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Fiction
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Fiction is the classification for any story or similar work derived from imagination—in other words, not based strictly on history or fact. Fiction does not refer to a mode or genre, unless used in its narrowest sense to mean a literary narrative. Instead, the context of fiction is generally open to interpretation, characters and events within a fictional work may even be openly set in their own context entirely separate from the known universe, a fictional universe. Science fiction, for example, predicts or supposes technologies that are not realities at the time of the works creation, for example, Jules Vernes novel From the Earth to the Moon was published in 1865 and only in 1969 did astronaut Neil Armstrong first land on the moon. Historical fiction places imaginary characters into real historical events, in the early historical novel Waverley, Sir Walter Scotts fictional character Edward Waverley meets a figure from history, Bonnie Prince Charlie, and takes part in the Battle of Prestonpans. Some works of fiction are slightly or greatly re-imagined based on some originally true story, often, even when the author claims the fictional story is basically true, there may be artificial additions and subtractions from the true story to make it more interesting. One such example would be Tim OBriens The Things They Carried, creators of fantasy sometimes introduce entire imaginary creatures or beings such as dragons and fairies. In terms of the separation between fiction and non-fiction, the lines are now commonly understood as blurred, showing more overlap than mutual exclusion. Even fiction usually has elements of, or grounding in, truth, also, infinite fictional possibilities themselves signal the impossibility of fully knowing reality, provocatively demonstrating that there is no criterion to measure constructs of reality. The Internet has had a impact on the creation and distribution of fiction. Also, digital libraries such as Project Gutenberg make public domain texts more readily available, the combination of inexpensive home computers, the Internet and the creativity of its users has also led to new forms of fiction, such as interactive computer games or computer-generated comics. Countless forums for fan fiction can be online, where loyal followers of specific fictional realms create and distribute derivative stories. Types of literary fiction in prose, Short story, A work of at least 2,000 words, the boundary between a long short story and a novella is vague. Novella, A work of at least 17,500 words, joseph Conrads Heart of Darkness is an example of a novella. Novel, A work of 50,000 words or more, cartoonist Character Fiction writing Legend Mythology Non-fiction Pseudohistory Eco, Umberto 2009. On the ontology of fictional characters, A semiotic approach
2.
Plot (narrative)
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Plot refers to the sequence of events inside a story which affect other events through the principle of cause and effect. The causal events of a plot can be thought of as a series of sentences linked by, Plots can vary from simple structures such as in a traditional ballad to complex interwoven structures sometimes referred to as an imbroglio. The term plot can serve as a verb and refer to a planning future actions in the story. In the narrative sense, the highlights the important points which have important consequences within the story. The term is similar in meaning to the term storyline, english novelist E. M. Forster described plot as the cause-and-effect relationship between events in a story. According to Forster, The king died, and then the queen died, is a story, while The king died, as a result, according to Dibell, the plot can be described numerically as 1→3 while the story can be described as 1→2→3. A story orders events from beginning to end in a time sequence, teri Shaffer Yamada agrees that a plot does not include memorable scenes within a story which do not relate directly to other events but only major events that move the action in a narrative. Another example of a scene which is not part of the plot occurs in the 1980 film The Empire Strikes Back. A fabula is the events in the world, whereas a syuzhet is a perspective of those events. Formalist followers eventually translated the fabula/syuzhet to the concept of story/plot and this definition is usually used in narratology, in parallel with Forsters definition. The fabula is what happened in chronological order, in contrast, the syuzhet means a unique sequence of discourse that was sorted out by the author. That is, the syuzhet can consist of picking up the events in non-chronological order, for example, fabula is <a1, a2, a3, a4, a5, …, an>, syuzhet is <a5, a1. He also believed that the events of the plot must causally relate to one another as being necessary or probable. Of the utmost importance is the ability to arouse emotion in the psyche of the audience. Acts are connected by two points or turning points, with the first turning point connecting Act I to Act II. The conception of the structure has been attributed to American screenwriter Syd Field who described plot structure in this tripartite way for film analysis. In his Poetics, Aristotle considered plot the most important element of drama—more important than character, for example. A plot must have, Aristotle says, a beginning, a middle, and an end, of the utmost importance to Aristotle is the plots ability to arouse emotion in the psyche of the audience
3.
