Aspects of the Novel

224 pages

Published Sept. 1, 2005 by Penguin.

ISBN:
978-0-14-144169-6
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3 stars (1 review)

The Clark Lectures, sponsored by Trinity College of the University of Cambridge, have had a long and distinguished history and have featured remarks by some of England's most important literary minds. Leslie Stephen, T.S. Eliot, F.R. Leavis, William Empson and I.A. Richards have all given celebrated and widely influential talks as the keynote speaker. One of the Lectures' most important milestones came in 1927 when, for the first time, a novelist was invited to speak. E.M. Forster had recently published his masterpiece, A Passage to India, and rose to the occasion, delivering eight spirited and penetrating lectures on the novel. The decision to accept the lectureship was actually a difficult one for Forster, as he had deeply ambivalent feelings about the use of criticism. Although suspecting that criticism was somewhat antithetical to creation, and upset by the thought that time spent preparing for the lectures was time away from his …

13 editions

Aspects of the Novel

3 stars

I've been trying to read more books about novels, and this is another entry in that genre. Given the time of its publication (1927), the examples are necessarily restricted, but Forster does make some interesting points -- I was particularly struck by what he wrote about the endings of novels, and the overuse of weddings and death as authors look for an "out." I was unable to find the exact edition that I read in Boookwyrm -- I read the Abinger edition of Forster, edited by Oliver Stallybrass, published by Edward Arnold in 1974. This edition has extensive notes and excerpts from Forster's other writings that demonstrate his thinking in preparation of these lectures. Since these were presented as lectures, the writing itself has a nice conversational style that is easy to follow.