THE CONCEPT OF PLOT AND PLOT OF ‘TOM JONES’’-R.S CRANE

R.S CRANE

A leader of Chicago School of Criticism

Revised and developed the concept of ‘form’ in Aristotle’s ‘Poetics’ and made a distinction between form and structure.

‘The Languages of Criticism and the Structure of Poetry and Critical and Historical Principles of Literary History’ formed the foundation for Chicago movement.

R.S Crane and the Chicago critics are often

referred to as “Neo-Aristotelians", tried to

liberate New Criticism from a mechanical

Formalism.

Chicago School emerged as a reaction against

New Criticism but had to subsume it under New

Criticism itself.

“The Concept of Plot and Plot of ‘Tom Jones’”

appeared in “Critics and Criticism:

Ancient and Modern”(1952).

The plot of Tom Jones has elicited the

most unqualified praise.

“‘Oedipus Tyrannus’, ‘The Alchemist’ ,and ‘Tom Jones’ are the three most perfect plots ever planned” –Coleridge

PART-I Crane concerns about the nature and critical

adequacy of the conception of plot in general and the plot of ‘Tom Jones’.

The strictly limited definition of plot is as something that can be abstracted from the moral qualities of the characters and the operations of their thought.

Plot is equated with the material continuity of the story and the fictional maintenance of curiosity.

Plots are considered good in terms of the

variety of incidents it contains ,the amount of

suspense it evokes and the ingenuity with

which all the happenings in the beginning and

middle are made to contribute to the resolution

at the end.

Critics says ‘Tom Jones’s plot as perfect

because of its “felicitous contrivance and happy

extrication of the story”.

Plot in the earlier discussions is simply one of

several sources of interest and pleasure

afforded by a novel.

The plot is viewed not as an end but a means.

Plot is described through metaphors like “frame

work” for characters ,or mechanism.

According to Crane it is a very limited and

abstract definition of plot which leads to

fragmented criticism of works like ‘Tom Jones’.

Any novel is a composite of 3 elements

The things that are imitated in it.

The linguistic medium in which they are

imitated.

Manner of technique of imitation.

Thus the plot is the particular temporal

synthesis of the elements of action, character

and thought that constitute the matter of artistic

invention.

According to the three elements , plot will differ in structure.

Plots of Action-change is in the character’s situation.

Plots of Character-change in the moral character of the protagonist

Plots of thought-change is in the thought and feelings of character.

Thus plot is as such synthesis endowed necessarily because it imitates in words a sequence of human activities, with a power to affect our emotions and opinions in a general way.

The pleasure in the gradual unfolding of events

and the resultant curiosity and learning are

fundamental to the greatness of any plot.

The form of the plot is that which makes its

matter into a definite artistic thing.

The form of the plot is, Crane argues, its

distinctive working or power.

PART-II

After establishing plot as a total organic form,

Crane proceeds to an analysis of the plot of

‘Tom Jones’.

Sustained concealment and final disclosure of

Tom’s parentage is the unifying idea by which

the plot is held together in ‘Tom Jones’.

Other unifying factors are the love affair of Tom

and Sophia, the conflict between Tom and Blifil

and the quasi picaresque of Tom’s adventures

with women and on the road.

But plot of Tom Jones has a distinctive and

dynamic unity that is beyond the combination of

such parts.

Crane makes a detailed textual analysis of the

plot of Tom Jones to substantiate his notion of

organic emotive unity.

His survey starts from Bridget’s scheme to provide security for both herself and her illegitimate son by palming off Tom on Allworthy as a foundling.

Tom acquires an antagonist in the younger Blifil. Tom’s budding love for Sophia is built on the likeness of nature. Tom’s mistaken confession that he is the father of Molly’s child and a series of machinations by other characters blacken the character of Tom. But Fielding manages to maintain a positive impression throughout in the mind of the reader regarding the innate goodness of Tom. Even his affair with Lady Bellaston is handled carefully so that Tom does not regarded into a totally base character. Ultimately fortune begins to turn in favour of Tom to bring about the final resolution of the plot.

Crane argues that the unity of the plot of Tom Jones is to be found in this total system of actions, moving by probable or necessary connections from beginning through middle to end.

The artistic quality of the work emanates from this unity of action coupled with the evolution of the character of Tom and the resultant world view concerning virtue and vice.

Crane goes forward into an analysis of the different variables contributing to the strength of the plot of Tom Jones.