Protagonist
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A protagonist is the main character in any story, such as a literary work or drama. The protagonist is at the center of the story, typically makes the key decisions, the protagonist usually affects the main characters circumstances as well, as they are often the primary actor propelling the story forward. If a story contains a subplot, or is a made up of several stories. The word protagonist is used notably in stories and forms of literature and culture that contain stories, in those forms the protagonist may simply be the leading actor, or the principal character in the story. The antagonist will provide obstacles and complications and create conflict that test the protagonist, thus revealing the strengths, the earliest known examples of protagonist are dated back to Ancient Greece. At first dramatic performances involved merely dancing and recitation by the chorus, but then in Poetics, Aristotle describes how a poet named Thespis introduced the idea of having one actor step out and engage in a dialogue with the chorus. This was the invention of tragedy, which occurred about 536 B. C, then the poet Aeschylus, in his plays, introduced a second actor, inventing the idea of dialogue between two characters. Sophocles then wrote plays that required a third actor, euripides play Hippolytus may be considered to have two protagonists. The protagonist of the first half is Phaedra, who dies partway through the play and her stepson, the titular Hippolytus, assumes the dominant role in the second half of the play. In Ibsen’s play The Master Builder, the protagonist is the architect Halvard Solness, the young woman, Hilda Wangel, whose actions lead to the death of Solness, is the antagonist. In Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet, Romeo is the protagonist and he is actively in pursuit of his relationship with Juliet, and the audience is invested in that story. The character of Tybalt opposes Romeo’s desires, he is the antagonist, in Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, Prince Hamlet, who seeks revenge for the murder of his father, is the protagonist. The antagonist would be the character who most opposes Hamlet, Claudius, in the novel The Catcher in the Rye, the character Holden Caulfield is the protagonist. He is the character, and the reader is invested in his story. Sometimes, a work will have a false protagonist, who may seem to be the protagonist, the character Marion in Alfred Hitchcocks film Psycho is an example. A novel that contains a number of narratives may have a number of protagonists, alexander Solzhenitsyns The First Circle, for example, depicts a variety of characters imprisoned and living in a gulag camp. Leo Tolstoys War and Peace, depicts fifteen major characters involved in or affected by a war
4.
Screenwriting
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Screenwriting, also called scriptwriting, is the art and craft of writing scripts for mass media such as feature films, television productions or video games. It is frequently a freelance profession, screenwriters are responsible for researching the story, developing the narrative, writing the screenplay, and delivering it, in the required format, to development executives. Screenwriters therefore have great influence over the direction and emotional impact of the screenplay and, arguably. The act of screenwriting takes many forms across the entertainment industry, often, multiple writers work on the same script at different stages of development with different tasks. Over the course of a career, a screenwriter might be hired to write in a wide variety of roles. The content is usually invented solely by the screenwriter, though spec screenplays can also be based on established works, or real people, the spec script is a Hollywood sales tool. The vast majority of scripts written each year are spec scripts, a spec script is usually a wholly original work, but can also be an adaptation. In television writing, a script is a sample teleplay written to demonstrate the writers knowledge of a show and ability to imitate its style. It is submitted to the producers in hopes of being hired to write future episodes of the show. Budding screenwriters attempting to break into the business generally begin by writing one or more spec scripts, although writing spec scripts is part of any writers career, the Writers Guild of America forbids members to write on speculation. The distinction is that a script is written as a sample by the writer on his or her own. In addition to writing a script on speculation, it is not advised to write camera angles or other directional terminology. A director may write up a shooting script himself or herself, the director may ask the original writer to co-write it with him or her, or to rewrite a script that satisfies both the director and producer of the film/TV show. Spec writing is unique in that the writer must pitch the idea to producers. In order to sell the script, it must have a title, good writing. A logline is one sentence that lays out what the movie is about, a well written logline will convey the tone of the film, introduce the main character, and touch on the primary conflict. Usually the logline and title work in tandem to draw people in and these things, along with nice, clean writing will hugely impact whether or not a producer picks up the spec script. A commissioned screenplay is written by a hired writer, the concept is usually developed long before the screenwriter is brought on, and often has multiple writers work on it before the script is given a green light
5.
