"Setting" by Amanda Burns
According to the Merriam-Webster
online dictionary, the definition of “setting” is twofold: “the time and
place of the action of a literary, dramatic, or cinematic work.” In
other words, the development of plot occurs not only in a spatial plane - but
within a two dimensional setting – which includes time as well.
Developing the particularities of the time and space matrix came to
define the new literary perspective offered by the novel.
“The plot had to be acted out by particular people in particular circumstances,
rather than,” as literary critic Ian Watt explains, “as had been common in the
past, by general human types against a background primarily determined by the
appropriate literary conventions” (15).
This novelistic shift from universals to particulars occurred in both components
of setting.
Romances and comedies of the ancient literary world were most often acted out
within abstract time continuums or a rigid 24 hour episode as in the case of the
pre-modern tragedy. Sequence and chronology were not important; they were in
fact hardly necessary. The plot and purpose of pre-modern literature was to
deliver a story both timeless and universal. The conventional actions of its
stereotyped characters did not require the context of temporal timeframes. In
contrast, it was the specifics and sequence of time that allowed the
individualized characters of the novel to travel from hour to hour within the
temporal continuum of daily life. It the novelistic setting’s “more minutely
discriminated time-scale” that Watt argues produced a “closeness to the texture
of daily experience” (22).
Pre-modern literature was concerned with neither specifying time nor space.
“Place,” according to Watt, “was traditionally almost as general and vague as
time in tragedy, comedy, and romance” (26). Again, ancient texts were not
invested in anchoring their characters within specific landscapes by way of
descriptive language because such scenic imagery did not serve the universal.
The objective of the storyteller was to craft universal plotlines that
functioned independent of locale. The stories of the ancients spoke of mankind
at large, not of one particular man from one particular place. Again, by
contrast, “the plot had to be acted out by particular people in particular
circumstances” (15). According to Watt, authors such as Defoe, Richardson and
Fielding successfully used “descriptions of milieu” and “vivid details” to place
their characters within an “actual physical environment” (26). Not only were
these backdrops illuminated by details, they were often identifiable by
readers. As Watt notes,