Essay Questions

What does the author reveal as the task of prose?

Prose is placed into juxtaposition with poetry as the junction at which it coalesces into a literary form capable of challenging the historical dominance of verse: the arrival of what is commonly regarded as the first actual novel, Don Quixote. Narrative poetry—especially epic poetry—tell stories that follow roughly along the conventional structure of plot construction, but the content is always subjugated to the form. As long as each successive episode of heroic deeds is connected stylistically, logical and rationality can be easily sacrificed. What prose beings to the game is precisely that expectation of logical progression not dependent upon the deus ex machina of drama or random acts of coincidence easily ignored thanks to poetic flair. The task of prose is to bring control and reason to the working out of stories. Another term for this is, of course, the unified plot.

What term does the author use to describe the narrative trope of the weak, undermatched hero upsetting the seemingly invincible opponent?

The plot described here is one which can be applied to any number of different stories over the course of history. The earliest example provided by the author is that David versus Goliath as delineated in the Old Testament. Others he provides are exemplary models such as the tailor who slays giants and a frog managing to best an elephant. This trope almost certainly accounts for probably half the sports movies Hollywood has made and likely a significantly higher percentage than that. The working out of this conflict is based on the paradox of the weaker entity defeating the stronger one and it is this paradox which earns the author’s distinctive term describing it: the oxymoronic plot.

After explaining how literary plots capable of reaching the status of a trope must first be born, what specific example is forwarded to demonstrate how they are also subject to dying?

The basic outline of the “abduction and recognition” plot is that the hero must first be abducted and thought dead only to reappear at the end to save the day. It is a plot the author primarily associated with adventures stories, but one that can equally well be applied to a number of Shakespeare’s plays, including subplots in some of his most respected tragedies. By death, of course, it not meant that it is never found in modern stories, but that its rare appearances are mostly relegated to children’s stories, parody or satire. The relevance to adventures stories is not incidental to the “death” of this plot: its commission even in the best of hands requires outrageous suspensions of disbelief, a series of unlikely coincidences and, always helpful, villainous characters who are not the sharpest knives in the drawer.