ASPECTS
OF THE NOVEL
NEW YORKHARCOURT, 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 underthe auspices of Trinity College, Cambridge, in the spring of 1927. Theywere informal, indeed talkative, in their tone, and it seemed safer whenpresenting them in book form not to mitigate the talk, in case nothingshould be left at all. Words such as "I," "you," "one," "we," "curiouslyenough," "so to speak," "only imagine," and "of course" willconsequently occur on every page and will rightly distress the sensitivereader; but he is asked to remember that if these words were removedothers, perhaps more distinguished, might escape through the orificesthey left, and that since the novel is itself often colloquial it maypossibly withhold some of its secrets from the graver and granderstreams 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
ASPECTS OF THE NOVEL
I
INTRODUCTORY
THIS lectureship is connected with the name of William George Clark, afellow of Trinity. It is through him we meet today, and through him weshall approach our subject.
Clark was, I believe, a Yorkshireman. He was born in 1821, was at schoolat Sedbergh and Shrewsbury, entered Trinity as an undergraduate in 1840,became fellow four years later, and made the college his home for nearlythirty years, only leaving it when his health broke, shortly before hisdeath. He is best known as a Shakespearian scholar, but he published twobooks on other subjects to which we must here refer. He went as a youngman to Spain and wrote a pleasant lively account of his holiday calledGazpacho...