Illusions of Prgression and Creations of Significance in English Fiction

FAIN: FA-12262-78

Sheldon Sacks
University of Chicago (Chicago, IL 60637-5418)

To explore some vital consequences for our understanding of the development of multiple forms we have come to label "novels" if we reexamine certain traditional concepts now frequently conceived of as merely primitive, as atavistic intellectual constructs whose utility we have transcended. Among the most important of these is the sense of progression referred to at various stages of critical history as "story" or "fable" or "material action"—that is, the reconstruction of events in any narrative in causal and chronological order. We must understand more fully the roles that a sense of progression in fact performs in fictions, most of these virtues must be conceived of as the inevitable consequence of the ways stories are told-this will be a book-length study.