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 seems to be far from 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 unification of an artistic event. It would seem that everything is simple. A few pages of text, one important event, preferably the 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 in this word, growing from ancient times. Therefore, we will try to deal with the origins.
Origin of form
Genetically, stories are fairy tales, fables, jokes. What served as the emergence of a cultured 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 epic, a simple person tried to express his natural craving for literature, which arose just with the advent of these ancient genres.
Short story
There is another important term for understanding the story, called the short story. The word, of course, comes from a European literary tradition. Russian literary scholars were tormented by the separation of these two terms from each other, but they did not agree. Someone contrasts them, someone identifies. The meaning of this review is not in knowledge-based fabrications on this topic.
We are only interested in the fact that both of these genres are so similar that they allow us to add one more trait inherent in both of them. Temporal dependence of the content of the form. Each era added certain nuances to the short story. For example, during the time of romanticism a raid of mysticism appeared. With the advent of realism, psychologism was added to the short story, as well as to the Russian story. This is the definition of literature in the trends of modern times accompanied by a gradual change in the whole genre.
Story development
At first, he was inseparable from the story. The same Gogol defined the story as its particular kind. The recognized master of the story Chekhov emphasized the installation for the utmost brevity of form. Moreover, it is not even the number of pages. For example, his “Ionych” in volume will completely pass for a good story. However, even here we find the ability to give one or two brief details to give a complete picture of the character of the hero, his essence and even the meaning of the character's existence.
Another form virtuoso - Nagibin - believed that the selection of details was not so much complicated as the speed of their supply, so that the reader could almost instantly develop an image. With speed of reading. Stories are not just a small form of storytelling, they are the skill of point-feed material at a gigantic reading speed so that the picture appears almost immediately 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 naturally into the story. The author’s determination of the stylistic orientation of his work is manifested in giving the hero some particular features of self-expression. For example, in the stories of Leskov and Zoshchenko, we come across characters who speak like no one else. They are incredibly recognizable.
The waves of time
As already mentioned, the story is characterized by the spirit of the times, the literary era. So, Chekhov is characterized by a subtext unknown in the middle of the 19th century. At the beginning of the twentieth century. modernism, which engulfed art, also caught literature. Here you can recall the stories of Sologub, Bely. Further more. The artistic discovery of the “stream of consciousness” gave rise to such interesting and very often completely bizarre writers like Kafka or Camus.
We should not forget about other areas. For example, the heroic Sholokhov. And of course, satire. Bulgakov, Zoshchenko and many others. Stories are a storehouse of interesting and useful, given the original baggage that was transferred to the genre as a legacy of a fable, an anecdote, etc.
Future
The emergence of a huge amount of media content, as it is now fashionable to say, it’s scary to say, gradually crowds out literature in its original meaning for society. Now the child is watching the world, for the most part, through the camera lens. Reading has become long and uninteresting. The play of imagination, spurred by a printed page, goes by the wayside. Therefore, stories are an opportunity to avoid a paranoid look into the future, where there is no place for the games of the mind. Especially pleasing in the context is the development of varieties of form. Fiction, fantasy, household, psychological, satire and others. There is hope that literature, as a cultural phenomenon, will not disappear into the sea of ​​media content.
Conclusion
This attempt concludes by presenting a short prosaic form called “story”. It turned out to be quite simple to define, 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 true enthusiasts, with whom there is a bow. Readers are advised not to forget that imagination is much more important than semi-finished media.