36 Dramatic Situations by Georges Polti (1895)
Free version found here:
The outline on Wikipedia is wrong. (no big surprise there) Not once did Polti argue for conflict. He does not use the term. He looks at these as situations. We've covered conflict language at length.
Things of note (for me, so read it on your own):
This is during the French Third Regime (His president while he was publishing this is Jean Casimir-Perier) during stable democracy. You can feel it in the work oddly enough as he celebrates Polish and French freedom sticking it to Gustav Freytag who called French Theater inferior. (Believe me, Gustav Freytag spent long, long chapters on this. Unhinged chapters.) It is really hard to name someone not German that Gustav Freytag didn't hate as a contemporary... but he really did hate French theater a lot, so I don't blame Polti. BTW, this is near to his introduction.
I can feel him pushing back on Gustav Freytag a bit because he mentions Polish people, French, Chinese, and goes to great lengths to defend Hindus (Indians of the time--remember Indian history with British occupation.) He also names English plays that Freytag would have known. Of course Shakespeare and Greek plays as well. All groups that Gustav Freytag went out of his way to say were inferior to Wagner's Opera, going on and on about Shakespeare and Aristotle. Gustav Freytag isn't mentioned, but the odd admixture kinda of argues to me, that he wanted to try to say no to Freytag. This is before WWI, so maybe said a bit early to boast, but also ahead of his time. Thumbing his nose about Polish and French freedom feels like indirect confrontation with Freytag, especially when he goes out of his way to not argue for superiority or inferiority. AND he definitely knows German and makes several broad statements to that effect, naming German plays as well. It's not likely he missed Freytag.
This is AFTER the advent of Francis Boaz, the social scientist who went to create Anthropology--you can feel his influence when Polti tries (maybe in vain a little) to do some cultural relativism, which is kind of refreshing to be honest. Does he do it well? Ummmm... not really. But I give him the effort. I should note here, that a lot of Early anthropology theoretical work was in France.
He DOES list Chinese plays and tries his best to be international, but mostly lands on France and Italy. The Chinese plays he lists, I can't find, though, so I might have to ask some Chinese people for help on that.
The Avenging of a Slain Parent or Ancestor:–"The Singer," an anonymous Chinese drama; "The Tunic Confronted" (of the courtesan Tchang-koue-pin). I want to know which these are. And what the original Chinese names are.
Some of the reasons why he did it was because he thought it might boost? creativity. He even says he can hear your cries about limiting creativity, but energetically says that's not his purpose. He wants to have some organization, not put down the budding creativity of the time between various movements of writing, such as naturalism, etc. (I cover that elsewhere, Early 19th century story drivers, etc are fascinating).
19th century France was still considered a hotbed of cultural influences and ideas. Works from all over were being translated into French. (This is something that Lit professors go over a lot, and you get this from Art History as well... but this is easy to find) Modernism and other cultural ideas flourished. So when he references all of these different cultural texts, it's because people all over the world--Korea, China, Japan, Germany, English, etc often did go to France. And France also benefited.
He does use the word Denouement, but it's not used in the same way as the later usage. I think the translation might be a bit faulty, but I think he means mounting plot (nouement, according to some) and then the Denouement (dismount) is the deescalation of the tension.
He does abuse Aristotle by making a thesis, and then not backing his thesis. Can we stop doing this? No? Never?
Can I get a quote from Poetics please? He did argue for simplicity. That it should be long, simple and easy to remember. No subplots. But the overstatemets after that I'm not quite sure about.
The majority of his story theory and the reasons why he did it are at the end. Read the conclusion will help more than the categorization.
He never cites the work that he took it from, beyond one name TT Cue me crying in a corner as I blind stab and try to find the original source and hope that it has a translation. He cited Carlo Gozzi. Of which only five of the ten plays quoted are translated as theoretical works.
Later people who cite him use him for structuralism purposes, but if you read his treaties carefully, he's not quite pro structuralism because that doesn't come as a thought pattern until later (early 20th century). He's not arguing for structure or for a particular story theory--he likes the diversity actually and goes to great lengths to state so before, during and after his treaties. He wants the pluralism, but he wants organization too.
He actually cites people knowing they are of other races than white and bends over backwards to try to do it. Not always well, but you can feel his intentions are good, so you can't hate him for the effort. (Keep in mind this is before the big push on sociology and Anthropology, so he's kind of ahead of the curve.)
There is some sexism in it... but I'm willing to give a pass since he doesn't really disparage women as writers directly like some of the other authors on this list. And he's willing to paint men as just as bad as the women in his scenarios to fill out the lot. Victim of his times might apply here, since it's late 19th century and there was the "damsel in distress" type of plot prevalent at the time.
If I were to rank, he's not the worst of the lot. But his energetic enthusiasm, even when wrong spills over onto the page. He really does think he's doing the world a favor, but not in a holier-than-thou way so I can't quite hate him for it. Brecht is still the most fun to read Followed by Selden Lincoln Whitcomb, who really did know what he was doing with his pluralities. And then maybe I'd put this one third for the semi- (proto)-structuralists.
Let's be honest, Percy Lubbock is kinda oppressive to read because he's so convinced of his self-worth and that he has a horrible solution to a problem he should not see with literary discourse. And as much as I like EM Forster pushing back on Lubbock, some of his story theory ideas don't hold water well. (Forster isn't a structuralist though).
So yeah... Not the best to read and entertaining, but you can't quite hate him, even if his exact information is a bit off...? Ya know. But still some of his information is off, so you can't quite reward him. It's like the eager student who means well when they raise their hand, but somehow are only 80% correct. What do you do with them?
Anyway, you can see him in time and space with this contextualization, I hope. I have 3 good candidates for the Antigone diagram. If it's who I think it is, then we have a super awesome figure to cover.
