What is style in literature definition. Style definitions. Signs and characteristic linguistic features of the artistic style

The traditions of classical rhetoric and poetics, which constituted a meaningful body of manuals for the study of literature in the 19th century, were used (and supplanted) by the emerging scientific style, which eventually moved into the field of linguistics.

The linguistic orientation of style was already assumed by ancient theory. Among the requirements for style formulated in the school of Aristotle was the requirement of "correctness of language"; the aspect of presentation associated with the "selection of words" (stylistics) was determined in the era of Hellenism.

In "Poetics" Aristotle clearly contrasted "the words" commonly used ", giving clarity to speech, and all sorts of unusual words, giving solemnity to speech; the writer's task is to find the right balance of both in each necessary case.

Thus, the division into “high” and “low” styles, which have a functional meaning, was fixed: “for Aristotle, “low” was business, scientific, non-literary, “high” - decorated, artistic, literary; after Aristotle, they began to distinguish between the style of high, medium and low.

Summing up the stylistic research of ancient theorists, Quintilian equates grammar with literature, transposing “the science of speaking correctly and interpreting poets” into the area of ​​the former. Grammar, literature, rhetoric form the language of fiction, which is studied by stylistics, closely interacting with the theory and history of poetic speech.

However, in late antiquity and the Middle Ages, there was already a tendency to recode the linguistic and poetological features of style (the laws of metrics, word usage, phraseology, the use of figures and tropes, etc.) into the plane of content, subject, theme, which was also reflected in the doctrine of styles.

As P. A. Grinzer notes in relation to “types of speech”, “for Servius, Donat, Galfred of Vinsalva, John of Harland and most other theorists, the criterion for dividing into types was not the quality of expression, but the quality of the content of the work.

As exemplary works of simple, medium and high styles, Virgil's Bucolics, Georgics and Aeneid were considered, respectively, and in accordance with them, each style was assigned its own circle of heroes, animals, plants, their special names and scenes ... " .

The principle of matching the style to the subject: “Style corresponding to the theme” (N. A. Nekrasov) - obviously could not be reduced only to the “expression” of the linguistic plan, for example, to one degree or another of attracting Church Slavonicisms as a criterion for distinguishing between “calms” - high, mediocre and low.

M. V. Lomonosov, who applied these terms in his linguistic and cultural studies, based on Cicero, Horace, Quintilian and other ancient rhetoricians and poets, not only correlated the doctrine of styles with genre poetics in its verbal design (“Preface on the Usefulness of Church Books in Russian Language, 1758), but also took into account the substantive significance associated with each of the genres (“memory of the genre”), which was predetermined by the communication between the “linguistic” and “literary” styles. The concept of three styles received “practical relevance” (M. L. Gasparov) in the Renaissance and especially classicism, significantly disciplining the thinking of writers and enriching it with the whole complex of content-formal ideas that had accumulated by that time.

The predominant orientation of the stylistics of the New Age to the linguistic aspect was disputed by G. N. Pospelov, not without reason. Analyzing the definition of style adopted in linguistics is “one of the differential varieties of language, a linguistic subsystem with a dictionary, phraseological combinations, turns of phrase and constructions ... usually associated with certain areas of speech use”, the scientist noted in it “a mixture of the concepts of“ language ”and“ speech."

Meanwhile, “style as a verbal phenomenon is not a property of language, but a property of speech, arising from the characteristics of the emotional and mental content expressed in it.”

V. M. Zhirmunsky, G. O. Vinokur, A. N. Gvozdev and others wrote about the need to distinguish between the spheres of linguistic and literary stylistics on various occasions. - Lovsky, D.S. Likhachev, V.F. Shishmarev), who was inclined to include stylistics in the field of literary criticism, the general theory of literature, and aesthetics.

In discussions on this issue, a prominent place was occupied by the concept of V. V. Vinogradov, who argued the need for a synthesis of "linguistic stylistics of fiction with a general aesthetics and theory of literature."

In the study of writing styles, the scientist proposed to take into account three main levels: “this is, firstly, the stylistics of the language ... secondly, the stylistics of speech, i.e., different types and acts of public use of the language; thirdly, the style of fiction”.

