ASPECTS
OF THE NOVEL
E. M. FORSTER
NEW YORK HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1927, BY
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC.
By the same author
A PASSAGE TO INDIA
HOWARDS END
A ROOM WITH A VIEW
THE LONGEST JOURNEY
WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD
THE CELESTIAL OMNIBUS and other stories
THE ETERNAL MOMENT and other stories
ABINGER HARVEST
GOLDSWORTHY LOWES DICKINSON
VIRGINIA WOOLF (The Rede Lecture)
To
CHARLES MAURON
NOTE
THESE are some lectures (the Clark lectures) which were delivered under the auspices of Trinity College, Cambridge, in the spring of 1927. They were informal, indeed talkative, in their tone, and it seemed safer when presenting them in book form not to mitigate the talk, in case nothing should be left at all. Words such as "I," "you," "one," "we," "curiously enough," "so to speak," "only imagine," and "of course" will consequently occur on every page and will rightly distress the sensitive reader; but he is asked to remember that if these words were removed others, perhaps more distinguished, might escape through the orifices they left, and that since the novel is itself often colloquial it may possibly withhold some of its secrets from the graver and grander streams of criticism, and may reveal them to backwaters and shallows.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I [INTRODUCTORY]
II [THE STORY]
III [PEOPLE]
IV [PEOPLE (continued)]
V [THE PLOT]
VI [FANTASY]
VII [PROPHECY]
VIII [PATTERN AND RHYTHM]
IX [CONCLUSION]
[INDEX OF MAIN REFERENCES]