Literary Criticism: What Is Plot?

What is plot? According to Aristotle, it is a continuous sequence of events or actions with a beginning, middle, and end. He says, "A beginning is that which does not itself follow necessarily from something else, but after which a further event or process naturally occurs. An end, by contrast, is that which itself naturally occurs, whether necessarily or usually, after a preceding event, but need not be followed by anything else. A middle is that which both follows a preceding event, and has further consequences" (Aristotle, Poetics 7 (1450 27-31; trans. Halliwell, LCL)).

According to James Resseguie, plot "is the designing principle that contributes to our understanding of the meaning of a narrative. More concretely, the plot is the sequence of events or incidents that make up a narrative (James L. Resseguie, Narrative Criticism of the New Testament: An Introduction (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005), 198).