The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [520]
Thrilling Escape From Death: one of the commonest devices used in a story (particularly at its climax), to show the hero or heroine miraculously escaping from the clutches of the `dark power'.
The Archetypal Happy Ending: for a story to reach a completely `happy ending' the masculine and feminine values must be brought into perfect balance. This is supremely symbolised by the image of a man and a woman being brought together in loving union, representing integration with the Self.
Most of the hundreds of individual stories cited in this book as examples are not listed here, because either they are so well-known that they have been published in many editions, or they are more familiar in non-literary form, as films, operas or ballets. I have, however, included a number of stories which did not originate in English, to specify the translations used (although even here the translations have on occasion been very slightly modified, to clarify their meaning in sympathy with the original text).
Aeschylus, The Oresteian Trilogy, translated by Philip Vellacott, Penguin Classics, 1956.
Afanas'ev, Alexsandr, Russian Fairy Tales, translated by Norbert Guterman, Sheldon Press, London, 1976.
Andersen, Hans, Fairy Tales and Legends, Hodder and Stoughton, 1924.
Apuleius, The Golden Ass, translated byRobert Graves, Penguin Classics, 1950.
Aristophanes, The Wasps and The Poet and the Women (Thesmophoriazusae), translated by David Barrett, Penguin Classics, 1964.
Aristophanes, Lysistrata, translated by Alan H. Sommerstein, Penguin Classics, 1973.
Aristotle, The Poetics, translated by T. S. Dorsch, Penguin Classics, London, 1965.
Beckett, Samuel, Waiting For Godot, Faber and Faber, London, 1955.
Beowulf, translated by David Wright, Penguin Classics, 1957.
Bettelheim, Bruno, The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, Thames and Hudson, London, 1976.
Booker, Christopher, The Neophiliacs: A Study of the Revolution in English Life in the 1950s and 1960s, Collins, London, 1969.
Brinton, Crane, The Anatomy of Revolution, W. W. Norton.New York, 1938.
Campbell, Joseph, The Hero With A Thousand Faces, Bollingen Foundation, New York, 1949.
Canetti, Elias, The Voices of Marrakesh, Marion Boyars, London, 1978
Chekhov, Anton, Plays, translated by Elizaveta Fen, Penguin Classics, 1959.
Dante, Alighieri, The Divine Comedy (3 vols.), translated by Dorothy L. Sayers, Penguin Classics, 1955.
Donington, Robert, Wagner's Ring and Its Symbols, Faber and Faber, London, 1963.
Edinger, Edward F., Ego and Archetype, Pelican Books, 1973.
Fiedler, Leslie, Love and Death In The American Novel, Jonathan Cape, London, 1967.
Frye, Northrop, Anatomy of Criticism, Princeton University Press, 1957
Gilgamesh, The Epic of, an English version by N. K. Saunders, Penguin Classics, 1960.
Gittings, Robert, The Younger Hardy and The Older Hardy, Heinemann, London, 1975/1978.
Goethe, J. W., The Sorrows of Young Werther, translated by Catherine Hutter, New American Library (Signet Classic) New York, 1962.
Graves, Robert, The Greek Myths, Pelican Books, London, 1955
Grimm, Jakob and Wilhelm, The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1975,
Holden, Amanda (ed.), The Penguin Opera Guide, Penguin Books, 1997.
Holmes, Richard, Shelley: The Pursuit, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974.
Homer, The Odyssey, translated by E. V. Rieu, Penguin Classics, 1946.
Ibsen, Henrik, Peer Gynt, translated by Peter Watts, Penguin Classics, 1966
James, M. R., The Ghost Stories, Edward Arnold, 1931.
Jung, Carl, Collected Works, published 1953-1979 by Routledge, Kegan Paul (London), particularly:
Vol. 5 (II), Symbols of Transformation; Vol.6, Psychological Types, Vol.7, Two Essays On Analytical Pychology; Vol.8, The Structure And Dynamics Of The Psyche; Vol. 9 (I), The Archetypes And The Collective Unconscious, Vol. 9 (II), Aion; Vol.