Abstract Narratology provides the basis for an innovative method of analyzing novels in terms of influence, imitation, and variation across generations. Conceptual schema, as formulated by James Phelan, can organize a source study of complex, multiplot novels. Essential to this approach is the interplay between centrifugal and centripetal narrative energy, the former propulsive and the latter restrictive. The primarily mimetic narrative flow of centrifugal schema is checked and shaped by the primarily diegetic centripetal schema. Some examples of paired centrifugal and centripetal schema are courtship and marriage, seduction and betrayal/abandonment, travel and adventure, capital/inheritance and finance, work, and career. Three well-known novels demonstrating the evolution of these schema are Tom Jones, Martin Chuzzlewit, and Middlemarch. Thus, the influence of Fielding on Dickens and of both these precursors on George Eliot can be elucidated and evaluated in a useful and distinctive comparative analysis of evolving conceptual schema of this type. As a result, the heretofore neglected impact of Henry Fielding will emerge, as well as Eliot’s prowess in adapting the materials drawn from these earlier novelists.
Wayne Batten (Sat,) studied this question.
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