A history of English literature

by Edward Albert

THE DEVELOPMENT OF LITERARY FORMS

1. The Novel. In mass of production the novel easily outdoes all other species of literature; in general workmanship it has advanced exceedingly; and in importance it probably deserves to take the first place. We shall comment briefly upon a few of the outstanding lines of development.

(a) The Novel as Propaganda. The “purpose novel” has long been a feature of our literature, but was never so prominent as it is to-day. It seems as if the novel were swallowing up the duties of the sermon, the pamphlet, and the text-book. Of all the subjects that are discussed social and religious questions are the most popular.

(b) The Realism of the Novel. This will probably be regarded as typical of the age. The realistic novel certainly forms a large proportion of the whole. In subject it deals with modern life in all its complexity; in detail it seeks to reflect faithfully the world we live in; and in style it is studiously subdued. How much this modern development makes for the improvement of the novel is a question still unsolved. In the hands of a novelist of the caliber of Mr. Hardy realism becomes actual beauty, and George Gissing and Mr. Galsworthy are able to make it artistically important. In lesser hands, however, realism is apt to degenerate into squalor and ugliness, and the studious simplicity of style becomes a dreary burden.

(c) The Romantic Novel. Along with the flood of realistic novels, there is a steady stream of the romantic kind. Mr. Kipling, who seems to delight in such mundane things as machinery, is concerned with showing the intense romantic beauty behind them. Other writers, such as Maurice Hewlett and Kenneth Grahame, are openly absorbed in things that are remote and beautiful—the essential qualities of the romance. On the other hand, it is unfortunately true that the historical novel shows hardly a flicker of life.

(d) The Commercializing of the Novel. It is a common habit to decry the age one lives in, and the present age is no exception. It is freely declared that, in spite of the importance attained by the novel, there are few great novelists, and that the level of merit, such as it is, will rapidly fall. The decline, moreover, is (it is declared) due to the stress that is being laid upon the commercial value of fiction. Novels are now expensive things to publish; to make each one of them worth publishing a large circulation must be assured; to ensure this circulation the novel must appeal to the vulgar taste, and must avoid originality and teasing literary devices—these are the charges levelled against the modern novel. Such assertions are exaggerated, but there is no doubt that the persistent desire to turn the novel into a commercial chattel will lead to its decline as literature.

2. The Short Story. This type of fiction has become so important that it is here necessary to give a very brief sketch of its development.

(a) Definition. To define a “short” story, we must clearly come to some conclusion as to length. We can approximately define this length by saying that a short story should be capable of being read at one brief sitting.

(b) Medium of Publication. At the very outset a difficulty met the writer of the short story: how was he to get his work published? The short story is not long enough to appear as a book by itself. There were two ways of overcoming the difficulty: by inserting (or interpolating) the short story in the midst of a long one, or by using it as an item in a magazine. We shall trace the development of both these methods. The publication of collections of short stories in volume form is a comparatively modern practice.

(c) The Interpolated Story. This was the earliest form of the short story. As early as the romance of Don Quixote we have one or more of the characters of the main story relating some short tale that acts as a foil to the principal narrative. The interpolated story is a common device in the picaresque novel, and it is freely employed by Defoe, Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne. Scott, in his famous Wandering Willie’s Tale, which is introduced in Redgauntlet, continues the practice; and as late as Dickens we have the common use of short stories, some of them of very inferior quality, in The Pickwick Papers. At this point the interpolated story becomes quite rare in good fiction, for the magazine has appeared on the scene and has provided the natural medium for the genuine short story. In many cases the interpolated tale is of great merit, but it spoils the unity of the main story, and so it is better out of the way.

(d) The Magazine Short Story. The development of the popular magazine led to the establishment of this class of tale. In English its history can be said to begin with Addison, whose Coverley papers are really a collection of short stories; the record continued through the eighteenth century in the miscellaneous work of Goldsmith and Dr. Johnson. During the first half of the nineteenth century there was a decline in the production of the short story. The lighter type of magazine was not yet in favor, and the more ponderous journals, like The Quarterly Review and The Edinburgh Review, which specialized in literary and political articles, held the stage. Blackwood’s Magazine and The London Magazine encouraged the more popular kinds of fiction. Among their contributors were James Hogg, De Quincey, and Charles Lamb. Some of the essays of these writers, such as Lamb’s famous tale of roast pig, are short stories thinly disguised. Another contributor of the same kind was Douglas Jerrold (1803–57), whose Cakes and Ale (1842) is one of the first collections of short stories and sketches. After the middle of the century there was a rapid increase in part-fiction magazines, such as Dickens’s All the Year Round (1859) and Thackeray’s Cornhill Magazine (1860). As the century drew near its close the number of lighter magazines largely increased, until nowadays we have a large proportion entirely given over to the supply of fiction. Nearly all the writers of the modern epoch have taken to the short story, and most of them have issued this class of their work in volume form. To the names already mentioned in this chapter we may add those of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (born 1859) and W. W. Jacobs (born 1863). The former struck a rich vein in the popular detective story, and the latter specialized in the humorous presentation of the longshoreman.

3. The Drama. (a) The Poetical Drama. In this class of drama there is little to set on record. The blank-verse tragedy is still written with skill and enthusiasm, but there is little of outstanding merit, and nothing of originality. The poetical dramas of Mr. Yeats—for example, The Countess Cathleen (1892) and The Shadowy Waters (1900)—have all his mystical beauty, and are the most original of their class. Stephen Phillips (1868–1915) achieved some distinction, and even considerable stage success, with his smooth and Tennysonian blank-verse tragedies, such as Paolo and Francesca (1899), Ulysses (1902), and The Virgin Goddess (1910). Mr. Hardy’s Dynasts is dramatic only in form; it is rather a philosophical poem with a dramatic setting.

(b) The Prose Drama. In this age the activity of the prose drama is second only to that of the novel. The mood of the time is essentially critical, and the prose drama is an excellent medium for expressing such a mood. Among the earliest of the modern dramatists is Sir Arthur Pinero (born 1855), and we can trace the development through the work of Mr. Galsworthy, already mentioned, and of St. John Hankin (1869–1909) and Granville Barker (born 1877). Their plays have the note of the realistic novel in the emphasis they lay upon common life and common speech. The plays of Mr. Shaw, by reason of their wit and high spirits, stand rather apart from this class; and the brilliance of the Wilde comedies is that of a past age.

4. Poetry. (a) The main poetical tendency of the time is toward the lyric, especially toward a chastened and rather tepid form of it. Of this class, the lyrics of Sir William Watson are fairly typical. Mr. Davies’s best pieces, and some of Mr. Hardy’s, are good examples of the simple and direct lyric, and Francis Thompson excels in the descriptive style.

(b) In the class of descriptive-narrative poetry we have the sea-pieces of Mr. Masefield and the rustic poetry of Mr. Drinkwater. To these we must add the work of Ralph Hodgson (born 1871), several of whose poems, in particular The Bull and The Song of Honour, have some of the ecstatic energy of the young Coleridge.

(c) In addition to what we may call the standard types of poetry, there are experiments in vers libre, or free verse (that is, rhymeless verse of the type of Matthew Arnold’s The Strayed Reveller), and the more daring efforts of others who defy the conventions of rhyme, meter, and even intelligibility. Experiments such as these are all for the good of poetry, which, if it is to live at all, must live by progressing. So far, the attempts of the innovators have produced nothing that is really noteworthy; and with that we must leave them.