On Forster's Aesthetic Manifestation Of Pattern And Rhythm In His Two Novels

Edward Morgan Forster (1879-1970), a renowned English novelist and critic, delivered a series of lectures entitled Aspects of the Novel in 1927, in which he offered seven aspects for both the reader and the novelist to study a novel. Among the seven aspects, Pattern and Rhythm are aesthetic aspects of the novel. Forster explains that "the Pattern appeals to our aesthetic sense, it causes us to see the book as a whole" (Forster, 2002:386). By rhythm Forster means "repetition plus variation" (Forster,2002:432). Used properly, rhythm can create musical beauty and stitch the novel together internally. Pattern and rhythm serve as artistic techniques and critical standards by which novels can be compared and analyzed, interpreted and evaluated.In his life, E.M. Forster writes altogether six novels in his artistic way. However, most of the critical studies of E.M. Forster's fiction are devoted to detailed analyses of A Passage to India. As two important early novels, A Room with a View (1908) and Howards End (1910) are not paid enough attention by critics, nor have been judged and interpreted by his own suggested standards, the aspects of pattern and rhythm. To fill the gap, this thesis will apply Forster's own critical standards:pattern and rhythm to interpret these two novels to see how pattern and rhythm, have worked together to establish beauty in the novel and bring pleasure to the reader.Chapter one gives a summary introduction to E.M. Forster's pattern and rhythm theory.Chapter two discusses the pattern of A Room with a View and the pattern of Howards End. A Room with a View is shaped like an hour-glass, which is visual, while, Howards End has a musical form, which is aural. In A Room with a View, the two chief characters Lucy and George converge, cross and recede with precision of an hour-glass; meanwhile, this symmetry is reinforced by the exchange of places of the two minor characters Mr. Beebe and Miss Bartlett. Howards End follows sonata structure to response four parts of the novel; what's more, Forster's use of "sonata-form" which is usually adopted in the first movement of a sonata in his first section of the novel further supports this theory. Different as the patterns of the two novels are, both cause us to see the book as a whole and give us a sense of beauty.Chapter three first discusses easy rhythm of these two novels. In A Room with a View, easy rhythm is reflected by the use of rhythmical repetition of kissing views, the false unselfish tone and the habitual gesture of Charlotte Bartlett, and Lucy's leitmotif of music. In Howards End the recurrence of the house image, the image of cars and some phrases not only thicken the theme of connection but also give the novel a good sense of rhythm. And then it discusses linking rhythm, which is not discussed by Forster himself. Linking rhythm, recurring in Forster's fictional works, not only joins the two novels to each other but also joins Forster's other novels together.After careful studying the pattern and rhythm in Forster's two novels, this thesis draws a conclusion that Mr. E.M. Forster writes his novels by incorporating his concepts of pattern and rhythm as basic structural devices. As "pattern" designates an outward form and causes reader to see the book as a whole, so does "rhythm" suggest internal order, which stitches the fiction together from the inside and produces musical beauty to the reader. A full understanding of the two novels is gained only after a realization of the craftsmanship that went into creating them.