What is the genre uniqueness of war? Genre and plot originality
- one of greatest works writer Tolstoy, which reveals the historical past of the country. The genre of this novel is epic. But how are the features of this genre reflected in Tolstoy’s novel?
To understand why War and Peace is classified as an epic novel, it is necessary to understand what this genre is and what its features are. So, the epic novel reveals the grandiose events of the country, all aspects of the life of society and the people as a whole. The epic novel reflects the views of people, shows their way of life and the customs of various segments of the population. This is a work that evaluates the reflected events. This is exactly what Tolstoy's work War and Peace is.
Meanwhile, the writer himself could not accurately decide on the genre of the work. After all, at that time there was no such definition as an epic novel, and to existing directions it was difficult to attribute the author's work. It was with his work that he discovered this form of the genre.
Tolstoy managed to depict the diverse life of the early nineteenth century, capturing a large period of time and depicting two wars in his masterpiece. The writer shows there the political and social life of the country, where historical events are intertwined with a description of the life of the heroes. The author depicts not only the war, but also the experiences of the characters, their feelings and everyday life.
Reading Tolstoy, we understand how successfully the author manages to combine descriptions of national ups and downs, combining them with life stories of individuals. The writer shows different layers of society, describes different types of people, and all this against the background of the unfolding grandiose events. At the same time, describing the war and relying on historical facts and the opinions of experts, the author gives his assessment of the events taking place. He does not support any of the opinions of historians, where some idolized the Emperor of Russia, while others praised Napoleon, who was defeated not by the Russian army, but by severe winters.
Tolstoy saw victory in something else. He showed the war of liberation, where he completely drove out the foreigners. Due to the fact that the author combined elements of different genres in his novel, he touches on philosophical and family themes. There are elements of socio-psychological and historical novels. Therefore, War and Peace can rightfully be considered an epic novel with all its features of the genre.
What are the features of the genre of the epic novel “War and Peace”?
What rating will you give?
Patriotic theme in L. N. Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace” 
An essay about: negative heroes novel by L.N. Tolstoy "WAR AND PEACE" 
The death of Petya Rostov, the hero of Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace”
Artistic features of the novel "War and Peace"
1. Mastery of composition. The composition of the novel is striking in its complexity and harmony. The novel develops many storylines. These storylines often intersect and intertwine. Tolstoy traces the fates of individual heroes (Dolokhov, Denisov, Julie Karagina) and entire families (Rostov, Bolkonsky, Kuragin).
The complex interweaving of human relationships, the complex feelings of people, their personal, family, and social lives are revealed on the pages of the novel along with the depiction of great historical events. A person is somehow captured by these events.
A distinctive feature of the composition of “War and Peace” is that the writer constantly transfers the action from one place to another, moves from events associated with one line to events associated with another line, from private destinies to historical paintings. Now we are in the Bolkonsky estate, now in Moscow, in the Rostov house, now in the St. Petersburg social salon, now at the theater of military operations.
This transfer of actions is far from accidental and is determined by the author’s intention. Due to the fact that the reader sees different events taking place simultaneously in different areas, he compares and contrasts them and thus understands them more deeply true meaning. Life appears before us in all its fullness and diversity.
In order to more sharply highlight the features of certain events and characters, the writer often resorts to the method of contrast. This is expressed in the very title of the novel “War and Peace”, and in the system of images, and in the arrangement of the chapters.
Tolstoy contrasts the corrupt life of the St. Petersburg aristocracy folk life. The contrast is contained in the depiction of individual characters (Natasha Rostova and Helen Bezukhova, Andrei Bolkonsky and Anatol Kuragin, Kutuzov and Napoleon), and in the description of historical events ( Battle of Austerlitz- Battle of Borodino).
2. Psychological analysis. In the novel we find the deepest psychological analysis, manifested in the author’s narration, in the transmission of the characters’ internal monologues, in “eavesdropping on thoughts.” Psychologism also has an effect in dreams as a form of reproducing mental experiences and subconscious processes. One of the psychologists discovered in the novel 85 shades of eye expression and 97 shades of a human smile, which helped the writer reveal the variety of emotional states of the characters. Such attention to the slightest shades of movement human soul was a real discovery by L.N. Tolstoy and was called the method of disclosure "dialectics of the soul".
