E. KRUISINGA, P. J. H. O. SCHUT AND R. W. ZANDVOORT 1922 VOLUME FOUR NOS 1-6 PUBLISHED BY MESSRS. SWETS & ZEITLINGER, AMSTERDAM ! 1106496 DR. F. P. H. PRICK VAN WELY, DR. A. VERWEY, W. VAN DOORN, The Women of George Eliot's Novels 185, 217. The Pan-erotic Element in Shelley 241. 243. 75. DR. F. P. H. PRICK VAN WELY, A Dictionary of Military Terms (Farrow) 125. Prof. Dr. J. PRINSEN J.LZN, Giovanni Florio (Longworth Chambrun) 239. PROF. DR. N. VAN WIJK, Language, its nature, development and origin (Jespersen). R. W. ZANDVOORT, Byron (de Reul). 208. 72. J. L. Cardozo, A Holiday at Stratford-on-Avon, 109; W. A. Editorial, 234; English Association in Holland, 32, 65, 113, 201, 234; 198. 76, 77, 127, 214. 44, 77, 128, 215, 245. . 177. Notes on Methods of Narration in some English Novels. In W. H. Hudson's excellent Introduction to the Study of Literature we find a sentence which indirectly reveals the difficulty of giving a satisfactory definition of the novel. 'A novel', he says in a chapter on prose fiction, 'whatever else it is or is not, is at any rate a story'. This meagre, prudent statement may seem a truism, and we can indeed hardly imagine a definition of the novel that could ignore the element of story-telling altogether, and yet this seemingly vital element has of late years more and more dropped into the background. Criticism is almost universally concerned with the 'whatever else' and the novelists themselves seem to neglect the technical management of their plots or what comes perhaps nearer to the truth: they are striving to reform the old time-honoured narrative technique. For the apparent disparagement of careful plot construction is not an independent phenomenon in the history of novel-writing. It is only the outward, easily discernible aspect so to say of a far deeper and far more important development. The interest in epic literature has undergone a complete change. What was originally the chief attraction for the hearers or readers of a romance: the strange adventures, the tension of the intrigue being kept up to the last moment, the hero's splendid behaviour and superhuman deeds, is now no longer necessary, rather it is usually detrimental to the success of epic art. We do not in the first place expect from the artist power of invention, of plot-building, of creating thrilling situations, but we do expect from him that he shall show the nicest psychological discernment, the all-important power to create character; we are no longer satisfied with a naïve distribution of rewards to the virtuous and punishments to the bad, we want to see in the novel a deeper philosophy revealed, a sincerer and more original view of life. The change has been admirably typified by Professor W. Raleigh's witty contrast between two extremes of epic art: a minstrel's song and the work of Henry James. 'If a mediaeval minstrel', he says in The English Novel, 'had been requested to embody all the novels of Mr. H. James in his narrative, he would have put them into a single line: When twenty years were come and gone and hurried on to the next giant.' But these 'storms in teacups' as Henry James's novels have been called, which a minstrel and his audience would treat with amazed contempt, engross us and satisfy our artistic sense, whereas the giants and their offspring, the romantic heroes, the paragons of virtue, the monsters of vice and all their thrilling blood-curdling adventures have been banished from the domain of serious literature and relegated to the limbo of the cinema. From the middle ages onward there has been a gradual awakening to a sense of fact, a process which was suddenly intensified and accelerated in the middle of the 19th century. This mental growth, engendering a more sceptical attitude on the part of the audience, has made the task of the story-teller ever so much more difficult. No artistic appreciation, no enjoyment of a tale is possible without a temporary belief in its reality. The reader of a novel, the listener to a romance unconsciously begins with an act of surrender. He subdues his will, he switches off as it were the current of the thoughts, impressions, joys, sorrows, hopes, fears that constitute his own daily life, to live for some time |