Foil (literature)
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In fiction, a foil is a character who contrasts with another character —usually the protagonist— in order to highlight particular qualities of the other character. In some cases, a subplot can be used as a foil to the main plot and this is especially true in the case of metafiction and the story within a story motif. The word foil comes from the old practice of backing gems with foil in order to make them shine more brightly, a foil usually either differs dramatically or is extremely similar but with a key difference setting them apart. The concept of a foil is also widely applied to any comparison that is made to contrast a difference between two things. In Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, the two characters, Dr. Frankenstein and his creature are both together literary foils, functioning to compare one to the other. In Jane Austens Pride and Prejudice, Marys absorption in her studies places her as a foil to her sister Lydia Bennets lively, similarly, in Shakespeares play Julius Caesar, the character Brutus has foils in the two characters Cassius and Mark Antony
6.
Climax (narrative)
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The climax or turning point of a narrative work is its point of highest tension and drama, or it is the time when the action starts during which the solution is given. The climax of a story is a literary element. e. to construct a dramatization, in the play Hippolytus, by the famous Greek playwright, Euripides, the climax arrives when Phaedra hears Hippolytus react badly because of her love for him. That is the moment that Aphrodites curse is fulfilled. An anticlimax is a situation in a plot in which something which would appear to be difficult to solve is solved through something trivial. Another example could involve the protagonist faced with insurmountable odds and ultimately being killed without accomplishing his goal, dramatic structure Literary element Climax as a rhetorical device
7.
Cliffhanger
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A cliffhanger is hoped to ensure the audience will return to see how the characters resolve the dilemma. Some serials end with the caveat To Be Continued, in movie serials and television series the following episode sometimes begins with a recap sequence. Cliffhangers were especially popular in 1920s and 1930s serials when movie theaters filled the cultural niche later primarily occupied by television, Cliffhangers are often used in television series, especially soap operas that end each episode on a cliffhanger. Prior to the early 1980s, season-ending cliffhangers were rare on U. S. television, the first such season-ender on U. S. TV was in the comedy send-up of soap operas Soap in 1978. Cliffhangers were rare on American television before 1980, as television networks preferred the flexibility of airing episodes in any order. The phenomenal success of the 1980 Who shot J. R. Cliffhangers are also used to open the possibility of a character being killed off due to the actor not continuing to play the role. The cliffhanger has become a genre staple, the heavily serialized television drama True Blood has become notorious for cliffhangers. Not only do the seasons conclude with cliffhangers, but almost every episode finishes at a cliffhanger directly after or during a dramatic moment. Sometimes a movie, book, or season of a show will end with the defeat of the main villain before a second. Occasionally an element other than a villain is also used to tease at a sequel, back to back film production Bluma Zeigarnik Vincent Fröhlich, Der Cliffhanger und die serielle Narration. Word Detective Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention Cliffhanger Film Showings
8.
Conflict (narrative)
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In works of narrative, conflict is the opposition main characters must face to achieve their goals. Traditionally, conflict is a literary element that creates tension. A narrative is not limited to a single conflict, while conflicts may not always resolve in narrative, the resolution of a conflict creates closure, which may or may not occur at a storys end. Conflict in literature refers to the different drives of the characters or forces involved, conflict may be internal or external—that is, it may occur within a characters mind or between a character and exterior forces. Conflict is most visible two or more characters, usually a protagonist and an antagonist/enemy/villain, but can occur in many different forms. A character may as easily find himself or herself in conflict with a force, such as an animal or a weather event. The literary purpose of conflict is to create tension in the story, there may be multiple points of conflict in a single story, as characters may have more than one desire or may struggle against more than one opposing force. When a conflict is resolved and the reader discovers which force or character succeeds, conflicts may resolve at any point in a story, particularly where more than one conflict exists, but stories do not always resolve every conflict. If a story ends without resolving the main or major conflict, open endings, which can serve to ask the reader to consider the conflict more personally, may not satisfy them, but obvious conflict resolution may also leave readers disappointed in the story. The basic types of conflict in fiction have been codified as man against man, man against nature. Although frequently cited, these three types of conflict are not universally accepted, ayn Rand, for instance, argued that man against nature is not a conflict because nature has no free will and thus can make no choices. Man against man conflict involves stories where characters are against each other. The conflict may be direct opposition, as in a gunfight or a robbery and this type of conflict is very common in traditional literature, fairy tales and myths. One example of the man against man conflict is the struggles between the protagonist and the antagonist stepfather in This Boys Life. Other examples include Dorothys struggles with the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Man against nature conflict is an external struggle positioning the hero against an animal or a force of nature, such as a storm or tornado or snow. The man against nature conflict is central to Ernest Hemingways The Old Man and the Sea and it is also common in adventure stories, including Robinson Crusoe. Wild not only takes its name from this conflict, but it is also an example, featuring Bear Grylls. With man against self conflict, the struggle is internal and this is a conflict that is usually associated with an internal conflict
9.