3. Portraits of heroes. Psychological characteristics are provided by portraits of heroes, whose function is to give a visible image of a person. The peculiarity of the portrait characteristics of the characters in the novel is that it is usually woven from details, one of which is persistently repeated (the radiant eyes of Princess Marya, Helen’s smile, which is the same for everyone, Lisa Bolkonskaya’s short lip with a mustache, etc.)
4. Landscape descriptions. No less important role They play landscape descriptions that help to understand the situation in which the hero lives and acts (the hunting scene of the Rostovs), his state and train of thoughts (the sky of Austerlitz), the nature of his experiences (Prince Andrei’s double meeting with the oak tree), the emotional world of the hero ( Moonlight night in Otradnoye). Tolstoy's pictures of nature are given not in themselves, but in the perception of his characters.
It is impossible to overestimate the importance of the novel - the epic "War and Peace", which remains a great work of Russian classical literature for all times.
War and Peace. Genre features, History of creation
In 1862, Tolstoy married and took his wife from Moscow to Yasnaya Polyana, where the order of his life was established for decades.
Tolstoy began writing “War and Peace” directly at the end of 1863, having completed work on the story “Cossacks”. In 1869 the novel was written; published in the thick magazine M.N. Katkov "Russian Bulletin". The basis of the novel is historical military events, artistically translated by the writer. Historians argue that the novel War and Peace is not only historically plausible, but also historically valid.
Genre features
“War and Peace” is a unique genre phenomenon (the work contains more than 600 characters, of which 200 are historical figures, countless everyday scenes, 20 battles). Tolstoy understood perfectly well that his work did not fit into any of the genre canons. In the article “A few words about the book “War and Peace”” (1868), Tolstoy wrote: “This is not a novel, still less a poem, even less a historical chronicle.” He immediately added: “Starting from “ Dead souls""Gogol and before" House of the Dead“Dostoevsky, in the new period of Russian literature there is not a single outstanding artistic prose work that would fully fit into the form of a novel, poem or story.” Tolstoy is right in that Russian literature boldly experimented with genre form.
“War and Peace” has been assigned the genre definition of an epic novel, which reflects the combination of the characteristics of a novel and an epic in the work. Romannoe the beginning is associated with the image family life and the private destinies of the heroes, their spiritual quests. But, according to Tolstoy, individual self-affirmation is disastrous for him. Only in unity with others, in interaction with “common life,” can one develop and improve. The main features of the epic: a large volume of work that creates a picture of the life of the nation at a historically turning point for it (1812), as well as its comprehensiveness. But if the essence of the ancient epic, Homer’s Iliad, for example, is the primacy of the general over the individual, then in Tolstoy’s epic “common life” does not suppress the individual principle, but is in organic interaction with it.
A model analogue of the genre and art world It is no coincidence that the epic novel as a whole is called the water globe, which Pierre Bezukhov sees in a dream. A living globe consisting of individual drops flowing into each other. Pierre Bezukhov is the first Tolstoy hero who embodied in its entirety that idea of Man, which was formulated by Tolstoy only in last years life, but which was formed in him, starting from his first literary experiments: “Man is Everything” and “part of Everything.”
The same images are repeated in Petya Rostov’s dream, when he, falling asleep, hears a “harmonious choir of music”: “Each instrument, sometimes similar to a violin, sometimes like trumpets - but better and cleaner than violins and trumpets - each instrument played its own and , not yet finishing the tune, merged with another, which began almost the same way, and with a third, and with a fourth, and they all merged into one and scattered again, and again merged, now into the solemn church, now into the brightly brilliant and victorious.
Unlike the ancient epic, Tolstoy's epic novel depicts not only the spiritual movement of the heroes, but also their involvement in the continuous and endless flow of life. In "War and Peace" there are no beginnings and endings of action in the usual sense. The scene that opens the novel in Anna Scherer’s salon, strictly speaking, does not “ties up” anything in the action, but immediately introduces the heroes and readers into the movement of history - from the Great French Revolution to the moment. The entire aesthetics of the book is subject to one law: “True life is always only in the present.”
