English Art/Literary Idioms / Maxims / Sayings

The model of the line is a powerful part of traditional metaphysical terminology. ... Narrative event follows narrative event in a purely metonymic line, but the series tends to organize itself or to be organized in a causal chain. The chase has a beast in view. The end of the story is the retrospective revelation of the law of the whole. That law is an underlying "truth" that ties all together in an inevitable sequence revealing a hitherto hidden figure in the carpet.