Composition technique in literature: description, application and rules

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

The word "composition" is first encountered at school, later it becomes a term, then a concept, gradually expanding to the key in any plan for understanding a literary work. There are various ways and forms of artistic representation of reality, and compositional technique is considered as one of the main formative units.

Composing

"Composition" from Latin is translated that way. Or "writing". It is this phenomenon that gives the reader a holistic narrative and, in general, any text. How to interpret the compositional technique that helps to arrange all parts of the text in the correct order, which is determined purely by the content of this work? Of course, the composition is not just a chain of scenes and episodes, there is much more sophisticated creative work in composing parts of the text.

So, one way to bring all the elements into a composition is to compose a single wholenarratives from descriptions, monologues, dialogues, figurative system, inserted stories, author's digressions, characteristics of heroes, plot of the story and its plot, landscapes and portraits. This will be the first composition technique.

Looking into the past and the future

Retrospection takes the reader back in time, where the author immerses him in events that happened to the hero as long as he likes, and thus the root cause of what is happening in the present is clarified. The compositional technique of retrospection is used by the authors very widely and often both in prose and in poetry.

Intrigue is created very effectively when the author alternates chapters, giving them in turn to several heroes, or events, or localities. And each chapter ends with an unfinished and intriguing scene. A huge incentive appears for the reader to scroll further faster. Such compositional techniques are called discontinuities in the literature. In addition, the composition itself can be built thematically, mirrored, in a ring or in reverse order of events.

Four moves

The composition of any real work is certainly multi-layered, each of them has a "double" and even "triple bottom", "undercurrents" and even whirlpools. How does the author achieve such ambiguity? Of course, using a variety of compositional techniques in literature. There are an incredible number of them. There are four main ones: editing, contrasting, amplifying and repeating.

Repetition is one of the simple and extremely effective, it pours an unexpected context into ordinary words, gives harmony to the sound, helps to identify the main thing. Here, the well-known example of Blok's poem "Night, street, lamp, pharmacy …" is most appropriate, where the main compositional techniques - repetition and amplification - show the circularity of the circle of life and a constant return to the past. It is the same in prose - some kind of repetitive detail or a certain image is brought into the leitmotifs of the work, which is permeated with them and thus acquires integrity. For example, the resurrection of Lazarus by Dostoevsky ("Crime and Punishment") or the image of a thunderstorm by Ostrovsky.

Strengthening and contrasting

Strengthening as a technique is close to repetition, but there is more effect in the artistic transmission of a phenomenon or event, since details or images similar to the first are selected, which with each new exit increase the emotional stress of the reader and quickly fill the depicted picture with new details and visible images. Gogol is especially good at this technique (a description of the house of Sobakevich or Plyushkin). Chekhov uses this technique in the story "The Man in the Case".

The opposite technique is no less good and effective. Opposition, otherwise - antithesis, the use of contrasting images. With great power, these compositional techniques are manifested in poems. Let us recall Lermontov, where the black blood of arrogant descendants is shed next to the poet with righteous blood, how the very depth of each tremblesreader's heart from such oppositions. And compositional opposition is present almost everywhere, you can’t do without it: storm and peace (“Sail” by Lermontov), Onegin and Lensky. Without contrast, not a single work will take place, even poetry, even prose, this technique is strong and expressive.

Contamination and installation

This is a combination of two techniques - opposition and repetition. Thus, a particularly strong effect is obtained - a mirror composition. Contamination in translation means mixing, so it is easier to remember the name of the compositional technique that combines polar opposite values. With a mirror composition, the repetition is almost literally exact, but with the opposite meaning. Let us recall: the scene of Tatyana and Onegin with a rebuke to Tatyana at the beginning and the scene of Onegin and Tatyana with a rebuke to Onegin at the end of the novel. Mirror composition is a very advantageous and powerful tool.

Editing is a more complex technique, subtly sought out, but striking on the spot. When reading, however, this is felt as an insight, although the author probably thought for a very long time which compositional technique to choose, put together puzzles, rearranging two different images side by side so that a third, new meaning was born from their proximity. For example, Pavel Petrovich, an aristocrat who has a silver ashtray in the form of a bast shoe on his table. Silver. Bast shoes. We now know everything about the aristocrat Pavel Petrovich through an oxymoron composed by Turgenev, who masterfully used compositional means.

Techniques and their levels

Bcomposition of the work, all the techniques used perform one of two functions that differ from each other. The compositional technique organizes either a separate fragment of the text - the micro level, or the entire text as a principle of composition - the macro level. Repetition in a separate part of a poetic text often uses such tropes as anaphora (one-man command) and rhyme (sound repetition at the end of verses).

The technique of amplification in prose is most often appropriate at the micro level, in descriptions of an object or phenomenon, and in a poem it is a great way to create a general unity of composition. As an example, one can recall Pushkin's poem "The Prophet" (and Rimsky-Korsakov wrote the music for it so well that one can, it seems, even feel the amplification technique). Editing also sometimes reaches the macro level and organizes the composition of the whole work, even a very voluminous one, as, for example, in Pushkin ("Boris Godunov") or Bulgakov ("The Master and Margarita").

Compositional techniques and effects

Editing and amplification, opposition and repetition - any of the main compositional techniques, and not only the main ones, can expand its meaning to the principle of composition construction. But at the heart of each such principle is, first of all, the effect. Otherwise, why all the fuss with compositional techniques, if you can retell the information according to the principle of a telephone directory.

What compositional tricks will add effect to the piece? For example, if the action does not start from the beginning of events, but vice versa - fromend, gradually building the course of time in the following episodes and explaining the reasons for the events that occurred. This is the so-called reverse composition, a very interesting technique ("What to do?" Chernyshevsky). And if the repetition of stanzas is used, as if framing a poem, or a description that takes place at the beginning and end of the work, closing the composition with a ring, this technique will be called that - ring composition or framing composition. Used very often in both poetry and prose.

Artistic image

Artistic image is a great composition organizer. Gogol, for example, drew as a red thread through the entire poem "Dead Souls" the image of the road, which served as a clear outline of the entire narrative: the road to the city of NN, from there the road to Manilovka, the road to Korobochka, the road to the tavern with Nozdryov located there, the road to Nozdryov, the road further - from house to house. And Gogol also finishes dear. So, this is the structure-forming element.

Also, the author can make the exposition an organizing element, as, for example, Pushkin in the novel "Eugene Onegin", where the entire first chapter is it. A compositional technique is also the symmetry of episodes, images, words, as well as phenomena, chapters, scenes - anything, and this principle of constructing a composition is also very popular so far. It has already been said about contamination and compositional gap, we can only add that most often the latter are used by the authors of detective stories and adventure novels to enhance the intrigue.

Theme

This is also quite a compositional technique, when the author most clearly highlights the relationship between the main characters of the work or its central images. This method is preferred by lyric poets.

The sequence of narration, logical reasoning that develops from thought to thought, leading to the final conclusion, as, for example, in many poems by Pushkin, Tyutchev, Mayakovsky, is called sequential composition, where sequence is a device.