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Showing papers in "Novel: A Forum on Fiction in 1971"


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The literary motif as mentioned in this paper is a family of related words or phrases that, by virtue of their frequency and particular use, tell us something about the author's intentions, conscious or otherwise.
Abstract: Since the rise of the New Criticism in the Thirties, a criticism preoccupied with the work-in-itself and consequently with literary technique, there has been a steadily increasing flow of critical essays primarily concerned with language. One important phase of this study of language has been the attempt to discover clusters or families of related words or phrases that, by virtue of their frequency and particular use, tell us something about the author's intentions, conscious or otherwise. Mark Schorer, concerning himself only with families of metaphors, terms them "metaphoric substructures."' Reuben Brower, also mainly concerned with recurrent images or metaphors, terms them "continuities."2 But although most critics have concentrated primarily on the metaphoric members of these language families, it seems obvious that the literal components, in conjunction with the figurative, form a larger unit that may prove more revealing still. And when we combine the literal and the figurative into a single family unit, we emerge with what is perhaps most accurately called the literary "motif." Although there has been much discussion of the function of motifs in specific works, so far as I know there has been nothing approaching a detailed analysis of the device. I should like, therefore, to attempt such an analysis, a description of what the literary motif is and how it functions. And when I have done that I should like then to examine the question of its literary value. It is a fairly automatic critical assumption that to demonstrate the existence of an elaborate motif in a given work is to demonstrate something that enhances the value of that work. I agree. But at the same time I think it advisable to inquire into the reasons behind this widespread assent. It is not enough to show that an author has employed a motif or that one has found its way into his work without at least inquiring why or if its presence is an asset. Perhaps as useful a starting point as any is the entry under "motif" in one of the standard literary dictionaries:

26 citations



Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The text of Texts for Nothing as discussed by the authors contains a passage from the King James Version of the Bible which is used by Beckett's English style to define its own meaning in the text.
Abstract: In I Corinthians, in the King James Version which Beckett's English style often echoes, the Apostle Paul advises, "So likewise ye, except ye utter by the tongue words easy to understand, how shall it be known what is spoken? for ye shall speak into the air. There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and none of them is without signification" (xiv. 9-10). Verily, his words comprise a text for Beckett's Texts for Nothing. For Beckett's voice tries here to define itself. Text IV opens by asking, "Where would I go, if I could go, who would I be, if I could be, what would I say, if I had a voice, who says this, saying it's me?"' The voice, or Beckett as creator behind it, is too honest to settle on any conjecture. His voice fully exploits the thinking and doubting of the Cartesian "I," the perceiving of the Berkeleian being-to mention only two philosophers whose work Beckett has studied-but it cannot rely on any substantiating Power outside its echo chamber. It cannot tell what it is or what it signifies. But to us, its sympathetic reader-listeners, it implies finally that it is its signification. The title, ambiguous in its referents but not in its signifiers, indicates that this will be the case. Both texte and text have the narrow meaning of a passage from the Gospels which serves as a point of departure for a more extended discourse. In the general meaning, both French and English have kept a semantic link with Latin and suggest parts that have been woven into a whole and, by the extension of common usage, form a verbal structure. The stark negativity of the English "for Nothing," "for a no-thing, a void, an abyss," is extenuated by the French "pour rien," which not only conveys "for no purpose, to no avail, in order to achieve nothing," but which implies also a barely discernible antonym. "Rien" from the accusative res/rem can mean "something" or "anything." It means "nothing" only in certain, admittedly common, grammatical contexts. Beckett's texts, then, are "for nothing" chiefly in the sense that they are "for nothing identifiable." Confining or boundless, the void, perhaps the voice itself, is unknowable, but it is something. Beckett uses "text" in both the narrow and broad sense. Each text has its own theme, motif, or conceit which it elaborates, and each text is a point of departure for our elaboration. The collection as a whole functions this way for us also. The collection contains the Dante echoes customary in Beckett, but it would be, I believe, a mistake to proceed from these echoes to claim that the monologues,