Deus ex machina
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Deus ex machina is a Latin calque from Greek ἀπὸ μηχανῆς θεός, meaning god from the machine. The term was coined from the conventions of Greek tragedy, where a machine is used to bring actors playing gods onto the stage, the machine could be either a crane used to lower actors from above or a riser that brought actors up through a trapdoor. Preparation to pick up the actors was done behind the skene, the idea was introduced by Aeschylus and was used often to resolve the conflict and conclude the drama. Although the device is associated mostly with Greek tragedy, it appeared in comedies. Aeschylus used the device in his Eumenides, but it was with Euripides that it became a stage machine. More than half of Euripides extant tragedies employ a deus ex machina in their resolution, in Alcestis, the eponymous heroine agrees to give up her own life in order to spare the life of her husband, Admetus. At the end, Heracles shows up and seizes Alcestis from Death, restoring her to life, aristophanes play Thesmophoriazusae parodies Euripides frequent use of the crane by making Euripides himself a character in the play and bringing him on stage by way of the mechane. The effect of the device on Greek audiences was a direct, audiences would have a feeling of wonder and astonishment at the appearance of the gods, which would often add to the moral effect of the drama. Shakespeare used the device in As You Like It, Pericles, Prince of Tyre, Cymbeline and it was also used in John Gays The Beggars Opera where the author uses a character to break the action and rewrite the ending as a reprieve of the hanging of MacHeath. Both in Shakespeares and Gays plays the deus ex machina happens with breaking the illusion often in the form of an episodic narrator exposing the play itself. This is different from the use of the deus ex machina in the ancient examples with the coming from a participant in the action in the form of a god. It is natural for the gods to be considered participants and not outside sources because of their privileged position and it is these attributes that allow the Greek gods to believably wrap up and solve the series of events. During the politically turbulent 17th and 18th centuries, the deus ex machina was sometimes used to make a controversial thesis more palatable to the powers of the day. Aristotle was the first to use deus ex machina as a term to describe the technique as a device to resolve the plot of tragedies and it is generally deemed undesirable in writing and often implies a lack of creativity on the part of the author. In H. G. Wellss The War of the Worlds, in the novel Lord of the Flies, the rescue of the savage children by a passing navy officer is viewed by some critics as a deus ex machina. The abrupt ending conveys the terrible fate that would have afflicted the children if the officer had not arrived at that moment. J. R. R. Tolkien coined the term eucatastrophe to refer to a turn of events that ensures the protagonist does not meet some impending fate. He also referred to the Great Eagles that appear in places in The Hobbit
10.
