In the book, the genre structure of the novel is considered as a structure of creative activity focused on the implementation of ethical and aesthetic tasks specific to the genre. The poetics of the novel is investigated on the material of Russian and foreign literature as a system of plot, plot-compositional and narrative forms of deployment, processing and organization of material controlled by this structure; the content of this activity is a purposeful dialogue of the creative subject with reality, in which the novel concept of man and the world, personality and society is created.