Art and the Novel

“Nature delivers a brazen world, but art a golden”–this is how Sir Philip Sidney conceives art. According to him, art creates a new world altogether for the edification and delight of the people. Man is a social animal. He cannot keep his experiences, observations, ideas, emotions and fancies to himself. He is under stress of a constant desire to impart them to those about him. For this he seeks the help of art. Literature is one such channel.

The word “literature” can be applied to any kind of writing from medicine advertisements to works of scholarship. So Dequincey distinguishes between literature of knowledge and literature of power. Literature of knowledge is liable to change. Books of science and history come under this category and they are to be revised often. Literature of power, which we may call for con­venience imaginative literature, stands the test of time.

Literature is neither merely imitative as the great Greek masters saw it, nor creative as the modern critics tend to suggest: Traditional criticism uses the word “Poetry” not confining the sense to what is written in verse. So we may call it “imaginative literature” for convenience, in the sense that it is both imitative and creative at the same time.

Ever since Plato, there have been three changes against imaginative writers, that they are liars, that they encourage immorality and that they are useless.

Aristotle says that it is the “mimetic quality” or fictitious quality that distinguishes imaginative literature from other kinds of literature. Literature imitates objects in the real world as much as historical and scientific writing. Aristotle means that literature creates fictitious objects. But Plato feels that the poet or the imaginative writer does not really “make” but he “imitates” objects in the real world. According to him, all literature is false because it is “imitation” and not the real thing. But the question of falsehood arises only where a person tells of facts, past or present. The best answer to this charge is given by Sidney: “The poet nothing aftirmeth, and therefore never lies.”

The second and third charges have been heard even now and they are more serious ones. In the treatment of life, literature treats both virtue and vice alike, sometimes making the one and sometimes the other triumph indifferently. It pained Plato to see virtue often coming to grief in the literature esteemed in his day like the works of Homer, Sophocles and Euripides. He feels that they give us to understand that many evil livers are happy and many righteous men unhappy. So he condemns such literature severely.

Ever since Freud, the values of good and bad, virtue and evil have been changed. His teachings have made the modern writer explore the subconscious recesses of the human mind. What our fathers dared not mention is frankly talked about now-a-days. Thus we have a striking sexual frankness in Jovce’s “Ulysses” or in Lawrence. But this may be a way of evading social or moral problems.

All art has some timeless quality because it is related to the passions and impulses which do not change amid the vast upheavals of the ages. This timeless quality is achieved through the union of experience with form and beauty. This permanence is something that remains in our mind. It is the solitary reaper that reaps and sings for herself. It is the Greek warrior that grows old in the long years of sea-life and finally finds his home in a mess. It is the woman who becomes a play-toy in the hands of cruel fate. It is the mood, the place and the detachment from history. In all great art, there is this haunting illusion as in Dickens, Hardy or Scott. Even after the allegorical relevance ceases, books like “Gulliver’s Travels” can be read with equal enjoyment.

David Copperfield is not an “imitation” of an actual person who has actually existed. But he is an imitation of a person. The sufferings of a boy with a step-father are the same anywhere. Philip with a lame-foot in “Of Human Bondage” has not actually existed. But his sensitivity, reactions, humility, adoration of perfection–they are the same with every crippled person.

The third charge is damaging to our way of life. The usefulness of literature still stands as the most controversial question. The usefulness depends on what we take literature for. Plato wanted literature to do the work of morality. Aristotle expects it to be no more than what it is–an art. This leads to the trend “Art for art’s sake,” which began to develop in the 19th century. Literatures in Germany and France have spread the doctrine” Are without purpose, for all purpose perverts art.” As a result “pure art” and “pure beauty” have floated into currency, and along with them the term “art for art’s sake.” To the question “What end does this book serve?” their answer will be: “It serves the end of being beautiful.” The campaign of art for art’s sake was carried during the second half of the 19th century into England with most flourish.

With the rise of Marxism, the concept of “art for art’s sake” has almost been rejected. Marxism places man is the centre of its philosophy. The novel is the first art to attempt to take the whole man and give him expression. E. M. Forster has pointed out that the great feature which distinguishes the novel from the other arts is that it has the power to make the secret life visible.

The theory of art for art’s sake does not suit the modern world which is beset with manifold crises–social, economical, religious and psychological. Literature must tell the truth–the truth of all these crises. So the modern novelists have to discard the aims of beauty and pleasure.

Marxism insists that neither form nor content are separate and passive entities. Form is produced by content and one with it. So the novel is best suited to show the man who is in conflict with society, with his fellows or with nature;

In the book “The Nature of Narrative” written by Mr. Robert Scholes in collaboration with Robert Kellogg, the authors proposed that there are two main modes of narrative: the empirical and the fictional. Empirical narrative subdivides into history, which is true to fact. and mimeses (i. e., realistic imitation) which is true to experience. Fictional narrative subdivides into romance, which cultivates beauty and aims to delight, and allegory, which cultivates goodness and alms to instruct. The primitive oral epic was a synthesis of empirical and fictional modes. Later this synthesis broke up in the transition from oral to written forms of communication. Once again in the renaissance, a new synthesis of the two modes produces in the 18th century, the novel.

The novel stands to modern civilization as the epic did to ancient civilization. The epic was a complete expression of society. There was a balance between the characters of the epic and the society in which they lived. “The Iliad” is more a picture of a society than of anyone of its characters. The novel deals with the individual. In “Robinson Crusoe”, we see a man at war with his fellows and with nature.

In modern fiction, we do not expect the author to interrupt his story to point the moral of the situation and justify or deplore the conduct of his characters. We see such practice with Thackery to provide this kind of running commentary. Fielding has been blamed because he introduced “sermons” into his novels. The difference between Scott and Fielding is that Scott’s characters are idealizations, while Fielding’s are types. A novelist can give his lesson more impressively through the fortunes of his characters than by such running commentary.

The novel has emerged as a powerful social force and is responsible for great reforms. Dickens says that “Nicholas Nickleby” was written to expose the monstrous neglect of education in England and the disregard of it by the state. “Bleak House” was aimed at the outrageous costs and delays of the law. “Oliver Twist” was aimed at the abuses of the workhouse system and the poor law in general. Charles Reade’s “It’s Never Too Late to Mend” and “Hard Cash” respectively laid bare the dreadful conditions in prisons and lunatic asylums. American novelist, Harriet Beecber Stowe’s novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” contains anti-slavery sentiments. These novels are still read with enjoyment when the conditions that evoked them have long since disappeared. Thus the novel began as an entertainment and grew into a powerful social force.

There has been a remarkable shift of interest in the modern world from poetry and drama to prose fiction. The novel which is historically the product of the printing press has become the central form of literary art. It has become the most effective medium for the portrayal of human thought and action. Poetry and drama have their roots in oral-aural and (in the case of drama) non-verbal modes of communication. Since the invention of the printing press, the novel has come into prominence and novels are not only read and studied more and more, but increasingly written as well.

As we move from a print-oriented culture to an electronically revived oral-aural culture, the novel seems to have been facing neglect. Some critics are of the opinion that the decay of the novel has already started. But the novel has two prominent assets. The novel alone can give a complete picture of life with man as its centre. It is able to show the important inner life which is beyond the scope of the drama or the cinema.