life, flora and fauna, as well as material culture (buildings, furnishings, views of cities, etc.).

But the main subject of knowledge in fiction is the characteristic features of human life. These are the social characters of people both in their external manifestations, relationships, activities, and in their internal, mental life.

Yesin: Subject -"an object artistic reflection, those life characters and situations that seem to pass from reality into a work of art and form the objective side of its content.”

Tomashevsky:“Unity of meanings of individual elements of a work. It brings together the components of an artistic design.”

The plot may be the same, but the theme is different. In popular literature, the plot weighs heavily on the theme. Life very often becomes the object of depiction.

The topic is often determined by the author’s literary preferences and his belonging to a certain group.

The concept of internal theme is themes that are cross-cutting for the writer; this is the thematic unity that unites all his works.

The theme is the organizing beginning of the work.

Problem - this highlighting of some aspect, the emphasis on it, which is resolved as the work unfolds, is the writer’s ideological understanding of the social characters that he depicted in the work. The writer highlights and enhances those properties, aspects, relationships of the characters depicted that he considers the most significant.

The problem is still to a greater extent than the subject depends on the worldview of the author. Therefore, the life of the same social environment can be perceived differently by writers who have different ideological worldviews.

Moliere in the comedy “Tartuffe,” having portrayed the main character as a rogue and a hypocrite who deceives straightforward and honest people, depicted all his thoughts and actions as manifestations of this main negative character trait. The name Tartuffe became a common noun for hypocrites.

Idea- this is what the author wants to say, why this work was written.

It is thanks to the expression of ideas in images that literary works have such a strong effect on the thoughts, feelings, will of readers and listeners, on their entire inner world.

The attitude to life expressed in a work, or its ideological and emotional assessment, always depends on the writer’s understanding of the characters he portrays and follows from his worldview.

The idea of ​​a literary work is the unity of all aspects of its content; this is a figurative, emotional, generalizing thought of the writer.

The reader is usually sinceregives in to the illusion that everything depicted in the productionknowledge is life itself; he is addicted to action,the fate of the heroes, experiences their joys, sympathizes with themsuffering or internally condemns it. Whereinthe reader often does not immediately realize what essentialfeatures are embodied in the heroes and in the entire course of the artof the events being described and what significance the details havetheir actions and experiences.

But these detailsare created by the writer in order to, through them, elevate the characters of some heroes in the minds of the reader and reduce the characters of others.

Just by re-reading the works andby thinking about them, the reader can come to the realizationwhat general properties lives are embodied in those orother heroes and how they are comprehended and evaluated by the writertel. Literary criticism often helps him in this.

SUBJECT- Subject, main content of reasoning, presentation, creativity. (S. Ozhegov. Dictionary of the Russian language, 1990.)
SUBJECT(Greek Thema) - 1) The subject of presentation, depiction, research, discussion; 2) statement of the problem, which predetermines the selection of life material and character artistic storytelling; 3) the subject of the linguistic utterance (...). (Dictionary of Foreign Words, 1984.)

Already these two definitions can confuse the reader: in the first, the word “theme” is equated in meaning to the term “content,” while the content of a work of art is immeasurably broader than the topic, the topic is one of the aspects of the content; the second makes no distinction between the concepts of topic and problem, and although topic and problem are philosophically related, they are not the same thing, and you will soon understand the difference.

The following definition of the topic, accepted in literary criticism, is preferable:

SUBJECT- This life phenomenon, which became the subject of artistic consideration in the work. The range of such life phenomena is SUBJECT literary work. All phenomena of the world and human life constitute the artist’s sphere of interests: love, friendship, hatred, betrayal, beauty, ugliness, justice, lawlessness, home, family, happiness, deprivation, despair, loneliness, struggle with the world and oneself, solitude, talent and mediocrity, the joys of life, money, relationships in society, death and birth, secrets and mysteries of the world, etc. and so on. - these are the words that name life phenomena that become themes in art.

The artist’s task is to creatively study a life phenomenon from sides that are interesting to the author, that is express the topic artistically. Naturally, this can only be done posing a question(or several questions) to the phenomenon under consideration. This is the question that the artist asks, using the resources available to him. figurative means, and there is problem literary work.

So,
PROBLEM is a question that does not have a clear solution or involves many equivalent solutions. Polysemy possible solutions the problem is different from tasks. The set of such questions is called PROBLEMATICS.

The more complex the phenomenon of interest to the author (that is, the more complex the chosen subject), the more questions ( problems) it will cause, and the more difficult these issues will be to resolve, that is, the deeper and more serious it will be problems literary work.

