Comment by dambi0
9 months ago
How much plot could one or two paragraphs from a wider body of work contain?
We do learn more than it’s just muddy. For example the Lord Chancellor is somewhat introduced. We know the time of year. We know it’s been muddy for a while. We know the time of year. We know some term has finished so it’s likely that less people are around or it is quieter than usual. Whether these are relevant to the whole plot we can’t tell from such a short passage but that is true of any extract.
Doesn't Dickens want us to read the text slowly and imagine a dinosaur stomping around after the flood, horses and dogs dealing with the weather, and all sorts of visuals?
It's not about the amount of words but what is expected by the reader parsing them. The reader is expected to spend a lot of time imagining the non- plot stuff.