Full-Length Books on Plot Genotype Theory by Terence Patrick Murphy
Palgrave Macmillan, 2015
From the time of the Classical era of Greece and Rome, literary theorists have been concerned wit... more From the time of the Classical era of Greece and Rome, literary theorists have been concerned with the subject of how the plots of stories are organized. In The Poetics, Aristotle put forward the crucial idea that a plot must possess sufficient amplitude to allow a probable or necessary succession of particular actions to produce a significant change in the fortune of the main character. In the early twentieth century, the Russian scholar Vladimir Propp put forward the radical idea that each of the plots in his corpus of a hundred Russian fairy tales consisted of a sequence of 31 functions executed in an identical order. In this way, Propp had provided a workable solution to the mystery of how that 'significant change in the fortune of the main character' might be brought about. In effect, what Propp had done was to discover the first plot genotype, the functional structure or compositional schema of a particular short fiction, the Marriage fairy tale. But Propp was mistaken in his belief that all plots were the same. Although the exact number of plot genotypes is still unclear, this number is not excessively great. Plot genotypes fall into set categories, which means that the analysis of a few important fairy tales will shed light on the way in which most fairy tales - and by extension most short stories and dramatic texts and Hollywood screenplays - are also organized. This study explores the plots of ten fairy tales to lay the foundations for a complete description of the plot genotype.
The book was published by Palgrave Macmillan in August 2015.
It is available for purchase here:
http://www.amazon.com/Fairytale-Structure-Terence-Patrick-Murphy/dp/1137547073
And here:
http://www.palgrave.com/kr/book/9781137547071?wt_mc=ThirdParty.SpringerLink.3.EPR653.About_eBook#otherversion=9781349575435
Palgrave Macmillan, 2015
In Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting (1979), Syd Field first popularized the Three-Act... more In Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting (1979), Syd Field first popularized the Three-Act Paradigm of Setup, Confrontation and Resolution for conceptualizing and creating the Hollywood screenplay. For Field, the budding screenwriter needs a clear screenplay structure, one which includes two well-crafted plot points, the first at the end of Act I, the second at the end of Act II. By focusing on the importance of the four essentials of beginning and end, and the two pivotal plot points, Field did the Hollywood film industry an enormous service. Nonetheless, although he handles the issue of overall structure expertly, Field falls down when offering the screenwriter advice on how to successfully build each of the three individual Acts. This is because Field did not recognize the importance of another layer of analysis that underpins the existence of plot points. This is the level of the plot genotype.
Plot genotypes are the compositional schemas of particular stories. They are sets of instructions, written in the language of the plot function, for executing particular plots. This book will offer you a richer theory of plot structure than the one Field outlines. It will do this not by contradicting anything Field has to say about the Hollywood paradigm, but by complementing it with a deeper level of analysis. It outline the plot genotypes for The Frog Prince, The Robber Bridegroom, Puss-in-Boots, and Little Red Riding Hood, and will show how these genotypes provide the underpinnings for the film screenplays of Pretty Woman, Wrong Turn, The Mask, and Psycho. By means of a detailed study of these four Hollywood screenplays, you will be able to offer a much richer description of what is going on at any particular point in a screenplay. In this way, you will become much sharper at understanding how screenplays work. And you will become much better at learning how to write coherent screenplays yourself.
Stylometric Studies by Terence Patrick Murphy
Pre-Print, 2024
Although stylometric studies tends to situate itself within the eld of forensic analysis, most st... more Although stylometric studies tends to situate itself within the eld of forensic analysis, most stylometricians appear averse to considering genetic explanations for their ndings. Instead, they try to work with a range of what they construe as environmental factors in attempting to understand the clustering of individual authorial idiolects. However, researchers in behavioral genetics have demonstrated that the traits for cognitive abilities, including language ability, are among the most heritable. In this paper, I set out the major postulate and eight corollaries for the genetic hypothesis and the major postulate and ve corollaries for the environmental hypothesis for explaining the clustering of individual idiolects in dendrogram analysis, using stylo in R. Using a corpus of Anglo-American modernist poetry, I then demonstrate that the individual idiolects of each of the Sitwell siblings-Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell-cluster together. In this way, I aim to help researchers decide which of the two hypotheses is the most likely explanation for the attested idiolectal similarities among the members of a number of important British and French literary families. Signi cance Statement Within the eld of sociolinguistics, it is accepted that there is variety in language. This is true whether we consider a language, a dialect, a dialect subgroup , or an individual member. If the individual idiolect is substantially a genetic inheritance, this helps explain why language variety exists. The theory of genetic inheritance also offers a way to begin to understand language variety at a more ne-grained level of analysis. In this way, the genealogical study of the individual and related familial idiolects will help forensic linguistics to achieve scienti c consilience with the behavioral sciences.