In the second part of the epilogue, Tolstoy sets out his concept of the philosophy of history:
1. history is made by the masses themselves;
2. people make history individually, not together;
3. people make history unconsciously.
In the novel there is an antithesis between Napoleon and Kutuzov. Tolstoy draws a portrait of Napoleon somewhat reduced. Napoleon plays in everything; he is an actor.
Kutuzov does not consider himself the demiurge of history. It's simple everywhere. Tolstoy reduces his external greatness, but emphasizes his internal activity. Kutuzov is the external embodiment of popular thought.
Novel-epic-tells about significant, grandiose events from the history of the country, illuminates important aspects of people's life, views, ideals, life and morals of various strata of society.
The assessment of historical events in the epic novel is given from the point of view of the entire people.
"War and Peace" is not only the largest work of Leo Tolstoy, but also the greatest work of the world literature of the 19th century century. There are about six hundred characters in the work. “It’s terribly difficult to think over and change your mind about everything that could happen to all the future people of the upcoming essay, a very large one, and to think about millions of possible combinations in order to choose the one millionth of them,” the writer complained. Tolstoy experienced such difficulties while working on each of his major works. But they were especially great when the writer created War and Peace, and this is not surprising. After all, the action of this novel lasts more than fifteen years and covers a huge number of events. The writer really had to think through “millions of possible combinations” and choose from them only the most necessary, the most vivid and truthful.
Over the course of a year, Tolstoy wrote fifteen versions of the beginning of War and Peace. As can be seen from the surviving manuscripts, he tried to start the novel with the author’s introduction, which assessed the historical events of 1812, then with a scene that takes place in Moscow, then in St. Petersburg, then on the estate of the old Prince Bolkonsky, then abroad. What did the writer achieve by changing the beginning of the novel so many times? This can be seen by reading the scene that opens War and Peace. Tolstoy shows the high-society salon of the maid of honor Anna Pavlovna Scherer, where eminent guests meet and have a lively conversation about what most worried Russian society at that time - about the upcoming war with Napoleon. Reading this scene, we meet many actors and among them with the two main characters of the novel - Andrei Bolkonsky and Pierre Bezukhov.
Tolstoy found such a beginning to the work that immediately introduces us to the atmosphere of the pre-war era, introduces us to the main characters, shows how their views and opinions collided when assessing the most pressing issues of the time.
And from this first scene until the end of the novel, we follow with unflagging interest and excitement how events unfold and how an increasing number of people become participants in them.
"War and Peace" shows Russian life early XIX century in all its diversity, depicts historical events associated with two wars, 1805-1807 and 1812, as well as political and public life Russia. Pictures of major events of historical significance are intertwined in the novel with everyday scenes that depict everyday life heroes with all its joys and sorrows.
Tolstoy was equally successful in both war and peace paintings and scenes. And he experienced great creative joy from this. To paint a picture of the Battle of Borodino, he traveled to Borodino and created a picture of the battle that has never been seen in Russian or in all world literature. Each of important points The Battle of Borodino and each of its significant details are depicted with amazing clarity. We ourselves seem to be present at the center of what is happening - at the Kurgan Battery, from where we see the entire battlefield.
One of the best "peaceful" scenes in the novel is the hunting scene. The discerning author himself was very pleased with it.
In order to completely reliably describe the events of the Patriotic War of 1812, Tolstoy studied many books, historical documents, letters and other materials about this era. Reading what Russian and foreign historians wrote about the Patriotic War of 1812, Tolstoy became extremely indignant. He saw that the first “unrestrainedly praised Emperor Alexander I, considering him the conqueror of Napoleon, and the second praised Napoleon, calling him invincible. They tried to prove that Napoleon was defeated not by the Russian army led by Kutuzov, but ... by severe Russian frosts.
Tolstoy decisively rejected all those “works” of historians in which the War of 1812 is portrayed as a war of two emperors - Alexander and Napoleon. He showed it as a war of liberation waged by the Russian people against foreign invaders. It was Patriotic War, in which, as Tolstoy writes, “the goal of the people was one: to cleanse their land from invasion.” The writer said that he loved “folk thought” in this work, that for the Russian people this war was sacred, since it was about the most important thing - the salvation of the homeland from foreign enslavement.
