L2L Plot vs. Poetics

Plot vs. Poetics

An L2L “Great Debate”

Across several months in 1927, Jun’ichiro Tanizaki and Ryunosuke Akutagawa engaged in a great debate about what drives fiction: plot or the poetic structure of narrative. Each had his camp — and attempted to win the argument with their works (with some output poignant examples, others perhaps unintended counterexamples). Other writers, subtly or explicitly, have continued the dispute. This week, Leigh, P. T., and Dr. C add in their own two cents ... with additional examples along the way. This episode is the first in a new L2L series of “Great Debates in Literature.”

Digging deeper ... For example, in “The Cask of Amontillado” (and many of his other stories), Edgar Allan Poe makes the fantastical mundane. These are the stories Tanizaki likes. The plot (the content, what happens) drives the story, motivates us as readers to turn the page.

Authors like Faulkner, Proust, Mahfouz, etc., make the mundane meaningful and engage in larger philosophical issues. Their stories are rooted in the real, in specific times and places. This is the Akutagawa camp. He is less interested in the content of what happens in the story; he is more concerned with how it is told and the art and craft of the writing and its structure. His short story “In a Grove” is a prime example.

(Photos © FreeImages/Robbie Ribeiro, Ove Tøpfer, and steph p)