Plot

Other meanings

• A small piece of planted ground, as for a garden. A cemetery provides plots for the deceased.
• A plot is a planned conspiracy. E.g.,the Babington plot, July 20 Plot or The Passover Plot.
• Epistemological historian Paul Veyne (1971: 46-47; English trans. by Min Moore-Rinvolucri 1984: 32-33) defines a plot in the following way: "Facts do not exist in isolation, in the sense that the fabric of history is what we shall call a plot, a very human and not very "scientific" mixture of material causes, aims, and chances--a slice of life, in short, that the historian cuts as he wills and in which facts have their objective connections and relative importance...the word plot has the advantage of reminding us that what the historian studies is as human as a play or a novel....then what are the facts worthy of rousing the interest of the historian? All depends on the plot chosen; a fact is interesting or uninteresting...in history as in the theater, to show everything is impossible--not because it would require too many pages, but because there is no elementary historical fact, no event worthy atom. If one ceases to see events in their plots, one is sucked into the abyss of the infintismal."