|
Posted by Renee Damstra (145.53.239.208) on 19:49:33 02/12/06
I'm trying to find out how to place the novel A Passage to India in the literature of that time, and I read on this board that Forster is a modernist writer with some Victorian influences. Now I can see the modernism in this book, but what are the Victorian influences in Forsters writing? Does anyone know?
Posted by Heiko (editor) on 10:12:18 03/12/06
Dear Renee,
The Edwardian era is obviously set between the Victorian era and Modernism. As history doesn't change overnight, one can expect a transitional period. And there are transitional writers, so to speak, too: Wells, Forster, Conrad, James... I think that, in Forster's case, the plots, the imagery, and most often the language are rather traditional and therefore close to Victorianism. David Medalie writes in his _E. M. Forster's Modernism_ that Forster practised a "reluctant modernism". If one tries to evaluate Forster's writings with Raymond Williams’s key features of Modernism, one will find that most often they don't fit together. (Then there are also some old-fashioned ideas in Forster’s writing, especially when it comes to cultural evaluations. English vs. Italian, English vs. Indian. They are not really modern.) But maybe somebody else can share his/her ideas…
Best
/h
Main Board
|