According to V. V. Vinogradov, “the stylistics of the language includes the study and differentiation of different forms and types of expressive semantic coloring, which affect the semantic structure of words and word combinations, their synonymic parallelism and subtle semantic relationships, and in the synonymy of syntactic constructions, in their intonational qualities, in variations of word arrangement, etc. ”; the style of speech, which is “based on the style of the language”, includes “intonation, rhythm ... tempo, pauses, emphasis, phrasal accent”, monologue and dialogic speech, the specifics of genre expression, verse and prose, etc.

As a result, "getting into the sphere of the stylistics of fiction, the material of the stylistics of language and the stylistics of speech undergoes a new redistribution and a new grouping in the verbal and aesthetic plan, acquiring a different life and being included in a different creative perspective."

At the same time, there is no doubt that a broad interpretation of the style of fiction can "blur" the object of study - according to it, for all its multidimensional study, it should be aimed at the actual literary style.

A typologically similar range of problems is associated with the relationship between style as a subject of literary criticism and style as a subject of art history. V. V. Vinogradov believes that “literary criticism style” sometimes combines “specific tasks and points of view coming from the theory and history of fine arts, and in relation to poetic speech from the field of musicology”, since it is “an offshoot of the general art history style ". A. N. Sokolov, who deliberately put forward style as an aesthetic category at the center of his research, tracing the development of the art history understanding of style (in the works of J. Winkelmann, J. W. Goethe, G. W. F. Hegel, A. Riegl, Kohn-Wiener, G. Wölfflin and others), makes a number of significant methodological observations regarding the "elements" and "carriers" of style, as well as their "correlation".

The researcher introduces the concept of stylistic categories as “those most general concepts in which style is comprehended as a specific phenomenon of art” - their list, obviously, can be continued. The stylistic categories are: “the attraction of art to strict or free forms”, “the size of the monument of art, its scale”, “the ratio of statics and dynamics”, “simplicity and complexity”, “symmetry and asymmetry”, etc.

In conclusion, anticipating a deeper and more focused study of the style of the characterization of this concept, we emphasize that its inherent complexity and non-one-dimensionality follow from the very nature of the phenomenon, which changes over time and generates more and more new approaches and methodological principles in the theory of studying style.

The question posed by A. N. Sokolov as anticipating the inevitable difficulties associated with the objective “two-unity” of style is still relevant: “As a phenomenon of verbal art, literary style correlates with artistic style. As a phenomenon of verbal art, literary style correlates with linguistic style.

And universalizing in relation to all the diverse positions regarding the concept of "style" is the conclusion of the researcher: "Stylistic unity is no longer a form, but the meaning of the form."

Introduction to Literary Studies (N.L. Vershinina, E.V. Volkova, A.A. Ilyushin and others) / Ed. L.M. Krupchanov. - M, 2005

established form of art. self-determination of an era, region, nation, social or creative. groups or departments personality. Closely related to aesthetics. self-expression and constituting the center, the subject of the history of literature and art, this concept, however, extends to all other types of people. activity, turning into one of the most important categories of culture as a whole, into a dynamically changing total sum of its concrete history. manifestations.

S. is associated with concr. types of creativity, taking on their Ch. characteristics ("picturesque" or "graphic", "epic" or "lyric" S.), with decomp. social levels and functions of language communication (S. "colloquial" or "business", "informal" or "official."); in the latter cases, however, the more impersonal and abstract concept of stylistics is more often used. S., although it is a structural generalization, is not faceless, but contains a lively and emotional. echo of creativity. S. can be considered a kind of air superproduct, quite real, but imperceptible. The “airiness” and ideality of S. historically and progressively intensified from antiquity to the 20th century. Ancient, archaeologically fixed style formation is revealed in "patterns", in succession. rows of things, cultural monuments and their characteristic features (ornaments, processing techniques, etc.), which are not only purely chronological. chains, but also clear lines of prosperity, stagnation or decline. Ancient S. closest to the earth, they always (as S. "Egyptian" or "Old Greek") denote the strongest possible connection with def. landscape, with types of power, settlement, and everyday life peculiar only to this region. In more conc. approaching the subject, they clearly express decomp. handicraft skills ("red-figure" or "black-figure" S. other Greek vase painting). In antiquity, an iconographic style definition (closely associated with the canon) was also born: the decisive factor was k.-l. a symbol fundamental to the beliefs of a given region or period (the "animal" symbol of the art of the Eurasian steppe, originally associated with totemism).

