CONCEPT OF PLOT AND

PLOT OF TOM JONES

PART 5
 Fielding’s greatest book
 Influential English novel
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge argued that it
has one of the ‘three most perfect plots
ever planned’
 Novel – major and minor characters {women}
 Many passages – extra dramatic thought
 Writing style – highly selective dialogues
 Use of diction and imagery – comic style even when
the incidents seem serious
 Crane states that he have no consideration about these
features of the play
 To make clear the assumptions
 To illustrate some of the possibilities for practical
criticism – part analysis of narrative one which
view plot as a “First principle of artistic
construction”
 All critical methods has its own limitations
 It must be judged – the problems it is fitted to deal & the things which lie
beyond it’s scope
 By the method part analysis of narrative - able to view a work of art as a
dynamic whole – affects our emotions- through the functioning together of
elements
 Parts of a work/section can contribute maximum effect in readers
 Example:- Character ‘Partridge’ in Tom Jones [teacher- minor role-
comedic Harlequin character- pathetic, bumbling, coward but he plays a
perfect role in the evolution of comic action.
 This method also helps us to seek the value of a writer’s
performance
 A method adapted to appreciate the success or failure of
individual works rather than making comparative judgement
 Crane terms this method “a poetics of form” – analytical
isolation of works of art as finished products
 Better to explain –
Effects in a work are constructed in accordance with the
same combination of artistic principles – might have the
same effects of any other work / whatever date.
 Rather than explaining –
The work was produced by a given artist, in a given period,
at a given stage…
 Crane’s pluralist view- Criticism of forms, Criticism of
qualities
 Criticism of forms- valid and useful critical method
 Needs to be supplemented by criticism of qualities
 It is a sole method capable of dealing with a minimum of
unanalyzed terms, literally in terms of causes and effects
 A method ought to have a strong appeal to students
 Students are averse to modern critical systems
 Criticism of qualities and investigation of historical
origins can be done independently
 But for better results it should be found by formal
principles[criticism of forms]
 This lead to less qualitative criticism- writers, fewer
literary histories.
THANK YOU