CHAPTER IX_A Manual of the Art of Fiction

THE EPIC, THE DRAMA, AND THE NOVEL

Fiction a Generic Term--Narrative in Verse and Narrative in

Prose--Three Moods of Fiction: I. The Epic Mood--II. The Dramatic

Mood: 1. Influence of the Actor; 2. Influence of the Theatre; 3.

Influence of the Audience--[Dramatized Novels]--III. The

Novelistic Mood.

=Fiction a Generic Term.=--Throughout the present volume, the word

_fiction_ has been used with a very broad significance, to include

every type of literary composition whose purpose is to embody certain

truths of human life in a series of imagined facts. The reason for

this has been that the same general artistic methods, with very slight

and obvious modifications, are applicable to every sort of narrative

which sets forth imagined people in a series of imagined acts. Nearly

all of the technical principles which have been outlined in the six

preceding chapters apply not only to the novel and the short-story,

but likewise to the epic and the lesser narrative in verse, and also

(though with certain evident limitations) to the drama. The materials

and methods of fiction may be studied in the works of Homer,

Shakespeare, and even Browning, as well as in the works of Balzac,

Turgénieff, and Mr. Kipling. The nature of narrative is necessarily

the same, whatever be its mood or its medium. The methods of

constructing plots, of delineating characters, of employing settings,

do not differ appreciably whether a narrative be written in verse or

in prose; and in either case the same selection of point of view and

variety of emphasis are possible. Therefore, in this volume, no

attempt has hitherto been made to distinguish one type of fictitious

narrative from another.

=Narrative in Verse and Narrative in Prose.=--Such a distinction, if it

be attempted at all, should be made only on the broadest and most

general lines. First of all, it should be admitted that, in an inquiry

concerned solely with the methods of fiction, no technical distinction

is possible between the narrative that is written in verse and the

narrative that is written in prose. The two differ in the mood of

their materials and the medium through which they are expressed; but

they do not differ distinctly in methods of construction. As far as

plot and characters and setting are concerned, Sir Walter Scott went

to work in the Waverley Novels, which are written in prose, just as he

had gone to work in "Marmion" and "The Lady of the Lake," which are

written in verse. In his verse he said things with the better art, in

his prose he had more things to say; but in each case his central

purpose was the same: and nothing can be gained from a critical dictum

that "Ivanhoe" is fiction and that "Marmion" is not. In the history of

every nation, fiction has been written earliest in verse and only

afterwards in prose. What we loosely call the novel was developed

late in literature, at a time after prose had supplanted verse as the

natural medium for narrative. Therefore, and therefore only, have we

come to regard the novel as a type of prose literature. For there is

no inherent reason why a novel may not be written in verse. There is a

sense in which Mrs. Browning's "Aurora Leigh," Owen Meredith's

"Lucile," and Coventry Patmore's "The Angel in the House," to mention

works of very different quality and calibre, may be regarded more

properly as novels than as poems. The story of "Maud" inspired

Tennyson to poetic utterance, and he told the tale in a series of

exquisite lyrics; but the same story might have been used by a

different author as the basis for a novel in prose. The subject of

"Evangeline" was suggested to Longfellow by Hawthorne; and if the

great prose poet had written the story himself, it would not have

differed essentially in material or in structural method from the

narrative as we know it through the medium of the verse romancer.

François Coppée has composed admirable short-stories in verse as

well as in prose. "The Strike of the Iron-Workers" ("_La Gréve des

Forgerons_"), which is written in rhymed Alexandrines, does not

differ markedly in narrative method from "The Substitute" ("_Le

Remplaçant_"), which is written in prose. To be sure, the former is a

poem and the latter is not; but only a very narrow-minded critic would

call the latter a short-story without applying the same term also to

the former. Therefore, the question whether a certain fictitious tale

should be told in verse or in prose has no place in a general

discussion of the materials and methods of fiction. It is a matter

of expression merely, and must be decided in each case by the

temperamental attitude of the author toward his subject-matter.

=Three Moods of Fiction.=--Eliminating, therefore, as unprofitable any

attempt at a critical distinction between fiction that is written in

verse and fiction that is written in prose, we may yet derive a

certain profit from a distinction along broad and general lines

between three leading moods of fiction,--the epic, the dramatic, and

what (lacking a more precise term) we may call the novelistic. Certain

materials of fiction are inherently epic, or dramatic, or novelistic,

as the case may be. Also, an author, according to his mental attitude

toward life and toward the subject-matter of his fictions, may cast

his stories either in the epic, the dramatic, or the novelistic mood.

