I just lately read the passage in Aristotle's Poetics about unity of action, where he says that you have to have a story or drama about a single thing that happened. He spells out in so many words that poets who write a Heraclead, supposing that since Heracles was one man a story that includes all the things that one man did must have unity, are Not Getting It. That sounds a lot like your complaint about Turner.
(Incidentally, apparently the "Aristotelian unities" are no such thing: Aristotle thought that the action of a play shouldn't take very long, but he was fine with an epic taking much longer, and he said nothing at all about location. Unity of time and unity of place seem to have been palmed off on him by guys like Corneille.)
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Date: 2015-06-05 05:42 am (UTC)(Incidentally, apparently the "Aristotelian unities" are no such thing: Aristotle thought that the action of a play shouldn't take very long, but he was fine with an epic taking much longer, and he said nothing at all about location. Unity of time and unity of place seem to have been palmed off on him by guys like Corneille.)