Aspects of the Novel

by E. M. Forster Narrated by Jonathan Keeble

Overview

E.M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel is an innovative and effusive treatise on a literary form that, at the time of publication, had only recently begun to enjoy serious academic consideration.

First given as a series of lectures at Cambridge University, Aspects of the Novel is Forster's analysis of this great literary form. Here he rejects the 'pseudoscholarship' of historical criticism - 'that great demon of chronology' - that considers writers in terms of the period in which they wrote and instead asks us to imagine the great novelists working together in a single room. He discusses aspects of people, plot, fantasy and rhythm, making illuminating comparisons between novelists such as Proust and James, Dickens and Thackeray, Eliot and Dostoyevsky - the features shared by their books and the ways in which they differ. Written in a wonderfully engaging and conversational manner, this penetrating work of criticism is full of Forster's habitual irreverence, wit and wisdom.

E. M. Forster (1879-1970) was a noted English author and critic and a member of the Bloomsbury group.

Editorial Reviews

Jacques Barzun

We discover, under [Forster's] casual and wittily acute guidance, many things about the literary magic which transmutes the dull stuff of He—said and She—said into characters, stories, and intimations of truth.
—Harper's Magazine

Theodore Spencer

Mr. Forster's volume is more than a discussion of a literary form, it is a discussion of experience, of life, an admirable and delightful reflection of a mind that has recognized it's own affinity with Erasmus and Montaigne.
—New York Times Book Review

Product Details

BN ID:	2940176889918
Publisher:	SNR Audio
Publication date:	01/02/2023
Edition description:	Unabridged

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