Literary Stylistics by Terence Patrick Murphy
Journal of Literary Semantics, 2012
In The Rhetoric of Fiction (1961), Wayne Booth first proposed the critical concepts of the reliab... more In The Rhetoric of Fiction (1961), Wayne Booth first proposed the critical concepts of the reliable and unreliable narrator. Booth suggested that the notion of reliability was best defined in terms of its underlying relationship to the implied author. But this attempted linkage was never a truly secure one; and in the intervening years, a protracted debate has persisted regarding this central issue. This paper suggests that the key to resolving this debate is the formulation of a more secure definition of narrative reliability. The linguistic concept of markedness provides the critical means for doing this. Using the test case of Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby, five determinants of a reliable narrator in first-person fiction are suggested: a secure speaking-location back home; the use of the classical middle style of standard English; observer-narrator status; ethical maturity; and a plot structure which involves the retrospective re-evaluation or Aristotelian anagnorisis of a character other than the narrator. If this much is accepted, unreliable narration may be defined in terms of a range of departures from this basic model.
Journal of Literary Semantics, 2005
The narrative use of the reverie over the past has often been seen as part of the stock-in-trade ... more The narrative use of the reverie over the past has often been seen as part of the stock-in-trade of popular fiction. This has produced scandal and silence in about equal measure. In many critical retellings of James Joyce’s “Eveline”, for example, the strategy of silence has prevailed, even when critics like Robert Scholes have attempted to make the relationship between story and récit the focus of their attention. A second form of neglect has resulted when critics attempt to read all narrative fictions as marked order narratives. To read all Joycean first-person narratives as marked order fictions is to obliterate what distinguishes chronologically ordinary and marked order narration altogether. In contrast, by focussing on the use of a marked order narrative in “Eveline”, I attempt to demonstrate how an understanding of the significance of this authorial choice can throw into relief the basis for divergent critical interpretations of the short story. Through the use of four diagrams, I also reconstruct the two different chronological possibilities that critics use when they read “Eveline”.
Narrative, 2007
In Aspects of the Novel, E.M Forster makes a distinction between round and flat characters that h... more In Aspects of the Novel, E.M Forster makes a distinction between round and flat characters that has achieved a certain celebrity. The passage in which Forster suggests that Lady Bertram is transformed from a flat into a round character is explicable, however, in terms other than those the English novelist proposes. Indeed, this alternative explanation is preferable because it throws valuable light on an aspect of novelistic discourse that has remained remarkably undeveloped: the monitoring of the directly quoted speech of a particular character through the presentation of a substitute form. Monitored speech thus refers to the equivalence relation that exists between directly quoted speech and the variety of speech paraphrase. Monitored speech takes two principal forms. In the first, the narrator upgrade the words of a character, typically by offering a shorter, ameliorated version as a substitute for what would have been the character’s directly quoted speech; in the second, the narrator downgrades, by offering a more obscure version as a substitute for what would have been the character’s directly quoted speech.
Journal of Literary Semantics, 2017
The concept of an unreliable third-person narrator may seem a contradiction in terms. The very ac... more The concept of an unreliable third-person narrator may seem a contradiction in terms. The very act of adopting a third-person stance to tell a story would appear to entail an acceptance of a basic need for truth-telling, a commitment to what Wayne Booth terms the implied author's " norms of the work. " Nonetheless, in the essay that follows, three of Katherine Mansfield's short stories — " A Cup of Tea " (1922), " Bliss " (1918) and " Revelations " (1920) — will be examined in order to demonstrate how the strategic suppression of the distinction between the voice of the narrator and that of the central character can lead to a strong sense of unreliability. In order to read such narratives effectively, the reader must reappraise the value of certain other stylistic elements, including the use of directives involved with directly quoted speech, seemingly minor discrepancies between adjacent sentences and, perhaps most importantly, the structure of the fiction itself. We contend that Mansfield's use of this form of unreliable third-person fiction is her unique contribution to the short story genre.
