Product Description

Collection of literary lectures by E.M. Forster, published in 1927. For the purposes of his study, Forster defines the novel as "any fictitious prose work over 50,000 words." Forester's wit and lively, informed originality have made this study of the novel a classic. Avoiding the chronological approach of what he calls "pseudoscholarship," Forster freely examines elements that all English-language novels have in common: story, people, plot, fantasy, prophecy, pattern and rhythm.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #81021 in Books
• Published on: 2005-09-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

About the Author
E. M. Forster (1879-1970) was a noted English author and critic and a member of the Bloomsbury group. His first novel, Where Angels Fear To Tread appeared in 1905. The Longest Journey appeared in 1907 followed by A Room With A View (1908), based partly on the material from extended holidays in Italy with his mother. Howards End (1910) was a story that centered on an English country house and dealt with the clash between two families, one interested in art and literature, the other only in business. Maurice was revised several times during his life, and finally published posthumously in 1971. Sir Frank Kermode is the first literary critic to be knighted since Empson and is widely acknowledged as the head of the profession in this country. His books include A Sense of an Endgin, his autobiography, Not Entitled, Pleasing Myself, and the best-selling Shakespeare's Language.

Customer Reviews

A passage to understanding the novel
After dazzling me with his wonderful novels, I read this critical work by Forster and it gave me a much clearer idea of some of the notions behind his own methods of writing as well as those of other twentieth-century novelists. He explains the need to create an aesthetic view of the universe when writing a novel, as logic and reality are not as important within literature as stylistic effect. He demonstrates this concept most clearly in A Passage to India where truth is so distorted that everyday objects are miraculously deified and Eastern mysticism is often undermined. He further illustrates the role of truth in fiction, whether through believable or unbelievable characterisation, or through use of artistic or journalistic language.

Personal Vision of the Genre
The book which started as a series of lectures grew to become one of landmarks in history of literary criticism. Over eighty years after its original publication its value has not diminished. Quite on the contrary, Forster's lucid and rational approach to literature seem to become even more valuable with the publication of almost every book on literary criticism largely regardless of their authors theoretical agendas.
A quarter of a century after the novel was recognised as literature (before Henry James' "The Art of Fiction" only poetry and drama deserved the name) and in the peak period of the modernism (this book was written exactly between the publications of "Ulysses" and "Finnegans Wake") Forster presented his personal view of fiction in a quiet and unassuming but clear and rational way. The resulting book is fairly unrevolutionary for the period of turmoil and change but it has stood the test of time at least as well as the modern experiments.
"Aspects of the Novel" is one of the books which keep the readers repeating to themselves: "But I know this!" Yes, you do. But it was E. M. Forster who said it first.

Forster on how novels work
This book is based on lectures Forster delivered in 1927, but it still felt (to me) very relevant and useful today, as well as being often amusing and thought-provoking. His approach avoids the standard `history and development' of the novel, concentrating instead on how novels work practically.

Some of the key concepts are ones he was (I think) the first to articulate. He formulates the distinction between the `story' (the sequence of events, where we ask `what will happen next?') and the `plot' (the events linked by causality, where we ask `why?'). He disputes with Aristotle (emotion isn't only in action, but in our internal secret lives, to which the novelist has access). He demonstrates the difference between flat characters (unchanging and `constructed round a single idea' like Mrs Macawber's loyalty to her husband) and round ones (`capable of surprising in a convincing way'). He looks at how characters are different from real people (they spend most time loving and desiring rather than eating and sleeping!). How points of view (omniscient, free indirect) can be mixed and matched. How novelists persuade us to accept the fantastic (whether in terms of coincidences or angels). How patterns work (the structuring of the plot and of symbols). And what the future of the novel might be (when individuals, through social and personal change, start to look at themselves in a new way, novels, he claims, will find new ways of representing things).

The style is witty and full of nice lines. `[The pseudo-scholar] loves mentioning genius, because the sound of the word exempts him from discovering its meaning.' `Speculations... always have a large air about them, they are a convenient way of being helpful or impressive.' `Love, like death, is congenial to a novelist because it ends a book conveniently.'

Examples range from the earliest of novels (Richardson, Defoe) to the (then) latest (Woolf, Lawrence) and across an international field: Tolstoy and Gide as well as Sterne, Dickens and Wells. Arnold Bennett said of the book, `I have never met this kind of perspicacity in literary criticism before'. I know what he means - I wish I'd read it years ago...