Action in Literature
"Action in literature" refers to the events, conflicts, and activities that drive the plot forward in a story. It encompasses the physical and emotional movements of the characters, as well as the sequence of events that unfold. Action is crucial for creating tension, engaging the reader, and advancing the narrative in literature.
3 Key excerpts on "Action in Literature"
eBook - ePub- David Edgar(Author)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Nick Hern Books(Publisher)
...2 Actions Actions Many of the terms we use to categorise the elements of dramatic fiction are slippery, and none more so than the word ‘action’. Sometimes it means everything that happens on the stage (‘dramatic action’), sometimes it refers narrowly to physical activity (‘stage action’), or even just to the representation of violence. As a verb it’s used to describe how an actor motivates an individual line. In this chapter, I’m trying to define the term, very specifically, as a brief encapsulation of the narrative progression of a play, structured to convey its meaning. In this, I am following the philosopher Aristotle. The primacy of plot Aristotle’s Poetics is a problematic text. Compared to his other works, it’s often elliptical in expression and sometimes inconsistent in argument. As a result of this, many scholars think it’s unfinished; that it may consist of jottings or (at best) lecture notes. Only 44 pages long in the Penguin Classics edition, the book is clearly part of a larger work, which promises material on comedy (the idea that this material might have survived is the basis of the plot of Umberto Eco’s medieval mystery, The Name of the Rose). The rules for which it’s generally credited – the necessary unities of time, space and action – are taken from later interpretations, based on scant evidence in the original text (as rules, they are first formulated by Lodovico Castelvetro in an edition of 1570). Coining the expression ‘Aristotalitarianism’, the playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker points out that the great man’s theses – such as they are – don’t apply to all or even the majority of the classical Greek plays that have come down to us. Nonetheless, Aristotle’s big idea has dominated theatre criticism from his own time, via the Renaissance and the neoclassical period, through to the thinking of twentieth-century structuralist critics and on to the screenwriting gurus of our own age...
eBook - ePub- Roger Hall(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...This scene contains many actions. Taken together, however, they constitute a larger action: A woman buys her lunch. If we also saw her eating her meal and leaving, the whole action might be “a woman lunches.” The same layering of actions occurs in any play. In one moment Hamlet praises an actor. That is one action. A series of actions taken together might constitute a larger action: Hamlet sets a trap. All of those actions taken together form an action that absorbs the character throughout the play: Hamlet avenges his father’s murder. In acting terms, that overall action is what is meant by such terms as through line, superobjective, or spine. The recognition that small actions fit together to create larger actions is just as important for a playwright as it is for an actor. Taken simply, an action is someone doing something. The action can be small in scope or large; it can be a simple action or a complex action composed of numerous smaller actions. It can be static action—such as sitting or sleeping—or frenetic action—such as running or dancing. Most modern theater practitioners also recognize psychological action—a thought process, a decision, or a point of view. For instance, if a lawyer tells you to do something, his authority might compel you to do it without even the slightest actual physical action on his part. There is a psychological force at work. Harold Pinter is famous for the silences written into his scripts. Pinter knows that silences represent critical moments because people make decisions in those pauses and silences. We, however, cannot see the decision. What we do see is the physical manifestation of the decision: The character does something or says something based on her decision. Working with beginning playwrights, I’ve found it especially helpful to consider thought and decision as preceding physical action. Picture, for example, a woman in a department store. She looks at a bracelet. Then she looks around. Thought occurs...
eBook - ePub- Christine MacIntyre(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- David Fulton Publishers(Publisher)
...Chapter 2 The Role of the Literature One of the important principles of action research is that the action plan is informed by the literature, and to meet this criterion, researchers aim to show how a critical and analytic study of (usually) recent literature has informed their research question and subsequent research action. But why? Why not just pick a topic and have a go? Bell (1993) gives a thought-provoking reason why. She explains that, ‘Action researchers who read are enriching their experience… and those who don’t, will inevitably engage in unproductive reinventing of the wheel.’ Let’s consider what this enrichment entails. Certainly it means that those who read will discover what has already been studied in their field of enquiry, and if they go to research journals, it is likely that they will discover the rationale, i.e. why the study was considered important in the first place, the particular aspect that was studied, the method that was selected, the context i.e. where the research was carried out and the people who were involved. All this as well as the findings, i.e. what was discovered. In this way, new researchers can plan their own study enlightened by what has gone before and secure in the knowledge that their new venture has substance and that their findings will take understanding forward. All of this sounds reasonably straightforward but readers will also find that different authors have different perspectives on the same topic and that these give seemingly conflicting results. This is fascinating, but it can also be confusing until the reader comes to understand the source and the implications of these inconsistencies. Perhaps the different authors are coming from their own specialist field, e.g...
