02-21-2013, 03:45 PM
Sean Manning wrote:
This was Keegan's approach to his three battles in The Face of Battle; each chapter starts with a narrative in 'rough strokes' which is then broken down into stages and incidents for detailed analysis.
I see where the confusion comes from. You believe that the story told by Keegan is a replica of his working method. It is not. Like I said, a story is a method to tell something to an audience, but in order to write it, Keegan started with an idea. This idea evolved out of study of sources and thinking about them, not out of the method of telling a story in a certain way. He tells the story in this way because that is how literature works, and his audience would not have been captivated by him if he had ignored the rules of literature. Literature is the way we communicate our ideas, not the way we evolve them.
This was Keegan's approach to his three battles in The Face of Battle; each chapter starts with a narrative in 'rough strokes' which is then broken down into stages and incidents for detailed analysis.
I see where the confusion comes from. You believe that the story told by Keegan is a replica of his working method. It is not. Like I said, a story is a method to tell something to an audience, but in order to write it, Keegan started with an idea. This idea evolved out of study of sources and thinking about them, not out of the method of telling a story in a certain way. He tells the story in this way because that is how literature works, and his audience would not have been captivated by him if he had ignored the rules of literature. Literature is the way we communicate our ideas, not the way we evolve them.
