some definiteness for the novel as a whole, but a large part of its æsthetic value depends on changes within the composition. If the novel is "allegro," so to speak, as a whole, it will require a "presto" movement to give much acceleration; and an "andante" movement will, by comparison, be a retardation. It might be possible to select individual novels or passages as standards of the principal rates of movements suggested by the analysis of music.

Momentum has not been defined as referring merely to the purely narrative interest, a reader may perhaps be more concerned with the accumulation of philosophical ideas, etc., - but this is the most common and most natural application. Viewing a novel as a narrative, description, exposition, and often dialogue are retarding elements; the highest degree of acceleration occurs in narrative passages characterized by rapid sequence of well-relieved incidents.

Richardson's novels are famous examples of retardation; Smollett's, as novels of adventure, are marked by notable acceleration. The eleven pages of Chapter XXI of Sir Launcelot Greaves include a marriage, father's rejection of a daughter, persecution of a debtor, imprisonment, birth and death of a child, formation of the drunkard's habit, development of semi-insanity, social and prison history of a "gay young widow," bankruptcy and imprisonment of another character, and several other distinct incidents. (But in this passage there is little mass in the momentum, for Sir Launcelot is hardly the important character, and the others are entirely episodic.) There is nothing resembling this in Silas Marner. That novel as a whole might perhaps be considered an andante movement. Acceleration is specially noticeable in Chapters XIII, XVIII, and the latter part of Chapter I; retardation in Chapters VI and XI.

39. Climax and Foiling. Foiling is represented by the formula, aA,1 in reference to any two consecutive items of

1 For a conception of the term and its application, see Moulton's Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist.

interest; though, like climax, more generally referred, in the novel, to characters and events. Climax is represented by the formula aAA. In the relations of character, an example of foiling is found when character A is presented as good, B as better, or the reverse; in the relations of action, when a mysterious event is compared with a more mysterious, etc. Logically, it requires three points and no more to make a climactic effect, and this triple form is common in fiction, especially romantic fiction. Compare the triple testing of chastity, the three caskets of the Merchant of Venice, and Bedivere with Excalibur in the Idylls of the King.

Of course there are many degrees of definiteness in foiling and climax. Special structural value is found only when the author is conscious of the effect, but the student may discover many examples for himself. In a certain way, Jem Rodney is a foil for Dunstan Cass, but it is doubtful if George Eliot thought of the two as so related. In Robinson Crusoe there is climax in the series of disasters to the hero in his early history; in his gradual conquest of circumstances on the island, and in the later growth of the colony. Each of these series may be outlined in distinct stages. A good example of romantic character foiling is found in the hero and the monster of Frankenstein tion and suffering; greater isolation and suffering. Climax of plot, as a definite technical term, is noticed in Section 51.

great isola

40. Reciprocity. - Any two points or masses with definite structural interchange of value, so to speak, especially when the values are considered about equal, may be called reciprocal. The terms counterpoint, countermass, may also be used. Contrast is the most familiar and perhaps the most significant type of reciprocity. It is naturally most emphatic when the two points are adjacent, and when it passes into detailed antithesis. Victor Hugo often carries his fondness for sharp contrast, observable in every element of the novel, into the details

of sentence and phrase. Contrast should not be limited to characters, though this is certainly one of its most important aspects in the novel. Contrast incorporated in the main theme of a novel is suggested by such titles as Master and Man, Cloister and Hearth, Sense and Sensibility.1 Suspense and its "relief" are of course reciprocal. They are often somewhat massed at the beginning or climax of a novel, and at the catastrophe, respectively.

A marked example of anticipation is found in Janet's Repentance, the closing paragraph of Chapter IX. This item of the narrative is elaborated in its proper place in the first paragraphs of Chapter XXVII, even with essential repetition of a few details-"her eyes were worn with grief and watching"; "in quiet submissive sorrow," etc. What seems to be definite anticipation is not always fulfilled. When Godfrey Cass sees his dead wife in Marner's cottage, "he remembered that last look at his unhappy hated wife so well, that at the end of sixteen years every line in the worn face was present to him when he told the full story of this night." This is so definite that we may naturally expect a corresponding passage later, but there is no further mention of this terrible memory of Godfrey.

41. Analysis of Simpler Narratives. The novel is too long and complex to permit an exhaustive analysis of all the elements of narrative form. For practise in such analysis the short story is more satisfactory. For the examination of mere mechanism, perhaps nothing is better than that barren type in which narrative interest is reduced to its lowest terms, the genealogy. In the tenth chapter of Genesis, for example, it is easy to distinguish the beginning, middle, and end; the episodes; the points of repetition, retardation, acceleration, etc. Most of the analyses of the present volume could be simply exemplified from Biblical narratives.

1 Other phases of contrast are noticed in the chapter on General Esthetic Interest.

CHAPTER III

PLOT 1

It

42. Meaning of Plot. Four somewhat different conceptions of plot are explained in the glossary. The root idea of them all is that of design—of unity fashioned out of complexity of details. This root idea implies a certain subjectivity in all plot; for design, though it may be given external form, is essentially a product of the mind. follows that plot analysis is more or less flexible, depending on the particular way in which the artist and the critic see the relation of the details to a central plan. Even so simple a graphic design as this, ✪, the imagination may choose to see primarily as a circle with an inscribed cross, the four quarters of a circle, etc. In more complicated designs it may require some time for an untrained eye to perceive the unity in a given way. This flexibility is very pronounced in the novelistic plot, because the details themselves are invariably complicated and subjective. In a sense, the critic makes rather than merely discovers the plot. The closer the study, the more familiar any method of analysis, however, the more exact and uniform the results.

The general conception of plot as unity of design 'is applicable to all the arts, and is noticed more at length in

1 The general indebtedness of this chapter to Moulton's method of plot analysis, and to Freytag and his followers, may be acknowledged once for all. Many details will be apparent to any one acquainted with the two critics.

the chapter on General Esthetic Interest. The present chapter considers plot mainly in the first sense of the glossary, as a design of strictly narrative details.

43. Necessity and Ideality of Narrative Plot. — In any well-constructed narration, one may affirm the necessity and ideality of plot. When Mr. Tuckerman writes of Morte d'Arthur, "of plot there is none,"1 if he is using the word in the sense just given, his statement is opposed by an analysis of the romance itself. Plot is necessary because of the inevitable tendency of the mind to unify any series of events it considers together; it is ideal because the imagination, broadly interpreted, is the only mental faculty able to fashion this unity in a satisfactory manner. Though one may grant a certain objective unity in a series of natural events, as in the working of a machine or a process of crystallization, the narrative record of those events, unless a mere unmeaning jumble, is a product of imagination. The great unifying conception of evolution, even if all the facts were found in nature, is essentially imaginative, as science states it for our intellectual satisfaction and practical use.

Especially in any series of social or individual human experiences, the reason demands and the imagination attempts the transformation of a chaos of details into a cosmos of significance, if not of beauty. Plot, in this restricted sense, is common to epic, drama, novel, history, and biography; and the general method of analysis may be much the same for all. The student of the novel might profit by plot analysis of Carlyle's French Revolution, Hallam's Middle Ages, or Grant's Personal Memoirs. Most clearly is plot necessary and ideal in fictitious narrative. However real the main outline of events, or

1 English Prose Fiction, p. 40.