Difference between short story and novel. Characteristic features of the short story genre in Russian literature Roman and short story in relation to prose

Stories interspersed in the "Dialogue about Pope Gregory", apologists from the "Lives of the Church Fathers", fables, folk tales. In 13th-century Occitan, the term nova. Hence the Italian novella(in the most popular collection of the end of the 13th century, Novellino, also known as the Hundred Ancient Novels), which has been distributed throughout Europe since the 15th century.

The genre was established after the appearance of the book Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio (c.), the plot of which was that several people, fleeing the plague outside the city, tell each other short stories. Boccaccio in his book created the classic type of Italian short story, which was developed by his many followers in Italy itself and in other countries. In France, under the influence of the translation of the Decameron, around 1462, the collection One Hundred New Novels appeared (however, the material was more indebted to the facets of Poggio Bracciolini), and Margarita Navarskaya, modeled on The Decameron, wrote the book Heptameron ().

Description of the novel

The short story is characterized by several important features: extreme brevity, a sharp, even paradoxical plot, a neutral style of presentation, a lack of psychologism and descriptiveness, and an unexpected denouement. The action of the novel takes place in the author's modern world. The plot structure of the novel is similar to the dramatic one, but usually simpler.

Goethe spoke about the action-packed nature of the novel, giving it the following definition: “an unheard-of event that has taken place”.

The story emphasizes the meaning of the denouement, which contains an unexpected turn (pointe, "falcon turn"). According to the French researcher, "ultimately, one can even say that the whole short story is conceived as a denouement". Viktor Shklovsky wrote that the description of a happy mutual love does not create a short story; a short story needs love with obstacles: “A loves B, B does not love A; when B loves A, then A no longer loves B. He singled out a special type of denouement, which he called "false ending": it is usually made from a description of nature or weather.

Among the predecessors of Boccaccio, the short story had a moralizing attitude. Boccaccio retained this motif, but his morality followed from the short story not logically, but psychologically, and often was only a pretext and a device. The later short story convinces the reader of the relativity of moral criteria.

novella, short story, short story

Quite often the short story is identified with the story and even the story. In the 19th century, these genres were difficult to distinguish: for example, A. S. Pushkin's Belkin's Tale is, rather, five short stories.

The story is similar to the short story in volume, but differs in structure: the emphasis on the figurative and verbal texture of the narrative and the inclination towards detailed psychological characteristics.

The story is distinguished by the fact that in it the plot focuses not on one central event, but on a whole series of events covering a significant part of the hero's life, and often several heroes. The story is more calm and unhurried.

Novella and novel

The collection of short stories was the forerunner of the novel.

Novella in Chinese literature

China is a classic country of the novel, which developed here on the basis of the constant interaction of literature and folklore from the 3rd to the 19th century: in the 3rd-6th centuries. mythological bylichki were widespread, mixed with excerpts from historical prose and partly designed according to its canons (later, in the 16th century, they were called the term "zhiguai xiaosho", that is, stories about miracles). They were the most important source of the classic literary novel of the Tang and Song era (8th-13th centuries), the so-called "chuanqi", written in the classical literary language. Since the Song era, information has appeared about the folk tale "huaben" (literally, "the basis of the story"), which widely used both the legacy of the classical Tang Chuanqi and the folklore sources proper, democratizing the genre of the short story both in language and in subject matter. Huaben gradually moved completely from folklore to literature and reached its highest development in writing ("imitative huaben") in the late 16th-early 17th century

Thomas Hardy is considered to be the oldest of the English novelists (although he was neither the very first nor the oldest). Hardy was closely associated with the realist tradition of the Dickensian school. Another great English novelist - Oscar Wilde - was more of an aesthete, denied realism. His short stories were alien to the problems of sociology, politics, social struggle, etc. A separate place in English short stories is occupied by such a trend as naturalism. A characteristic trend of naturalism was the so-called "literature of the slums" (Arthur Morrison's collection of short stories "Tales of the Slums", 1894; George Moore's short story "Theater in the Wilderness", etc.). Another trend in English literature that opposed itself to aesthetes and naturalists is considered "neo-romanticism". The English novelists of the "late romantics" were Robert Stevenson, and later Joseph Conrad and Conan Doyle. At the beginning of the 20th century, the English short story becomes more "psychological". It is worth noting here Katherine Mansfield, whose novels were often almost "plotless". All attention in them was riveted to the inner experiences of a person, his feelings, thoughts, mood. In the first half of the 20th century, the English short story was characterized by psychologism, aestheticism and "stream of consciousness". The brightest representatives of English literature of the era