Film Criticism, 2018
In this essay, we explore the multiple plot structure in Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Rip... more In this essay, we explore the multiple plot structure in Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999). In contrast with thematic analysis, our concern is with plot structure, specifically the manner in which the Meredith Logue and Peter Smith-Kingsley plotlines intersect with the main plot of Tom Ripley’s attempts to get away with murder. Absent from Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955) and René Clément’s cinematic adaptation Plein Soleil (1960), the Meredith plot operates to heighten the significance of coincidence, while engendering new forms of suspense. In contrast, Peter temporarily opens the chance for an alternative future, one in which Tom might realize his social aspirations and a more authentic identity. Ultimately, it is the coincidental resurfacing of the Meredith plot that foils Tom’s attempt to escape his past, ensuring his own tragic defeat and a future of dwelling in counterfactuality.
Cultural Logic, 2007
In , Raymond Williams argues that writing is in an important sense always aligned. This sense of ... more In , Raymond Williams argues that writing is in an important sense always aligned. This sense of alignment, however, may be distinguished from a sense of chosen commitment,which is "conscious, active, and open". Through a close analysis of the early work of the Scottish working-class writer James Kelman, this essay examines how an ideologically committed writer learned to refashion the dominant forms of novelistic discourse for his own political purposes. For Kelman, commitment in writing involves the recognition of the "distinction between dialogue and narrative as a summation of the political system".
Language and Literature, 2008
In Vladimir Propp's Morphology of the Folktale, uncertainty has continually hovered over the pivo... more In Vladimir Propp's Morphology of the Folktale, uncertainty has continually hovered over the pivotal role occupied by the eighth function in what the Russian theorist suggested was a single invariant wondertale structure. In this article, I suggest that this discrepancy can be resolved: there are in fact two major types of wondertale, with their separate structures pivoting on the choice of one or other of the two eighth function options. By analyzing the Preparation and Complication sections of Charles Perrault's Cinderella, or the Little Glass Slipper and Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm's `The Robber Bridegroom', I suggest further that the notion of a pivotal eighth function requires the positing of the complementary notion of a pivotal fourth character. In conclusion, I briefly examine the introduction of four pivotal fourth characters in four canonical texts in order to pose the question: do such celebrated texts exhibit canonical ordering?
Journal of Literary Semantics, 2004
In this paper, I explore the notion of lost time in critical accounts of narrative fiction. The p... more In this paper, I explore the notion of lost time in critical accounts of narrative fiction. The paper begins by briefly exploring the work of the representative New Critics Brooks and Warren on the description of past time. I then move to consider the story/sequence distinction in the work of narratologists such as Genette, Chatman and Bal. As a bridge to the major discussion, I introduce Michael Toolan's Narrative (2001 [1988]) which attempts to explore how aspects of the narrative are revealed through key lexicogrammatical choices. I attempt to build on Toolan's basic insight about the importance of thematically marked sentences in a brief re-reading of the narrative discourse of Joyce's “Eveline”. In order to resolve a central difficulty in Toolan's analysis, I put forward a theory of narrative territory – the creation within the narrative discourse of a differentiated spatiotemporal continuum for the story events. Within the conceptual framework provided by the concept of the narrative territory, I then contrast the distinct functions of lost time in James Joyce's unmarked order fiction “An Encounter” and his marked order narrative “The Sisters”.
