Plots of Time: An Inquiry Into History, Myth, and Meaning

"Original and thought-provoking. . . . Wonderfully free from jargon."--Kathryn Hume, Distinguished Professor of English, Pennsylvania State University "A powerful, beautifully written, highly engaging book that offers an important contribution to human understanding. . . . A brilliant analysis of the ways in which human beings plot both fictional stories and the story of their individual and collective histories."--Bernard Paris, University of Florida Meaning occurs in life partly through the association of events--through plots, says Allen Tilley. Basing plot form on the stages of life (birth, puberty, adulthood, midlife transition, and death), he argues that for Western cultures the most significant plots have arisen from the Bible.
In Plots of Time he claims that Western plots have embodied a denial of the darker side of human nature. He applies findings in literature and psychology to some of the fundamental questions of life, asserting that humanity today is "in the process of finding out what it means to be adults at home on the earth."
Drawing on textual examinations of philosophy, religion, and world literature, Tilley describes a general development of human consciousness that relates the rise of feminism, the near-disappearance of chattel slavery, the diminution of child abuse, and the emergence of telepathy to what he calls a general plot of the emerging Other. Building on traditional perceptions of love and evil, Tilley offers his personal spiritual testament that cultural despair is unwarranted. The plot is shifting, he says. He finds "nonsectarian reason for hope, for faith in the future." In the process he addresses such concerns as the form of myths of history and the question of whether the myths serve this century.
Allen Tilley is professor of English at the University of North Florida. He is the author of Plot Snakes and the Dynamics of Narrative Experience (UPF, 1992).