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action, according to Aristotle, 43
algorithmic approach, 80, 116
algorithmic integrity, 106
Alice books (Carroll), 21
All’s Well That Ends Well (Shakespeare), 74, 75
Amphitryon 38 (Girandoux), 30
Andersen, Hans Christian, 132
Aristotle: action, according to, 43; activities as having goals that are political, 44; on characterization of drama, 53; as devoting more attention of unity of action than to those of place or time, 49–50; on doctrine of verisimilitude, 50, 51; on dramatic plots, 43, 45, 47, 55, 112; on epics, 82; Ethics, 56, 135; on events in drama, 24; as having little say about conflict, 54; on integrity of impact, 48; plots, according to, 3, 10, 15, 16, 36–37, 64; Poetics, 6, 55; on recognition scenes and on happiness, 56; tragedy, according to, 43; on tragic flaws, 135; well-being of city as proper goal of citizen’s activity, 45
Art of Poetry, The (L’Art poétique) (Boileau-Despréaux), 47
Aspects of the Novel (Forester), 39
associative relationships, 20, 25–26
As You Like It (Shakespeare), 62
Bakhtin, Mikhail, 19, 21, 82, 111, 112, 123, 124, 126, 127, 129
Before–After relationship/system, 20, 24
Belkin Tales, The (Pushkin), 91–92
Belknap, Robert L., background of, xiii
Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, Alexander, 91
Boileau-Despréaux, Nicolas, 47, 50
Brooke-Rose, Christine, 27
Browne, Anthony Montague, 94–95
Canterbury Tales, The (Chaucer), 25
Captain’s Daughter, The (Pushkin), 91
Cartesian Linguistics (Chomsky), 17
causality, xv, xxi, 23, 24, 46, 51, 84, 88, 89, 97, 115
causal system, xvii, xxii, 21, 24, 25, 47, 50, 68, 73, 83, 88–90, 99–101, 120, 139
causation, xvii, xviii, 17, 21, 22, 23, 24, 46–47, 85, 89, 90, 100, 102, 116, 118, 119
character, as constituent element, 3, 43, 45
chronological relationships, 19, 21
Clarke, Mary Cowden, xvii
climactic moments/climax, 53–54, 58
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 21
Comedy of Errors, A (Shakespeare), 63, 74
computers: impact of on plot, 5, 139; use of in creating literary summaries, 7
Confessions (Rousseau), 90
contaminatio, use of term, 14
Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky): attitude of on suffering, 138; causal relationships in fabula of, 115; critics as attacking, for rhetoric that exploits causality in ways they misunderstand, 115–21; Dostoevsky as often abandoning causation in, 116; Dostoevsky’s algorithm for creating/interpreting, 103, 106; dreams in, 128; epilogue of, 122–28; gentry as practically unrepresented in, 111; as having beginning, middle, and end, 106; murder in as overdetermined, 99; as not responding well to allegorical treatment, 27–28; as novel of multiple rehearsals followed by single performance, 125; as one of Belknap’s case studies, xiv, xxiv; one-sidedness of desire and violence in, 108–14; as ordeal novel, 124; paradox of, xx, 83–84; parallelisms in, 102; plot of, 104; power of, 104; as psychological novel/plot, xv–xvi, 96, 100; shaping rule in, 107; siuzhet of part I of as programming reader to read rest and participate actively in vicious murder, 101–7; unconscious as deeply moral, 99
desire, xv, xvi, 9, 36, 91, 108, 110–11, 112, 113, 114, 117, 139
de Tocqueville, Alexis, 87
de Vogüé, Melchior, 84, 87
Diary of a Writer, The (Dostoevsky), 120, 128
dispositio, use of term, 17
disruption, use of, xv, 53
Divine Comedy (Dante), 20
Dostoevsky, Fyodor: as anchored in Russian tradition that preceded him, xxii; The Arabian Nights and Don Quixote as recycled in fiction of, xx; as challenging current literary leaders by reinventing psychological plot, 96–100; coincidences in works of (see coincidences); compared to Freud, 99; as deeply Christian, 114; desire in works of, 110, 112; distaste for spiritualism by, 120; evolution of plotting in fiction of, 85; favorite authors of, 102; gentry as practically unrepresented in works of, 111; as having made many mistakes, 116; impact of Gogol on, 93; importance of causation to, 89–90; letter novels as offering resources that matched literary needs of, 84; as mocking great and little scientific minds for operating