Literary Language Betrays Itself: The Role of Anticipations inLiterature

This paper strives to introduce a new notion in literature: the notion of anticipations. Good literature is or should be teeming with anticipations. Anticipations are the signs or signals in a work of literature that gradually prepare the reader’s mind for something important that is going to happen in the offing. Unlike causes (put forward byForster) anticipations do not emanate suddenness and in actuality, creating delays shape the reader’s psychological structure of mind, perception, and emotion closely in line with the crucial event that is going to take place. They are also responsible to create maximum suspense, the continuous and simultaneously salient question of what happens next. Two examples have been cited from Shakespeare and Wordsworth and a comparison has been made between Eliot’s The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock and Keats’ Ode to A Nightingale to prove this theory. In the second stage, using the notion of anticipations, the paper renounces E.M. Forster’s differentiation between story and plot and stipulates that writers avail themselves of anticipations-and not causes as Forster says-to manipulate the plot. And at the end, it draws on Boris Tomashevski’s brilliant enunciation of fabula and syuzhet to have a final attack on Forster’s theory.

Keywords:

anticipation , emotion , fabula , necessity , perception , probability , psychological structure , syuzhet