Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories - Brossura

Booker, Christopher

Brossura

ISBN 10: 1472976185 ISBN 13: 9781472976185

Casa editrice: Bloomsbury, 2019

Riassunto

This remarkable and monumental book at last provides a comprehensive answer to the age-old riddle of whether there are only a small number of 'basic stories' in the world. Using a wealth of examples, from ancient myths and folk tales via the plays and novels of great literature to the popular movies and TV soap operas of today, it shows that there are seven archetypal themes which recur throughout every kind of storytelling.
But this is only the prelude to an investigation into how and why we are 'programmed' to imagine stories in these ways, and how they relate to the inmost patterns of human psychology. Drawing on a vast array of examples, from Proust to detective stories, from the Marquis de Sade to E.T., Christopher Booker then leads us through the extraordinary changes in the nature of storytelling over the past 200 years, and why so many stories have 'lost the plot' by losing touch with their underlying archetypal purpose.
Booker analyses why evolution has given us the need to tell stories and illustrates how storytelling has provided a uniquely revealing mirror to mankind's psychological development over the past 5000 years.
This seminal book opens up in an entirely new way our understanding of the real purpose storytelling plays in our lives, and will be a talking point for years to come.

Su questo libro

Recensione

Number 5  in Foyles bookshop Top Ten

"....remarkable parallels between the structure of the modern film Jaws and that of the Old English Beowulf." Writing Magazine

"If you have any interest in fiction and the way it works, you will enjoy this exploration of the seven basic plots and how they have been adapted and developed across the centuries." Writing Magazine

Mentioned in article about author in The Lady, 17/07/07 (The Lady)

"This magisterial volume really does offer readers a genuinely fresh and exciting perspective on virtually every tale ever told." --Bookmark, July 2005 (Bookmark)

"Fantastically entertaining" The Times

mention in Evangelical Times, 1 May 2009

Excerpts included in Gotham Writer's Workshop monthly e-newsletter for screenwriters. http://www.writingclasses.com/mailing.php?id=2419

'This book...has mind-expanding properties. Not only for anyone interested in literature, but also for those fascinated by wider questions of how human beings organise their societies and explain the outside world to their inmost selves, it is fascinating.' Katherine Sale, FT (Blurb from reviewer)

'Christopher Booker's mammoth account of plot types, archetypes, their role in literary history and where Western culture has gone horribly wrong.' Times Literary Supplement (Blurb from reviewer)

L'autore

Christopher Booker writes for the Sunday Telegraph and is the bestselling author of The Seven Basic Plots, The Real Global Warming Disaster, The Great Deception and Scared to Death (all published by Bloomsbury Continuum). He has been an author and journalist for nearly 50 years, and was the founding editor of the satirical magazine Private Eye.

Dettagli dell?edizione

• Editore: Bloomsbury
• Data di pubblicazione: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1472976185
• ISBN 13: 9781472976185
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Lingua: Inglese
• Numero di pagine: 736