Dramatic structure
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Dramatic structure is the structure of a dramatic work such as a play or film. Many scholars have analyzed dramatic structure, beginning with Aristotle in his Poetics and this article focuses primarily on Gustav Freytags analysis of ancient Greek and Shakespearean drama. In his Poetics, the Greek philosopher Aristotle put forth the idea that A whole is what has a beginning and middle and end. This three-part view of a plot structure prevailed until the Roman drama critic Horace advocated a 5-act structure in his Ars Poetica, renaissance dramatists revived the use of the 8-act structure. Under Freytags pyramid, the plot of a story consists of five parts, exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and dénouement/resolution/revelation/catastrophe. According to Freytag, a drama is divided into five parts, or acts, which refer to as a dramatic arc, exposition, rising action, climax, falling action. Freytags Pyramid can help organize their thoughts and ideas when describing the main problem of the drama, the rising action, the climax. Although Freytags analysis of structure is based on five-act plays, it can be applied to short stories and novels as well. Exposition can be conveyed through dialogues, flashbacks, characters thoughts, background details, in-universe media, in the rising action, a series of events build toward the point of greatest interest. The rising action of a story is the series of events that immediately after the exposition of the story. These events are generally the most important parts of the story since the entire plot depends on them to set up the climax, the climax is the turning point, which changes the protagonist’s fate. If the story is a comedy and things were going bad for the protagonist, if the story is a tragedy, the opposite state of affairs will ensue, with things going from good to bad for the protagonist, often revealing the protagonists hidden weaknesses. During the falling action, the conflict between the protagonist and the antagonist unravels, with the protagonist winning or losing against the antagonist, the falling action may contain a moment of final suspense, in which the final outcome of the conflict is in doubt. The dénouement comprises events from the end of the action to the actual ending scene of the drama or narrative. Conflicts are resolved, creating normality for the characters and a sense of catharsis, or release of tension and anxiety, etymologically, the French word dénouement is derived from the word dénouer, to untie, from nodus, Latin for knot. It is the unraveling or untying of the complexities of a plot, the comedy ends with a dénouement, in which the protagonist is better off than at the storys outset. The tragedy ends with a catastrophe, in which the protagonist is worse off than at the beginning of the narrative, in Shakespeares tragedies, the dénouement is usually the death of one or more characters. Freytags analysis was intended to apply to ancient Greek and Shakespearean drama, contemporary dramas increasingly use the fall to increase the relative height of the climax and dramatic impact
11.
Eucatastrophe
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For Tolkien, the term appears to have had a thematic meaning that went beyond its literal etymological meaning in terms of form. In his definition as outlined in his 1947 essay On Fairy-Stories, Eucatastrophe has been labelled as a form of deus ex machina, due to both sharing an impossible problem being suddenly resolved. However, differences between the two have also noted, such as its inherent connection to an optimistic view on the unfolding of events in the narrative of the world. In his view, Eucatastrophe can also occur without the use of a deus ex machina, Eucatastrophe has been observed in the climax of The Lord of the Rings. Though victory seems assured for Sauron, the One Ring is permanently destroyed as a result of Gollums attack on Frodo at Mount Doom, another example of eucatastrophe is the recurring role of the eagles as unexpected rescuers throughout Tolkiens writing. Tolkien described Bilbos eucatastrophic emotion at the appearance in The Hobbit as one of the key moments of the book. Happy ending Peripeteia Mazur, Eric Michael, ed. Encyclopedia of Religion, the Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays
12.
Foreshadowing
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Foreshadowing is a literary device by which an author hints what is to come. Foreshadowing is a device in which an important plot-point is mentioned early in the story. It is used to avoid disappointment and it is also sometimes used to arouse the reader. A hint that is designed to mislead the audience is referred to as a red herring, a similar device is the flashforward. However, foreshadowing only hints at a possible outcome within the confinement of a narrative, a flashforward is a scene that takes the narrative forward in time from the current point of the story in literature, film, television, and other media. Foreshadowing is sometimes employed through characters explicitly predicting the future, by analogy to foreshadowing, the literary critic Gary Morson described its opposite, sideshadowing. Found notably in the novels of Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky. This, according to Morson, increases the verisimilitude of the fiction because the audience knows that in life, unlike in novels. This sense of structurelessness invites the audience to interpret and question the events that actually do come to pass
13.
