Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2016 August 13

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August 13

Canonical number of chapters?

Were writers of previous eras constrained by the expectation about the number of chapters that a book should have? Alice in Wonderland and Alice through the looking glass had each 12 chapters, for example. Did a canonical number of chapters (3,7,12 or whatever) for literary works existed in the past? Llaanngg (talk) 22:34, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

If it was, Charles Dickens certainly didn't adhere to it. A Christmas Carol runs about half a dozen, while Great Expectations has around 30. It wouldn't be surprising if there were a mathematical reason for Lewis Carroll to do his books in 12 chapters. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:51, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

I remember forming the impression in the mid-1960s, based on novels I'd read then, that a "normal" novel would be 12 chapters long. I was a boy then and most of the novels I read were science fiction, which then was often directed at young people, and they were typically about the same length, too. But I have no idea of whether publishers, even within that limited field, actually had guidelines recommending a particular chapter length or number of chapters. And for that matter I have no idea of how common the exact length of 12 chapters really was -- maybe it really varied from 12 to 15 or something like that. This is just one anecdotal data point that the query suggested to me. --69.159.9.219 (talk) 05:41, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

Moby-Dick has well over 100 chapters. Had it been kept to 12, it might have been tolerable. (Unless he'd made each chapter 10 times longer.) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:30, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

There is not and does not appear to have ever been any standard for how many chapters a work should have. Ideally, a chapter should have somewhat clear beginning and end and (beyond references to prior chapters and possible foreshadowing of later chapters) approach being as close to self-contained as it can be (though writer talent or lack thereof can alter or even buck that). Ian.thomson (talk) 15:42, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

The Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Hebrew Bible (according to the Jewish count) are each made up of twenty-four books. The division of all of these seems to have happened after the books were written, and probably had something to do with the importance of the number twelve. See Eva Mroczek, The Literary Imagination in Jewish Antiquity, p. 166. Lesgles (talk) 14:44, 19 August 2016 (UTC)