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My chief reason for setting up this website is to give people coming after me a chance to think about what I have been trying to do since I began my research on narrative texts in 1971.
Why has my approach to my texts changed so much over time?
Why don’t I base my work on the publications of other scholars?
What explanations have I arrived at for my ritual narratives?
Why do I give less attention to magic in my latest work?
Why do I think my work is important?
1. Why has my approach to my texts changed so much over time?
The reason for this is that I’ve been engaged on an investigation into an unexplored area and could not predict where it was leading. I’ve been trying to gain information about a group of narrative plots which have turned out to be the products of an unknown system. This has meant finding a way of investigating plot structure without involving interpretation; interpretation based on what is known already has not been able to address these structures. I made a good start by experimenting with the notion of the single point of view, having the plot the invention of its hero or heroine: this instantly revealed an interesting sequence of repetitions in each plot – in fact, a unique kind of move structure. These move structures were then to teach me a rigorous discipline, enabling me to explore the possible relationships between the details of each structure. From the beginning, I was helped by the fact that the plots turned out to be very highly organised and I could use several of them as models, altering them as I learnt from the texts. It was a process of refining my methods as I worked on text after text, until I could offer solutions making good – irrational – sense. I also had the additional help of the conflicts between two levels of narrative in many texts, the author’s overlay and the totally different concerns of the plot.
2. Why don’t I base my work on the publications of other scholars?
These publications have none of them identified the narrative plots concerned as belonging to an unknown system. An unknown system cannot be interpreted until we have found out how the system works, and to find out how it works we have to describe it in terms of the structures it creates in as many relevant texts as we can find. This involves a particular kind of decipherment, learning how to read the close relationships between the details in the order in which they appear. Decipherment doesn’t lead to our finding obvious solutions: these structures are highly purposeful in entirely irrational ways, and only experience of work on a great many relevant texts gives us the judgement we need to find a solution. This is the work I have been engaged on since the 1970’s. The great merit of my early work – which was full of errors – was that it offered a view of the move structure, and I was surprised that no one followed me in studying this fascinating glimpse of an unconscious structure.
People have imagined that I’ve been using psychoanalysis, making interpretations on the basis of that theory, but I realised in the 1970’s that that would not be possible. My analysis of each text has had to arise out of the questions raised by the text concerned and then become an investigation of an unconscious plot structure. Psychoanalysis has had little to offer the literary specialist needing to address structure in unconscious activity, rather than meaning and motive. One thing I owe to psychoanalysis is the single point of view, on analogy with Freud’s theory of dreams: it enabled me to see the move structure and has proved an essential discipline for my work. The Oedipal material appearing in my plots I found a tedious, repetitive presence until I grasped that it belonged to the deeper levels of the mind – it was part of our emotional history – and that that was where my plots belonged too.
But, of course, I owe a great deal to the editors of texts I have studied, and also to scholars who have advised me. I also owe much to those who have pointed out particular absurdities in texts, and I’ve acknowledged their questions gratefully. While vexed by the absurdities they find, scholars have made little attempt to pursue them, and I can hardly blame them, knowing as I do that the pursuit can consume an entire career.
3. What explanations have I arrived at for my ritual narratives?
I think the genres of romance and folktale can sometimes trigger the emergence of narration belonging to a deeper level of the mind. There are linkages between the levels of the mind, and thought from deeper levels could surface under a strong stimulus: the feeling aroused in some kinds of storytelling situations would be such a stimulus.
I am wondering whether the origin of these deeper narratives might be a lifelong automatic storytelling process essential for the balance of the mind – perhaps to cope with conflict. The extent of their organisation suggests to me that they have a function there, and the primitive character of their thought suggests that this automatic process might have the form of regular re-runs of long-past mental stages. The exceptional popularity of the texts in which I have found them also suggests that audiences tune in – unconsciously – at the level of the ritual narrative, where primal concerns with desire and fear are effectively dealt with.
A ritual plot is a narration designed to secure remedies for inner desires and anxieties. The rituals are narrative manoeuvres which bring about a desired state of mind when invested with the power to do so. This investment of power will take place below consciousness, and therefore automatically, in the private place of the mind, but what happens when the plots appear in the public domain of a text? In the public domain, we find that these narratives have been enormously popular: they can have an immediate effect on audiences at a deep level we all share. We can also pursue this question in relation to authors, especially where several authors make use of the same narrative, as in the case of the Tristan verse romances. But here we need much more data than I have been able to assemble, working alone. In the areas I’ve worked in, I’ve found that authors may or may not give us a ritual plot. The rituals are not inherent in any particular narrative material, but only in the thought using it. This unconscious thought selects its narrative materials just as other levels of thought do in the creative process, and it uses them for ritual purposes. Meanwhile, other levels of thought may select the same materials for quite different purposes. Among the Tristan verse romances, two texts can look alike and yet be entirely different, because in one of them the narrative material is being used to create rituals for an investment of power, while in the other it is not. Gottfried von Strassburg gives us a ‘Tristan’ without the rituals, and his text is free to express his imaginative vision without there being a conflict between two levels of narrative. Meanwhile, Eilhart von Oberge gives us a ritual plot and therefore the two levels, the upper level subordinate and showing conflict. Eilhart’s deeper mind is evidently engaged in the ritual plot, which will therefore be dominant.
4. Why do I give less attention to magic in my latest work?
Studying texts, I learnt that magic is a system of thought which can create a narrative plot just like other forms of thought. When I came to consider the relationship between these texts and their audiences, I realised that a crucial characteristic of this system of thought must be that it invests power in things so that they can bring about desires and dispel unwanted feelings. Audiences identified with a plot would invest power in it and the magic would begin and end in the mind of an individual participant.
I now call my plots ‘ritual’, rather than ‘magical’, plots because the name ‘magical’ has been diverting attention from my principal findings. The move structure, with so much information to impart, is at the heart of my work, and the presence in many of my texts of two entirely separate levels of narrative, is also a great help to the researcher. Each level has its own type of structure, the lower level with the moves having a unique one, and the conflicts between the levels can be studied. By contrast, magic has largely to do with audience participation, and involves speculation. Such speculation can be a later step, but it cannot begin until we understand how the moves and defences work.
One thing my investigation has brought to light is that the unknown system is very highly organised, and this is also the case with magic. Real (unconscious) magic has a serious purpose and rigorous organisation, while playful magic created by our conscious minds doesn’t actually function as magic.
Narrative texts reveal more about the workings of magic than do anthropological field work and psychoanalysis, because the workings of the mind are expressed in detail on the page and can be minutely studied.
There is a discussion of magic on this website, in my cached paper no. 2, ‘Magical Structures in Narrative: some Medieval Examples’, page 7.
5. Why do I think my work is important?
I think my work solves particular problems which have troubled us in many narrative texts, most of which have enjoyed long popularity. It offers a methodology worked out during investigation of these texts, which can be tested, altered and extended by users engaged on similar work. The methodology also firmly detects texts which are not relevant to such an investigation. My work demonstrates that literary people can work independently with an unknown system of thought in a practical, exploratory way.
Outside the literary field, my work offers studies of structure in unconscious activity, opening up a new area for investigators. Earlier approaches to the unconscious have concentrated on identifying motives as they intrude on our social lives. Narrative texts offer an opportunity not offered elsewhere for the study of unconscious structures, because the unconscious uses narrative thought and texts present abundant detail for study.
My investigation enlarges our ideas of the role of narrative in human life. It also demonstrates that answers to problems sometimes lie outside the arena of our conscious, moral universe. |