that readerly dynamics become not just a consequence of textual dynamics
but also a force that shapes them. Furthermore, this crossover effect is itself an
especially strong manifestation of a phenomenon more central to the construc-
tion and reception of narrative than has previously been recognized: the mutual
influence of authorial and readerly agency on the shape of narrative texts.
To develop these points, I will start with Aristotle and then turn to the
neo-Aristotelian Sheldon Sacks, who worked in his own instructive way on
the interconnection between textual and readerly dynamics.^2 I will then look
at some other cases that further prepare the way for the analysis of Stitches.
ARISTOTLE ON PROBABILITY
In chapter 9 of the Poetics, Aristotle declares that “it is not the function of the
poet to relate what has happened, but what may happen—what is possible
according to the law of probability or necessity” (9.1). This declaration not
only fits well with Aristotle’s claims that tragedy is an imitation of an action
and that there is pleasure in imitation, but it also provides the basis for his
claim that poetry is more philosophical than history. By following the law of
probability and necessity, poetry, unlike history, can go beyond what has hap-
pened to what may happen and thus go beyond the particular to the universal.
With this cluster of claims and conclusions, then, Aristotle identifies necessary
conditions for an effective poetic construction. By the same reasoning, a poet
who violates the law of probability and necessity would be introducing error
into the imitation, as Aristotle himself says early on in chapter 25. Strikingly,
however, Aristotle, for all his systematic rigor, doesn’t stop there, but goes on
to his famous dictum that the poet should prefer probable impossibilities to
improbable possibilities, citing the pursuit of Hector as a “justified error.”
In “Literary Criticism and the Poet’s Autonomy,” Andrew Ford offers
what I believe is a standard explanation of Aristotle’s thinking. Aristotle, he
explains, views literary works as following “rules inherent in the form,” and he
therefore believes a work may contain “distortions of reality or even untruths”
if such materials contribute to the poem’s overall effect more powerfully than
strict adherence to reality or truth would allow it to do (149). With regard
- I approach Aristotle in the same spirit that the first-generation Chicago School theo-
rists did. R. S. Crane nicely captured this spirit in his introduction to Critics and Criticism,
when he noted that he and his fellow contributors have reconstructed an Aristotle “that is not
[identical to] the Aristotle of [his scholarly] commentators. It may not, indeed, except in a gen-
eral way, be Aristotle at all!” (17). In other words, I want to make a plausible reconstruction of
Aristotle’s thought, but I am less concerned about having that reconstruction pass muster with
classicists than I am with using it as a launching point for productive explorations into the logic
of literature that was never dreamed of in Aristotle’s philosophy.
34 • CHAPTER 2