Christopher BOOKER, The Seven Basic Plots. Why We Tell Stories
Continuum Books, 2005, 736 p.
ISBN : 0826452094
Description:
From The Epic of Gilgemesh to Jaws and Schindler's List, Christopher Booker examines in detail the stories that underlie literature and the plots that are basic to story telling through the ages. In this magisterial work he examines the plots of films, opera libretti and the contemporary novel and short story.
Underlying the stories he examines are Seven Basic Plots: rags to riches; the quest; voyage and return; the hero as monster; rebirth and so on. Booker shows that the images and stories serve a far deeper and more significant purpose in our lives than we have realised.
In the definition of these basic plots, Booker shows us we are entering a realm in which the recognition of the plots proves only to be the gateway. We are in fact uncovering a kind of hidden universal language: a nucleus of situations and figures which are the very stuff from which stories are made.
With Booker's exploration, there is literally no story in the world which cannot be seen in a new light: we have come to the heart of what stories are about and why we tell them.
Here, Christopher Booker moves on from some of the themes he outlined in his hugely bestselling book The Neophiliacs. Seven Basic Plots is unquestionably his most important book to date.
Table of Contents:
Part 1: Why Do We Tell Stories?
Chapter 1 - Overcoming the Monster - Beowulf - Red Riding Hood - Jaws
Chapter 2 - The Thrilling Escape from Death - The Pit and the Pendulum - Jonah - Journal of the Plague Year
Chapter 3 - Rags to Riches - The Ugly Duckling - Jane Eyre - The Gold Rush (Chaplin)
Chapter 4 - The Quest - The Odyssey - Exodus - The Aeneid - Moby Dick - Babar and Father Christmas
Chapter 5 - Voyage and Return - Alice in Wonderland - Peter Pan - Rasselas - The Third Man - Orpheus and Eurydice
Chapter 6 - Comedy - Aristophanes (The Wasps) - Plautus (The Pot of Gold) - Shakespeare (Love's Labours Lost, The Comedy of Errors etc) - Moliere (Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme) - Sheridan (The School for Scandal)
Chapter 7 - Comedy: The Plot Disguised - Fielding (Tom Jones) - Austen (Pride and Prejudice) - P.G Wodehouse - South Pacific - Four Weddings and a Funera
Chapter 8 - Tragedy Icarus - Macbeth - Don Giovanni - Anna Karenina - Bonnie and Clyde
Chapter 9 - Tragedy: The Divided Self
Chapter 10 - Tragedy: The Hero As Monster - Richard III - Dr Jekyll
Chapter 11 - Tragedies of Redemption and Fulfilment - King Lear - Tannhauser - Samson - The Snow Goose
Chapter 12 - From Shadow Into Light
Part 2: The Complete Happy Ending
Chapter 13 - The Dark Figures - Crocodile Dundee
Chapter 14 - Seeing Whole - The Jewel In the Crown
Chapter 15 - The Perfect Balance
Chapter 16 - The Unrealised Value
Chapter 17 - The Archetypal Family Drama
Chapter 18 - The Light Figures
Chapter 19 - Reaching the Goal - The Magic Flute - Lord of the Rings -Harry Potter
Chapter 20 - The Fatal Flaw
Part 3: Missing the Mark
Chapter 21 - Enter the Dark Inversion - Pere Goriot - Moby Dick
Chapter 22 - The Ego Takes Over: The Dark and Sentimental Versions - My Fair Lady - James Bond - Star Wars
Chapter 23 - The Ego Takes Over II Clarissa - Kafka - Catcher in the Rye
Chapter 24 - The Ego Takes Over III - Traviata - Tosca - Dorian Gray -You Only Live Twice
Chapter 25 - Losing the Plot - Thomas Hardy A Case History
Chapter 26 - Going Nowhere - Chekhov - Proust - Tender is the Night - Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Chapter 27 - Why Sex and Violence? Sade - Ulysses - Last Exit to Brooklyn - A Clockwork Orange
Chapter 28 - Rebelllion Against the One Job - 1984
Chapter 29 - The Mystery - Murders in the Rue Morgue - Sherlock Holmes - Citizen Kane
Chapter 30 - The Riddle of the Sphinx - Sophocles - Hamlet