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IV

If the storytelling traditions of the world express pleasures and capacities that that evolved long before the invention of writing—a storytelling instinct—can anything be further said about innate tendencies in structure of stories? This is a vexed question throughout the history criticism. Aristotle identified plot (Greek mythos) as the “structure of in a story; he claimed that of all the elements of drama, the most important and the hardest to achieve effectively: it was principle and “soul” of tragedy. The German poet Friedrich Schiller the Romantics were interested in the idea that there might manageably finite number of plots for fictions, and the nineteenth-century French writer Georges Polti, inspired by a remark made Goethe, listed plot types to describe “the Thirty-six Dramatic Situations.” Polti’s list, which became pop ular among writers and is still circulation (even among video-game creators) is not, strictly speaking, of plots but a catalogue of situations that might be useful in plots: “Erroneous judgment, “Loss of loved one,” “Fatal imprudence,” “Self-sacrifice for an ideal,” and so forth. Polti brought whole idea of plots as outlines into disrepute, but it remains a tantalizing that seen as a whole and across cultures, stories do seem to fall recognizable patterns. Might these patterns tap into innate tendencies?

The critic and journalist Christopher Booker has recently argued human beings have a cross-cultural predilection for stories built seven basic plot templates, which he draws from folktales of preliterate tribes, early epic poetry, novels, operas, and movies. He begins his in the summer of 1975, when moviegoers flocked to theaters to tale about a predatory shark that terrorized a little Long Island resort. Jaws told how three brave men go to sea in a small boat and, after bloody climax in which they kill the monster, return peace and security their town—not unlike a tale enjoyed by Saxons dressed in animal skins and huddled around a fire some 1,200 years earlier. Beowulf features a town terrorized by a monster, Grendel, who lives in a nearby lake and tears his victims to pieces. The hero Beowulf returns peace town during a bloody climax in which the monster is slain. Beowulf Jaws are examples of the first of Booker’s plot types. His list begins with seven plots, but he later adds two more for a total of nine:

“Overcoming the Monster” is found in countless stories from The Epic of Gilgamesh and Little Red Riding Hood to James Bond films such as Dr. No. This tale of conflict typically recounts the hero’s including an escape from death, and ends with a community the world itself saved from evil.

Rags to Riches.” Booker places in this category Cinderella, Ugly Duckling, David Copperfield, and other stories that tell modest, downtrodden characters whose special talent or beauty last revealed to the world for a happy ending.

Quest” stories feature a hero, normally joined by sidekicks, traveling the world and fighting to overcome evil and secure a priceless sure (or, in the case of Odysseus, wife and hearth). The hero gains not only the trea sure he seeks but also the girl, and they King and Queen.

Voyage and Return” is exemplified by Robinson Crusoe, Alice Wonderland, and The Time Machine. The protagonist leaves normal experience to enter an alien world, returning after what often amounts to a thrilling escape.

In "Comedy,” such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Importance Being Earnest, or It Happened One Night, confusion reigns until last the hero and heroine are united in love.

"Tragedy” portrays human overreaching and its terrible consequences in the Oresteia, Sophocles’ Oedipus plays, Hamlet, and innumerable Hollywood productions.

Rebirth” stories center on characters such as Dickens’s Scrooge, Snow White, and Dostoyevsky’s Raskolnikov.

To this template system he unexpectedly adds at the end of book two more plot types: “Rebellion” to cover the likes of Nineteen and “Mystery” for the recent invention of the detective novel.

Booker illustrates