Prose- oral or written speech without division into commensurable segments - poetry; in contrast to poetry, its rhythm is based on the approximate correlation of syntactic constructions (periods, sentences, columns). Sometimes the term is used as a contrast to 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 the work, and not its form, most genres gravitate towards either poetic writing (poems, plays) or prose (novels, short stories). Such a division, however, cannot be taken literally, since there are many examples when works of various genres were written in an unusual form for them. Examples of this are the novels and short stories of 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 verse (fairy tale).

Literary genres traditionally classified as prose include:

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

epic- an epic work of monumental form, distinguished by nationwide problems. Epic is a generic term for large epic and similar works:

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

The appearance of the epic was preceded by the circulation of past 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 grouped. These songs formed into large poetic units - epics - imprinted with the integrity of personal design and construction, but only nominally timed to one or another author.

Tale- a kind of epic work, close to a novel, depicts some episode from life; differs from the novel in less completeness and breadth of pictures of everyday life, mores. This genre does not have a stable volume and occupies an intermediate position between the novel, on the one hand, and the short story or short story, on the other, tends to chronicle plot that reproduces the natural course of life. In foreign literary criticism, the specifically Russian concept of “story” is correlated with a “short novel” (English short novel or novella).

In Russia in the first third of the 19th century, the term "story" corresponded to what is now called "story". The concept of a story or a short story was not known at that time, and the term “story” denoted everything that did not reach the novel in volume. A story was also called a short story about one incident, sometimes anecdotal (“Carriage” by Gogol, “Shot” by Pushkin).

The plot of a classic story (as it developed in the second half of the 19th century) is usually centered around the protagonist, whose personality and fate are revealed within a few events. Side storylines in the story (unlike the novel) are usually 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. So, Turgenev first called "Rudin" a story, and then a novel. The titles of the stories are often associated with the image of the protagonist (“Poor Liza” by N. M. Karamzin, “Rene” 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” by E. I. Zamyatin, etc.).

Novella(Italian novella - "news") - a literary small narrative genre, comparable in volume to a story (which sometimes gives rise to their identification), but differing from it in genesis, history and structure. It is customary to call the author of stories a novelist, and the totality of stories - short stories.

A short story is a shorter form of fiction than a short story or novel. It goes back to the folklore genres of oral retelling in the form of legends or instructive allegory and parable. Compared to more detailed narrative forms, there are few characters in the stories and one plot line (rarely several) with the characteristic presence of some one problem.

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

Eikhenbaum's distinction between the novella and the short story received some, though not universal, support in Soviet literary criticism. The authors of stories are still called novelists, and "a set of small epic genres" - short stories. The distinction of terms, unknown to foreign literary criticism, also loses its meaning in relation to the experimental prose of the 20th century (for example, to the short prose of Gertrude Stein or Samuel Beckett).
The typical structure of a classic short story: plot, climax, denouement. The exhibition is optional. Even the romantics of the early 19th century appreciated the unexpected "falcon" turn (the so-called pointe) in the short story, which corresponds in Aristotle's poetics to the moment of recognition, or ups and downs. In this regard, Viktor Shklovsky noted that the description of a happy mutual love does not create a short story; a short story requires love with obstacles: “A loves B, B does not love A; when B loves A, then A no longer loves B.

Story- a small epic genre form of fiction - small in terms of the volume of the depicted phenomena of life, 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/novella and short story/novel

Until the middle of the 19th century, the concepts of a story and a story in Russia did not really differ. Any small narrative form was called a story, any large form was called a novel. Later, the idea prevailed that the story differs from the story in that in it the plot focuses not on one central event, but on a whole series of events covering a significant part of the hero’s life, and often several heroes. The story is more calm and unhurried than a short story or short story.

It is generally accepted that a separate short story as a whole is not characterized by a richness of artistic colors, an abundance of intrigue and interweaving in events - unlike a story or a novel, which can describe many conflicts and a wide range of various problems and actions. At the same time, J. L. Borges pointed out that after the short story revolution at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. the story is able to convey everything the same as the novel, while not requiring the reader to spend too much time and attention.