not on reason but on faith, 120; one-sidedness of desire and violence in Crime and Punishment as more peculiar to plotting of than the Dostoevshchina, 108–14; parallelism in works of, 103; parallel structures of desire and violence in works of, 112, 114; plot of Crime and Punishment as reflecting background of in history of literature as well as own evolution as novelist, 101; Razumikhin as Dostoevsky character most like, 60; as shaped by Russian version of nineteenth-century novel, xv, 86–95; situational rhyme in novels by, 28; on suffering, 136–37, 139; use of epilogue by, 122; use of epistolary form by, xxii; as wild man, 84. See also specific works
Double, The (Dostoevsky), 98, 99
“Dream of a Ridiculous Man, The” (Dostoevsky), 123
Enchanted Wanderer, The (Leskov), 22
English comedies, tragedies, and sonnets, Shakespeare as creating central canon for, 58
epics: as differing from dramas, 79; fabula and siuzhet in, 17; picaresque tradition of, 83; use of term, 82
Eternal Husband, The (Dostoevsky), 128
Ethics (Aristotle), 56, 135
Eugene Onegin (Pushkin), 91, 97
Evenings on the Bivouac (Bestuzhev-Marlinsky), 91
expectation, as component of siuzhet and incident, 38–40
fabula: as arranging events in the world characters inhabit, 16–18; as building up through two steps to an action, 39; cause and effect as central in, 22; creative tension between suizhet and, xxiv; defined, xviii, 43; description of, xv; as distinct from siuzhet, xxiii; in fairy tales, 17; as favorite term of Russian Formalist critics, 16; incidents in as causally related, 84; as multidimensional in space and time, xviii, 21; as signified, 17; space in, 20–21; structure of, 17; time in, 20; translation of term, xxi, 16; treatment of, xviii
Faerie Queene, The (Spenser), 70, 112
fairy tales: center of plot in, 55; description of moves in, 38; endings in, 132–33, 135; fabula and siuzhet in, 17
first-person narration, 85, 104
Flaubert, Gustave, 93, 136
folk narrative traditions, 82
French Structuralists, 16, 35, 36
Friend of the Family, The (Dostoevsky), 122
frustration, as component of siuzhet and incident, 38–40
fulfillment, as component of siuzhet and incident, 38–40
functions, according to Propp, 33, 34, 35
Gambler, The (Dostoevsky), 122, 128
Gargantua (Rabelais), xxi, 39
“Gentle Creature, The” (Dostoevsky), 123
Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Heroines: A Series of Fifteen Tales, The (Clarke), xvii, 100
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 14, 58, 84
Gogol, Nikolai, xxi, xxii, xxiii, 23, 38, 86, 93, 95–97, 99, 100, 107
Great Expectations (Dickens), 136
Greimas, Algirdas Julien, 35
Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm, 132
Hamlet (Shakespeare), 61, 75
Hays Code regulations, 133, 134
Henry IV, Part I (Shakespeare), 52
Hero of Our Time, A (Lermontov), 88, 91, 93
History of Julius Caesar (Napoleon III), 126
Holinshed’s Chronicles, 70
Holmes, Sherlock (fictional character), 20–21, 38
Hopkins, Gerard Manley, 26–27
House of the Dead, The (Dostoevsky), 127, 138
Idiot, The (Dostoevsky), 122
incidents: authors’ relating of, 19–28; defined, 29; as embedded in other incidents, 24–25; as most discrete elements of plot, xix; that form as siuzhets as having two parts, 38–40; traditional definition of, 36; as tripartite, 34–37, 38
inevitability, sense of, 47
Inspector General (Gogol), 23
Insulted and Injured, The (Dostoevsky), 122
inventio, use of term, 17
Iphigenia at Aulis (Euripides), 62, 135–36
Iphigenia in Tauris (Euripides), 56
Istoricheskaia poetika (Mueller), 31
Karamazovism (O ‘Karamazovshchine), 136
King Lear (Shakespeare): as not responding well to allegorical treatment, 27–28; as one of Belknap’s case studies, xiv, xxiii; plot of, xv, 28, 43–76; Shakespeare’s use of elaborate lies in, 64–68; suffering in, 136; Tolstoy and Tate as preferring comforting plots of sources of, 70–76; Tolstoy’s dislike of, xx, 72; Tolstoy’s summary of, xix–xx
Kittredge, George Lyman, 8
“Kugelmass Episode, The” (Allen), xvii
“La Belle Dame Sans Merci” (Keats), 23
Laclos, Pierre Choderlos de, 84, 99
Laocoön (Lessing), 19, 21
Le Morte d’Arthur (Malory), 91
