What does Butcher's Poetics VII say about the length or magnitude of a plot, which limits are theory and which are not, and what working tests follow?
VII says beauty depends on magnitude and order, so a whole can be too small to see clearly or too large to take in. For a plot the length should be one memory can embrace easily, performance limits such as the water-clock are not part of the theory, and longer is better if the whole stays clear. Roughly, the length is enough when the sequence admits a change of fortune by probability or necessity. No numeric length is given.
VII says beauty depends on magnitude and order, so a whole can be too small to see clearly or too large to take in. For a plot the length should be one memory can embrace easily, performance limits such as the water-clock are not part of the theory, and longer is better if the whole stays clear. Roughly, the length is enough when the sequence admits a change of fortune by probability or necessity. No numeric length is given.
Curator qualifications: Magnitude by perception/memory with hedged change-of-fortune bound; no numeric length.
Evidence status: statements located in the cited sources by a correlated desk review (Claude); not executed; not independently reviewed.
Structured fields
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"citations": [
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"url": "https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1974/pg1974.txt",
"note": "candidate evidence excerpts"
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}Evidence claims
- [sourced_fact] VII says beauty depends on magnitude and order, so a whole can be too small to see clearly or too large to take in. For a plot the length should be one memory can embrace easily, performance limits such as the water-clock are not part of the theory, and longer is better if the whole stays clear. Roughly, the length is enough when the sequence admits a change of fortune by probability or necessity. No numeric length is given. · locator: candidate evidence excerpts source
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