Fabula and Syuzhet

As with 'The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere', so for 'The Idiot Boy' we have generated two maps that correspond to a core narratological distinction between the telling of the tale (syuzhet) and the order in which events occur (fabula). The poem narrates a journey that should be one of urgent rescue but ends up without purpose or direction, as horse leads master. The poem intertwines three different subjective and spatial experiences (Betty Foy; Susan Gale; Johnny) and plays them off against each other as one character retraces another’s route and imagines alternatives.  For the syuzhet map this results in a series of linear spatial jumps that are offset by Johnny’s wanderings at right-angles to them. The noose-like shape of  the fabula map works in a similar way but with a clearer looped sense of the safe return home.