Frame story
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The frame story leads readers from a first story into another, smaller one within it. The frame story may also be used to allow readers to understand a part of the story and this is not however, to be mixed up with a narrative structure or character personality change. The earliest known frame stories are preserved on the ancient Egyptian Papyrus Westcar. This form gradually spread west through the centuries and became popular, giving rise to such classic frame tale collections as the One Thousand and One Nights, The Decameron, and Canterbury Tales. This format had flexibility in that various narrators could retain the stories they liked or understood, while dropping ones they didnt and this occurred particularly with One Thousand and One Nights, where different versions over the centuries have included different stories. A typical example of a story is One Thousand and One Nights. Many of Scheherazades tales are also frame stories, such as Tale of Sindbad the Seaman and Sindbad the Landsman, extensive use of this device is found in Ovids Metamorphoses, where the stories nest several deep, to allow the inclusion of many different tales in one work. Emily Brontës Wuthering Heights uses this device to tell the story of Heathcliff and Catherine. Her sister Anne also uses this device in her epistolary novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, the main heroines diary is framed by the narrators story and letters. Mary Shelleys novel Frankenstein is another example of a book with multiple framed narratives. Frame stories have appeared in other media, such as comic books. Neil Gaimans comic book series The Sandman featured a story arc called Worlds End which consisted of frame stories, frame stories are often organized as a gathering of people in one place for the exchange of stories. Each character tells his or her tale, and the tale progresses in that manner. Sometimes only one exists, and in this case there might be different levels of distance between the reader and author. In this mode, the tale can become more fuzzy. Here the frame includes the world of the imagined Crayon, his stories, essentially, it is a frame story without a story to be framed. When there is a story, the frame story is used for other purposes – chiefly to position the readers attitude toward the tale. One common one is to draw attention to the narrators unreliability, by explicitly making the narrator a character within the frame story, the writer distances himself from the narrator, he may also characterize the narrator to cast doubt on his truthfulness
14.
Poetic justice
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Poetic justice is a literary device in which ultimately virtue is rewarded and vice punished. In modern literature it is accompanied by an ironic twist of fate related to the characters own action. The demand for justice is consistent in Classical authorities and shows up in Horace, Plutarch. Philip Sidney, in Defense of Poetry, argued that justice was, in fact. Notably, poetic justice does not merely require that vice be punished and virtue rewarded, if, for example, a character is dominated by greed for most of a romance or drama, he cannot become generous. The action of a play, poem, or fiction must obey the rules of logic as well as morality, for tis the sport to have the engineer / Hoist with his own petard. The story of Esther includes two instances of poetic justice, both involving Haman, ultimately, Haman is executed on the gallows that he had prepared for Esthers cousin Mordecai. Dantes Divine Comedy reads like a compendium of examples of poetic justice, the self-fulfilling prophecy can be considered an early example of poetic justice. One example of this is the ancient Sanskrit story of Krishna, in order to prevent it, he imprisons both Devaki and her husband Vasudeva, allowing them to live only if they hand over their children as soon as they are born. He murders nearly all of one by one, but the eighth child, Krishna, is saved and raised by a cowherd couple. After growing up and returning to his kingdom, Krishna eventually kills Kamsa, in other words, Kamsas cruelty in order to prevent his death is what led to him being killed. Toward the conclusion of the popular Hunger Games series, President Snow is set to be put to death. The Shawshank Redemption In the South Park episode Chicken Lover, Kyle declares and its poetic justice in that he learned to read because of the Booktastic Bus driver, who was making love to the towns chickens in a plot to force Barbrady to learn how to read. Barbradys newfound literacy then allowed him to catch the very same chicken-lover in the act. The Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner cartoons feature repeated instances of poetic justice, as Wile E. Coyote always sets traps for Road Runner, poetic justice is referred to in The Simpsons episode Boy Scoutz N the Hood. When Bart returns home from a Junior Campers meeting Homer asks How was jerk practice, did they teach you how to sing to trees and build crappy furniture out of useless wooden logs. The chair that Homer is sitting on breaks and he declares Doh. In the film Batman Returns, The Penguin informs his traitorous cohort Max Shreck, the Penguin goes on to wonder if this is tragic irony or poetic justice
15.
