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What are Literary Universals?
Story Universals
"The Mind and its Stories"

Perhaps the most striking universal in this area is the most basic one—the existence of imagery. Writers in perhaps all traditions, and certainly in all written traditions, develop apparently incidental features of the scene in such a way as to make those features relevant to the reader’s experience of the work. The relevance may be a matter of thematic commentary, foreshadowing, the enhancement of mood, or something else. But development of the scene, beyond points necessary for the causal sequence of the plot, is routinely more than irrelevant background.

Other universals of imagery may be divided into two broad categories: functional relations and concrete particulars. What follows is a list of some universals in each category. (For discussion and evidence, see Hogan “Beauty” and “Shakespeare.”)

Functional relations:

Imagery may be reducible to two functional relations.

First, parallelism. Parallelism takes two forms, internal and external. Internal parallelism involves structural congruity between two or more linguistic, narrative, or other complexes in a work. Internal parallelism is particularly prominent between the cross-culturally standard strata of existence: the mind (or person), the family, society, and nature. Thus chaos in society may be parallel to a storm in nature; an individual’s mental conflict might be parallel to civil strife in society; the separation of a family may be parallel to the division of the land (e.g., by a river). On the other hand, parallelism may also operate within a single stratum. Circularity, beginning and ending a work in the same place or type of place, the same situation or type of situation, etc., is a universal of this sort. So too is foreshadowing, a temporally directed form of parallelism in which images operate to suggest subsequent events.

External parallelism involves structural congruity between a complex in the work at hand and a complex in a precursor work, as when a modern story about a revolutionary mirrors the Biblical story of Jesus or the story of a contemporary couple mirrors the story of Rāma and Sītā. A minimal case of external parallelism is allusion.

In all cases, parallels may be direct, or they may involve inversion or some other systematic alteration. Thus the life of one character may parallel the life of a second character, but upside-down, as when the successes of one character go along with the failures of another character.

The other functional relation defining imagery is the distinction between foreground and background. Literary works tend to involve the development of at least two of the standard levels of human existence—mind, family, society, and nature. Nonetheless, one of these levels is typically the object of primary attentional focus, thus the foreground, while the other is the background, which is to say, it is perceived and understood, but it is not the object of attentional focus, except perhaps intermittently. The background provides imagery for internal parallelism. In other words, without a division into foreground and background, one could not have imagery in this sense. The point holds, in a slightly altered form, for external parallelism as well. In that case, the precursor work is the background work in that it is not the object of attentional focus.

Additionally, with internal parallelism, the foreground figures tend to be those earlier in the list of standard strata and the background figures tend to be those later in the list (e.g., the family is more likely to serve as background to mind than the reverse). It is not clear whether this is true in the case of external parallelism, since the two works tend to focus attention on the same stratum. However, in external parallelism there is still a pattern as the precursor or background text tends to be one with equal or greater social or spiritual authority. In this case, the most relevant strata seem to bear on types of text, rather than types of existence. Specifically, a distinction among, roughly, individual or personal, socially authoritative, and divine texts appears to be a universal (perhaps only a statistical universal; the simpler division between human and divine texts is more likely to be absolute). In external parallelism, foreground texts come earlier in this list. Put simply, understanding individual or personal texts may rely on external parallelism with divine texts (e.g., the Gospels), but understanding divine texts is unlikely to rely on parallelism with human texts.

Concrete particulars:

Many recurrent concrete particulars derive directly from the parallelism of mind, etc., as in the examples cited above. Some further, prominent instances would include the following.

Heroes tend to be paralleled with creatures from the natural world. More specifically, military heroes tend to be paralleled with predatory land animals. Lovers tend to be paralleled with birds, though they too may be paralleled with predators if their sexual appetites are emphasized

The season of rebirth (e.g., spring) tends to be associated with renewal, birth, the reunion of lovers. The season of barrenness (e.g., winter) tends to be associated with despair, death, the separation of lovers, military loss, etc. Thus water tends to be associated with new life, whereas lack of water is regularly connected with death. In keeping with this, Pandit has argued that urban societies often establish a contrast between a partially degraded or corrupt place of civilization and “a semi-idyllic green world” (“Patriarchy” 103).

Sunset tends to be associated with death, separation, etc. Sunrise tends to be associated with renewal, birth or rebirth, reunion, etc.

Beyond the isolation of further universals of imagery, future work in this area will involve elaborating the distinct operations of internal and external parallelism (e.g., the ways in which they produce emotional effects in a reader) and integrating research in imagery with research in narrative and metaphor.

Possible Problems
Readers who know of counterexamples or other possible problems with any of the universals in this section are encouraged to submit a brief statement naming the universal, locating it on the website, explaining the nature of the difficulty, and including relevant citations. Please confine your submissions to 250 words or less, not including bibliography.