Write an essay on the modern English
novel with reference to any two novelists of your choice.
Answer:
Novel as a literary form is the most important and
popular literary medium in the modern times. It is the only literary form which
can compete for popularity with the film and the radio, and it is in this form
that a great deal of distinguished work is being produced. The publication of a
new novel by a great novelist is received now with the same enthusiastic
response as a new comedy by Dryden or Congreve was received in the Restoration
period, and a new volume of poems by Tennyson during the Victorian period.
Poetry which had for many centuries held the supreme place in the realm of
literature, has lost that position. Its appeal to the general public is now
negligible, and it has been obviously superseded by fiction.
The main reason for this change is
that the novel is the only literary form which meets the needs of the modern
world. The great merit of poetry is that it has the capacity to convey more
than one meaning at a time. It provides compression of meaning through
metaphorical expression. It manages to distil into a brief expression a whole
range of meanings, appealing to both intellect and emotion. But this
compression of metaphor is dependent upon a certain compression in the society.
In other words, the metaphor used in poetry must be based on certain
assumptions or public truths held in common by both the poet and the audience.
For example the word ‘home’ stood for a settled peaceful life with wife and
children, during the Victorian home. So if this word was used as a metaphor in
poetry its meaning to the poet as well to the audience was the same. But in the
twentieth century when on account of so many divorces and domestic
disturbances, home has lost its sanctity, in English society, the word ‘home’
cannot be used by the poet in that sense because it will convey to different
readers different meanings according to their individual experiences.
For poetry to be popular with the public there must
exist a basis in the individuals of some common pattern of psychological
reaction which has been set up by a consistency in the childhood environment.
The metaphors or ‘ambiguities’ which lend subtlety to poetic expression, are
dependent on a basis of common stimulus and response which are definite and
consistent. This is possible only in a society which in spite of its eternal
disorder on the surface, is dynamically functioning on the basis of certain
fundamentally accepted value.
The
modern period in England is obviously not such a period when society is
functioning on the basis of certain fundamental values. 