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The Plot of History from
Antiquity to the Renaissance
Eric MacPhail
' Citations of Aristotle's work are in the pagination of the Bekker edition; translations are
from The Metaphysics, tr. Hugh Tredennick (Cambridge, Mass., 1989); The Poetics, tr. S.H.
Butcher (New York, 1951).
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2 Eric MacPhail
paradox of existen
ics VI, 2 maintain
and destruction [g
symbebekos] ther
not so, if nothing
in the sense that
Genesis thus seems
the coincidental, r
dental or the for
not go back to s
cause.
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The Plot of History 3
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4 Eric MacPhail
I Augusto Rostagni,
6 Rhetorica ad Here
Diomedes, Ars Gram
8 Euanthius "De fab
vols.; Leipzig, 1902-
9 See Rostagni, 423-
10 Eduard Schwartz
(1897), 560.
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The Plot of History 5
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6 Eric MacPhail
contrary, it is the
recorded in legen
Diodorus by contra
is superior to their
possess the skill of
Another testimon
Cicero's Familiar
correspondent Lu
Civil Wars in ord
when he successf
consulship as a ty
peripeteias: "secer
bet enim varios act
term of office of
("uno in argumen
cum corpus"), whic
of the Poetics. Ci
afford the reader g
quam temporum
Aristotle conceive
experience from w
plot of his own pa
friend a tragic hist
Frank Walbank h
tragic history by a
Tragic history is
predates Aristotle
and Aristotle's vie
immense prestige
resolve the academ
does not answer t
where is the plot
of historians from
Perhaps the most
in classical antiqui
of Roman imperi
Carthage and Cor
'6 Frank Walbank, "History and Tragedy," Historia. 9 (1960), 216-34; repr. Selected Pa-
pers (Cambridge, 1985), 224-41.
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The Plot of History 7
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8 Eric MacPhail
~9 Polybius, The Histories, tr. W. R. Paton (6 vols.; London, 1922-27), IV, 371.
20 Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, tr. Charles Forster Smith (4 vols.; Lon-
don, 1919-23) I, 41.
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The Plot of History 9
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10 Eric MacPhail
Explanation means
disposing it in a c
done so that we ma
their occasion and
mains, according t
23 Antonius Possevinu
Dubois, La conception
"Explanatio est, ut res s
quomodo item, et quar
rerum, sed ratio etiam
reliqui, id Polybio judi
24 Ubertus Folieta, O
Theoretiker humanisti
resque in Europa gestae
deliberationem caderen
" Robert Black, "Ben
English Historical Re
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The Plot of History 11
26 Petrarch, Rerum memorandarum libri, ed. G. Billanovich (Florence, 1943), 43: "Ea est
prudentia. Quae nichil est aliud, ut a Marco Tullio diffinitur, nisi 'rerum bonarum et malarum
scientia'.... Hec posset minutius, sed trifariam brevissima partitione diducitur in preteritorum
memoriam, presentium intelligentiam et providentiam futurorum."
27 Juan Luis Vives, Opera omnia (8 vols.; Valencia, 1782-90; reprint London: Gregg Press,
1964), VI, 389: "Sed illa tamen nunquam mutantur quae natura continentur, nempe causae
affectuum animi, eorumque actiones et effecta."
28 Vives, VI, 387.
29 Marc Antoine Muret, Opera omnia, ed. Frotscher (3 vols.; Leipzig, 1834-41), II, 377.
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12 Eric MacPhail
It is curious how Mu
the basis of the Aris
analogy, as the basi
of analogy, "plerum
cent of Henricus C
the De occulta phil
convenit."'' Both au
of determinism and
Thus from the reco
history has develope
larity and recurrenc
great deal of penet
and Montaigne, but
express the conven
other humanists de
rected Aristotle's ev
Poetics. Focusing on
the use of real nam
posed to subordinate
acknowledged that
onomaton) because
plausible than do im
to derive tragedy fr
Poetics, the In libr
We have already s
tional names in tra
possibility. Robortel
uncharacteristic as
else it would not h
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The Plot of History 13
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14 Eric MacPhail
circumscribes the ar
as the poet.
When history usurps the function of poetry, what takes the place of history?
What narrative form remains or emerges to defy the orderly succession of events
and to rehabilitate the contingency of life? Renaissance fiction offers a variety of
solutions to convey the spontaneity of unplotted events and thus to revive the
role abdicated by history. As many critics have remarked, one distinctive feature
of Renaissance fiction is the vogue of the novella or short story, which Michel
Jeanneret calls modular narrative."3 In a collection of novelle each story or mod-
ule is generally independent of the others, and within each story the action usu-
ally arises spontaneously without antecedent or motivation. In Aristotelian terms
the short story is a story of accidents or uncaused causes. In this sense the most
emblematic form of the short story is the histoire prodigieuse which achieved a
prodigious success in the late French Renaissance, beginning with Pierre
Boaistuau's collection of Histoires prodigieuses of 1560. By its very nature the
prodigy or portent is a singular, unassimilable event, and each of the forty sto-
ries in Boaistuau's original collection is more of a miscellany than a continuous
narrative. As one of the foremost experts on the work has remarked, "On
dchouerait a vouloir tracer le plan de cet ouvrage: il est aussi peu ordonne qu'un
recueil de leqons."36 The Renaissance genre of histoires prodigieuses dispenses
with plot and promotes enumeration over dramatic synthesis.
The same phenomenon characterizes longer narrative, which often presents
a loose sequence of disparate episodes. French criticism has focused on the case
of Rabelais's Tiers Livre and Quart Livre which resemble collections of short
stories, while Leo Spitzer has characterized Rabelais's entire narrative project
in terms of the paradox of "gratuitous plot."37 Jeanneret observes of Rabelais's
later works: "Surtout, les Tiers et Quart Livres adoptent un mode de composi-
tion par accumulation qui n'a plus grand chose a voir avec le deroulement
chronologique d'un roman" while Spitzer declares more emphatically, "Rabelais
nous montre un d6dain souverain pour cette intrigue que je dirais 'gratuite,'
puisqu'elle tourne autour de Panurge, le h6ros de l'action gratuite."38 The chronicle
of Panurge's arbitrary adventures dissolves the coherence of plot and puts in
question the very concept of probable or necessary causation. It should be ac-
knowledged that a counter-tendency of criticism has insisted on the "design" of
Rabelais's work, but this design is primarily based on numerological propor-
5 Michel Jeanneret, "Le r6cit modulaire et la crise de l'interpretation," Le difi des signes
(Orleans, 1994), 53-74.
36 Jean C6ard, La nature et les prodiges: L'insolite aui XVIe siucle en France (Geneva,
1977), 253.
37 Leo Spitzer, "Rabelais et les 'rabelaisants,' " Studi Francesi, 4 (1960), 401-23.
38 Jeanneret, 55; Spitzer, 412.
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The Plot of History 15
39 See especially the trilogy of Edwin Duval, The Design of Rabelais' Pantagruel (New
Haven, 1991); The Design of Rabelais' Tiers Livre de Pantagruel (Geneva, 1997); and The
Design of Rabelais' Quart Livre de Pantagruel (Geneva, 1998).
o Erich Kohler, Der literarische Zufall, das M4gliche and die Nomwendigkeit (Munich,
1973), 31.
41 Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quijote de la Mancha, ed. Juan Bautista Avalle-Arce (2
vols.; Madrid, 1979), II, 42.
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16 Eric MacPhail
Indiana University
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