Author Type

Graduate Student

Date of Award

1971

Document Type

Thesis

Publication Status

Version of Record

Submission Date

October 2026

Thesis/Dissertation Advisor [Chair]

Greer, Allen W.

Abstract

The two writing modes in E.M. Forster's fiction--which we may call the "ironic" and the "poetic"--and the ambivalent meaning reflected in these modes make him a puzzling writer to comprehend fully. A study of his narrator's function sheds some light on this essential division in his work, revealing that the narrator evolves from an omniscient type often found in the Victorian novel to a much more subtle and unobtrusive , but not thoroughly effaced, narrator in his last novel. The narrator's role changes from that of a "Stage Manager" in A Room with a View to a mediator who speaks almost as one with the central character in Howards End to that of a commentator with psychological as well as social insight in A Passage to India. As such, the narrator makes a direct revelation of reality to the reader: a basically religious and tentatively hopeful awareness of some unseen power existing beyond the physical universe.

Extent

100 p.

Comments

Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters|Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 1971.|FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection|Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters

Identifier

FADT13424

Format

pdf

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