Aspects of the Novel

Summary

Aspects of the Novel is E. M. Forster's book of lectures on the art of fiction. He delivered them as the Clark Lectures at Trinity College, Cambridge, in the spring of 1927, and published them the same year, keeping their informal, talkative tone. Forster, by then the author of A Passage to India, does not offer a history of the novel. Instead he imagines all novelists, from different centuries, writing side by side in one circular room, and asks what they share. He organizes the book around seven aspects: the story, people, the plot, fantasy, prophecy, pattern and rhythm. The story is the most basic aspect, a narrative of events in time order that makes the reader ask what happened next. Forster admits, with mock regret, that the novel tells a story, and he treats this as necessary but primitive. In two lectures on people he distinguishes flat characters, built round a single idea and summed up in a sentence, from round characters, whose test is whether they can surprise in a convincing way. He draws examples from Jane Austen, Dickens, Defoe and others, and argues that a novelist can know characters completely, as we never know real people. Plot, he says, differs from story because it stresses causality: the king died and then the queen died is a story, but the queen dying of grief is a plot. Plot asks why, and demands memory and intelligence from the reader. Fantasy and prophecy describe novels that reach beyond ordinary life. Fantasy asks the reader to accept the supernatural or the strange, as in Tristram Shandy; prophecy, which Forster finds in Dostoevsky, Melville, D. H. Lawrence and Emily Bronte, gives a novel a tone of song and a sense of something beyond the story. The last lectures take up pattern and rhythm. Pattern is the shape of a whole book, like an hourglass in Anatole France's Thais or a grand chain in Henry James's The Ambassadors, and Forster warns that strict pattern can cramp life. Rhythm, which he finds in Proust, is repetition with variation that helps a novel expand. A brief conclusion declines to predict the future of the novel. The book became one of the most widely read discussions of fiction in English, and its terms, especially flat and round characters and story versus plot, remain standard in schools.

Plot or Argument

• I. Introductory

  Forster sets aside chronology and imagines all novelists writing together in one room; he limits the field to English novels and their closest relatives.

• II. The Story

  Story is a narrative of events in time sequence; it is the basic aspect of the novel and appeals to curiosity about what comes next.

• III-IV. People

  Characters are flat or round; round characters can surprise convincingly, and the novelist can reveal hidden lives that we cannot know in real people.

• V. The Plot

  Plot is a narrative of events with the emphasis on causality, and it calls on the reader's memory and intelligence.

• VI. Fantasy

  Some novels ask the reader to accept the strange or supernatural; Forster discusses Sterne, Joyce and others.

• VII. Prophecy

  Prophetic novelists such as Dostoevsky, Melville, Lawrence and Emily Bronte give their books a tone of song and a sense of the infinite.

• VIII-IX. Pattern and Rhythm; Conclusion

  Pattern shapes a whole book, rhythm repeats with variation; Forster prefers expansion to completion and declines to forecast the novel's future.

Lessons

• Story and plot

  Forster separates story, events in time order, from plot, events joined by cause. Students can test the distinction on any narrative they know, including the narratives of Scripture, where cause often lies in God's purpose.

  • How does Forster define a story and a plot?
  • Why does he say plot demands memory and intelligence?
  • Choose a novel you know and state one example of plot in it.

• Flat and round characters

  Flat characters are built around a single idea; round characters can surprise in a convincing way. The distinction gives students a precise vocabulary for describing how authors reveal persons.

  • What is Forster's test of a round character?
  • Does he think flat characters are always a fault?
  • Name a flat and a round character from a book you have read.

• Knowing persons

  Forster argues that in a novel we can know people more fully than in life. Students can compare this claim with the Christian teaching that only God knows the heart completely.

  • Why does Forster say fictional people can be known better than real ones?
  • What limits our knowledge of other people?
  • How does 1 Samuel 16:7 bear on this question?

Context

Forster gave these lectures in 1927, three years after A Passage to India, which proved to be the last novel he published in his lifetime. Modernist writers such as Joyce, Woolf and Proust were changing what a novel could do, and Forster discusses them alongside older masters.

Composition

The book prints the Clark Lectures delivered at Trinity College, Cambridge, in spring 1927; Forster's prefatory note says he kept their informal tone. The stored text is the first American edition, published in New York by Harcourt, Brace and Company in 1927.

Reception

Virginia Woolf reviewed the book and praised parts of it while doubting that it settled the laws of fiction; Somerset Maugham mocked its prescriptive air. Its distinctions between story and plot and between flat and round characters have become standard terms in teaching literature.

Comparisons

• Poetics

  Aristotle ranks plot first among the parts of tragedy; Forster also analyses plot, but gives at least equal weight to people and to the less definable aspects of fantasy, prophecy and rhythm.

• The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

  Forster's chief example of fantasy in the novel.

• Moby-Dick

  One of Forster's examples of prophecy in fiction.

• Mansfield Park

  Forster uses Lady Bertram to show a flat character briefly made round.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The image of all novelists writing together in a circular room.
• The three voices answering what a novel does, in The Story.
• The definitions of flat and round characters.
• The king-and-queen example that separates story from plot.
• The contrast between pattern and rhythm in the last lecture.

Key terms and names

Story

Forster's term for a narrative of events arranged in their time sequence.

Plot

A narrative of events with the emphasis falling on causality.

Flat character

A character constructed round a single idea or quality, expressible in one sentence.

Round character

A character capable of surprising the reader in a convincing way.

Rhythm

Repetition with variation that helps a novel expand beyond its pattern.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension What are the seven aspects of the novel that Forster discusses?
2. Comprehension How does Forster distinguish a story from a plot?
3. Interpretation Why does Forster speak of the story aspect with mock regret?
4. Interpretation Are flat characters always a weakness, according to Forster?
5. Interpretation What does Forster mean by prophecy in a novel?
6. Big Question Can a work of fiction help us know human beings more truly than ordinary life does?

Faith Connections

• 1 Samuel 16:7 (Scripture)

  Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart; compare Forster's claim that only the novelist sees fully into a character's hidden life.

• Genesis 50:20 (Scripture)

  Joseph's words show a biblical plot in Forster's sense: events joined by cause and purpose, here the purpose of God.

• Aristotle, Poetics (Great Conversation)

  Aristotle's account of plot as the soul of tragedy is the classic background to Forster's lecture on plot.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: A novel can best be understood not through its history but through its lasting aspects; the story is necessary but primitive, while people, plot, fantasy, prophecy, pattern and rhythm show how fiction rises to art.

Rhetorical device: illustrative example. Forster defines plot in two short sentences about the death of a king and a queen, making an abstract distinction concrete.

Debate: Resolved: that character matters more than plot in a great novel.

Memory Work

"The king died and then the queen died," is a story. "The king died, and then the queen died of grief" is a plot.

The test of a round character is whether it is capable of surprising in a convincing way.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Apply Forster's distinction between flat and round characters to one novel you have read, giving at least one example of each.

Comparison with Poetics: Compare Aristotle's view of plot with Forster's. Which of them gives more weight to character, and why?

Creative Prompts

• Classroom

  Write two short versions of the same event: one as a story (and then... and then...) and one as a plot (because...). Compare them aloud.

• Fiction

  Write a one-page scene in which a flat character surprises the reader in a convincing way.

• Essay

  Is Forster right that the novel's story is its most primitive aspect? Defend or attack his view using one novel you know well.

Further Reading

• A Passage to India, E. M. Forster

• Howards End, E. M. Forster

• Poetics, Aristotle