The Novel in English: Some Forms of Modern Fiction

Abstract

Our study of Tess of the d’Urbervilles has perhaps suggested the complexity of design that might be found in the novels we read. The ‘story’ is a vehicle for many other narrative and linguistic devices which carry the larger meanings of the novel. Contrasted characters, complex patterns of imagery, subtle and extensive literary, religious and philosophical allusions, a use of language which has a poetic richness of implication are only some of the means that Hardy uses in the construction of his novel. Even so, Hardy stood on the brink of a period of selfconscious experimentation with the novel form which is associated with the names of Joseph Conrad (1857–1924), Ford Madox Ford (1873–1939), James Joyce (1882–1941), Virginia Woolf (1882–1941), William Faulkner (1897–1962), Malcolm Lowry (1909–57), Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) and many others. This period of ferment and inventiveness lasted from the end of the nineteenth century until about 1936. Since then there have been periods of reaction to more traditional forms and periods when novelty and experimentation were once again in fashion. It is roughly true that the history of the novel has always been divided between those who were excited by their subjectmatter and those who were primarily concerned with the shaping of what they had to say. Needless to say, the constant preoccupation of the serious novelist is to find some form which most completely expresses the nature of the material he has before his mind.