EDWARD MORGAN FORSTER AND HIS ASPECTS OF THE NOVEL Oleh: Ribut Surjowati Universitas Wijaya Kusuma Surabaya ([email protected]) Abstract: Aspects of the Novel is the publication of a series of lectures on the English Language novel delivered by E.M. Forster. These lectures presents the seven aspects, Forster believes, should include in the novel. Those seven aspects are story, people, plot, fantasy and prophecy, pattern and rhythm. This article is elaborating those seven aspects along with the explanation. It is expected that after reading Forster’s lectures, people will get a better insight towards the form of a good novel. Key words: E.M.Forster, Aspects of the Novels Introduction when he spent the time at Rooksnest, Edward Morgan Forster (1 Stevenage, a house he evokes in January 1879 – 7 June 1970), was an Howards End. 1 English novelist, short story writer, With the money that was essayist and librettist. He is known best inherited from his parental great-aunt for his ironic and well-plotted novels Marianne, he became a writer. Thus he examining class difference and spent most of his life writing many books hypocrisy in early 20th-century British such as novels, short stories, plays, film society. Forster's humanistic impulse scripts, literary criticism, biography etc. toward understanding and sympathy One of his works which is going to be may be aptly summed up in the discussed in this paper is Aspects of the epigraph to his 1910 novel Howards Novel which is as a literary criticism. End: "Only connect". Aspects of the Novel is the Forster was the only child of publication of a series of lectures on the Edward Morgan Forster, architect, who English language novel, delivered by E. died in 1880, and of Alice ‘Lily’ Whichelo M. Forster at Trinity College, (1855-1945). His boyhood was Cambridge, in 1927 after he wrote A dominated by women, among them is passage to India. Forster dismisses the his influential great aunt and benefactress Marianne thornton. She 1 ___________E.M. Forster. Download left 8000-pound sterling for Forster. He on 1 December 2010 in has a happy childhood years (1883- 93) http://emforster.de/hypertext/template.php3?t=life . EDWARD MORGAN FOSTER AND HIS ASPECT OF THE NOVEL Ribut Surjowati method of examining the novel as a historical development, in preference to The Life of E.M. Forster an image of all novelists throughout Edward Morgan Foster was born history writing simultaneously, side by on 1 January 1879 in London and spent side. He first establishes that a novel is his childhood in Rooksnest with his a story that takes place over a period of mother, aunts and governesses. He time. He stresses the importance of often did travelling to Italy, Greece. On character, maintaining that both ‘‘flat’’ his return to Greece, he began to write and ‘‘round’’ characters may be included for the New Independent Review which in the successful novel. He regards the was launched in 1903. necessity of plot, which creates the In 1905 he completed Where effect of suspense, as a problem by Angels Fear to Tread , which was which character is frequently sacrificed published the same year, and spent in the service of providing an ending to some months in Germany as tutor to the the novel. Fantasy and prophecy, which children of the Conntess von Arnim In provide a sense of the ‘‘universal,’’ or 1906, now established with his mother in spiritual, Forster regards as central Weybridge, he became tutor to Syed aspects of the great novel. Ross Masood, a striking and colonial Finally, he dismisses the value of Indian Muslim patriot, for whom Forster ‘‘pattern,’’ by which a narrative may be developed an intense affection. The structured, as another aspect that Longest Journey appeared in 1907, A frequently sacrifices the vitality of Room with a View in 1908, character. Drawing on the metaphor of and Howards End , which established music, Forster concludes that rhythm, Forster as a writer of importance, in which he defines as ‘‘repetition plus 1910. In 1911 he published a collection variation,’’ allows for an aesthetically of short stories, mostly pastoral and pleasing structure to emerge from the whimsical in tone and subject- novel, while maintaining the integrity of matter, The Celestial Omnibus. character and the open-ended quality In 1912-13 he visited India for that gives novels a feeling of some months, meeting Masood in expansiveness. Aligarh and traveling with him. In 1913 This article is examining the another significant visit to the home of E. seven aspects Edward believes Carpenter near Chesterfield resulted in universal to the novel: story, characters, his writing Maurice, a novel with a plot, fantasy, prophecy, pattern, and homosexual theme which he circulated rhythm. 