17. The literary work as an ideological-aesthetic whole and an integral image of the world, and its criteria

A work of art is perceived as a whole; its analysis is one of unity of form and content, a holistic analysis. When the form changes, the content changes, and vice versa. The unity of wholeness and image is the main criterion of artistry. Macro-analysis is the analysis of all levels; micro-analysis is the analysis of a single level. The ideological-aesthetic wholeness of a work of art.

A literary work is a two-fold process of transforming the world in an artistic text into a unified whole. A literary work includes both a spiritual-poetic world and a material text.

A work of art becomes the result of the artist's aesthetic assimilation of reality. The phenomenon of the work of art is complex, multivalent, being the product of artistic creation, in which the artist's spiritual-substantive conception is embodied in sensory-material form. The work of art is the principal repository and source of artistic information. A literary work has a form of existence – a text, that is, a certain utterance. Therefore a work of art comprises, in its makeup, 2 elements: the artifact and the aesthetic object.

For a literary work, the artifact is a certain text.

Text – the minimal unit of verbal communication, possessing relative unity (integrity) and relative autonomy (separateness). The verbal text of a work is the sole material form of existence of its content

. Functions of the text:

• - transmission of artistic information;
• - generation of new information;
• - storage of information.

Structure of the text:

• - dialogicity. Dialogue may occur between form and content, author and hero, author and reader;
• - polyphony. The multi-sidedness, multivalence of the text.

An artistic text possesses a unity of structure.

The imagined artistic reality becomes the aesthetic object. A literary work is a two-fold process of transforming the world in an artistic text into a unified whole. A literary work includes both a spiritual-poetic world and a material text. The artistic text and the work of art are different concepts. The text is one of the components of a work of art. «The artistic effect as a whole arises from the juxtaposition of the text with a complex set of life-related and ideological-aesthetic conceptions» (Lotman). A number of scholars, proceeding from this definition as a strictly organized sequence of speech units, distinguish the main text from the secondary text (supertext). Besides these texts there is also the subtext. Contemporary literary scholarship regards the work of art as a complex, multi-level system in the interaction of its components. Potebnya said that a work of art has 3 aspects: external form (the word), internal form (images), and content (the idea). Proceeding from this kind of division, Leiderman distinguishes

3 levels of a work of art:

1. The conceptual level (system of views):

• theme – the sole objective element of a work of art;
• problem – the angle from which the author views the phenomena of reality;
• idea – the main thought;
• pathos – the ideological-emotional evaluation, part of the ideational world.

2. The level of internal form. It is created by 2 elements:

• the spatio-temporal organization;
• the subjective organization (the subject being the one who speaks in the text, the mediator).

3. The level of external form:

• the rhythmic-melodic organization of the text;
• the speech organization.

A work is perceived from the bottom up. A change in one of the levels entails a change in the rest.

The artistic world of a work.

Girshman defines the poetic world of a work of art as an ideal spiritual content. The organization of the artistic world includes both the author's style and his devices and modes of thought. The constituents of the artistic world:

• - events, that is, an artistically purposeful system of events – the plot;
• - characters (all types of characters and their appearance, portrait, psychological state, forms of expression of their inner world);
• - the external world (landscapes and interiors).

All the constituents of the artistic world in a work are arranged in order. For this there is composition – construction.

A work of art is perceived as a whole; its analysis is one of unity of form and content, a holistic analysis. When the form changes, the content changes, and vice versa. The unity of wholeness and image is the main criterion of artistry. Macro-analysis is the analysis of all levels; micro-analysis is the analysis of a single level. The ideological-aesthetic wholeness of a work of art.