In a message dated 4/26/12 6:49:53 PM, [email protected] writes:
> I think redundancy is a poor word in this context. It's more like an > echo when > patterns are repeated because in fact they can't be really repeated in a > visual > artwork except in a wallpaper type image. > I think William is right: 'redundancy' is a word that comes with connotations inapt in an aesthetic context. From a writer's point of view, yesterday I should have cited poetry as supplying the most striking examples of the effects of a kind of repetition. Perhaps 'reiteration' or even 'reprise' convey a sense of artfulness better than 'repitition'. Poe's THE RAVEN, or Dylan Thomas's DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT use reiteration to great advantage. What I was groping for was an insight into how this element might be exploited in narrative. As I said, writers, especially writers handicapped with an intrusive cerebrality, can tend to eschew any sort of repetition because the books on narrative craft frown on it. And yet Wilson's line was very interesting to me: "...neurobiological monitoring...[has] shown that the brain is most aroused by patterns in which there is about a 20 percent redundancy of elements..." I'm currently much involved with a one-act play centered around a conflict between a philosophy professor and a resistant younger woman. In effect she challenges him to come with something in his specialty -- philosophy of language and mind -- that doesn't sound like old news to her. As a playwright I take on the challenge for myself, in two ways: The first challenge is for the professor to startle her (and the audience) with insights she'd never seen before; the second challenge is how to make this extremely nerdy stuff theatrical -- and clear. Curiously, I sense that theatricality and (and clarity) may be aided by using reiteration, and yet repetition is in most forms an alleged no-no in narrative craft/art. Jack Benny's punchline in what is often said to be the most successful radio joke ever applies to me. (Benny, a notorious cheapskate, is accosted at night by a mugger who says, "Your money or your life!" There follows a long, long, long silence. The studio audience took a bit of time to catch on. Then the laugh began -- and it grew and grew, until the mugger growls again: "Didn't you hear me?! I said your money or your life!" The laughter went volcanic when Benny finally responded: "I'm thinking! I'm thinking!")
