CHAPTER IX

THE EPIC, THE DRAMA, AND THE NOVEL

Fiction a Generic Term-Narrative in Verse and Narrative in Prose-Three Moods of Fiction: I. The Epic Mood-II. The Dramatic Mood: 1. Influence of the Actor; 2. Înfluence of the Theatre; 3. Influence of the Audience [Dramatized Novels]-III. The Novelistic Mood.

Fiction a Generic Term.-Throughout the present volume, the word fiction has been used with a very broad significance, to include every type of literary composition whose purpose is to embody certain truths of human life in a series of imagined facts. The reason for this has been that the same general artistic methods, with very slight and obvious modifications, are applicable to every sort of narrative which sets forth imagined people in a series of imagined acts. Nearly all of the technical principles which have been outlined in the six preceding chapters apply not only to the novel and the short-story, but likewise to the epic and the lesser narrative in verse, and also (though with certain evident limitations) to the drama. The materials and methods of fiction may be studied in the works of Homer, Shakespeare, and even Browning, as well as in the works of Balzac, Turgénieff, and Mr. Kipling. The nature of narrative is necessarily the same, whatever be its mood or its medium. The methods of constructing plots, of delineating characters, of employing settings, do not differ appreciably whether a narrative be written in verse or in prose; and in either case the same selection of point of view and variety of emphasis are possible. Therefore, in this volume, no

attempt has hitherto been made to distinguish one type of fictitious narrative from another.

Narrative in Verse and Narrative in Prose. Such a distinction, if it be attempted at all, should be made only on the broadest and most general lines. First of all, it should be admitted that, in an inquiry concerned solely with the methods of fiction, no technical distinction is possible between the narrative that is written in verse and the narrative that is written in prose. The two differ in the mood of their materials and the medium through which they are expressed; but they do not differ distinctly in methods of construction. As far as plot and characters and setting are concerned, Sir Walter Scott went to work in the Waverley Novels, which are written in prose, just as he had gone to work in "Marmion" and "The Lady of the Lake," which are written in verse. In his verse he said things with the better art, in his prose he had more things to say; but in each case his central purpose was the same: and nothing can be gained from a critical dictum that "Ivanhoe" is fiction and that "Marmion" is not. In the history of every nation, fiction has been written earliest in verse and only afterwards in prose. What we loosely call the novel was developed late in literature, at a time after prose had supplanted verse as the natural medium for narrative. Therefore, and therefore only, have we come to regard the novel as a type of prose literature. For there is no inherent reason why a novel may not be written in verse. There is a sense in which Mrs. Browning's "Aurora Leigh," Owen Meredith's "Lucile," and Coventry Patmore's "The Angel in the House," to mention works of very different quality and calibre, may be regarded more properly as novels than as poems. The story of "Maud" inspired Tennyson to poetic utterance, and he told the tale in a series of exquisite lyrics; but the same story might have been used by a different author as

the basis for a novel in prose. The subject of "Evange line" was suggested to Longfellow by Hawthorne; and if the great prose poet had written the story himself, it would not have differed essentially in material or in structural method from the narrative as we know it through the medium of the verse romancer. François Coppée has composed admirable short-stories in verse as well as in prose. "The Strike of the Iron-Workers" ("La Grève des Forgerons"), which is written in rhymed Alexandrines, does not differ markedly in narrative method from "The Substitute" ("Le Remplaçant"), which is written in prose. To be sure, the former is a poem and the latter is not; but only a very narrow-minded critic would call the latter a short-story without applying the same term also to the former. Therefore, the question whether a certain fictitious tale should be told in verse or in prose has no place in a general discussion of the materials and methods of fiction. It is a matter of expression merely, and must be decided in each case by the temperamental attitude of the author toward his subject-matter.

Three Moods of Fiction.-Eliminating, therefore, as unprofitable any attempt at a critical distinction between fiction that is written in verse and fiction that is written in prose, we may yet derive a certain profit from a distinction along broad and general lines between three leading moods of fiction, the epic, the dramatic, and what (lacking a more precise term) we may call the novelistic. Certain materials of fiction are inherently epic, or dramatic, or novelistic, as the case may be. Also, an author, according to his mental attitude toward life and toward the subject-matter of his fictions, may cast his stories either in the epic, the dramatic, or the novelistic mood. In order to understand this distinction, we must examine the nature of the epic and the drama, and then study the novel in comparison with these two elder types of fiction.

I. The Epic Mood.-The great epics of the world, whether, as in the case of the Norse sagas and possibly of the Homeric poems, they have been a gradual and undeliberate aggregation of traditional ballads, or else, as in the case of the "Eneid" and "Paradise Lost," they have been the deliberate production of a single conscious artist, have attained their chief significance from the fact that they have summed up within themselves the entire contribution to human progress of a certain race, a certain nation, a certain organized religion. The glory that was Greece is epitomized and sung forever in the "Iliad, "-the grandeur that was Rome, in the "Eneid." All that the Middle Ages gave the world is gathered and expressed in the "Divine Comedy" of Dante: all of medieval history, science, philosophy, scholarship, poetry, religion may be reconstructed from a right reading and entire understanding of this single monumental poem. If you would know Portugal in her great age of discovery and conquest and national expansion, read the "Lusiads" of Camoëns. If you would know Christianity militant against the embattled legions of the Saracens, read the "Jerusalem Liberated" of Tasso. If you would know what the Puritan religion once meant to the greatest minds of England, read the "Paradise Lost" of Milton.

The great epics have attained this resumptive and historical significance only by exhibiting as subject-matter a vast and communal struggle, in which an entire race, an entire nation, an entire organized religion has been concerned, a struggle imagined as so vast that it has shaken heaven as well as earth and called to conflict not only men but also gods. The epic has dealt always with a struggle, at once human and divine, to establish a great communal cause. This cause, in the "Eneid," is the founding of Rome; in the "Jerusalem Liberated" it is

the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre; in the "Faerie Queene" it is the triumph of the virtues over the vices; in the "Lusiads" it is the discovery and conquest of the Indies; in the "Divine Comedy" it is the salvation of the human soul. Whatever nations, whatever races, whatever gods oppose the founding of Rome or the liberation of Jerusalem must be conquered, because in either case the epic cause is righteous and predestined to prevail. As a result of this, the characters in the great epics are memorable mainly because of the part that they play in advancing or retarding the victory of the vast and social cause which is the subject of the story. Their virtues and their faults are communal and representative: they are not adjudged as individuals, apart from the conflict in which they figure: and, as a consequence, they are rarely interesting in their individual traits. It is in rendering the more intimate and personal phases of human character that epic literature shows itself, when compared with the modern novel, inefficient. The epic author exhibits little sympathy for any individual who struggles against the cause that is to be established. Æneas' dallying with Dido and subsequent desertion of her is of little interest to Virgil on the ground of individual personality: what interests him mainly is that so long as Æneas lingers with the Carthaginian queen, the founding of Rome is being retarded, and that when at last Æneas leaves her, he does so to advance the epic cause. Therefore Virgil regards the desertion of Dido as an act of heroic virtue on the part of the man who sails away to found a nation. A modern novelist, however (and this is the main point to be considered in this connection), would conceive the whole matter more personally. He would be far less interested at the moment in the ultimate founding of Rome than he would be in the misery of the deserted woman; and instead of considering Æneas as a model of