In the classic and late antiquity S., finding its modern. the name is separated both from the thing and from faith, turning into a measure of creativity. expression as such. This happens in ancient poetics and rhetoric - along with the recognition of the need for diversity, which a poet or speaker needs to master in order to optimally influence the perceiving consciousness, most often three types of such stylistic influence were distinguished: "serious" (gravis), "medium" ( mediocris) and "simplified" (attenuatus). Regional S. are now beginning, as it were, to soar above their geogr. soil: the words "Attic" and "Asiatic" no longer necessarily signify something created specifically in Attica or Asia Minor, but first of all "more strict" and "more flowery and magnificent" in their manner.

Despite the constant reminiscences of the ancient rhetoric. understanding of S. in the Middle Ages. literature, regional-landscape moment is cf. century remains dominant, - coupled with the intensified religious and iconographic. So romance. S., Gothic and Byzantine. S. (as one can generally define the art of the countries of the Byzantine circle) differ not only chronologically or geographically, but primarily because each of them is based on a special system of symbolic hierarchies, however, by no means mutually isolated (as, for example, in Vladimir -Suzdal sculpture of the 12th-13th centuries, where the Romanesque is superimposed on the Byzantine basis). In parallel with the emergence and spread of world religions, it is the iconographic. the stimulus is increasingly becoming fundamental, determines the features of the style-forming kinship inherent in numerous. local centers of early Christ. artistic cultures of Europe, Asia Minor and North. Africa. The same applies to the Muslim culture, where the religious factor also turns out to be a style-forming dominant, partly unifying local traditions.

With the final separation of aesthetic. in the early modern period, i.e. from the turn of the Renaissance, the category S. is finally ideologically isolated (in its own way, it is significant that it is impossible to intelligibly say about some kind of "ancient" or "Middle Age." S., while the word "Renaissance" outlines at the same time an era, and a quite clear stylistic category.) Only now S. actually becomes S., since the sum of cultural phenomena that previously gravitated towards each other due to regional or religion. generalities, are equipped with critically evaluative categories, to-rye, clearly dominating, and outline the place of this sum, this "superproduct" in history. process (thus, Gothic, representing the decline and "barbarism" for the Renaissance and, on the contrary, the triumph of national artistic self-awareness for the era of romanticism, for several centuries of the New Age takes on the likeness of a giant historical and artistic continent, surrounded by a sea of ​​likes and dislikes). The whole history, starting from this milestone, is under the influence of the ever-increasing charm of the concepts of "ancient", "Gothic", "modern." etc., - begins to be comprehended stylistically or stylized. Historicism, i.e. man-vech. time as such is separated from historicism, i.e. the image of this time, expressed in various kinds of retrospectives.

S. from now on reveals more and more claims to normative universality, and on the other hand, it is emphasized individualization. "Persons-S" are moving forward. - they are all three Renaissance titans, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Michelangelo, as well as Rembrandt in the 17th century. and other great masters. Psychologization of the concept in the 17-18 centuries. further enhanced: the words of R. Burton "Style reveals (arguit) a person" and Buffon "Style is a person" from afar portend psychoanalysis, showing that it is not only about generalization, but about revealing, even exposing the essence.

Utopian ambivalence. claims to an absolute supra-personal norm (in fact, already the Renaissance in its classical phase interprets itself as such) and the growing role of personal manners or "idiostyles" is accompanied by another kind of ambivalence, especially clearly outlined within the Baroque; we are talking about the emergence of a permanent stylistic. antagonism, when one S. presupposes the obligatory existence of another as its antipode (a similar need for an antagonist existed before, for example, in the “Attic-Asiatic” contrast of ancient poetics, but has never acquired such a scale). The very phrase "baroque classicism of the 17th century." suggests such a duplicity, which is fixed when, in the 18th century. Against the background of classicism (or rather, within it), romanticism is born. The entire subsequent struggle between tradition (traditionalism) and the avant-garde in all their varieties goes along the line of this stylistic. dialectic of thesis-antithesis. Thanks to this, the property of any most historically significant work becomes not a monolithic integrity (characteristic of the monuments of ancient cultures, where, as it were, “everything is their own”), but actual or latently implied dialogism, the polyphony of S., which attracts primarily with its obvious or hidden differences.

