Fiction (French - "fine literature") - the general name of fiction in prose and poetry. Recently, the term "fiction" means a new meaning: "mass literature" opposed to "high literature".
In Russian, the word began to be used in the nineteenth century, thanks to literary critics Vissarion Belinsky and Dmitry Pisarev, who used it in relation to works that did not fit into the framework of their schemes. In a broad sense, this term is opposed to journalism (documentary genre), common in magazines of the XIX-XX centuries. Since the word "fiction" has French roots, Russian critics often used it in a dismissive manner, in relation to literature that glorified bourgeois ideals and had no social connotation. In the narrow sense of the word, the term "fiction" denotes light reading, more inherent in such genres as detective, ladies' novel, mysticism, adventure. Reading for a pleasant pastime, relaxation. Fiction is interconnected with stereotypes, fashion, popular topics. The characters' characters, their types, habits, professions, hobbies are correlated with the information space of most people. Fiction writers, as a rule, reflect the state of society, its mood and phenomena, and rarely project their own opinion into this space. Fictionalization is the narration of documentary material using artistic techniques. Over the course of a certain period of time, the same works of art may pass from one cultural layer to another. So, for example, the novels of Walter Scott, previously considered a genre of "high literature", gradually moved to the rank of adventurous fiction, and bylinas, on the contrary, from grassroots literature became common property. Modern fiction is a new product that occurred under the direct influence of the reading public, and, in turn, acting on it. Despite the seeming simplicity and uncomplicatedness, this is the most complex and interesting element of the literary process, in which real readers are participants.