Self-fulfilling prophecy
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A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that directly or indirectly causes itself to become true, by the very terms of the prophecy itself, due to positive feedback between belief and behavior. This specious validity of the self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuates a reign of error, for the prophet will cite the actual course of events as proof that he was right from the very beginning. Self-fulfilling prophecy are effects in behavioral confirmation effect, in which behavior, influenced by expectations and it is complementary to the self-defeating prophecy. Mertons concept of the self-fulfilling prophecy stems from the Thomas theorem, according to Thomas, people react not only to the situations they are in, but also, and often primarily, to the way they perceive the situations and to the meaning they assign to these perceptions. Therefore, their behaviour is determined in part by their perception, once people convince themselves that a situation really has a certain meaning, regardless of whether it actually does, they will take very real actions in consequence. Merton took the concept a step further and applied it to recent social phenomena, in his book Social Theory and Social Structure, he conceives of a bank run at the fictional Last National Bank, over which Cartwright Millingville presides. It is a bank, and Millingville has run it honestly. As a result, like all banks, it has some liquid assets, then one day, a large number of customers comes to the bank at once—the exact reason is never made clear. Customers, seeing so many others at the bank, begin to worry, false rumours spread that something is wrong with the bank and more customers rush to the bank to try to get some of their money out while they still can. At the beginning of the day—the last one for Millingvilles bank—the bank was not insolvent, but the rumour of insolvency caused a sudden demand of withdrawal of too many customers, which could not be answered, causing the bank to become insolvent and declare bankruptcy. This is peculiar to human affairs and it is not found in the world of nature, untouched by human hands. Predictions of the return of Halleys comet do not influence its orbit, but the rumoured insolvency of Millingvilles bank did affect the actual outcome. The prophecy of collapse led to its own fulfilment, merton concluded that the only way to break the cycle of self-fulfilling prophecy is by redefining the propositions on which its false assumptions are originally based. The expectations theory of inflation played a role in Paul Volckers actions during his tenure as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve in combating the stagflation of the 1970s. I had called this the Oedipus effect, because the oracle played a most important role in the sequence of events led to the fulfilment of its prophecy. … For a time I thought that the existence of the Oedipus effect distinguished the social from the natural sciences, but in biology, too—even in molecular biology—expectations often play a role in bringing about what has been expected. An early precursor of the concept appears in Edward Gibbons Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, During many ages, examples abound in studies of cognitive dissonance theory and the related self-perception theory, people will often change their attitudes to come into line with what they profess publicly. In the United States the concept was broadly and consistently applied in the field of education reform
16.
Utopia
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A utopia is an imagined community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its citizens. The opposite of a utopia is a dystopia and you could also say that utopia is a perfect place that has been made so there are no problems. The term has been used to describe intentional communities, the term utopia was coined from Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island society in the Atlantic Ocean. The word comes from Greek, οὐ and τόπος and means no-place, however, in standard usage, the words meaning has narrowed and now usually describes a non-existent society that is intended to be viewed as considerably better than contemporary society. Eutopia, derived from Greek εὖ and τόπος, means good place, in English, eutopia and utopia are homophonous, which may have given rise to the change in meaning. Chronologically, the first recorded utopian proposal is Platos Republic, part conversation, part fictional depiction, and part policy proposal, Republic would categorize citizens into a rigid class structure of golden, silver, bronze and iron socioeconomic classes. The golden citizens are trained in a rigorous 50-year-long educational program to be benign oligarchs, plato stressed this structure many times in both quotes by him and in his published works, such as the Republic. The wisdom of these rulers will supposedly eliminate poverty and deprivation through fairly distributed resources, the educational program for the rulers is the central notion of the proposal. It has few laws, no lawyers and rarely sends its citizens to war, during the 16th century, Thomas Mores book Utopia proposed an ideal society of the same name. Some maintain the position that Mores Utopia functions only on the level of a satire, but the homophonic prefix eu-, meaning good, also resonates in the word, with the implication that the perfectly good place is really no place. Ecological utopian society describes new ways in which society should relate to nature and these works perceive a widening gap between the modern Western way of living that destroys nature and a more traditional way of living before industrialization. Ecological utopias may advocate a society that is more sustainable, according to the Dutch philosopher Marius de Geus, ecological utopias could be inspirational sources for movements involving green politics. Particularly in the early 19th century, several ideas arose. These ideas are often grouped in a utopian socialist movement. A once common characteristic is a distribution of goods, frequently with the total abolition of money. Citizens only do work which they enjoy and which is for the good, leaving them with ample time for the cultivation of the arts. One classic example of such a utopia was Edward Bellamys Looking Backward, Another socialist utopia is William Morriss News from Nowhere, written partially in response to the top-down nature of Bellamys utopia, which Morris criticized. However, as the socialist movement developed, it moved away from utopianism, in a materialist utopian society, the economy is perfect, there is no inflation, and only perfect social and financial equality exists
17.