In the space of post-Enlightenment culture, the claims of a particular style to a universal aesthetic. significance diminishes over time. From Ser. 19th century The leading role is no longer played by "epochal" S., but by successive (from impressionism to the latest avant-garde trends) trends that determine the dynamics of art. fashion.

On the other hand, shrinking into art. life, S. is absolutized, even higher "soars" in philosophy. theories. Already for Winckelmann, S. is the highest point in the development of all culture, the triumph of its self-revelation (he believes that Greek art, after the classics, in a period of decline, generally no longer possesses S.). In Semper, Wölfflin, Riegl, Worringer, the idea of ​​S. plays a leading role as Ch. mode of historical art. research, revealing the worldview of the era, its internal. the structure and rhythm of her being. Spengler calls S. "the pulse of the self-fulfillment of culture", thereby indicating that this concept is the key to morphological. comprehension as a separate cultures and their world history. interactions.

In the 19th and 20th centuries Further "stylization" of history is also facilitated by the entrenched skill of naming many artists. periods for specific chronological milestones, most often dynastic ("S. Louis XIV" in France, "Victorian" in England, "Pavlovian" in Russia, etc.). The idealization of a concept often leads to the fact that it turns out to be an abstract philosophy. a program imposed from the outside on historical and cultural reality (as often happens with "realism", - a word originally borrowed from theology, and not artistic practice; "avant-garde" also constantly turns out to be a pretext for contemplating. , conjuncture). Instead of serving as an important tool of history. knowledge, the concept of S., epistemologically abstract, increasingly turns out to be his brake - when instead of concret. cultural phenomena or their complex sum, their correspondence to one or another abstract stylistic is investigated. norms (as, for example, in the endless debate about what is baroque and what is classicism in the 17th century, or where romanticism ends and realism begins in the 19th century). Complement the confusion in the 19-20 centuries. introduces the problem of national S., which has not yet found an optimal solution because of its fatal dependence on politics.

Psychoanalysis in decomp. its varieties, as well as structuralism, as well as the postmodern "new critique" make a fruitful contribution to the exposure of idiocratic. fictions that have accumulated around the concept of "C". As a result, it seems that it is now turning into a kind of obsolete archaism. In fact, it is transformed, in no way dying.

Modern practice shows that S. are now not so much born spontaneously, summed up after the fact, as they are consciously modeled, as it were, in some kind of time machine. The artist-stylist not only invents, but combines the "files" of the historical. archive; the design concept of "styling" (i.e. creating a visual image of the company) is also, it would seem, entirely combinatorial and eclectic. However, within the endless postmodern montage, the richest new possibilities of individual "idiostyles" open up, demystifying - and thus cognitively opening - the real field of culture. Modern the visibility of the entire world historical and stylistic panorama makes it possible to fruitfully study the diversity. morphology and "pulses" S., while avoiding mental fictions.

Lit .: Kon-Wiener E. History of fine arts styles. M., 1916; Ioffe I.I. Culture and style. L.; 1927; Ancient theories of language and style. M.; L., 1936; Sokolov A.N. style theory. M., 1968; Losev A.F. Understanding style from Buffon to Schlegel // Lit. studies. 1988. No. 1; Shapiro M. Style// Soviet art history. Issue. 24. 1988; Losev A.F. The problem of artistic style. Kiev, 1994; Vlasov V. G. Styles in Art: Dictionary. T. 1. St. Petersburg, 1995.

Great Definition

Incomplete definition ↓

There are about 40 style definitions. Here are some of them:

MM. Bakhtin: “Style is the realization of a creative method in specific historical conditions, requiring a certain unity of methods for designing and creating a text, processing material.” Bakhtin points to the connection between method and style. Style is a specific manifestation of the creative method, and the method, we recall, is the general setting for the cognition of reality, the selection of its phenomena.

“Style is such a state of the text, which is considered either as a deviation from the norm, or as a result of the choice of certain ways from the possible ways of creating the text.” This definition indicates a prerequisite for the originality of the text.

The definition given in LES (1987): “Style is a stable commonality of the figurative system, means of artistic expression, principles for constructing a work, methods of depiction, manifested in a tendency to a certain range of topics, ideas, problems, conflicts that characterize the originality of the writer, direction, method , epochs.

"Style is the unity - of the main ideological and artistic features, distinctive features, manifested in the work of writers, trends."