Lermontov, Mikhail, xxii, 58, 86, 87, 88–89, 90, 91, 100, 120
“Le roman experimental” (Zola), 98
Lessing, Gotthold, 19, 21
letters/letter-writing, 84
Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 24, 132
Love’s Labor’s Lost (Shakespeare), 61
Madame Bovary (Flaubert), xvii, 136
Measure for Measure (Shakespeare), 8, 9, 61–62
Merchant of Venice, The (Shakespeare), 62
Merry Wives of Windsor, The (Shakespeare), 61
Midsummer Night’s Dream, A (Shakespeare), 61
Mikado (Gilbert and Sullivan), 9
Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (Sturges), 134
Mochulsky, Konstantin, xxiii,
modern novel, origin of, 58
modern plot studies, 14, 30
Morphology of the Folktale (Propp), 32–33, 35
motivirovka (rationale), 22, 24, 85
Much Ado about Nothing (Shakespeare), 61
music, as constituent element, 3, 43, 44, 45
“My Confession” (Karamzin), 90
mystico-ascetic novel, 137
mythos, and English word plot, 6, 45
narration: according to Greimas, 35; in European novel, 87; first-person narration, 85, 104; narrative embedding, 38; omniscient narration, 85; role of narrative, 58; Russian interdependence between plotting and, 88; Russian narration, xxii; third-person narration, 104
Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, The (Poe), 20
narrators: James’s cardinal rule for, xxii, 92; role of, 25
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 60, 97
nineteenth-century Russian novel, Dostoevsky as shaped by, 86–95
Notes from Underground (Dostoevsky), 90, 97, 100, 120
novelistic justice, as compared to poetic justice, xvi, xxiv, 129–39
novelistic plotting, of Dostoevsky, 21
novels: according to Forster, 79; action, 84; detective, xv, 79; as differing from dramas, 79; epistolary novelists, 84; European novel/novelists, xv, xxiii, 79, 83, 85, 86, 87, 91, 96; evolution of, 79–80; fabula and siuzhet in, 17; Gothic novelists/novels, 86, 93, 108, 111, 123; history of, 81; ideological, 97; letter, xv, 79, 84, 85, 97, 104; manipulative, 107; mystico-ascetic, 137; ordeal, 111, 124; origin of modern, 58; picaresque, 83; political, 84; proto-novels, 82, 91; psychological, 84, 93, 97, 100, 114; Sensationalist novelists, 108; shuffled, 20; social, 84
Oedipus at Colonus (Sophocles), 54
Oedipus the King (Sophocles), 54
Optimistichkeskaia tragediia (The Optimistic Tragedy) (Vishnevsky), 134–35
“Overcoat, The” (Gogol), 96
Paradise Lost (Milton), 18
parallelism, xv, 26, 27, 28, 49–52, 64, 79, 83, 102, 104, 112, 113, 118, 129
parody, similarity of plot summary to, 14
pattern-recognition, 28, 51
Pericles (Shakespeare), 58, 63
Philoctetes (Sophocles), 56, 62
“Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote” (Borges), 26
Play’s the Thing, The (Molnár), 62
plot connections, recycling of, 83
plot(s): according to Aristotle, 3, 10, 15, 16, 36–37, 64; according to Veselovsky, 31; as arranging literary experience, 3–5; artistic, 139; as both wholes and complexities, 80; center of in commercial theatre of nineteenth century, 55; classical, 49; collections of as existing for centuries, 82; components of in English language, 4; defined, 4, 29; as deserving of study, 4–5; distinction between plot and story according to Forester, 39; dramatic, 43, 45, 47, 54, 112; epic, 43, 82; as fractal, xiv, xv, xvi, 29–33, 34, 39, 79, 91; impact of computers on, 5, 139; literary, xv, 3, 4, 8, 43, 112; migratory, 7, 30; novelistic, 25, 58, 82, 83; as offering insight into meaning of text, 129; political, 4, 139; psychological, xv, 96; as relationship among incidents, 15, 16, 29; relationship among incidents as most important aspect of, xxi; Shakespearean, 49, 59; as sine qua non, xxiv; as tripartite, 34–37, 38; verbal, 139
plot summary(ies): as aspiring to accuracy, 7; Belknap’s scrutiny of, xix; characteristics of, 9; as idiosyncratic and instructive, xx; as instrument of literary polemic, 14; as needing more serious study, 6–15; Tolstoy’s of King Lear, xix–xx, 72
poetic justice, novelistic justice as compared to, xvi, xxiv, 129–39
Poetics (Aristotle), 6, 55
“Poor Liza” (Karamzin), 90, 92
Possessed, The (Dostoevsky), 122, 128
Poverty’s No Crime (Ostrovsky), 12
