The Routledge Dictionary of Literary Terms

178 Pluralism
necessary order of a fiction. An exception
were the Chicago Aristotelians (see
CHICAGO CRITICS), who spoke persuasively
of its value as a means of distinguishing
the determining order of a work. (The
Russian FORMALIST critics also usefully
explored the concept.) What (here to
adapt Aristotle considerably) seems
apparent is that the ‘deep’ definition of
plot approximates to the difficulties of the
writing process before and during composition:
it involves recognizing an essential
relationship, familiar to writers if not
always to critics, between ‘plot’ in its
simple story sense and other elements
much more complicated than is usually
understood – characters, local linguistic
devices (‘speeches’, ‘descriptions’), general
linguistic devices (rhetorical strategies,
pervasive symbols), generative
sequence in actions at narrative and tonal
levels, starts and finishes.
Plot is a compositional whole. Even
then, it can seem a deterministic grid,
making the writer of a fiction a Godfigure
whose command over characters is
absolute. (This analogue – character as
liberal, plot as determinist – has often
been a theme in fiction: Muriel Spark’s
The Driver’s Seat, 1970 is a clear example.)
This is a possible derivative of the concept
of plot, and suggests its coherent wholeness.
See also CHARACTER, NARRATIVE
STRUCTURE, STRUCTURALISM, STRUCTURE.
See Aristotle, trans. I. Bywater,
Poetics (1909); R. S. Crane, ‘The concept
of plot and the plot of Tom Jones’ in
Crane (ed.), Critics and Criticism (1957);
E. M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel
(1927); Henry James, ‘The art of fiction’
(1888), reprinted in Morris Roberts (ed.),
The Art of Fiction and Other Essays by
Henry James (1948); N. J. Lowe, The
Classical Plot and the Invention of
Western Narrative (2004). For the
Formalist/Structuralist tradition, see Lee
T. Lemon and Marion J. Reis (trans.),
Russian Formalist criticism: Four Essays
(1965); Russian Poetics in Translation,
Vol. 4, Formalist Theory (1977); Tzvetan
Todorov, The Poetics of Prose (trans.
1977); Seymour Chatman, Story and
Discourse (1978).
Pluralism See CHICAGO CRITICS.
Poetic diction See DICTION, POETRY.
MSB
Poetic licence It has sometimes been
argued that, because of the difficulty of
satisfying the additional voluntary restrictions
of poetic form, the poet has a
‘licence’ to relax some of the normal
restrictions of the language-system. The
most thorough attempt to find a justification
for this was made by the Russian
Formalist and Prague Structuralist critical
schools. According to Shklovsky, people
living by the sea grow impervious to the
sound of the waves.
By the same token, we scarcely ever
hear the words which we utter.... We
look at each other, but we do not see
each other any more. Our perception
of the world has withered away, what
has remained is mere recognition.
By disturbing language, and therefore the
view of reality which we receive through
language, the poet refreshes perception
and replaces recognition by an impression
of novelty. Or, as Roman Jakobson has
put it, ‘The function of poetry is to point
out that the sign is not identical with its
referent.’ On this view, the kind of
‘licence’ we ought to grant should cover
neither technical incompetence nor novelty
for its own sake, but only deviations
which bring about a new sense of inner
and outer realities. Many writers, even
prose-writers, have agreed. Conrad, for
example, wrote that ‘the development