The topic and problem are historically dependent phenomena. Different eras dictate to artists different topics and problems. For example, the author of the ancient Russian poem of the 12th century “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” was worried about the topic of princely strife, and he asked the questions: how to force the Russian princes to stop caring only about personal gain and to be at enmity with each other, how to unite the disparate forces of the weakening Kyiv state? The 18th century invited Trediakovsky, Lomonosov and Derzhavin to think about scientific and cultural transformations in the state, about what an ideal ruler should be, and posed problems in literature civic duty and equality of all citizens without exception before the law. Romantic writers were interested in the mysteries of life and death, penetrated into dark corners human soul, solved the problems of human dependence on fate and unsolved demonic forces, the interaction of a talented and extraordinary person with a soulless and mundane society of ordinary people.

19th century with its focus on literature critical realism turned artists to new topics and forced them to think about new problems:

• Through the efforts of Pushkin and Gogol, the “little” man entered literature, and the question arose about his place in society and relationships with “big” people;
• became the most important women's theme, and with it the so-called public " women's question"; A. Ostrovsky and L. Tolstoy paid a lot of attention to this topic;
• the theme of home and family acquired a new meaning, and L. Tolstoy studied the nature of the connection between upbringing and a person’s ability to be happy;
• the unsuccessful peasant reform and further social upheaval aroused keen interest in the peasantry, and the topic peasant life and the fate discovered by Nekrasov became leading in literature, and with it the question: how will the fate of the Russian peasantry and all of great Russia turn out?
• tragic events of history and public sentiment brought to life the theme of nihilism and opened up new facets in the theme of individualism, which received further development Dostoevsky, Turgenev and Tolstoy in attempts to resolve the questions: how to warn the younger generation from the tragic mistakes of radicalism and aggressive hatred? How to reconcile generations of “fathers” and “sons” in a turbulent and bloody world? How do we understand the relationship between good and evil today and what is meant by both? How can you avoid losing yourself in your quest to be different from others?
• Chernyshevsky turns to the topic of public good and asks: “What to do?” so that a person Russian society could he honestly earn a comfortable living and thereby increase public wealth? How to “equip” Russia for a prosperous life? Etc.

Note! The problem is question, and it should be formulated primarily in interrogative form, especially if formulating problems is the task of your essay or other work on literature.

Sometimes in art, a real breakthrough is precisely the question posed by the author - a new one, previously unknown to society, but now burning, vitally important. Many works are created to pose a problem.

So,
IDEA(Greek Idea, concept, representation) - in literature: the main idea of ​​a work of art, the method proposed by the author for solving the problems he poses. A set of ideas, a system of author’s thoughts about the world and man, embodied in artistic images called IDEAL CONTENT a work of art.

Thus, the scheme of semantic relationships between the topic, problem and idea can be represented as follows:

When you interpret a literary work, you look for hidden (scientifically speaking, implicit) meanings, analyze the thoughts expressed explicitly and subtly by the author, you are studying ideological content works. While working on task 8 of your previous work (analysis of a fragment of M. Gorky’s story “Chelkash”), you were specifically concerned with issues of its ideological content.

When completing tasks on the topic “Content of a literary work: Author's position"Please note the contact statement.

You have been given a goal: to learn to understand a critical (educational, scientific) text and to correctly and accurately present its content; learn to use analytical language when presenting such a text.

You must learn to solve the following problems:

• highlight the main idea of ​​the entire text, determine its topic;
• highlight the essence of individual statements of the author and their logical connection;
• convey the author’s thoughts not as “one’s own,” but through indirect speech(“The author believes that...”);
• expand your lexicon concepts and terms.

Source text: With all his creativity, Pushkin, of course, is a rebel. He certainly understands that Pugachev, Stenka Razin, and Dubrovsky are right. He, of course, would have been, if he could, on December 14 at Senate Square together with your friends and like-minded people. (G. Volkov)

Variant of the completed task: According to the firm conviction of the critic, in his work Pushkin is a rebel. The scientist believes that Pushkin, understanding the rightness of Pugachev, Stenka Razin, Dubrovsky, would definitely have been, if he could, on December 14 on Senate Square along with like-minded people.

Any analysis of a literary work begins with identifying its theme and idea. There is a close semantic and logical connection between them, thanks to which the literary text is perceived as an integral unity of form and content. Correct understanding of the meaning literary terms the theme and idea make it possible to establish how accurately the author was able to realize his creative concept and whether his book is worth the reader’s attention.

The theme of a literary work is a semantic definition of its content, reflecting the author’s vision of the depicted phenomenon, event, character or other artistic reality.

An idea is a writer’s plan, pursuing a specific goal in creating artistic images, using the principles of plot construction and achieving the compositional integrity of a literary text.

