business of the narrative. In fiction, however, characterization plays a relatively more important part than in the actual chronicle, and the extent to which characterization may be carried is well illustrated in such typical studies of personality as Daniel Deronda, or The Egoist, or Helbeck of Bannisdale. These come close to what Marion Crawford has included in the term "novels-with-apurpose," and of them he says:

Probably no one denies that the first object of the novel is to amuse and interest the reader. But it is often said that the novel should instruct as well as afford amusement, and the "novel-with-a-purpose" is the realization of this idea. We might invent a better expression than that clumsy translation of the neat German "Tendenz-Roman." Why not compound the words and call the odious thing a "purpose-novel”? The purpose-novel, then, proposes to serve two masters, besides procuring a reasonable amount of bread and butter for its writer and publisher. It proposes to escape from my definition of the novel in general and make itself an "intellectual moral lesson" instead of an "intellectual artistic luxury.”1

Applying the principle underlying this judgment to the rhetorical aspects of narrative writing as exemplified in recent psychological fiction, we may well ask whether many of the so-called "modern novels" do not belong essentially to the domain of exposition rather than to that of narration.

1 Crawford's The Novel: What it is. Copyright, 1893. By permission of The Macmillan Company.

CHAPTER VI

THE ORDERING OF THE ACTION: PLOT

DEFINITIONS

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THE word plot as used in connection with narrative writing has two distinct, but allied, meanings. Etymologically it is associated with the Anglo-Saxon plot, "a piece of ground," and in the allied sense, “a ground plan," it signifies no more than the clear conception of his work in its totality as it exists in the mind of the composer, or the sense of completeness and unified purpose of which the reader is conscious as he reviews the finished work. Thus the biographer "plots" his composition when he selects the specific aspects of his subject that his finished work is to develop, - deepened character, perhaps, or the ultimate attainment of an ideal; the historian "plots" his narrative when he deliberately shapes the story of chronicled events, unifying his data and making for a definite goal, to demonstrate, it may be, how a true democracy has gradually been evolved from original absolutism or how a national tradition has been an underlying influence in the growth of a state. In accord with this principle it was that Dr. Allen "plotted" his biography of Phillips Brooks, and Bancroft planned his well-known history of the United States.

The student of rhetorical principles will see that in this sense of the word plot is merely unity of purpose combined with preliminary outline or plan. It is to the narrator what the brief is to the forensic writer. The debater in advance sees his goal, grasps the exact proposi

tion the truth of which he wishes to impress upon his judges. The ordering of his proof, the proper place of refutation, the relative weights of various arguments, their logical relations, all these he must appreciate at the outset, and upon the "plot," or plan, thus formulated he bases his ultimate appeal with all its persuasive enrichment. Similarly the narrator sets in due order his various episodes, planning in advance the most effective sequence, the repression of the climax in the interests of suspense, the adjustment of cause and effect, the correlation of similar forces, the development of setting and character, and the ultimate revelation of the end toward which all parts in turn have contributed.

Some writers modify their method to the extent that, given a starting-point, they allow the plan to unroll itself as the action advances, and "plot" is not apparent until toward the end. Thus it often was, in considerable degree, with Dickens and Scott, natural story-tellers both; yet the reader is aware of a unity of conception that permeates the finished whole. When, for example, one looks back over the course of Martin Chuzzlewit or Nicholas Nickleby, one realizes how an apparently loose narrative is in reality a mosaic of thoughts, words, and acts, at times of seeming insignificance, yet combining to form a pattern fairly complete, unified, homogeneous. And even so rambling a story as the adventures of the Pickwick Club presents in retrospect something of method and coördination of parts. This completeness constitutes what etymologically may be called the "plot" of the narrative.

Still other writers seem to have no distinct formulation, no conception of work unified in its entirety. They take up successively the various ideas suggested by the immediate incident of the moment, but they seem to

make for no definite goal. They apparently have as much difficulty in rounding their material into a well-defined conclusion as Defoe had in closing out his bi-weekly Review, when, after having pronounced its valedictory on at least two occasions, he proceeded to advertise its reappearance as a tri-weekly. The reader of Bourrienne's Memoirs of Napoleon is offended by this seeming vagueness of concentration, and questions the plot significance of data as they are introduced. In the domain of fiction, Smollett frequently betrays the same tendency; instead of having in mind a well-formulated plan of action he appears to write with the purpose of merely filling space, and to stop only when he has reached a prescribed number of pages, not because he has arrived at any definite conclusion.

But, perhaps through association with another word, complot, the term “plot” has taken to itself a second signification. Complot suggests the idea of complication (Latin: complicare), as of strands woven together into a pattern. And in this sense we find the word "plot" conveying the generally accepted idea of intricacy of detail, of a complex pattern made up of various threads of action combining in ultimate unity of design. Using the word with this signification, one says of a story that it is well written but has no real "plot.” Being interpreted, this signifies that the narrative is simple in construction, not a complex tissue of entanglements leading to an unexpected dénouement. In this everyday sense biography would possess little or no "plot"; a detective story, admirable "plot"; a history of the Jewish people would be but a simple chronicle without complication, whereas the story of Haman and Mordecai in the court of Ahasuerus would, because of its involved narrative structure, be well "plotted" and allied to the short-story or even to the drama.

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Now if we revert to the definition of narration, we shall see the exact aspect of "plot" with which we must be concerned. If narration be the arrangement in chronological order of the successive details that constitute an event, we have thus far concerned ourselves with what are, to a certain degree, narrative accessories: that is to say, setting has to do with the background against which the action is projected for its greater effectiveness; character concerns the agents by and through whom the action is presented. There is still left the ordering of the action itself as presented by the characters against the background. Complicated this action may be or simple, but before it can be presented it must be intelligently set in order, and this ordering of the events, this deliberate planning of the constituent details of the action constitutes what rhetorically is known as plot.

A little consideration will show that in fictitious narrative there is greater likelihood of complication in the articulation of plot elements, in the ordering of the details of action, than in the chronicling of mere facts. This may be because in veritable narrative, -as exemplified in historical or biographical literature, there is more of the expository process of setting forth facts whose virtue is in themselves. The attitude of mind with which one approaches a biography of Charles Dickens is radically unlike that with which one approaches the story of David Copperfield's career. And the difference proceeds from the fact that literature has two aspects, the intellectual and the emotional, and because these vary in proportion in different types of composition. The reader of the biography is actuated mainly by the intellectual impulse; he seeks a record of actual occurrences. The biography, to be sure, will not rank as a work of true literary merit unless it possesses something of emotional