For Edgar Poe, a novella is a fictional story that can be read in one sitting; for H. G. Wells, less than an hour. Nevertheless, the distinction between the story and other "small forms" from the novel in terms of volume is largely arbitrary. So, for example, “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” is usually defined as a story (a day in the life of one hero), although this text is closer in length to a novel. On the other hand, small-scale works by René Chateaubriand or Paolo Coelho with love weaves and intrigues are considered novels.

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

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

In terms of volume and function, it borders, on the one hand, on a scientific article and a literary essay (with which an essay is often confused), on the other hand, on a philosophical treatise. The essayistic style is characterized by figurativeness, mobility of associations, aphoristic, often antithetical thinking, an attitude towards intimate frankness and colloquial intonation. Some theorists consider it as the fourth, along with the epic, lyrics and drama, kind of fiction.

For Russian literature, the essay genre was not typical. 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, Andrey Bely, Lev Shestov, V. V. Rozanov turned to the essay genre, later - Ilya Erenburg, Yuri Olesha, Viktor Shklovsky, Konstantin Paustovsky, Joseph Brodsky. Literary and critical assessments of modern critics, as a rule, are embodied in a variety of the essay genre.

Biography- an essay that tells the story of the life and work of a person. a description of a person's life made by other people or by himself (autobiography). A biography is a source of primary sociological information that makes it possible to identify the psychological type of a person in his historical, national and social conditionality.

Biography recreates the history of a person in connection with social reality, culture and life of his era. Biography can be scientific, artistic, popular, etc.

The novel can be described as a prose narrative genre characterized by brevity, a sharp plot, a lack of psychologism, a neutral style of presentation, and an undoubtedly unexpected denouement. Often the term short story is used as a synonym for a story, less often a short story is called a kind of story.

The sources of the novella are primarily Latin essays, as well as fablios, stories found in the "Dialogues about Pope Gregory", as well as in the apology of the "Biographies of the Church Fathers", but most often, in folk tales and fables.

It should be especially emphasized that in many theoretical works the genres of short story and short story are almost synonymous. Novella is a literary genre, small in volume, comparable to a story, an epic narrative. The novella is comparable in length to the story, but in structure it is opposite to it. The possibility of such opposition appeared during the transition to critical realism. The novella was understood as a small, eventful, short story with a clear structure; which is alien to the extensiveness in the depiction of reality and descriptiveness. In the short story, the inner world of the hero is depicted rather restrainedly. A short story should have a distinct and unexpected turn, from which the action immediately comes to a denouement. The short story exists as a strict genre, where there cannot be a single random component.

The genre of the short story was fixed after the appearance of the book by Giovanni Boccaccio "The Decameron" 1353, the plot of this book was that several people, fleeing the plague outside the city, told each other short stories (hereinafter short stories). Boccaccio in his book created the classic type of Italian short story, which was developed by numerous followers both in Italy itself and in other countries. For example, in France, under the influence of the translation of the Decameron, around 1462, a collection called One Hundred New Novels appeared.

During the era of romanticism, under the influence of such authors as Hoffmann, Novalis, Edgar Allan Poe, the short story with elements of mysticism, fabulousness and fantasy gained immense popularity. Later, in the works of Prosper Mérimée and Guy de Maupassant, the term short story began to be used to refer to realistic stories.

American literature, beginning with Washington Irving and Edgar Poe, is directly related to the short story. The novella, or short story, has a special meaning, being one of the most characteristic genres.

In the second half of the 19th-20th centuries, the traditions of the short story were continued by such outstanding writers as Ambrose Bierce, O. Henry, H.G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, Gilbert Chesterton, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Karel Capek, Jorge Luis Borges and many others.

The novella can be characterized by several important features: extreme brevity, a sharp, even paradoxical plot, the absence of psychologism and descriptiveness, a neutral style of presentation, and, of course, an unexpected denouement. The structure or construction of a novella is similar to a dramatic story, but a novella is often simpler.

The novel emphasizes the significance of the denouement, which necessarily contains an unexpected twist. According to the French researcher, "ultimately, one can even say that the whole novella is conceived as a denouement."

