The word "composition" first appears in school, later on it becomes a term, then a concept, gradually expanding to a key concept of a literary work in any plan. There are various ways and forms of artistic depiction of reality, and compositional technique is considered as one of the main formative units.
Compilation
"Composition" from Latin is translated exactly that. Or "composition." It is this phenomenon that gives the reader a holistic narrative and generally any text. How to interpret a compositional technique that helps to arrange all parts of the text in the correct order, which is due solely to the content of this work? Of course, composition is not just a chain of scenes and episodes; much more sophisticated creative work is present in the compilation of parts of the text.
So, one of the ways to bring all the elements into a composition is to compose a single whole narrative from descriptions, monologues, dialogs, a figurative system, inserted stories, author's digressions, characteristics of heroes, the plot of the story and its plot, landscapes and portraits. This will be the first compositional trick.
Looks to the past and future
A retrospection takes the reader back in time, where the author plunges him into the events that happened to the hero as long as he wants, and in this way the root cause of what is happening in the present is clarified. The compositional technique of retrospection is used by the authors very widely and often both in prose and in poetry.
An intrigue is created very effectively when the author alternates the chapters, giving them in turn to several heroes, or events, or localities. Moreover, each chapter ends with an unfinished and intriguing scene. A huge incentive appears for the reader to scroll further on. Such compositional techniques are called gaps in the literature. In addition, the composition itself can be arranged thematically, mirrored, in a ring or in the reverse order of events.
Four tricks
The composition of any real work is certainly multi-layered, each of them has a “double” and even “triple bottom”, “undercurrents” and even whirlpools. How does the author achieve such ambiguity? Of course, using a variety of compositional techniques in the literature. There are an incredible number of them. There are four main ones: installation, contrasting, amplification and repetition.
Repeat - from simple and extremely effective, it pours an unexpected context into ordinary words, gives harmony to the sound, helps to indicate the main thing. Here the example of Blok’s poem “Night, street, street lamp, pharmacy ...”, where the main compositional techniques - repetition and amplification — show the looping of the circle of life and a constant return to the past is most appropriate. The same is true in prose - some kind of repeating detail or a certain image is displayed in the leitmotifs of the work, which is penetrated by them and thereby acquires integrity. For example, the resurrection of Lazarus at Dostoevsky ("Crime and Punishment") or the image of a thunderstorm at Ostrovsky.
Strengthening and contrasting
Amplification as a technique is close to repetition, but there is more effect in the artistic transmission of a phenomenon or event, since details or images similar to the first are selected, which with each new output increase the reader’s emotional stress and quickly fill the picture with new details and visible images. Gogol is especially good at this reception (description of the house of Sobakevich or Plyushkin). In Chekhov, this technique is used in the story "The Man in the Case."
The opposite technique is no less good and effective. Contrasting, otherwise - antithesis, the use of contrasting images. With great power, these compositional techniques appear in poems. Let us recall Lermontov, where the black blood of arrogant descendants spills next to the poet with righteous blood, as the very depth of every reader's heart trembles at such oppositions. A compositional opposition is present almost everywhere, you can’t do without it: storm and peace (Lermontov’s “Sail”), Onegin and Lensky. Without contrast, not a single work will take place, even poems, even prose, this technique is strong and expressive.
Contamination and installation
This is a combination of two methods - contrast and repetition. Thus, a particularly strong effect is obtained - a mirror composition. Contamination in translation means confusion; it’s easier to remember what is called a compositional technique, combining polar-different values. With mirror composition, the repetition is almost literally accurate, but with the opposite value. Recall: the scene of Tatyana and Onegin with a rebuke to Tatyana at the beginning and the scene of Onegin and Tatyana with a rebuke to Onegin - at the end of the novel. Mirror composition is a very winning and powerful tool.
Installation is a more complicated technique, sophisticatedly sought after, but the striker is on the spot. When reading, however, this feels like an insight, although the author probably thought for a very long time what compositional technique to choose, assembled puzzles, rearranging two different images side by side so that a third, new meaning was born from their neighborhood. For example, Pavel Petrovich, an aristocrat with a silver ash-tree ashtray on his desk. Silver. Bast. We now know everything about the aristocrat Pavel Petrovich through the oxymoron compiled by Turgenev, who masterfully used compositional means.
Receptions and their levels
In the composition of a work, all the tricks used perform one of two different functions. A compositional technique is organized either by a single fragment of the text - the micro level, or the whole text as the principle of composition - the macro level. Repeating in a separate part of a poetic text often uses such paths as anaphora (one-man command) and rhyme (sound repetition at the end of verses).
Reinforcement in prose is most often appropriate at the micro level, in descriptions of an object or phenomenon, and in a poem this is a great way to create a common unity of composition. As an example, one can recall Pushkin's poem "The Prophet" (and Rimsky-Korsakov wrote the music for him so well that it seems that you can even feel the reception of amplification). Editing also sometimes becomes macro-level and organizes the composition of the entire work, even very voluminous, such as, for example, in Pushkin (Boris Godunov) or Bulgakov (The Master and Margarita).
Compositional tricks and effects
Editing and reinforcing, contrasting and repeating - any of the main compositional techniques, and not only the basic ones, can expand its significance to the principle of composition construction. But at the heart of each such principle lies primarily the effect. Otherwise, why all the fuss with compositional techniques, if you can retell the information on the basis of a telephone directory.
What compositional tricks will add effect to the work? For example, if the action does not begin from the beginning of events, but rather from the end, gradually building up the passage of time in the following episodes and explaining the reasons for the events that occurred. This is the so-called reverse composition, a very interesting technique (“What to do?” Chernyshevsky). And if you use a repetition of stanzas, as if framing a poem, or a description that takes place at the beginning and end of a work, closing the composition with a ring, this technique will be called a ring composition or a framing composition. It is used very often in poetry and prose.
Artistic image
The artistic image is a great organizer of the composition. Gogol, for example, drew a red thread through the entire poem "Dead Souls" the image of the road, which served as a clear outline of the whole narrative: the road to the city NN, from there the road to Manilovka, the road to Korobochka, the road to the inn with Nozdryov located there, the road to Nozdryov, the road further - from home to home. And Gogol finishes, too, dear. This means that this is a structure-forming element.
The author can also make an organizing element an exposition, such as, for example, Pushkin in the novel "Eugene Onegin", where it is the entire first chapter. The compositional technique is the symmetry of episodes, images, words, as well as phenomena, chapters, scenes - whatever, and this principle of composition is also very popular so far. About contamination and compositional gap has already been said, you can add only that most often the latter are used by the authors of detectives and adventurous novels to enhance the intrigue.
Theme
This is also quite a compositional technique, when the author most clearly highlights the relationship between the protagonists of the work or its central images. This method is preferred by poetry poets.
The sequence of the narrative, the logical reasoning that develops from thought to thought, leading to a final conclusion, as, for example, in many poems by Pushkin, Tyutchev, Mayakovsky, is called a sequential composition, where the sequence is the reception.