6 citations



Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The Lord of the Rings as mentioned in this paper is a three-volume novel by a distinguished medievalist, and it has become one of the most popular books in the world for fantasy reading.
Abstract: That a three-volume novel by a distinguished medievalist should be as popular as J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings may be a little odd. That it should be popular with people who paint "Frodo lives!" on walls and wear pins that say "Go! Go! Gandalf" in elf script; with people who have never seen an English pub or walked more than two miles consecutively; with artists of the stature of W. H. Auden; and with respected critics who compare it to Malory, Spenser and Ariosto; and that it should achieve this with six appendixes and no sex is an event Aristotle would banish from any plot as an "improbable possible." That the trilogy should be a novel at least in being "a piece of prose fiction of a certain length" and yet show itself so different in kind from the literature on which our current tools for understanding and evaluating aesthetic experiences work best, makes the riddle one of real concern to the critic of fiction. An admirer of the trilogy is inevitably haunted by the ghost of Ossian-or rather, by the fantasm of some urbane critic of the twenty-first century who will find our response to it as self-evidently ludicrous as we find the mid-eighteenth century's enthusiasm for Macpherson's pseudo-epics. We cannot even be sure that he will laugh at our enthusiasm rather than at our prudishness about admitting it. One way or the other, he will find in our behavior infallible symptoms of cultural malnutrition. But whether our response to Tolkien merely reveals, as the Ossian phenomenon did, an age's craving for a category of experience of which it is discovering itself to be deprived, or whether it shows the euphoria of discovering something intrinsically good which will go on appealing to audiences who come to it from widely differing experiences, we can certainly ask ourselves what sort of experience reading the Trilogy actually is. When we do, we see that it is as different from what happens to us in reading a novel, whether of the nineteenth century or of our own, as it is from most fantasy and most "escape" literature. Tolkien himself has made it peculiarly difficult for his admirers to save face. The manifest discrepancy between the subject and manner of the trilogy and the works we take seriously as "literature" might be glossed over if we could interpret it allegorically and find that it is about everything it appears not to be about. But Tolkien has repeatedly insisted that the trilogy is not allegorical. Recently, in a preface to the paperback edition, he has gone so far as to admit that such a story may have "applicability" to other situations where related issues are involved, but he insists that his book "is neither allegorical nor topical.... I cor-

5 citations



Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The influence of Kafka on French literature can be traced to two generations of Kafka progeny: the Surrealists and the Existentialists as mentioned in this paper, and it can be seen as a natural progression of the naturalization process.
Abstract: Robbe-Grillet is the foremost of many critics who allude to the influence of Kafka on their work. This would not, of itself, make the subject worth investigating. At least since 1940 Kafka has been in the French air, acting as a kind of objective compulsion, to the point where there is hardly a writer with modernist pretensions who would not acknowledge his influence, hardly a critic of these writers who would not play the "cherchez Kafka" game.1 Indeed, Kafka's impact on French literature seems to be deeper, more varied, and more enduring than on his native literature. Maja Goth had profuse material for a book-length study entitled Kafka et les lettres francaises as early as 1956, whereas there exists, to my knowledge, no full-scale investigation of Kafka and German letters. Miss Goth's book deals with two generations of Kafka progeny: the Surrealists and the Existentialists. The names of these movements sufficiently indicate the general trend of the naturalization process: to the Surrealists Kafka offered a model for fantastic literature, to the Existentialists a paradigm for the philosophy of the absurd. If in the Sartre-Camus generation Kafka resides largely in the eye of the beholder, it is because they regarded him as an existential philosopher who happened to write fiction, rather than as an artist whose vision encompassed, among other things, the existential problematic. According to Marthe Robert, the philosopher Merleau-Ponty refused to accredit Kafka's life-long admiration for one of the Existentialists' favorite betes noires, the unphilosophical "pure" novelist Flaubert.2 In the next literary generation this view was drastically reversed by RobbeGrillet, who persistently links both Kafka and the New Novel with Flaubert. His preface to the collection of critical essays, For a New Novel, ends with the following words:

