French Literature Reviews - 2026
C. Booker, The Seven Basic Plots. Why We Tell Stories
Comparative and World Literature
Christopher BOOKER, The Seven Basic Plots. Why We Tell Stories
Continuum Books, 2005, 736 p.
ISBN : 0826452094
Description:
From The Epic of Gilgamesh to Jaws and Schindler's List, Christopher Booker examines in detail the narratives that underpin literature and the fundamental plots of storytelling across the ages. In this magisterial work, he analyzes the plots of films, opera librettos, contemporary novels, and short stories.
At the root of the stories he examines lie Seven Basic Plots: rags to riches; the quest; voyage and return; the hero as monster; rebirth, and so on. Booker demonstrates that these imagery patterns and narratives serve a much deeper and more significant purpose in our lives than we have previously realized.
By defining these core plots, Booker reveals that we are entering a domain where recognizing the plots is merely the gateway. We are actually uncovering a hidden universal language: a nucleus of situations and archetypes that form the very fabric of storytelling.
Through Booker's exploration, virtually every story in the world can be viewed in a new light; we reach the very heart of what stories are and why we tell them.
Here, Christopher Booker builds upon several themes introduced in his massively bestselling book The Neophiliacs. The Seven Basic Plots is unquestionably his most important work to date.
Table of Contents:
Part 1: Why Do We Tell Stories?
Chapter 1 - Overcoming the Monster - Beowulf - Red Riding Hood - Jaws
Chapter 2 - The Thrilling Escape from Death - The Pit and the Pendulum - Jonah - Journal of the Plague Year
Chapter 3 - Rags to Riches - The Ugly Duckling - Jane Eyre - The Gold Rush (Chaplin)
Chapter 4 - The Quest - The Odyssey - Exodus - The Aeneid - Moby Dick - Babar and Father Christmas
Chapter 5 - Voyage and Return - Alice in Wonderland - Peter Pan - Rasselas - The Third Man - Orpheus and Eurydice
Chapter 6 - Comedy - Aristophanes (The Wasps) - Plautus (The Pot of Gold) - Shakespeare (Love's Labour's Lost, The Comedy of Errors etc) - Moliere (The Bourgeois Gentleman) - Sheridan (The School for Scandal)
Chapter 7 - Comedy: The Plot Disguised - Fielding (Tom Jones) - Austen (Pride and Prejudice) - P.G Wodehouse - South Pacific - Four Weddings and a Funeral
Chapter 8 - Tragedy: Icarus - Macbeth - Don Giovanni - Anna Karenina - Bonnie and Clyde
Chapter 9 - Tragedy: The Divided Self
Chapter 10 - Tragedy: The Hero As Monster - Richard III - Dr Jekyll
Chapter 11 - Tragedies of Redemption and Fulfillment - King Lear - Tannhauser - Samson - The Snow Goose
Chapter 12 - From Shadow Into Light
Part 2: The Complete Happy Ending
Chapter 13 - The Dark Figures - Crocodile Dundee
Chapter 14 - Seeing Whole - The Jewel in the Crown
Chapter 15 - The Perfect Balance
Chapter 16 - The Unrealized Value
Chapter 17 - The Archetypal Family Drama
Chapter 18 - The Light Figures
Chapter 19 - Reaching the Goal - The Magic Flute - The Lord of the Rings - Harry Potter
Chapter 20 - The Fatal Flaw
Part 3: Missing the Mark
Chapter 21 - Enter the Dark Inversion - Le Père Goriot - Moby Dick
Chapter 22 - The Ego Takes Over: The Dark and Sentimental Versions - My Fair Lady - James Bond - Star Wars
Chapter 23 - The Ego Takes Over II: Clarissa - Kafka - The Catcher in the Rye
Chapter 24 - The Ego Takes Over III - La Traviata - Tosca - The Picture of Dorian Gray - You Only Live Twice
Chapter 25 - Losing the Plot - Thomas Hardy: A Case History
Chapter 26 - Going Nowhere - Chekhov - Proust - Tender Is the Night - Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Chapter 27 - Why Sex and Violence? - Sade - Ulysses - Last Exit to Brooklyn - A Clockwork Orange
Chapter 28 - Rebellion Against the One Job - 1984
Chapter 29 - The Mystery - The Murders in the Rue Morgue - Sherlock Holmes - Citizen Kane
Chapter 30 - The Riddle of the Sphinx - Sophocles - Hamlet
The study of universal narrative structures has a long tradition within literary scholarship, tracing back to classical poetics, structural anthropology, and myth criticism. Scholars in these fields have frequently sought to map recurring motifs, character archetypes, and underlying patterns that recur across diverse cultural traditions and historical periods. By examining a vast range of material extending from ancient epics to modern cinema, Christopher Booker contributes to this ongoing inquiry into how narrative forms shape human culture and imagination.
Within this broad comparative framework, the book investigates specific narrative categories such as overcoming the monster, the quest, voyage and return, rags to riches, tragedy, and comedy, illustrating each with examples drawn from novels, plays, films, and traditional tales. Readers interested in narrative theory, comparative literature, and the recurring structural patterns found in world storytelling traditions may find this exploration relevant to their investigations.