Epic – ancient genre, where life is depicted on a national-historical scale. The novel is a new European genre associated with interest in the fate of an individual.
Features of the epic in “War and Peace”: in the center is the historical fate of the Russian people in the Patriotic War
The War of 1812, the meaning of his heroic role and the image of a “whole” existence.
Features of the novel: “War and Peace” tells about the private lives of people, showing specific individuals in their spiritual development.
The genre of the epic novel is the creation of Tolstoy. The ideological and artistic meaning of each scene and each character becomes clear only in their connection with the comprehensive content of the epic. The epic novel combines detailed pictures of Russian life, battle scenes, the author's artistic narration and philosophical digressions. The basis of the content of the epic novel is the events of the great
Historical scale, “life is common, not private,” reflected in the destinies of individual people. Tolstoy achieved an unusually wide coverage of all layers of Russian life - hence the huge number of characters.
The ideological and artistic core of the work is the history of the people and the path of the best representatives of the nobility to the people. The work was not written to recreate history; it is not a chronicle. The author created a book about the life of the nation, created an artistic, rather than historically reliable truth (much of the actual history of that time was not included in the book; in addition, real historical facts are distorted in order to confirm the main idea of the novel - exaggeration of Kutuzov’s old age and passivity, portrait and a number of Napoleon's actions).
Historical and philosophical digressions, the author’s reflections on the past, present and future are a necessary component of the genre structure of “War and Peace”. In 1873, Tolstoy made an attempt to simplify the structure of the work, to clear the book of reasoning, which, according to most researchers, caused serious damage to his work.
It is believed that cumbersomeness, heaviness of periods (sentences), multifaceted composition, many plot lines, and an abundance of authorial digressions are integral and necessary features of War and Peace. The artistic task itself - the epic coverage of enormous layers of historical life - required complexity, and not lightness and simplicity of form. The complicated syntactic structure of Tolstoy’s prose is a tool for social and psychological analysis, an essential component of the style of the epic novel.
The composition of “War and Peace” is also subject to the requirements of the genre. The plot is based on historical events. Secondly, the significance of the destinies of families and individuals is revealed (to analyze all the contrasts, see above).
Psychologism (showing characters in development) allows not only to objectively depict a picture of the mental life of the characters, but also to express the author’s moral assessment of what is depicted.
Psychological analysis on behalf of the author-narrator. Revealing involuntary insincerity, a subconscious desire to see oneself better and intuitively seek self-justification (for example, Pierre’s thoughts about whether or not to go to Anatoly Kuragin, after he gives Bolkonsky his word not to do so). Internal monologue, creating the impression of “overheard thoughts” (for example, the stream of consciousness of Nikolai Rostov during the hunt and pursuit of the Frenchman; Prince Andrei under the sky of Austerlitz). Dreams, revelation of subconscious processes (eg Pierre's dreams). Impressions of the heroes from the outside world. Attention is focused not on the object and phenomenon itself, but on how the character perceives them (for example, Natasha’s first ball). External details (eg oak on the road to Otradnoe, the sky of Austerlitz). The discrepancy between the time in which the action actually took place and the time of the story about it (for example, the internal monologue of Marya Bolkonskaya about why she fell in love with Nikolai Rostov).
According to N.G. Chernyshevsky, Tolstoy was interested “most of all in the mental process itself, its forms, its laws, the dialectics of the soul, in order to directly depict the mental process in an expressive, defining term.” Chernyshevsky noted that Tolstoy’s artistic discovery was the depiction of an internal monologue in the form of a stream of consciousness. Chernyshevsky highlights general principles“dialectics of the soul”: a) Image of the inner world of man in constant movement, contradiction and development (Tolstoy: “man is a fluid substance”); b) Tolstoy’s interest in turning points, crisis moments in a person’s life; c) Eventfulness (the influence of events in the external world on the inner world of the hero).
Essays on topics:
- “War and Peace” is like an epic novel. The genre of “War and Peace” is unusual. Tolstoy himself rejected the genre definition of his majestic work, preferring...