4 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The Turn of the Screw as discussed by the authors is a seminal work in the history and psychology of James's life, and it is a locus classicus of some of the more intense and continuing concerns of his mind.
Abstract: Critical stress on and over "The Turn of the Screw" has flourished through two generations with apparently no decrease in heat or vitality. The phenomenon suggests a dimension of interest in the tale beyond its intrinsic mystery, a dimension not further complicating the trompe l'oeil of the given duplicitous perspective, but resolving through a kind of depth perception the conflicting demands of literal versus critical readings. Leon Edel, in his most recent installment of the five-volume biography of James, helps us to locate "The Turn of the Screw" in James's history and psychology as a locus classicus of some of the more intense and continuing concerns of James's mind. The writing of "The Turn of the Screw" coincided with James's decision to lease Lamb House in Rye, Sussex, and to move there from London. He had admired the house years earlier. Edel describes the connection between Lamb House and "The Turn of the Screw" in this way:

4 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Pnin, one of Vladimir Nabokov's most approachable novels, may be read enjoyably on an elementary level for its "human interest"-those quotation marks, and that sneer, belong to the author himself as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Pnin, one of Vladimir Nabokov's most approachable novels, may be read enjoyably on an elementary level for its "human interest"-those quotation marks, and that sneer, belong to Nabokov himself. Consequently, some critics have praised Pnin out of all proportion, and Nabokov's best critics have tended to over-react and slight this delightful novel. A book that can be enjoyed by simple people is not necessarily a simple book, and Pnin is as complicated as a pet snake. Timofey Pnin, a pathetically comic Russian emigre, teaches his native language at Waindell College, somewhere in New England. His ineffectual English makes him the butt of countless jokes; amid this alien corn Pnin wanders with apparent cheer, but cannot always avoid hearing the mockery of his numerous mimics on campus. Far from a cliche clown, Pnin is inescapably comic because he is a penguin out of water, a man who had the world pulled out from under him. Among fellow Russian emigres a highly intelligent, articulate, polite, scholarly student of the social sciences, among Americans he appears an incoherent fool, unschooled in the simplest of the mores of "unpredictable America." As a whole, Pnin's life may be tragic, but in its visible fragments it is either comic or pathetic. Nabokov thoroughly exploits these dual possibilities, continually shifting his focus and our allegiance. While the views of Pnin are ambivalent, they are rarely ambiguous; the distinction is between Pnin fooled and Pnin hurt. In the first chapter we witness Pnin's comic misadventures with American trains, busses, and women's clubs, as well as his pathetic heart attack. The second chapter includes his hilarious encounters with a washing machine and a heart-breaking visit from his cruel, thoughtless, exploitative ex-wife. The quiet third chapter records his comic battles with the college library as well as the loss of his pleasant room and his failure to recognize his own birthday. The fourth chapter begins a rising movement in Pnin's fortunes: he meets his ex-wife's son Victor to their mutual delight. The comedy of this chapter involves Pnin's-or America's-confusion between football and soccer, the vagaries of Jack London's literary reputation, and Victor's height; a comic fall gives Pnin a later, pathetic backache. The fifth chapter, Pnin with fellow emigres, shows him at his best: the comedy involves not just Pnin lost in the Catskills, but also Pnin marvellously talented at croquet; the pathos is Pnin's remembrance of a childhood sweetheart who died in a Nazi concentration camp. The sixth chapter begins a corresponding falling movement. The comedy is again on Pnin's side, the triumph of his little party. The emotion catches us rather off-guard, for just as Pnin is feeling most at home in his new house and in

