Contents Introduction

Image motifs and topos go beyond the individual characters-heroes. The image-motive is a theme that is consistently repeated in the work of a writer, expressed in various aspects by means of varying the most significant elements of it ("rustic Rus" by S. Yesenin, "Beautiful Lady" by A. Blok).

Topos (Greek topos - place, terrain, letters, meaning - common place) denotes common and typical images created in the literature of a whole epoch, nation, and not in the work of an individual author. An example is the image of the "little man" in the work of United States writers - from A. Pushkin and N. Gogol to M. Zoshchenko and A. Platonov.

Recently, the concept of archetype is widely used in the science of literature. (from Greek arc he - the beginning and typos - the image). For the first time this term occurs in German Romantics at the beginning of the XIX century, but the real life in various fields of knowledge gave him the works of the Swiss psychologist K. Jung (1875-1961). Jung understood the archetype as a universal image, unconsciously transmitted from generation to generation. Most often archetypes are mythological images. The last ones, according to Jung, are literally & nbsp; crammed all mankind, and archetypes nest in the subconscious of man, regardless of his nationality, education or tastes. "As a doctor," Jung wrote, "I had to identify images of Greek mythology in the delirium of pureblood Negroes."

Brilliant ("visionary", in Jung's terminology) writers not only carry these images in themselves, like all people, but also are able to reproduce them, and reproduction is not a simple copy, but is filled with new, modern content. In this connection, Jung compares archetypes with the channels of parched rivers, which are always ready to be filled with new water.

To a large extent, the term "strong mythology" is widely used in the literary criticism of the Jungian understanding of the archetype. (in the English-language literature - mimesem ). The latter, like an archetype, includes both mythological images, and mythological subjects or parts thereof.

Much attention is paid in literary criticism to the problem of the relationship between image and symbol. This problem was posed in the Middle Ages, in particular Thomas Aquinas (13th century). He believed that the artistic image should reflect not so much the visible world as to express what can not be perceived by the senses. So the realized image actually turned into a symbol. In the understanding of Thomas Aquinas, this symbol was called upon to express primarily the divine essence. Later, symbolist poets of the 19th and 20th centuries, symbol images could carry earthly content ("the eyes of the poor" by S. Baudelaire, "yellow windows" by A. Blok). The artistic image does not need to be dry and divorced from the objective, sensual reality, as was proclaimed by Thomas Aquinas. Blokovskaya Stranger is an example of a magnificent symbol and at the same time a full-blooded living image, perfectly inscribed in the "objective", terrestrial reality.

Philosophers and writers (Vico, Hegel, Belinsky, etc.), who defined art as "thinking in images", somewhat simplified the essence and functions of the artistic image. This simplification is also characteristic of some modern theorists who, at best, define the image as a special "iconic" sign (semiotic, partly structuralism). It is obvious that through images not only think (or thought primitive people, as J. Vico rightly noted), but also feel, not only "reflect" reality, but also create a special aesthetic world, thereby changing and ennobling the real world.

Functions performed in an artistic manner are numerous and extremely important. They include aesthetic, cognitive, educational, communicative and other possibilities. Let us confine ourselves to just one example. Sometimes the literary image created by a brilliant artist actively influences life itself. Thus, imitating Goethe's Werther ("The Sorrows of Young Werther," 1774), many young people, like the hero of the novel, committed suicide.

The structure of the artistic image is both conservative and changeable at the same time. Any artistic image includes both the author's real impressions and fiction, but as art develops, the relationship between these components changes. Thus, in the images of the Renaissance literature, the titanic passions of the heroes are brought to the forefront, in the Age of Enlightenment, the object of the image is predominantly "natural" man and rationalism, in the realistic literature of the XIX century, writers seek a comprehensive coverage of reality, revealing the contradictoriness of human nature, etc.

If we talk about the historical fate of the image, then there is hardly any reason to separate ancient figurative thinking from the modern one. However, for each new era, there is a need for a new reading of the images created before. Undergoing numerous interpretations projecting the image into the plane of certain facts, tendencies, ideas, the image continues its work of mapping and transforming reality already beyond the text - in the minds and lives of succeeding generations of readers. "

The artistic image is one of the most multifaceted and complex literary and philosophical categories. And it is not surprising that the scientific literature devoted to him is extremely great. The image is explored not only by writers and philosophers, but also by mythologists, anthropologists, linguists, historians and psychologists.