Content and form of a literary work: description, theory

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

In theoretical poetics there is such a conceptual pair as form and content. These concepts are taken from philosophy. Philosophers define content as essence; literary critics understand the plot itself by this word.

The category of the content of a literary work is invariably linked to the category of form. And the form is understood as a finished work; as a separate world, described by successful expressions.

Before you start writing any kind of fiction, you should understand the theoretical nuances of these concepts.

Content and form of literary work

In literature, content is an internal image, the very meaning of the whole story. Meaning is expressed through style, through the harmonious combination of words, that is, through form. Since the time of the Aristotelian "Poetics", the form and content have been conceived by the authors as an inseparable dialectical conceptual unity.

Only Aristotle himself expressed these categories in slightly different words. He defined two concepts - "how" and "what". These categories correspond to the logical concepts of subject and predicate. The form of a novel cannot exist without content, and the author's thoughts cannot be conveyed to the reader unless the author defines some kind of material base for them.

The word "form" comes from the Greek language and means - the appearance of something, the image. The category of form is invariably associated with the totality of the purely physical aspects of a material character. And the content is connected with the concept of the essence or content of a certain image.

In ancient Rome, the concept of "content" was opposed to material objects of being. The distinction between these concepts is conditional and reflects only the human need to know. These are purely philosophical terms. And they also came to the modern world as epistemological categories.

Subjectivity of the content of the work

It's worth noting that form is always something objective. The external form of fiction is the vocabulary used by the author. That's what copyright covers. That is, no one else has the right to write the same words in the same order as this famous author. But content can be copied to some extent.

Here are some examples of the content of some text.

• Content of scientific work - concepts and hypotheses. Object - words used to reason and communicate facts.
• Artisticwork. The idea and composition are the content, the author's speech, the dialogues of the characters and the descriptions of the world around the characters are the expression of the form.
• A literary work of pedagogical content - ideas on how best to convey knowledge, to interest students. An example is Makarenko's Pedagogical Poem.

Artwork. Foundation

Lifestyle material	Contents	Shape
Images main heroes	Theme and Idea	Author's speech and the speech of the heroes
	Composition	Artistic techniques; used vocabulary

So, the content of a literary work is a plot. Although the composition of the work has its own objective structure, and is built according to certain laws, the reader can interpret it in his own way. After all, two different people interpret the same story in two ways. Since everyone comes from their own experience.

Scientific articles, diplomas and dissertations also have a structure and an idea. But there is little subjectivity here, since each thought is proved by facts and logical constructions.

Summary of a literary work

Such brief descriptions save time for students of philological universities. The student, without reading the entire volume of the text, will recognize the main storylines, key conflicts of the work and some character traits of the protagonist.

The ideological content of the literarya work of art can be understood based on a brief description of the plot. The summary helps to form a personal opinion of a student or school student regarding the characters and their relationship.

The content of a literary and artistic work is described in the plot. The plot is an extremely brief content, where the storyline is shown in strict chronological order.

The plot as the basis of the work

So, a work consists of form, author's idea and composition. The composition is built according to a certain pattern. A literary work always begins with a prologue and ends with an epilogue. Everyone knows the basis of the composition from the 8th grade of the school:

• Prologue.
• Tie.
• Climax.
• Decoupling.
• Epilogue.

The plot of the work is often similar in many stories. In detective works, the investigator finds a murderer or a robber; the romance of lovers in a melodramatic scenario ends either with a wedding, or with parting and regret. But each author fills the plot with his own colors, tries to make the hero more interesting, gives the reader some unforgettable emotions.

Through the plot, through the transformation of the hero, the writer conveys the idea that he conceived at the beginning of his story, as the main one.

Johann Goethe described the task of the writer as follows:

To master the whole world and find expression for it.

This is what it means to combine form and content. History is not just writtenany story raises social or philosophical issues. And in order to reveal the problem, you need to be able to use the figurative expressions of the language and know how to make your hero close to the reader.

Hegel's aesthetics. Ideal and figurative expression

During the heyday of German classical philosophy, Hegel tried to explain the terms of literary creativity within the framework of his worldview. In his work "Aesthetics", the philosopher paid special attention to the concepts of content and form of a literary work.

Hegel noticed - the images of the creator of the work can not be something limited. Each artistic image should express the idea inherent in it. The character of the hero will certainly affect his appearance and speech, and the past of the owners and their attitude to the material side of life should be displayed in the interior of the room.

On this occasion, Hegel himself, in his "Aesthetics", put forward the main position:

Connection of idea and image into their free reconciled whole.