In order to understand this distinction, we must examine the nature of

the epic and the drama, and then study the novel in comparison with

these two elder types of fiction.

=I. The Epic Mood.=--The great epics of the world, whether, as in the

case of the Norse sagas and possibly of the Homeric poems, they have

been a gradual and undeliberate aggregation of traditional ballads, or

else, as in the case of the "Æneid" and "Paradise Lost," they have

been the deliberate production of a single conscious artist, have

attained their chief significance from the fact that they have summed

up within themselves the entire contribution to human progress of a

certain race, a certain nation, a certain organized religion. The

glory that was Greece is epitomized and sung forever in the

"Iliad,"--the grandeur that was Rome, in the "Æneid." All that the

Middle Ages gave the world is gathered and expressed in the "Divine

Comedy" of Dante: all of medieval history, science, philosophy,

scholarship, poetry, religion may be reconstructed from a right

reading and entire understanding of this single monumental poem. If

you would know Portugal in her great age of discovery and conquest and

national expansion, read the "Lusiads" of Camoëns. If you would know

Christianity militant against the embattled legions of the Saracens,

read the "Jerusalem Liberated" of Tasso. If you would know what the

Puritan religion once meant to the greatest minds of England, read the

"Paradise Lost" of Milton.

The great epics have attained this resumptive and historical

significance only by exhibiting as subject-matter a vast and communal

struggle, in which an entire race, an entire nation, an entire

organized religion has been concerned,--a struggle imagined as so vast

that it has shaken heaven as well as earth and called to conflict not

only men but also gods. The epic has dealt always with a struggle, at

once human and divine, to establish a great communal cause. This

cause, in the "Æneid," is the founding of Rome; in the "Jerusalem

Liberated" it is the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre; in the "Faerie

Queene" it is the triumph of the virtues over the vices; in the

"Lusiads" it is the discovery and conquest of the Indies; in the

"Divine Comedy" it is the salvation of the human soul. Whatever

nations, whatever races, whatever gods oppose the founding of Rome or

the liberation of Jerusalem must be conquered, because in either case

the epic cause is righteous and predestined to prevail.

As a result of this, the characters in the great epics are memorable

mainly because of the part that they play in advancing or retarding

the victory of the vast and social cause which is the subject of the

story. Their virtues and their faults are communal and representative:

they are not adjudged as individuals, apart from the conflict in which

they figure: and, as a consequence, they are rarely interesting in

their individual traits. It is in rendering the more intimate and

personal phases of human character that epic literature shows itself,

when compared with the modern novel, inefficient. The epic author

exhibits little sympathy for any individual who struggles against the

cause that is to be established. Æneas dallying with Dido and

subsequent desertion of her is of little interest to Virgil on the

ground of individual personality: what interests him mainly is that so

long as Æneas lingers with the Carthaginian queen, the founding of

Rome is being retarded, and that when at last Æneas leaves her, he

does so to advance the epic cause. Therefore Virgil regards the

desertion of Dido as an act of heroic virtue on the part of the man

who sails away to found a nation. A modern novelist, however (and this

is the main point to be considered in this connection), would conceive

the whole matter more personally. He would be far less interested at

the moment in the ultimate founding of Rome than he would be in the

misery of the deserted woman; and instead of considering Æneas as a

model of heroic virtue, would adjudge him as personally base. From

this we see that the novelistic attitude toward character is much more

intimate than the epic attitude. The wrath of Achilles is significant

to Homer, not so much because it is an exhibition of individual

personality as because it is a factor in jeopardizing the victory of

the Greeks. Considered as types of individual character, most of

Homer's heroes are mere boys. It is the cause for which they fight

that gives them dignity: embattled Greece must repossess the beauty

which a lesser race has reft away from it. Even Helen herself is

merely an idea to be fought for; she is not, as a woman, interesting

humanly. It is only in infrequent passages, such as the scene of

parting between Andromache and Hector, that the ancient epics reveal

the intimate attitude toward character to which we have grown

accustomed in the modern novel.