Among the predecessors of Boccaccio, the short story had a pronounced moral side. Boccaccio retained this approach in his work, however, morality in this case followed from the novel not logically, but psychologically, and often was only a device and an excuse. Later, the short story convinces the reader of the sufficient relativity of moral criteria.

Quite often, the short story is identified with the story and even the story. In the 19th century, it was really difficult to distinguish between these genres: for example, A.S. Pushkin, are more like five short stories. The story coincides with the short story in terms of volume, but differs in structure: since the figurative and verbal texture of the narrative and the tendency to detailed psychological characteristics are brought to the fore. The story differs from the short story in that in it the plot focuses not on any one central event, but on a whole series of events covering a significant part of the hero's life, and often several heroes. The story is more calm and unhurried in nature.

Classical examples of short stories were works by A.S. Pushkin's Tales of Belkin, which Boris Eikhenbaum directly compared with the short stories of O. Henry. The further development of Russian literature was connected with the physiological essay. Having collected certain elements of the short story, it turned into a completely special form of essay-short story. Thanks to N.V. Gogol, short stories appeared, which are masterpieces of Russian literature, but they definitely differ from the classic short story "The Overcoat", "The Nose".

Only at the beginning of the 20th century did the Russian short story acquire a new sound. The next author in this regard definitely deserves attention, Alexander Grin, in whose work the influence of Edgar Allan Poe and Ambrose Bierce is noticeable. In Soviet Sinology, they are usually called "tales", which is not entirely true. The main form of publication of the Russian short story at all times was the collection.

The short story, as a genre of literature recognized by readers and writers, appeared in English literature around the second half of the 19th century. During this period in England there was a fertile ground for the bright flowering of the novel, a short dynamic genre, much more suitable for experimentation than the novel. The number of short stories published in literary magazines has increased. Critical articles devoted to the problems of short stories appeared. Both already recognized authors who gained popularity with their novels, and novice writers full of bold ideas, but with practically no literary experience, turned to the genre of the short story. English literature of this period was replete with literary trends, currents, schools that were at war with each other: naturalists, aesthetes, realists, neo-romantics and many others.

One of the oldest English novelists is considered to be Thomas Hardy. Another great English novelist is Oscar Wilde, who is more of an aesthete, since he denied realism in his works. His short stories were unknown to social problems, political, problems of social struggle. Among the English writers who at various times worked in the novel genre, there are such remarkable authors as: Jerome K. Jerome, John Galsworthy, Somerset Maugham, Dylan Thomas, John Sommerfield, Doris Lessing, James Aldridge.

A short story, a short story, a fairly common genre form in America in the first half of the 19th century. The stories were published mainly in popular magazines, which could not but affect the development of the genre. The rapid development of the novel genre was precisely the means by which some of the most characteristic works of the best American writers received public approval. The form of short entertaining narrative has become typical and, importantly, the most common form of American literature.

In 1819, when Washington Irving published his series of short stories, The Book of Sketches, novellas, or short stories, took a significant place in the work of all American prose writers. The short story becomes a mass magazine genre, but, however, does not have any specific genre theory. Many who tried to work in this genre "barely suspected that there was any difference between the novel and the short story, except for the number of pages." The main criterion was to create a vivid emotional impression on the reader. The main principle of achieving the desired result was the correct construction of the composition, the selection of artistic means that would best serve to create the desired effect. The main task of the author is the maximum possible emotional impact on the reader. This goal subordinates to itself all the main characteristics of the work and all the artistic possibilities of the author.

In the whole work there should not be a single word that would not directly or indirectly lead to the intended goal. Every detail plays a huge role and not a single detail can be neglected. The author, first of all, determines the finale of the novel, the moment of the highest tension, the catastrophe or the resolution of the riddle, which will further connect and unite the previous details. The writer builds the plot, grouping derivative elements of the narrative around the center, gradually linking them together. Gathering and linking together the details of the narrative, the reader arrives at that final idea, which contains the main author's idea, which was the starting point for the author's construction of the novel.

Upon closer examination, it turns out that none of the specified criteria for the genre of the short story not only does not reveal the entire variety of phenomena included in this genre, but is also not characteristic exclusively for the short story.

Foreign critics do not find any difference between such literary concepts as a story and a short story. 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 defining the difference between a novella and a short story, each of these literary phenomena should be considered in detail.

What is a story?