4 citations




Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, it is argued that the meaning of blackness has served as a means of shocking others and as a mean of causing tension rather than peace and quiet in the life of Christ.
Abstract: Surely this meaning of blackness is unusual in Christmas' life as we know it. For if it has been anything to him, blackness has served as a means of shocking others and as a means of causing tension rather than peace and quiet. One may also object that this apparent search for peace and quiet is difficult to reconcile with Christmas' later behavior in Jefferson, for there he attempts to escape and is once more hurled into the violent activity that has been the hallmark of his life. It is my contention that Christmas' unusual behavior at the end of Light in August can best be understood within a structure that includes his earliest childhood in the Memphis orphanage, his subsequent relations with men, his behavior




Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the author argues that the insights of depth psychology must be applied, if at all, in a very different way to George Eliot than to Dickens or to Charlotte and Emily Bronti.
Abstract: Contrasting Middlemarch with Wuthering Heights, Thomas C. Moser has remarked that "George Eliot requires no second guessing," for in her novels "everything is held up to the light"; novels which justify the critic's using depth psychology are "those in which unconscious creation plays a large part and in which sex is a central subject.'" Although in theory it may be difficult to distinguish between works in which "unconscious creation plays a large part" and those in which it does not, in practice it appears obvious that the insights of depth psychology must be applied, if at all, in a very different way to George Eliot than to Dickens or to Charlotte and Emily Bronti. For despite the demonstrable care the last three took with their work, their writings frequently give the impression of an intuitive rather than an intellectual handling of plot, imagery and symbol. By contrast, with Eliot we are constantly aware of the author as a strong presence, consciously shaping her fictive creations to illustrate beliefs previously arrived at through intellectual processes. So much is critical commonplace. Yet Eliot's novels, and in particular The Mill on the Floss, have attracted some psychological criticism. David Smith has attempted to demonstrate the extent to which Maggie and Tom Tulliver's attachment is incestuous,2 while Bernard J. Paris (modifying his earlier position as to the unity between Eliot's intentions and achievements) has discussed the conflicts in Maggie, and Eliot's uneven treatment of them, in terms of Karen Horney's concepts of aggressive and compliant character-trends.3 Laurence Lerner, without going so far as to judge Maggie "neurotic," as Paris does, finds the central conflict in The Mill on the Floss to be one between reason and impulse. According to Lerner, in repeating the imagery of being "borne along by the tide" in Maggie's union with her brother in death, Eliot the novelist opted artistically for impulse, however much Eliot the thinker was consciously choosing reason and restraint; for the reader sympathizes with Stephen Guest's plea against self-denial rather than with Maggie's willed suppression of her deepest feelings.4 Lerner also credits Eliot with having worked out "a good deal of what psycho-analysis has since discovered,"5 but this turns out to refer only to Eliot's sense of the existence of



Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In the pages below George Ford, Frank Kermode, and Colin Clarke reply at NOVEL'S invitation-to Mark Spilka's review-essay, "Lawrence Up-Tight, or The Anal Phase Once Over," which appeared in our last issue (IV, Spring 1971, 252-267) as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: In the pages below George Ford, Frank Kermode, and Colin Clarke reply-at NOVEL'S invitation-to Mark Spilka's review-essay, "Lawrence Up-Tight, or The Anal Phase Once Over," which appeared in our last issue (IV, Spring 1971, 252-267); and Spilka replies to their replies. Lawrence's anal propensities and what these and other critics make of them is the subject under discussion. George Ford inspired the jocular subtitle above by calling his entry "A Brief Tail-Piece."