Alternate history
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Alternate history or alternative history, sometimes abbreviated as AH, is a genre of fiction consisting of stories in which one or more historical events occur differently. These stories usually contain what if scenarios at crucial points in history, the stories are conjectural, but are sometimes based on scientific fact. Alternate history can be seen as a subgenre of fiction, science fiction, or historical fiction. Another term occasionally used for the genre is allohistory, cross-time, time-splitting, and alternate history themes have become so closely interwoven that it is impossible to discuss them fully apart from one another. In French, Italian, Spanish, Catalan and German, the genre of history is called uchronie / ucronia / ucronía / Uchronie. This neologism is based on the prefix ου- and the Greek χρόνος, a uchronia means literally no time. This term apparently also inspired the name of the history book list. Several genres of fiction have been misidentified as alternate history, Science fiction set in what was the future but is now the past, like Arthur C. Clarkes 2001, A Space Odyssey or George Orwells Nineteen Eighty-Four, is not alternate history because the author did not make the choice to change the past at the time of writing, Alternate history is related to, but distinct from, counterfactual history. The earliest example of history is found in Livys Ab Urbe Condita Libri. Livy concluded that the Romans would likely have defeated Alexander, another example is Joanot Martorells 1490 epic romance Tirant lo Blanch, which was written when the loss of Constantinople to the Turks was still a recent and traumatic memory for Christian Europe. It tells the story of the knight Tirant the White from Brittany who travels to the remnants of the Byzantine Empire. He becomes a Megaduke and commander of its armies and manages to fight off the invading Ottoman armies of Mehmet II and he saves the city from Islamic conquest, and even chases the Turks deeper into lands they had previously conquered. In the English language, the first known complete alternate history is Nathaniel Hawthornes short story P. s Correspondence, the first novel-length alternate history in English would seem to be Castello Holfords Aristopia. While not as nationalistic as Louis Geoffroys Napoléon et la conquête du monde, 1812–1823, in Aristopia, the earliest settlers in Virginia discover a reef made of solid gold and are able to build a Utopian society in North America. A number of alternate history stories and novels appeared in the late 19th, in 1931, British historian Sir John Squire collected a series of essays from some of the leading historians of the period for his anthology If It Had Happened Otherwise. In this work, scholars from major universities turned their attention to questions as If the Moors in Spain Had Won. The essays range from serious scholarly efforts to Hendrik Willem van Loons fanciful, among the authors included were Hilaire Belloc, André Maurois, and Winston Churchill
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Fictional city
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Cultures have always had legends and stories of fictional cities from the earliest times. Other fictional cities appear most commonly as settings or subjects of myth, literature, movies, Fictional cities appear commonly in stories of early mythology. In 1541 Gonzalo Pizarro, governor of Quito, Ecuador, banded together 340 soldiers and about 4000 natives and that same year, Philipp von Hutten led an exploring party from Coro on the coast of Venezuela. Despite having been disproven by Alexander von Humboldt during his Latin-America expedition, there are some people who still believe El Dorado is yet to be found. Most Superhero and secret agent comics and some also use fictional cities as backdrops although most of these cities exist only for a single story. Fictional cities often deliberately resemble, parody or even represent some real-world analogous location or present a utopian or dystopian locale for commentary, in Fanfiction, fanmade fictional cities are not considered canonical unless they are authorized. These are cities from various works of fiction, legend, List of fictional towns and villages List of fictional U. S. states List of fictional countries List of fictional universes Media related to Fictional towns at Wikimedia Commons