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

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

The plot of the story focuses on one important and interesting episode from the life of the protagonist. The author, as a rule, shows his personal attitude and main idea 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 story is usually told in the first person. The narrator can be either the author himself or one of the characters in the story.

What is a novella?

The short story, as a literary genre, arose in the Renaissance after the writing of the Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio. Then the main features of the novel were considered: the presence of an acute conflict in the plot, unexpected turns that disrupted the peaceful life of the protagonist.

Over time, the genre of the short story has changed, acquiring new features. So the novels 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 Mérimée, the short story began to be considered an exclusively realistic genre.

In Russia, the short story, as a literary genre, was able to form thanks to Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin. The first Russian novels are considered to be his work "". Although the title contains the word "tales", literary critics and critics are still convinced that "The Tales 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 a short story. Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol wrote wonderful short stories, such as " Nose”, “” and others, which in their content were far from the novel in the classical sense.

It was only in the 20th century that new life was breathed into the novel genre. The short stories by Sigismund Krzhizhanovsky and Alexander Grin are considered to be landmark works of this time.

Nowadays, the short story is a prose literary genre, which is characterized by: small volume, neutral style of depiction, action, surprise ending. The author's attention is focused not on the emotional experiences of the characters, but on the events taking place in the work. His goal is to show the situation objectively, without expressing his personal attitude, to achieve the maximum intensity of passions and lead to an unpredictable end. The novel 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 the mention of them is allowed only on the condition that the scenes with their participation will enhance the overall dynamics of the plot.

So, having examined in detail the genres of the story and the short story, one can single out their common and distinctive features.

Common features of the novel and short story

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

The main difference between a novel and a short story

1. In the story, events are described with greater artistic expressiveness than in the short story.
2. 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 a novelist, this is unacceptable. The main feature of the novel is the absence of any author's assessment.
3. In the story, the author seeks to show the internal development of the main character, the motives of his actions. For the short story, the main thing is the dynamics of the plot and the sharpness of the conflict. The novel depicts the event without analyzing the psychology of the characters.
4. The severity of the conflict in the short story is more pronounced than in the story.
5. Very often the story carries a hidden subtext. No other interpretations of the main plot are allowed in the short story.
6. A story can have multiple storylines. The novel has only one storyline.

Although in Russian literary criticism the short story is distinguished as an independent literary genre, Russian writers rarely turn to it, preferring the short story. Many Russian critics are unanimous with their 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 the short story with the story, or consider the short story one of the varieties of the story.

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

The story as an epic genre

Distinctive features of the story are a small number of characters, little content, one storyline. The story does not have interweaving in events and it cannot contain the diversity of artistic colors.

Thus, the 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 type of epic genre goes back to 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, the story began to be distinguished from the essay by the conflict of the plot. There is a difference between the story of "large forms" and the story of "small forms", but this distinction is often arbitrary.

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

The novel as an epic genre

Many people think that a short story is a certain kind of short story. But still, the definition of a short story sounds like a kind of small prose work. The short story differs from the story in the plot, which is often sharp and centripetal, in the severity of the composition and volume.

The novel most often reveals an acute problem or question through one event. As an example of a literary genre, the short story arose during the Renaissance - the most famous example is Boccaccio's Decameron. Over time, the short story began to depict paradoxical and unusual incidents.

The heyday of the short story, as a genre, is considered the period of romanticism. Famous writers P. Merimee, E.T.A. Hoffman, 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 game of fate with a person appeared at the beginning of the 20th century. Such writers 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 a 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 any real, historical events ("The Tale of Bygone Years", "The Tale of the Battle of Kalka"), but later it became a separate genre for reproducing the natural course of life.

A feature of the story is that the main character and his life are always in the center of her plot - the disclosure of his personality and the path of his fate. The story is characterized by a sequence of events in which the harsh reality is revealed.

And such a theme is extremely relevant for such an epic genre. Famous stories are "The Stationmaster" by A. Pushkin, "Poor Liza" by N. Karamzin, "The Life of Arseniev" by I. Bunin, "The Steppe" by A. Chekhov.

The value of artistic detail in the story

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

This serves as a way to highlight some kind of psychological trait of the protagonist or mood that is characteristic of the work. It is noteworthy that the important role of the artistic detail lies in the fact that it alone can replace many narrative details. Thus, the author of the work emphasizes his attitude to the situation or to the person.

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