A Frenchwriter from the mid-19th century, Georges Polti (sometimes George Polti) is best-known today for his list of 36 dramatic situations and for writing Art of Inventing Characters (ASIN: 0899843883, originally L'art d'inventer les personnages).
Polti was inspired by an (unreferenced) quote that states a prior academician named Gozzi "maintained that there can be but thirty-six tragic situations." Polti says in his introduction that he wondered if that was true, and set to prove or disprove it.
Polti would argue that the three categories I described in the last paragraph are too broad, but I can counter that his categories are similarly too broad or too narrow.
Reading Polti, one does not walk away with a clear vision of how to write a story, construct a plot, or even develop a meaningful dramatic situation.
GeorgesPolti, a French writer from the mid-19th century, examined some 1,200 works of literature and produced a list of 36 dramatic situations which, in some combination or variation, he suggested were all that could be found in these works.
In Polti’s case, suppose every novel used only four of his situations, the number of combinations of 36 situations taken four at a time is 58,905.
By the time you, Polti, or I had finished reading those novels, we would have forgotten the combination used in the first novel, and if we reread it, it would again be novel to us.
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