psychological causation, 24
psychological plot, xv, 96
Pushkin, Alexander, xxii, 9, 58, 86, 87, 90–91, 92, 93, 97, 100
Racine and Shakespeare (Stendahl), 49, 59
Raw Youth, The (Dostoevsky), 128
Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative (Brooks), xviii
recognition scenes, xv, xxi, 53, 54, 55–56, 59, 62–63, 68, 73, 74, 75
relationships: associative relationships, 20, 25–26; Before–After relationship/system, 20, 24; cause/effect relationships, 22–24, 46, 88, 100; chronological relationships, 19, 21; fabula as, 17; kinds of, 29; siuzhet as, 17; spatial relationships, 20–21
Republic, The (Plato), 44
Richardson, Samuel, 84, 111
Roderick Hudson (James), 122
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 84, 88, 90
Russian book reviews, purpose of, 11–12
Russian novel, Dostoevsky as shaped by, 86–95
Saussure, Ferdinand de, 17, 30
scène à faire (righting a wrong), 53, 54, 55, 57
scene of repentance/forgiveness/reconciliation, 53
Sensationalist novelists, 108
Sentimental tradition/Sentimentalism, 88, 90, 91, 92
Shakespeare, William: as having been pirated, 10; as having replaced unit of action with unity based on parallelism, xv, 49–52; as having written for royalty and groundlings, 10; parallelism as leading to abstraction in works of, 102; as preparing for recognition scenes with elaborate lies, 59–63; standard plotting devices of, xv, 53–58; Tolstoy and Tate as preferring comforting plots of Lear’s sources to Shakespeare’s, 70–76; Tolstoy’s dislike of, xx; as using elaborate lies in King Lear, 64–68. See also specific works
Shakespearean plot, 49, 59
similarity, treatment of, 51, 52
siuzhet: as arranging events in world reader encounters, 16–18; creative tension between fabula and, xxiv; defined, xviii; description of, xv; as distinct from fabula, xxiii; in fairy tales, 17; as favorite term of Russian Formalist critics, 16; as having two parts, 38–40; incidents forming, xvi; as one dimensional, 21; of part I of Crime and Punishment, 101–7; as signifier, 17; space in, 20, 21; structure of, 17–18; time in, 19, 21; translation of term, xxi, 16; treatment of, xviii
Sky Mall: The World’s In-Flight Shopping Mall, 12
social goals (of drama), 53
spatial relationships, 20–21
“Special Regulations on Crime in Motion Pictures,” 133–34
spectacle, as constituent element, 3, 4, 43, 45, 55
standard plotting devices, xv, 53
Stanislavsky, Konstantin, 66
Stendahl (Marie-Henri Beyle), 49, 50, 59
Sylvie and Bruno (Carroll), 21
Tale of a Tub, A (Swift), 60
“Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich, The” (Gogol), xxiii, 93–94, 95
Tales from Shakespeare (C. and M. Lamb), 8–9
Taming of the Shrew, The (Shakespeare), 22, 61, 62
Tempest, The (Shakespeare), 58, 61, 62
Teoriia literatury (Tomashevsky), 32
Thackeray, William Makepeace, 87, 88, 91
Theory of Literature (Welleck and Warren), xviii
Theory of Prose (Shklovsky), 36
third-person narration, 104
Timon of Athens (Shakespeare), 62
Tolstoy, Leo: critics’ opinions of, 131; education of in Eastern culture, 87; on King Lear, xv, 70–76; and Russian novelistic technique, 88; on Shakespeare, xx, 72; summary of King Lear by, xix–xx. See also specific works
Tradition and Innovation: General Education and the Reintegration of the University (Belknap and Kuhns), xiii
tragedy, according to Aristotle, 43
translation, similarity of plot summary to, xix, 7, 14
Treasure, The (Shvarts), 21
Tristram Shandy (Sterne), 11, 19, 25, 80
True Chronicle History of King Leir, The, 70, 75
Twelfth Night (Shakespeare), 62, 63, 74
Two Gentlemen of Verona, The (Shakespeare), 61, 62
unity of action: achievement of, 9; need for, 43–48; replaced by Shakespeare with unity based on parallelism, xv, 49–52; Shakespeare as ignoring, 50; Shakespeare as sacrificing, 59
unrequited/unfilled love, 111
Upstairs-Downstairs (TV series), 20
Veselovsky, Alexander, 30, 31, 33
Waiting for Godot (Beckett), 39
“Walrus and the Carpenter, The” (Carroll), 4
War and Peace (Tolstoy), xix, 7
What Is Art? (Tolstoy), 73
What Is to Be Done? (Chernyshevsky), 97, 128
White Devil, The (Webster), 23
Will to Power (Nietzsche), 60
Winter’s Tale, The (Shakespeare), 74