2 privately; it was published posthumously in 1971. It did not as he had hoped open 2 ___________Aspects of the Novel a new vein of creativity and the outbreak summary. Download on 1 December 2010 in of war further impeded his career. He http://www.enotes.com/aspects-novel. OKARA, Vol. I, Tahun 8, Mei 2013 92 EDWARD MORGAN FOSTER AND HIS ASPECT OF THE NOVEL Ribut Surjowati worked for a while at the National celebrated comment, 'yes-oh dear yes- Gallery then went to Alexandria in 1915 the novel tells a story.' for the Red Cross; his Alexandria: A In the 1930s and 1940s Forster History and a Guide was published became a successful broadcaster somewhat abortively in 1922 (almost the on BBC Radio and a public figure entire stock was burned) and reprinted associated with the British Humanist in revised form in 1938. In Alexandria he Association. He was awarded a Benson met Cavafy whose works, on his return Medal in 1937. Forster developed a to England in 1919, he helped to long-term loving relationship with Bob introduce; an essay on Cavafy appears Buckingham, a married policeman (his in Pharos and Pharillon (1923). wife's name was May), and included the In 1921-22 he revisited India, couple in his circle, which also included working as personal secretary for the the writer and arts editor of The maharajah of the native state of Dewas Listener, J.R. Ackerley, the psychologist Senior for several months. The W.J.H. Sprott, and, for a time, the completion of A Passage to India (1922- composer Benjamin Britten. Other 4) which he had begun before the war, writers with whom Forster associated was overshadowed by the death of his included the poet Siegfried Sassoon and closest Egyptian friend Mohammed, but the Belfast-based novelist Forrest Reid. when the novel appeared in June 1924 it Forster was elected an was highly acclaimed. Forster's fears honorary fellow of King's College, that this would be his last novel proved Cambridge in January 1946, and lived correct, and the remainder of his life was for the most part in the college, doing devoted to a wide range of literary relatively little. He declined activities; over many years he took a a knighthood in 1949 and was made a firm stand against censorship, involving Companion of Honour in 1953. In 1969 himself in the work of PEN and the he was made a member of the Order of NCCL, of which he became the first Merit. Forster died of a stroke in president, campaigning in 1928 against Coventry on 7 June 1970 at the age of the suppression of R. Hall's The Well of 91, at the home of the Buckingham. Loneliness, and appearing in 1960 as a Forster was a humanist, homosexual, witness for the defence in th e trial of the lifelong bachelor. publishers of Lady Chatterley's Lover. In 1927 he delivered the Clark Forster’s Novels lectures at Cambridge printed the same Forster had five novels published year as Aspects of the Novel; his tone in in his lifetime. Although Maurice these was in his own words 'informal, appeared shortly after his death, it had indeed talkative', and they contain the been written nearly sixty years earlier. A OKARA, Vol. I, Tahun 8, Mei 2013 93 EDWARD MORGAN FOSTER AND HIS ASPECT OF THE NOVEL Ribut Surjowati seventh novel, Arctic Summer, was between the free-thinking George never finished. Emerson and the repressed aesthete His first novel is Where Angels Cecil Vyse. George's father Mr Emerson Fear to Tread (1905). It is the story of quotes thinkers who influenced Forster, Lilia, a young English widow who falls in including Samuel Butler. A Room with a love with an Italian man, and of the View was filmed by Merchant-Ivory in efforts of her bourgeois relatives to get 1985. her back from Monteriano (based His other novels, Where Angels on San Gimignano). The mission of Fear to Tread and A Room with a Philip Herriton to retrieve her from Italy View can be seen collectively as has features in common with that Forster's Italian novels. Both include of Lambert Strether in Henry references to the James's The Ambassadors, a work famous Baedeker guidebooks and Forster discussed ironically and concern narrow-minded middle-class somewhat disapprovingly in his English tourists abroad. The books book Aspects of the Novel (1927), share many themes with short stories where Angels Fear to Tread was collected in The Celestial adapted into a film by Charles Omnibus and The Eternal Moment. Sturridge in 1991. Howards End (1910) is an Next, Forster published The ambitious "condition-of-England" novel Longest Journey (1907), an concerned with different groups within inverted buildings roman following the the Edwardian middle classes lame Rickie Elliott from Cambridge to a represented by the Schlegels (bohemian career as a struggling writer and then to intellectuals), the Wilcoxes (thoughtless a post as a schoolmaster, married to the plutocrats) and the Basts (struggling unappetizing Agnes Pembroke.