What is the difference between a theme and an idea?

Figuratively speaking, a theme can be considered any reason that prompted the writer to take up the pen and transfer it to Blank sheet paper perception reflected in artistic images surrounding reality. You can write about anything; another question: for what purpose, what task should I set myself?

The goal and task determine the idea, the disclosure of which constitutes the essence of an aesthetically valuable and socially significant literary work.

Among the diversity literary themes there are several main directions that serve as reference points for flight creative imagination writer. These are historical, social, adventure, detective, psychological, moral and ethical, lyrical, philosophical themes. The list goes on. It will include both original author's notes and literary diaries, and stylistically refined extracts from archival documents.

The theme felt by the writer takes on spiritual content, an idea without which book page will remain just coherent text. The idea can be reflected in historical analysis problems important to society, in the depiction of complex psychological moments on which human destiny, or just in creation lyrical sketch, awakening in the reader a sense of beauty.

The idea is the deep content of the work. Theme is a motive that allows you to realize a creative idea within a specific, precisely defined context.

The difference between a theme and an idea

The theme determines the actual and semantic content of the work.

The idea reflects the tasks and goals of the writer, which he strives to achieve while working on a literary text.

The theme has formative functions: it can be revealed in small literary genres or be developed into a major epic work.

The idea is the main content core literary text. It corresponds to the conceptual level of organization of the work as an aesthetically significant whole.

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There is an inextricable logical connection.

What is the theme of the work?

If you raise the question of the theme of the work, then intuitively every person understands what it is. He just explains it from his point of view.

The theme of a work is what underlies a particular text. It is with this basis that the most difficulties arise, because it is impossible to define it unambiguously. Someone believes that the theme of the work - which is described there, is the so-called vital material. For example, topic love relationship, war or death.

The topic can also be called problems of human nature. That is, the problem of personality formation, moral principles or the conflict of good and bad actions.

Another topic can be the verbal basis. Of course, it’s rare to come across works about words, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. There are texts in which the play on words goes to foreground. Suffice it to recall the work of V. Khlebnikov “Perverten”. His verse has one peculiarity - the words in a line are read the same in both directions. But if you ask the reader what the verse was actually about, he is unlikely to answer anything intelligible. Since the main highlight of this work is the lines that can be read both from left to right and from right to left.

The theme of the work is a multifaceted component, and scientists put forward one or another hypothesis regarding it. If we talk about something universal, then the theme of a literary work is the “foundation” of the text. That is, as Boris Tomashevsky once said: “The theme is a generalization of the main, significant elements.”

If the text has a theme, then there must be an idea. An idea is a writer’s plan that pursues a specific goal, that is, what the writer wants to present to the reader.

Figuratively speaking, the theme of the work is what made the creator create the work. So to speak, the technical component. In turn, the idea is the “soul” of the work; it answers the question of why this or that creation was created.

When the author is completely immersed in the topic of his text, truly feels it and is imbued with the problems of the characters, then an idea is born - spiritual content, without which the page of the book is just a set of dashes and circles.

Learning to find

For example, we can cite a little story and try to find its main theme and idea:

• The autumn downpour did not bode well, especially late at night. All the residents of the small town knew about this, so the lights in the houses had long gone out. In all but one. It was an old mansion on a hill outside the city, which was used as Orphanage. During this terrible downpour, the teacher found a baby on the threshold of the building, so there was a terrible turmoil in the house: feeding, bathing, changing clothes and, of course, telling a fairy tale - after all, this is the main tradition of the old orphanage. And if any of the residents of the city knew how grateful the child would be who was found on the doorstep, they would have responded to the soft knock on the door that sounded in every house on that terrible rainy evening.

In this small passage, two themes can be distinguished: abandoned children and an orphanage. Essentially, these are the basic facts that forced the author to create the text. Then you can see that introductory elements appear: a foundling, tradition and a terrible thunderstorm, which forced all the city residents to lock themselves in their houses and turn out the lights. Why does the author talk about them specifically? These introductory descriptions will be the main idea of ​​the passage. They can be summarized by saying that the author is talking about the problem of mercy or selflessness. In one word, he tries to convey to every reader that, regardless of weather conditions, you need to remain human.

How is a theme different from an idea?

The theme has two differences. Firstly, it determines the meaning (main content) of the text. Secondly, the topic can be revealed as in large works, and in short stories. The idea, in turn, shows the main goal and task of the writer. If you look at the presented passage, you can say that the idea is the main message from the author to the reader.

Determining the theme of a work is not always easy, but such a skill will be useful not only in literature lessons, but also in Everyday life. It is with its help that you can learn to understand people and enjoy pleasant communication.