M. Bakhtin's view of form and content

Mikhail Bakhtin is one of the most famous Russian-speaking philosophers and literary theorists. His views largely determined the course of development of Russian literature. What is his opinion on the question of the content and form of a literary work? M. Bakhtin did not consider the form as just a technique or style of the writer.

For him, the shape means more the way the story is organized. The literary critic said that the reader should not just read the words, but experienceaesthetically read text.

Analysis of the content of a literary work

Analysis is necessary for a more complete understanding of the issues that the author raises. Works of literature should be considered from two sides. Evaluation is given both for compliance with technical standards and rules for plotting, and for the degree of disclosure of the topic.

Analysis must also have a certain structure.

The plan for critical analysis of the work is as follows:

1. Determine the theme and main idea of the piece. How fully the topic is disclosed.
2. Analyze whether the integrity of the form and content is observed.
3. Describe the characters, the system of images in a literary work, analyze the methods of revealing characters and their plausibility in various scenes.
4. Describe the attitude of the author himself to the topic.
5. Find out how expressive means are used to create images; comment on the writer's style.

C. T. Coleridge, an English poet and critic, said that the work of a talented writer differs from the work of a mediocre one by absolute organicity and integrity.

Another critic B. Larin developed his own method of analysis - "The experience of form analysis". The category of the content of a literary work here is maximally revealed and detailed.

Analysis of the unity of form and content

The analysis of the unity of the content and form of a literary work is considered separately. The critic also considers and analyzes this aspect of the novel.

In order to write a qualitative analysis of a work, the level of knowledge and skills in the field of philology and philosophy of literature must be high. And also the author of the analysis must have excellent critical thinking.

The content of a literary work is the definition of the moral side of the novel. Not only the style matters for the critic, but also the morality that the writer brings at the end of the story or novel.

Content of a literary work. Contemporary look

In modern literature, writers and literary critics try not to use such terms as "content" and "form". Instead of them, more abstract concepts are used - "sign" and "symbolism of the sign". However, in their inner essence, these categories are exactly the same. The modern system of concepts is quite consistent with the concepts of "what" and "how" in Aristotle.

For novels and short stories, there is no template by which the plot is built. The content of a literary work is the entire inner world of the author, enclosed in some kind of lexical form, divided into episodes and chapters. However, you can't write by intuition. A novice author needs to know the laws of a dramatic work.

Yuri Lotman. The integrity of the work

Yuri Mikhailovich Lotman is the most outstanding Russian thinker, literary critic and culturologist of the 20th century. What did he think about the ideological content of a literary work?

Yu. Lotman argued that the content is the plan of the architect, and the form is the already realized plan of the building. And accordingly, the building cannot exist without a plan. The plan helps the writer to structure the plot and create a literary work according to all the canons of dramatic art.

The reader must give a moral assessment of the heroes of the work. He evaluates their actions, thoughts and experiences. Sympathy for the hero will arise only if the author was able to create a voluminous character, not a "cardboard" one, that is, faceless. The integrity of the work is a harmonious combination of all storylines together so that the plot describes only one integral event. The resolution of the entire conflict must come from the plot. And the character of the hero must comply with the principles of believability and correspond to the time and space described.

How is the plot built?

A story is really interesting when it has a rather serious unresolvable conflict between a hero and an anti-hero or a hero and society. The writer needs to think through all the episodes that make up the plot in detail.

The reader delves into the artistic world of the work, unknown to him, in order to follow the development of the conflict and the fate of the hero he likes. The content of a literary work is a plot, but expanded and detailed.

To build a plot, you need to build a clear plan. To do this, write out a clear idea and theme of the future work. Then briefly describe all the milestones of the plot - exposition, development of the conflict, whenthe climax and what comes after it.

Be sure to work out the character of the main character: what does he look like at the beginning of the story? What are his motives? Who and why is he fighting? How did he change at the end, and are he and his loved ones happy with these changes in his personality?

When it is possible to tie together the transformation of the hero, the resolution of his personal dilemma and the resolution of the fundamental conflict of the whole story, then the idea is finalized. Now you can sit down to write a form - a vessel for an idea.

Conclusions

So, the unity of the content and form of a literary work is achieved in the process of detailed plot planning. With the right plot. The author clearly knows which scenes he needs, which dialogues are appropriate, and which ones need to be deleted.

Categories of form and content were analyzed by all famous philosophers and writers: Aristotle, Hegel, Mikhail Lotman. These concepts serve as the basis for building a harmonious literary work and scientific work equally.

Summaries of literary works are necessary for understanding the plot. Having read only the main characteristics of the hero and the plot of the work, a student or schoolchild can already write something about the work in his essay. And for a novice writer, familiarity with the plot helps to find solutions for their plots in already known works.