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The Analysis of Literary Situation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Carl E. W. L. Dahlström
Carl E. W. L. Dahlström*
Affiliation:
University of Michigan
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Extract

There have been sporadic attempts to determine the number of situations which artists may exploit in literature, especially dramatic literature; but, so far as I know, there has been no signal effort on the part of scholars to come to grips with the subject. Apart from determining the exact number of situations, it is of importance that we come to some agreement regarding the term situation and its function in literary art. I shall attempt here to discuss: earlier efforts at definition and analysis, the nature of situation, the exact number of situations, and examples in literature.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 51 , Issue 3 , September 1936 , pp. 872 - 889
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1936

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References

1 This is an expansion of the paper “Situation in Literature” read before the Modern Language Association section on Aesthetics and Poetical Form, December, 1933.

2 Also published by Mercure de France.

3 Sur l'autel des 36 filles d'Iacchos et de Melpomène leur prêtre Polti sacrifie contre son gré M. Pierre Louys ephèbe. Mercure de France, xiii (1895), 227.

4 Undoubtedly given, at least in part, with tongue in cheek.

5 Les Trente-Six Situations Dramatiques. Nouvelle Édition. (Mercure de France: Paris, 1912), p. 11. The third edition (1924) is substantially the same.

6 Ibid., p. 12.

7 Ibid., pp. 9–10.

8 Ibid., p. 200. Italics in text.

9 Ibid., p. 18.

10 Ibid., p. 197.

11 In the next section of this paper, I shall re-evaluate these forces.

12 To indicate the category of forces pertaining to self-motivated action without limitation to self-love and self-interest, I use the words egoïc and egoïcally. They are terms to define a category in the large without reference to attributes in particular. For this purpose, the words egoistic, egotistic, and other related forms are unsatisfactory.

13 It is obvious that some of the differences seem to be without much distinction; that is, some of the situations are variations in kind. See, for example, situations iii and iv, xiii and xiv, xv and xxv, and xx and xxi.

14 Les Trente-Six Situations Dramatiques, pp. 172–175.

15 I use the word shelter in the widest sense of “instrument of protection” (whether cave, hut, tree, or clothing) from inimical forms of life and destructive or injurious action of the elements.

16 An entomologist might point to the ants as an equally valid example.

17 See Note 12 above.

18 One of the most outstanding examples of egoïc force is found in Shaw's Bach to Methuselah, Part v. The She-Ancient says at one point, “The day will come when there will be no people, only thought.”

19 The mathematical development has been checked by Dr. R. V. Churchill, Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the University of Michigan. I have relied chiefly on Edward A. Bowser, College Algebra (Boston: Heath, 1888).

20 See Bowser, op. cit., pp. 385–392.

21 P→P′, corresponding to our earlier opposition of P O S E D→P′O′S′E′D′.

22 Bowser, op. cit., p. 424.

23 Ibid., p. 422. Professor Churchill called my attention to this formula as immediately applicable to the series.

24 It can be demonstrated that the attributes of forces are infinite in extent, with the necessary result of infinite variation.

25 Text by Wyatt and Chambers (Cambridge: University Press, 1914), ll. 102–106.

26 Ibid., ll. 159–163.

27 There is a great deal of research to be done in determining the relationships of situation, plot, theme, character, and setting.

28 I refer here solely to setting in its physical and temporal aspects, and not in the social.

29 Observe that the novel opens with a prime stress on Egdon Heath as a kind of physical force.

30 In spite of James A. Quinn's statement, “Sex was not the factor originally responsible for cither marriage or the family.” Hedger (and others), An Introduction to Western Civilization (Garden City: Doubleday, Doran and Co., 1933), p. 604. Under the caption “Functions of Marriage,” however, Quinn does declare that “Marriage has as one of its most important functions the control of relations between the sexes. …”

31 See note 18 above.

32 Introductory stanzas to S'ömngångarnätter på vakna dagar. Samlade skrifter, Vol. xiii (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1913).

33 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1918), p. 312.

34 Genesis xxxii. 26.

35 Goethe makes it clear, however, that God is the prime motivating force even for the one “der reizt und wirkt und muss als Teufel schaffen.”

36 I have given treatment in passing to situation in two articles: “Hallström's Impressionism as Illustrated in ‘A Secret Idyll’,” PMLA, xlvi (September 1931), 937; and in “An Introduction to the Critical Appreciation of Literature,” Papers of the Mich. Acad. of Science, Arts and Letters, xix (1933, published 1934), 521.