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A comparison of Shakespearean imagery with the Richardsonian version of it in Clarissa makes the difference in method and effect obvious as mentioned in this paper, and no one would deny the very real power of Clarissa or even Pamela.
Abstract: There is one thing certain about Samuel Richardson's style. It does not lend itself to the critical orthodoxies of the American graduate school: studies of the "integrity of metaphorical design" or "metaphysical profundity" or "all-but-Shakespearean continuity of imagery."' If it is not too great a stretch of the imagination, however, Richardson himself probably would have claimed rights to all these studies with considerable pride. Highly self-conscious "literary" techniques are found throughout his works beginning with The Apprentice's Vade Mecum (London, 1734). Literary allusions, often-repeated images, allegories, and rhetorical patterns appear again and again. Although he and his heroines maintain that "no style can be proper, which is not plain, simple, easy, natural, and unaffected," and they all distinguish between the style "which captivates the imagination, and that which informs the judgment," it is nevertheless true that Richardson could not resist what Pamela deprecatingly terms "a kind of allegorical or metaphorical style, I know not what to call it."2 Unfortunately these excursions into high style, the analogies, allusions, the ornate rhetoric are usually most memorable for their cheap melodramatic effects and their vulgarity, or their highly amusing and unintentional ironies. A comparison of Shakespearean imagery with the Richardsonian version of it in Clarissa makes the difference in method and effect obvious. Othello's dramatic recognition of Iago's perfidy is condensed into these simple words: "I look down towards his feet,-but that's a fable." Lovelace echoes Othello's language when he surprises Clarissa in her Hampstead hiding place: "[S]he would have it, that I was neither more nor less than the devil, and could not keep her eye from my foot; expecting, no doubt, every minute to see it discover itself to be cloven."3 The devil-angel identification has been insisted on so often, so blatantly and explicitly that by this point in the novel the mention of a cloven hoof is the reductio ad absurdum. In addition, the intensity of Othello's speech is a remarkable contrast to the wordiness of Lovelace's conjecture which becomes in this situation either a heartless jibe or, worse, windy selfcongratulation. Nevertheless, no one would deny the very real power of Clarissa or even Pamela. Just as one knows what "an lago" is, the reader of Richardson reacts

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors argue that women in love can be seen as working tentatively and half-unconsciously back toward society in the broad sense of humanity in the sense that they reject the social industrial structure of Western civilization.
Abstract: Perhaps because in the 1960s we became increasingly aware of the gravity of social problems, recent readers of Women in Love have often expressed dissatisfaction that the main characters reject their society so emphatically. So frequently have critics felt compelled to condemn or justify this separation of individuals from society that we may take the novel's ability to make us react this way as one of its important strengths.1 Most critics resist, of course, reducing any novel to an exposition of a social philosophy. But this resistance can lead to an opposite kind of dogmatism. Colin Clarke writes that Women in Love is "not a novel with a message, not 'instructing us to adopt one course rather than another'; we can't even say that perhaps it reaches conclusions, which is what seems to be entailed in the proposition that perhaps Birkin reaches them."2 Up to a point such an impulse is sound; we all want to distinguish art from propaganda. But a reader ought to be uncomfortable, I think, with the idea that a novel like Women in Love, which is so clearly about modern society, embodies no discernible social values. A novel's actions are likely to commit it, however vaguely, to values which suggest courses of action. A novel is unlikely to raise important questions, such as, what are the most fulfilling relations among individuals? or, what is the proper relation between an individual and society? without implying answers. At least, a reader ought to make this assumption. That different readers keep finding opposed answers-which is emphatically the history of the criticism of Women in Loveonly testifies to the book's suggestiveness. The two closely connected questions that I have just stated about relations between individuals and between individual and society provide the starting point for this paper. One may doubt that Birkin and Ursula can have a fulfilling relationship if they reject society and so exist in a social void. One may ask if the affirmation of their marriage is relevant to those without independent incomes or to those who are not impelled to reject society. I want to approach such problems by arguing that we can see Birkin and Ursula not as sunk motionless in isolation from modern society but rather as working tentatively and half-unconsciously back toward society in the broad sense of humanity. What Birkin and Ursula mainly react against is the social-industrial structure of Western civilization, with its values and its modes of perception. In the process of breaking loose from existing