Structure and Unity in the Work of Art

Abstract

It would be true to say, I think, that until the last ten years no one would have thought it anything but a truism to say of a work of art that it must be a unity. The only difference in the past had arisen in the interpretations to be put upon the words and on the degree of strictness with which unity was to be demanded. When Aristotle said that a tragedy must have a beginning, a middle, and an end and gave explicit meaning to these terms, he was not making an extravagant demand but simply making explicit what every reasonable man would take without question.¹ It has remained to our own day to present stories and plays in which it does not seem to be the aim of the author to make clear what is happening and which may be said merely to stop and not come to an end.