Style, 2012
According to Vladimir Propp, plot functions constitute the fundamental components of the story, i... more According to Vladimir Propp, plot functions constitute the fundamental components of the story, involving an act of a character defined from the point of view of its significance for the course of the action. Perhaps the most pressing concern for critics interested in advancing plot analysis is the need to specify some workable strategies for relating the sequence of plot functions to the fictional discourse they purport to explain. In this paper, it is argued that plot functions are embedded in demarcated text segments embodying significant semantic meaning. These text segments may include significant voice-overs, meaningful gestures, acts of recognition, written notes, financial exchanges, speech exchanges, and major actions. The key defining feature of each of these text segments is whether they serve to execute the plot function in an effective manner or not. In order to demonstrate this argument, a neo-Proppian analysis will be employed to elucidate the plot functions in Martin McDonagh's black comedy In Bruges (2008).
Journal of Language, Literature and Culture, 2018
Allan Pasco has noted the relative paucity of critical attempts to define the short story as a ge... more Allan Pasco has noted the relative paucity of critical attempts to define the short story as a genre. Most critics, he suggests, 'insist upon the story, for the causally and chronologically constructed narrative is generally viewed as central.' One means of moving beyond causation and chronology, we argue, is by recourse to the concept of the plot genotype, first elaborated by Vladimir Propp in his analysis of the Russian fairy tale. In this essay, we show how a refined Proppian morphology can be used to interpret Katherine Mansfield's story 'At " Lehmann's " ' (1910). In doing so, we offer a model that is capable of accounting for short literary fictions, specifically modernist ones, that critics have tended to regard as 'plotless.'
Journal of Narrative Theory, 2003
Situations: Cultural Studies in the Asian Context, 2009
In his essay, "Narrative and Dialogue in Jane Austen" (1970), Graham Hough first introduced the E... more In his essay, "Narrative and Dialogue in Jane Austen" (1970), Graham Hough first introduced the English-speaking world to the stylistic analysis of voice in the novel.
Style, 2019
Within days of being published in the New Yorker on December 11, 2017, Kristen Roupenian's "Cat P... more Within days of being published in the New Yorker on December 11, 2017, Kristen Roupenian's "Cat Person" had sparked a storm of internet activity, inspiring "countless tweets" and "think pieces about modern dating, consent, feminism and the role of fiction in American culture." The positive responses also provoked backlash from some readers, who voiced irritation with the story through social media, debating, for instance, whether Margot or Robert is the more sympathetic character, or if "Cat Person" is a self-indulgent personal essay. The wide range of popular interpretations, we contend, while reflective of the contemporary cultural moment, is also a result of the story's sophisticated deployment of narratological and stylistic techniques. A good deal of the controversy, particularly among millennials, has been generated by its irresolute ending, which induces readers to develop divergent search strategies, while overlooking certain improbabilities and deviations from the story's dominant code.
Situations: Cultural Studies in the Asian Context, 2011
In their landmark study, Style in Fiction (1981, Geoffrey Leech and Mick Short note that texts di... more In their landmark study, Style in Fiction (1981, Geoffrey Leech and Mick Short note that texts differ greatly in their degree of stylistic interest or markedness. On the basis of this assertion, the authors flesh out a position based on what they term "the metaphor of 'transparency' and 'opacity' in style". In my opinion, however, the notion of relative transparency is insufficiently flexible to deal with the full complexities of style in fiction. As an alternative, I draw on the concept of the three levels of style identified in the tradition of classical rhetoric-the simple, the middle and the grand style. Building on this foundation, I outline a modified account of style in narrative fiction that utilizes five separate levels and illustrate how this model may be used to account more accurately for aspects of sentencelevel stylistic markedness.
Style, 2009
Co-reference refers to the way in which literary characters are established and maintained within... more Co-reference refers to the way in which literary characters are established and maintained within the active register of the text world. If the first co-reference choice serves to establish part of a character network of about seven or eight “control centres” for subsequent plot elaboration, settled co-reference choice maintains that character within the active register of the narrative discourse. In James Joyce's Dubliners (1914), the stories divide up into a large set that employs stable co-reference and a smaller set of narratives that utilize marked choices as part of their aesthetic designs of secrecy and revelation.
