In a short article, the definition of the word "story" will be considered. And, perhaps, it seems that the form is small, although quite capacious, but the task itself, it seems, is far from being as trivial as it seems at first glance. Well, let's get started.
Definition
The Encyclopedia defines a story as a short narrative form aimed at a small volume and unambiguous association of an artistic event. It would seem that everything is simple. Several pages of text, one important event, preferably a main character, perhaps a couple of additional, not so important, short but capacious strokes of a literary brush. It seems that everything is taken into account. However, there is something mysterious, deep, growing in roots from distant times in this word. Therefore, let's try to deal with the origins.
Origin of form
Genetically, stories are fairy tales, fables, anecdotes. What served as the appearance of a cultivated phenomenon grew out of a popular desire to decorate life, to make it more understandable, interesting, to understand it, in the end. Indeed, in a fairy tale or an epic, a simple person tried to express hisnatural craving for literature, which was born just with the advent of these ancient genres.
Novel
There is another important term for understanding the story, called a short story. The word, of course, comes from the European literary tradition. Russian literary critics have suffered with the separation of these two terms from each other, but have not agreed. Someone contrasts them, someone identifies. The meaning of this review is not science-intensive fabrications on this topic.
We are only interested in the fact that both these genres are so similar that they allow us to add another feature inherent in both. Temporal dependence of the content of the form. Each era added certain nuances to the novel. For example, during the time of romanticism, a touch of mysticism appeared. With the advent of realism, psychologism was added to the short story, as well as to the Russian story. It is in literature that the definition of form by the trends of modernity is accompanied by a gradual change in the entire genre.
Story Development
At first it was inseparable from the story. The same Gogol defined the story as its particular variety. Chekhov, the acknowledged master of the short story, emphasized the emphasis on the utmost brevity of form. Moreover, it's not even the number of pages. For example, his "Ionych" in terms of volume will quite pass for a good story. However, even here we find the ability to give a complete picture of the character of the hero, his essence and even the meaning of the character's existence in one or two brief details.
Otherthe virtuoso of form - Nagibin - believed that it was not so much the selection of details that was difficult, but the speed of their presentation, so that the reader almost instantly formed an image. Reading speed. Stories are not just a small form of storytelling, they are the art of pinpointing material at a gigantic reading speed so that the picture almost immediately appears in the head.
Stylistic unity
The small volume of the form gives another important feature. This is a stylistic unity. Usually the narration comes from a specific person. It can be the author himself or the hero. Therefore, the unity of speech fits quite organically into the story. The definition by the author of the stylistic orientation of his work is manifested in giving the hero certain features of expressing himself. For example, in the stories of Leskov and Zoshchenko, we come across characters who speak like no one else. They are incredibly recognizable.
Trends of the times
As already mentioned, the story is characterized by the spirit of the time, the literary era. So, for Chekhov, a subtext is characteristic, unknown even in the middle of the 19th century. At the beginning of the twentieth century. modernism, which swept art, also caught on literature. Here we can recall the stories of Sologub, Bely. Further more. The artistic discovery of the "stream of consciousness" has given rise to such interesting and very often downright bizarre writers like Kafka or Camus.
We should not forget about other directions. For example, the heroic Sholokhov. And, of course, satire. Bulgakov, Zoshchenko and many others. Stories are a treasure trove of interesting anduseful, given the original baggage that was inherited by the genre by fable, anecdote, etc.
Future
The emergence of a huge amount of media content, as it is now fashionable to say, scary to say, is gradually crowding out literature in its original meaning for society. Now the child is watching the world, for the most part, through the camera lens. Reading became long and uninteresting. The game of imagination, spurred on by the printed page, fades into the background. Therefore, stories are an opportunity to avoid a paranoid look into the future, where there is no place for mind games. Particularly pleased in the context of the development of varieties of form. Science fiction, fantasy, household, psychological, satire and others. There is hope that literature, as a cultural phenomenon, will not be lost in a sea of media content.
Conclusion
This attempt to present a short prose form called "story" ends. It turned out to be quite simple to give a definition, but to understand the real depth of the genre, its influence on literature, on human consciousness, is much more difficult. Nevertheless, this form, having deep historical roots, continues to exist in numerous works of real enthusiasts, to whom we bow to the ground. Readers are advised not to forget that the imagination is much more important than the semi-finished media.
