一画面,是情节架构的基本单元。情节长度的含义也就是若干画面以一定方式的缀联和组合。因此,画面包容着诸多的情节因素,如人、景物、情境、细节等。这些因素对艺术画面提出了某些要求:形象性、直观性和可感性。欧洲中世纪的叙事文学大都是散点结构,情节架构近似于故事梗概(如教会文学中的圣人故事)。它缺乏应有的情节长度,也缺乏画面的形象和直观性。这便在很大程度上限制了作品的艺术感染力和文学形象的生活实感。塞万提斯在形象画面的构筑上,并不满足于既定的表现模式。他将古典戏剧艺术的表述形式融进了叙事文学。文艺复兴初期,戏剧舞台已成为一个重要的思想窗口,戏剧美学也初具了理论体系。当时的意大利戏剧理论家斯卡里洛继承了亚里士多德的美学见解,并对戏剧艺术的審美特征作了精辟的概括。他认为,不论是悲剧,还是喜剧,“它以行动的形式”,“以动人而有音律的语言表达出来”①的。另一文艺理论家卡斯特尔维特洛也认为,“舞台的真实感”是建筑在形象的动态感上,即人物“在多数行动中” A picture is the basic unit of plot structure. The meaning of plot length is also a combination of several screens in a certain way. Therefore, the screen contains a lot of plot factors, such as people, scenes, situations, details and so on. These factors put some requirements on the art scene: vividness, intuition and sensibility. The narrative literature of the Middle Ages in Europe is mostly a scattered structure, the plot structure is similar to the outline of the story (such as saints in church literature story). It lacks the length of plot it deserves and lacks the image and intuition of the picture. This will largely limit the artist’s artistic appeal and literary life experience. Cervantes in the construction of the image screen, not satisfied with the established mode of expression. He incorporated the formulation of classical theater art into narrative literature. In the early Renaissance, the theater stage had become an important window of thought, and theater aesthetics also began to have its own theoretical system. The then Italian theater theorist Scalillo inherited Aristotle’s aesthetic insights, and made a brilliant summary of the aesthetic characteristics of theatrical art. In his opinion, whether it is a tragedy or a comedy, “it is expressed in the form of action” and “expressed in a moving and phonetic language.” Another literary theorist Castel Vitrotles also believes that the “stage of the real sense of” is built on the dynamic image of the sense that the characters “in most actions”