Plot, in fiction, the structure of interrelated actions, consciously selected and

arranged by the author. Plot involves a much higher level of narrative organization

than normally occurs in a “story” or fable. According to E.M. Forster in Aspects of

the Novel (1927), a story is a “narrative of events arranged in their time-

sequence,” while a plot organizes the events according to a “sense of causality.”
In the history of literary criticism, plot has undergone a variety of

interpretations. In the Poetics, Aristotle assigned primary importance to plot

(mythos) and considered it the very “soul” of a tragedy. Later critics tended to

reduce plot to a more mechanical function, until, in the Romantic era, the term was

theoretically degraded to a mere outline on which the content of fiction was hung.

Such outlines were popularly thought to exist apart from any particular work and to

be reusable and interchangeable. They might be endowed with life by an author

through development of character, dialogue, or some other element. The publication

of books of “basic plots” brought plot to its lowest esteem.
In his great defense of the novel, The Art of Fiction (1884), Henry James politely

refuted the prevailing theory of separable elements or ingredients of fiction that

could be mixed in proportion like a recipe.

“A novel is a living thing, all one and

continuous, like any other organism, and in proportion as it lives, will it be

found, I think, that in each of the parts there is something of each of the other

parts.” He went on to say: “What is character but the determination of incident?

What is incident but the illustration of character?”
The wide acceptance of this organic theory of the novel focussed critical attention

on what made the work of fiction “live” or “move” and what principle defined or

controlled the interaction of character and incident.
In the 20th century there have been many attempts to redefine plot as movement, and

some critics have even reverted to the position of Aristotle in giving it primary

importance in fiction. These neo-Aristotelians (or Chicago school of critics),

following the leadership of the critic Ronald S. Crane, have described plot as the

author’s control of the reader’s emotional responses—his arousal of the reader’s

interest and anxiety and the careful control of that anxiety over a duration of

time. This approach, however, is only one of many attempts to restore plot to its

former place of priority in fiction.



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