The Story
UNDERSTANDING THE TEXT
1. What do you understand of the three voices in response to the
question ‘What does a novel do’?
Answer:
2. What would you say are ‘the finer growths’ that the story
supports in a novel?
Answer:
3. How does Forster trace the human interest in the story to
primitive times?
Answer:
4. Discuss the importance of time in the narration of a story.
Answer:
TALKING ABOUT THE TEXT
Discuss in pairs or in small groups
1. What does a novel do?
Answer:
2. ‘Our daily life reflects a double allegiance to ‘the life in time’
and ‘the life by values’.
Answer:
3. The description of novels as organisms.
Answer:
APPRECIATION
1. How does Forster use the analogy of Scheherazade to establish
his point?
Answer:
2. Taking off from Forster’s references to Emily Bronte, Sterne and
Proust, discuss the treatment of time in some of the novels you
have read.
Answer:
LANGUAGE WORK
1. ‘Qua story’: what does the word mean? Find other expressions
using the word qua.
2. Study the Note to Aspects of the Novel given at the end. Discuss
the features that mark the piece as a talk as distinguished
from a critical essay.
3. Try rewriting the lecture as a formal essay and examine Forster’s
statement: ‘…since the novel is itself often colloquial, it may
possibly withhold some of its secrets from the graver and
grander streams of criticism’.
SUGGESTED READING
1. The Craft of Fiction by Percy Lubbock
2. The Sense of an Ending by Frank Kermode.
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