One of these is the character traits of the hero, which prompt us to like or dislike him , and wish good or bad fortune for him. Then there is the judgement we make about the pleasurable or painful effects of the events that happen in the life of the hero.

The form of a given plot is a function of the particular correlation among these three variables.

Based on this we may assume that the plot of Tom Jones has a prevading comic form.

The hero is intrinsically virtuous. A series of

painful incidents occur to him. We follow him

through his troubles and distresses with a

desire that he will eventually be delivered from

them.

This notion corresponds to the “Comic Vision”

propounded by Northrop Frye. To maintain this

comic effect, Fielding take’s recourse to various

techniques of characterization.

The reader gets a perception, which in ease

case grows stronger as the novel proceeds,

that the persons whose actions for whom,

though in varying degrees, we are bound to feel

a certain contempt.

The reader is given a feeling of security that nothing irreparable, can befall the hero.

Hence the action of the antagonists constantly evoke not an intense concern for the hero but a kind of a amused laughter.

Our fear for the hero increasingly declines as the plot progresses. This attenuation of fear, pity and indignation is a necessary condition of the peculiar comic pleasure which is the form of the plot in ‘Tom Jones’.

Crane presents a contrast between the comic plot of Tom Jones and the comic plots of some other classics, for instance ‘The Silent Woman’ or ‘Volpone’ by Ben Jonson.

In such classics, a morally despicable person is made, by reason of his own folly or lapse from cleverness, to suffer a humiliating end, to him, though not to others, painful reversal of fortune.

• The comedy of Blifil is indeed of this simple harsh kind.

But the comedy of Tom and hence of the plot as a whole is of a different sort. It is not simple comedy but mixed. We always maintain a favourable attitude towards the protagonist irrespective of what the blunders arise from no permanent weakness of character but are merely the natural errors of judgement, easily corrigible in the future, of an inexperienced and too impulsively generous and gallant young man.

We experienced a kind of faint alarm which is the comic analogue of fear.

Because of our confidence that no permanent harm can happen to him, we do not pity him in his moments of misfortune but rather laugh at him as a man who has behaved ridiculously or beneath himself and is now being properly punished.

Tom is a good man, and we expect him to go better, and so our amused reaction to his sufferings lack entirely the punitive quality that characterizers comedy of the Jonsonian type.

If the anticipatory emotion is a mild shudder of apprehension, the climatic emotion – the comic analogue of pity – is a kind of friendly mirth at his expense.

Thus the Aristotelian tragic emotions of fear and pity get transmuted to apprehension and pleasure in the comic mode.

This “working or power of Tom Jones”, the manner in which Fielding handles the constituent parts of the novel, sustains and maximizes the special pleasure of Tom Jones, which is its form.

After having established the plot of Tom Jones as a product of powerful and dynamic form, Crane makes an analysis of some of its shortcomings.

No plot can be ideal or perfect.

Even in Tom Jones there are frequent longueurs (long and tedious sections) like the Man of the Hill Story.

There are other general faults, too. The introductory essays, while we should not like to lose them from the cannon of Fielding’s writings serve only occasionally the functions of chorus.

But Crane says that despite such minor blemishes, there are not many novels of comparable length in which the various parts are conceived and developed with a shrewder eye to what is required for a maximum realization of the form.

After summarizing the major factors that contribute to the organic unity of plot of ‘Tom Jones’.

Crane states that his attempt is not so much to attempt a revaluation of the novel as to make clear the assumptions and to illustrate some of the possibilities for practical criticism of a kind of whole –part analysis of narrative, that is, one which view plot as a “first principle of artistic construction”, not withstanding its limitations.

The distinctive character of this approach derives from the fact that it views a work of art as a dynamic whole which affects our emotions in a certain way through the functioning together of its elements in subordination to a determinate poetic form.

This method which Crane terms “a poetics of

form”, depends on the analytical isolation of

works of art, as finished products, from the

circumstances and processes of their origin.

Demonstrating his “pluralist” view of criticism,

Crane contends that the criticism of forms must

be supplemented by the criticism of qualities

and by historical enquiries of various sorts.

The criticism of qualities and the investigation of

historical origins and significances may be done

independently, but will attain better results when solidly founded on formal principles.

This would lead to less criticism of the dogmatic

sort that censures writers for not exhibiting

virtues of language or thought incompatible with

the specific tasks these writers chose to

undertake as well as fewer literary histories

written without reference to the formal ends

which helped to determine the use made by particular writers of materials and technology.

Submitted By

Temina Cyriac

1 MA English Literature

Alphonsa College, Palai