f the
qualities of the actors."--And yet, for the writer who, like
Turgenieff, works from the inside out, it is entirely possible to
develop from "the qualities of the actors" a train of action that
shall be as stirring as it is significant.

=Recapitulation.=--The main principle of narrative to bear in mind
is that action alone, or character alone, is not its proper
subject-matter. The purpose of narrative is to represent events; and
an event occurs only when both character and action, with contributory
setting, are assembled and commingled. Indeed, in the greatest and
most significant events, it is impossible to decide whether the actor
or the action has the upper hand; it is impossible, in regarding
such events, for the imagination to conceive what is done and who
is doing it as elements divorced. A novelist who has started out
with either element and has afterward evoked the other may arrive
by imagination at this final complete sense of an event. The best
narratives of action and of character are indistinguishable, one from
another, in their ultimate result: they differ only in their origin:
and the author who aspires to a mastery of narrative should
remember that, in narrative at its best, character and action and
even setting are one and inseparable.

For the conveniences of study, however, it is well to examine the
elements of narrative one by one; and we shall therefore devote three
separate chapters to a technical consideration of plot, and
characters, and setting.

REVIEW QUESTIONS

1. What is a narrative?

2. Distinguish between a succession and a series of events.

3. What are the two steps in any art?

4. What are the three component elements of every event?

5. Is life itself narrative in pattern?

6. Can the foregoing question be answered without qualification?

7. Discuss the comparative advantages of the narrative of action and
the narrative of character.

SUGGESTED READING

WILLIAM TENNEY BREWSTER: Introduction to "Specimens of Prose
Narration."

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON: "A Gossip on Romance."

HENRY JAMES: Essay on Turgenieff, in "Partial Portraits."

CHAPTER IV

PLOT

Narrative a Simplification of Life--Unity in Narrative--A Definite
Objective Point--Construction, Analytic and Synthetic--The
Importance of Structure--Elementary Narrative--Positive and Negative
Events--The Picaresque Pattern--Definition of Plot--Complication
of the Network--The Major Knot-