“Style is a system of linguistic means and artistic techniques characteristic of a single work or the entire work of a writer or movement.

In these definitions, style includes content categories. In the definition of V.V. Vinogradov, style means only the verbal, linguistic essence of style: “Style is a system of individual aesthetic use of the means of verbal expression characteristic of a given period in the development of fiction.”

In the definition of A.B. Esin also voiced only formal signs of style: "Style is the aesthetic unity of all elements of the artistic form, which has a certain originality and expresses a certain content."

For understanding S., it is essential that it finds expression in all formulations: style is a deeply original phenomenon. Style arises where, on the one hand, we feel typical, repetitive internal patterns in the field of composition, the choice of artistic means, certain themes, conflicts, etc. In other words, the very idea of ​​a style form is the result of a generalization of some characteristic features that are repeated in several works. So, in the works of classicism, the conflict between duty and feeling was repeated, which became typical, in the works of Turgenev a portrait of the “Turgenev girl” was drawn, whose features in each work received clearer contours. On the other hand, S. exists where the unique, individual, deeply original is manifested. Style is felt when the writer has something of his own, special. Thus, S. includes both standard and individual forms. It arises on the basis of experience, one's own, practical and experience already existing in the practice of other writers. But this experience necessarily brings its own .. In turn, individual style can become a source of new typical forms of style - the style of trends, schools. For example, the Nekrasov style was repeated in the experience of the poets of the Nekrasov school and became typical. The typical style develops into a national one, because it carries a generalization.

Style is an aesthetic, and therefore an evaluative category. When we say that a work has style, we mean that in it the art form has reached a certain aesthetic perfection. In this sense, S. is opposed, on the one hand, to stylelessness (the absence of any aesthetic meaning, aesthetic inexpressiveness of the artistic form), and on the other hand, epigone stylization (a simple repetition of already found artistic effects).

The aesthetic impact of a work of art on the reader is due to the presence of style. Like any aesthetically significant phenomenon, style can cause aesthetic controversy; Simply put, style can be liked or disliked. This process takes place at the level of primary reader's perception. Aesthetic evaluation is determined both by the objective properties of S., and by the characteristics of the perceiving consciousness - the recipient, which, in turn, are determined by a variety of factors: the psychological and even biological properties of the personality, upbringing, previous aesthetic experience, etc. As a result, various properties of style excite in the reader either positive or negative aesthetic emotion: someone likes the harmonious style and dislikes disharmony, someone prefers brightness and colorfulness, and someone prefers calm restraint, someone likes the style simplicity and transparency, for someone, on the contrary, complexity and even confusion. This kind of aesthetic assessments at the level of primary perception are natural and legitimate, but they are not sufficient to comprehend the style. It should be borne in mind that any style, whether we like it or not, has an objective aesthetic significance. The scientific comprehension of style is intended, first of all, to reveal and reveal this significance; show the unique beauty of a variety of styles. A developed aesthetic consciousness differs from an undeveloped one primarily in that it is able to appreciate the beauty and charm of the largest possible number of aesthetic phenomena (which, of course, does not exclude the presence of individual style preferences).

S. is associated with the worldview. A new S. appears in Goethe and Schiller when they move on to romanticism. Style is a dynamic, changing phenomenon. Pushkin's romance is characterized by a bright, figurative, "romantic" language, Pushkin is a prose writer, a realist, writes differently, freeing prose from any expression.

S. is an expression of the aesthetic integrity of the work. This implies the subordination of all elements of the form to a single pattern, the presence of an organizing principle of S., which permeates the entire structure of the form. So, in “War and Peace”, the antithesis becomes the stylistic principle, which is realized in every cell of the work and embodied in a pair of images - spiritual and bodily, war and peace, Russians and French, Moscow and St. Petersburg, Natasha and Helen, Kutuzov and Napoleon. Another stylistic principle of Tolstoy is attention to bodily portrait detail (the small hands of Andrei Bolkonsky, the radiant eyes of Princess Marya).

Since S. is not a separate, localized element, but is, as it were, poured into the entire structure of the form, so each point of the text, each of its fragments bears the imprint of the whole. Thanks to this, S. is identified by a separate episode: an experienced reader who is well acquainted with one or another author, it is enough to read a short passage to determine the author. The style is recognizable and can be reproduced on the basis of imitations, stylizations, parodies.