Style, 2005
In the landmark study Introduction to Text Linguistics (1981), Robert de Beaugrande and Wolfgang ... more In the landmark study Introduction to Text Linguistics (1981), Robert de Beaugrande and Wolfgang Dressler put forward the idea of the text as a cybernetic system that continually self-regulates the functions of its constituent occurrences. To work efficiently, however, the cybernetic system's functional principles must exclude whole classes of utterances from consideration, among them ambiguities, contradictions, discrepancies, in-jokes, and paradoxes. Since such utterances play a central role in many of the conversational exchanges among characters in novels, it would appear that the notion of the text as a self-regulating cybernetic system cannot be extended to works of narrative fiction. The central problem that Beaugrande and Dressler have identified, however, remains. How do readers process the uncertain or ambiguous conversational exchange? Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist provides examples for an examination of a range of ways in which the narrative voice plays a central role as the monitor of the uncertainties involved in conversational exchange. The examination suggests that a central function of the narrative voice is to provide the means for the reader to process the simple conversational exchange, mixed-form conversation, and wholly monitored speech.
Journal of Literary Semantics, 2008
How do writers of narrative fiction integrate local instances of situational discrepancy with the... more How do writers of narrative fiction integrate local instances of situational discrepancy with the more global concerns that arise from the attempt to create engaging and ultimately satisfying plots? If tendentious situation monitoring is used as a local strategy to enable the correct reading of potentially ambiguous conversational exchange, third-person narrators use plot management to steer the reader through situational discrepancies that are crucial to the outcome of the plot. The link between these two narrative tasks is provided by the concept of the skeleton Propp structure, which serves to constrain the number of possible arrangements and re-arrangements of the character functions within the narrative fiction. By linking the function of situational discrepancy in narrative fiction to the overall management of the plot, this essay will examine how Daphne du Maurier's short story of shock and surprise, “Don't Look Now” works.
Uploads
Full-Length Books on Plot Genotype Theory by Terence Patrick Murphy
The book was published by Palgrave Macmillan in August 2015.
It is available for purchase here:
http://www.amazon.com/Fairytale-Structure-Terence-Patrick-Murphy/dp/1137547073
And here:
http://www.palgrave.com/kr/book/9781137547071?wt_mc=ThirdParty.SpringerLink.3.EPR653.About_eBook#otherversion=9781349575435
Plot genotypes are the compositional schemas of particular stories. They are sets of instructions, written in the language of the plot function, for executing particular plots. This book will offer you a richer theory of plot structure than the one Field outlines. It will do this not by contradicting anything Field has to say about the Hollywood paradigm, but by complementing it with a deeper level of analysis. It outline the plot genotypes for The Frog Prince, The Robber Bridegroom, Puss-in-Boots, and Little Red Riding Hood, and will show how these genotypes provide the underpinnings for the film screenplays of Pretty Woman, Wrong Turn, The Mask, and Psycho. By means of a detailed study of these four Hollywood screenplays, you will be able to offer a much richer description of what is going on at any particular point in a screenplay. In this way, you will become much sharper at understanding how screenplays work. And you will become much better at learning how to write coherent screenplays yourself.
Stylometric Studies by Terence Patrick Murphy
Literary Stylistics by Terence Patrick Murphy
The book was published by Palgrave Macmillan in August 2015.
It is available for purchase here:
http://www.amazon.com/Fairytale-Structure-Terence-Patrick-Murphy/dp/1137547073
And here:
http://www.palgrave.com/kr/book/9781137547071?wt_mc=ThirdParty.SpringerLink.3.EPR653.About_eBook#otherversion=9781349575435
Plot genotypes are the compositional schemas of particular stories. They are sets of instructions, written in the language of the plot function, for executing particular plots. This book will offer you a richer theory of plot structure than the one Field outlines. It will do this not by contradicting anything Field has to say about the Hollywood paradigm, but by complementing it with a deeper level of analysis. It outline the plot genotypes for The Frog Prince, The Robber Bridegroom, Puss-in-Boots, and Little Red Riding Hood, and will show how these genotypes provide the underpinnings for the film screenplays of Pretty Woman, Wrong Turn, The Mask, and Psycho. By means of a detailed study of these four Hollywood screenplays, you will be able to offer a much richer description of what is going on at any particular point in a screenplay. In this way, you will become much sharper at understanding how screenplays work. And you will become much better at learning how to write coherent screenplays yourself.