The 'heart of the plot'. A study of autobiographical literature of the meditative type: Augustine, Rousseau and Proust.

摘要

Concordant discordance, expressed figuratively in the 'heart of the plot,' is one defining element of the meditative type of autobiography in the Western tradition. An anatomy of the 'heart of the plot,' considered as a critical concept of narratology, precedes literary analyses of core emotional determination in Augustine's Confessions, Rousseau's Confessions and Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu. These writers deploy this figure of organic unity in a rhetorical strategy that attempts to configure an aesthetic representation of the inner life such that the literary text may stand as the sign of subjectivity. Informed by an underlying sense that 'whereof we cannot speak, we must commit to writing,' their approach involves an aesthetic 'technology of the self.' Analysis highlights recording as a way of organizing conceptually the nexus of narrative, emotion, memory and the process of literary composition.; Augustine, Rousseau and Proust engage in a meditative mode of self-writing that treats literature as a form of contemplative practice, and their projects are shown to involve interrelated ethical and aesthetic commitments. These writers are interested to express individuality in the narrative text, and in doing so to reflect on the meaning of inner experience and the nature of the developing self. A cyclic development of the 'interlacing' relations of history and fiction in autobiography (Ricoeur), with its 'half-poetical and half-historical treatment of events' (Goethe), connects these authors. Each adopts a 'heart of the plot' narrative framework and idiosyncratically adapts it to suit his own situation and purpose. As contributors to a tradition that explores the inner life through writing, reading and thinking, each presents a variation on a theme.; Along with 'recording,' 'concordant discordance' (Ricoeur), 'core emotional determination' (adapted from Hegel's reading of pathos) and 'organic unity' (a principle of mythos and mimesis inaugurated by Plato and Aristotle), several other interpretive concepts feature prominently in the analysis, including 'narrative identity,' 'prefiguration, configuration and refiguration' (Ricoeur's 3-fold mimesis), 'narrative integrity' (Freeman and Brockmeier, following Ricoeur) and 'creative repetition' (Frye). The conclusion offers a summary comparison and clarifies the way in which the inquiry's results tend to reinforce Frye's 'creative repetition' thesis.