On The Polyphony In Edward Morgan Forster's A Passage To India

Polyphony is a musical term,which refers to a number of independent melodic lines are organically combined to form polyphonic music,it composed of the coordinated flow of the main music.Bakhtin put forward the theory of polyphonic novel,namely,there are many independent and incompatible voices and consciousness exist in the novel.Scholars seldom used dialogicality to analyze literary works previously.Based on the theory of polyphonic novels,this thesis expounds the polyphonic artistic features of Edward Morgan Foster's colonial novel A Passage to India,which reflects the connection and division.Forster as a humanitarian writer,but he was also an imperialist writer,the dual identity showed ambivalence in the novel.The leading characters such as Doctor Aziz and Miss Adela Quested,who reveal emerged and distinct voices of their different consciousnesses within themselves.Within their psychological worlds,multiple consciousnesses of different selves are not isolated.It is impossible that one consciousness remains isolated from other ones,for any one certain self must necessarily interact with other selves.When multiple consciousnesses enter into genuine dialogical relationship with each other,the polyphonic nature of the character is formed.In the novel,the three plotlines,connection and separation of marriage between Adela and Ronny,connection and separation of India between Muslims and Hindus,and connection and separation of the world between the West and the East,represent not only Forster's contradictory oscillation between connection and separation but the polyphonic feature of the plotline in the novel.The parallel development of the three plotlines centers around the theme of "only connect." In the meantime,the opposite voices of connection and separation in every individual plotline also reveal the plotline's polyphonic nature.Throughout the novel,the polyphonic portrayal of colonized India,especially the Marabar Caves can be noticed.Behind the seemingly simple description of the environment,the dialogue between humanism and Orientalism carried on in the writer's consciousness can be discovered.Based on Bakhtin's polyphonic novel theory,this thesis analyzes A Passage to India from four aspects: the overview of the work,the dialogicality of multiple personality,the setting of the plot and the creation of the environment,which puts forward an artistic world of dialogue for the readers.Edward Morgan Forster makes it possible that various voices converge in the novel and develop a dialogical relationship with each other.By virtue of this dialogical relationship,each individual consciousness or voice is connected and "speaking" to others.The polyphonic features of A Passage to India reveal more prominently their special cultural and political significance as well as the conflicts between the West and East and the contraditions within India.It appeals that only through dialogue on equal footing between different sides can the West and East even the whole world achieve true understanding and establish a relationship of mutual promoting.