Poetic Justice
Dec. 13th, 2004 07:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
odd_buttonsOops. While linking related entries for "Resolution", I found that I had skipped one, so to catch up, here it is.
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The following is an excerpt from Part III of the book Making Shapely Fiction, by Jerome Stern. The first two parts are very much worth reading as well. The book is available in paperback.
Poetic Justice
Poetic justice implied that the characters in the story get what they deserve.
In tragedy, poetic justice can mean that admirable figures may die, but they'll be ennobled in their downfall, while the wicked will die in disgrace. In comedy, the good finally get their wishes granted, and the bad are embarrassed into repentance for their vices. Those endings are appropriate for each genre. Poetic justice will, however, seem heavy-handed when it's used simplistically to give a story a sentimental ending. The hero gets the girl and the ranch; the villain gets burned up in the fire he set. It's hard to take that kind of juridical symmetry seriously.
But poetic justice can refer to much more subtle resolutions. Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury and Ellison's Invisible Man leave the characters neither rewarded nor punished in any definite way, but the endings are aesthetically satisfying, poetically just.
See Endings, Irony, Resolution.
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The following is an excerpt from Part III of the book Making Shapely Fiction, by Jerome Stern. The first two parts are very much worth reading as well. The book is available in paperback.
Poetic Justice
Poetic justice implied that the characters in the story get what they deserve.
In tragedy, poetic justice can mean that admirable figures may die, but they'll be ennobled in their downfall, while the wicked will die in disgrace. In comedy, the good finally get their wishes granted, and the bad are embarrassed into repentance for their vices. Those endings are appropriate for each genre. Poetic justice will, however, seem heavy-handed when it's used simplistically to give a story a sentimental ending. The hero gets the girl and the ranch; the villain gets burned up in the fire he set. It's hard to take that kind of juridical symmetry seriously.
But poetic justice can refer to much more subtle resolutions. Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury and Ellison's Invisible Man leave the characters neither rewarded nor punished in any definite way, but the endings are aesthetically satisfying, poetically just.
See Endings, Irony, Resolution.