Because the epic authors have been interested always in communal

conflict rather than in individual personality, they have seldom made

any use of the element of love,--the most intimate and personal of all

emotions. There is no love in Homer, and scarcely any love in Virgil

and in Milton. Tasso, to be sure, uses a love motive as the basis for

each of the three leading strands of his story; but because of this,

his epic, though gaining in modernity and charm, loses something of

the communal immensity--the impersonal dignity--of the "Iliad" and the

"Æneid." On the other hand, novelistic authors, since they have been

interested mainly in the revelation of intimate phases of individual

personality, have seized upon the element of love as the leading

motive of their stories. And this is one of the main differences, on

the side of content, between epic and novelistic fiction.

Certain great works of fiction stand upon the borderland between the

epic and the novel. "Don Quixote" is, for instance, such a work. It

is epic in that it sums up and expresses the entire contribution of

Spain to the progress of humanity. It is resumptive of the nation that

produced it: all phases of Spanish life and character, ideals and

temperament, are epitomized within it. But, on the other hand, it is

novelistic in the emphasis it casts on individual personality,--the

intimacy with which it focusses the interest not so much upon a nation

as upon a man.

The epic, in the ancient sense, is dead to-day. Facility of

intercommunication between the nations has made us all citizens of the

world; and an increased sense of the relativity of national and

religious ideals has made us catholic of other systems than our own.

Consequently we have lost belief in a communal conflict so absolutely

just and necessary as to call to battle powers not only human but

divine. Also, since the French Revolution, we have grown to set the

one above the many, and to believe that, of right, society exists for

the sake of the individual rather than the individual for the sake of

society. Therefore the novel, which deals with individual personality

in and for itself, is more attuned to modern life than the epic, which

presents the individual mainly in relation to a communal cause which

he strives to advance or to retard.

The epic note, however, survives in certain momentous modern novels.

"Uncle Tom's Cabin," for example, is less important merely as a novel

than as the epic of the great cause of abolition. Underlying many of

the works of Erckmann-Chatrian is an epic purpose to advance the cause

of universal peace by a depiction of the horrors of war. Balzac had in

mind the resumptive phase of epic composition when he planned his

"Human Comedy" (choosing his title in evident imitation of that of

Dante's poem), and started out to sum up all phases of human life in

a single monumental series of narratives. So also the late Frank

Norris had an epic idea in his imagination when he planned a trilogy

of novels (which unhappily he died before completing) to exhibit what

the great wheat industry means to the modern world.

In the broad and social sense, the epic is undeniably a greater type

of fiction than the novel, because it is more resumptive of life in

the large, and looks upon humanity with a vaster sweep of vision; but

in the deep and personal sense, the novel is the greater, because it

is more capable of an intimate study of individual emotion. And it is

possible, as we have seen, that modern fiction should be at once epic

and novelistic in content and in mood,--epic in resuming all aspects

of a certain phase of life and in exhibiting a social struggle, and

novelistic in casting emphasis upon personal details of character and

in depicting intimate emotions. Probably no other author has succeeded

better than Emile Zola in combining the epic and the novelistic moods

of fiction; and the novels in the Rougon-Macquart series are at once

communal and personal in their significance.

=II. The Dramatic Mood.=--It is somewhat simpler to trace a

distinction both in content and in method between novelistic and

dramatic fiction, because the latter is produced under special

conditions which impose definite limitations upon the author. A

drama is, in essence, a story devised to be presented by actors on a

stage before an audience. The dramatist, therefore, works ever

under the sway of three influences to which the novelist is not

submitted:--namely, the temperament of the actors by whom his plays

are to be performed, the physical conditions of the theatre in which

they are to be produced, and the psychologic nature of the audience

before which they are to be presented. The combined force of these

three external influences upon the dramatist accounts for all of

the essential differences between the drama and the novel.

=1. Influence of the Actor.=--First of all, because of the influence

of his actors, the dramatist is obliged to draw character through

action, and to eliminate from his work almost every other means of

characterization. He must therefore select from life such moments as

are active rather than passive. His characters must constantly be

doing something; they may not pause for careful contemplation.

Consequently the novelist has a wider range of subject than the

dramatist, because he is able to consider life more calmly, and to

concern himself, if need be, with thoughts and feelings that do not

translate themselves into action. In depicting objective events in

which the element of action is paramount, the drama is more

immediate and vivid; but the novel may depict subjective events

which are quite beyond the presentation of actors in a theatre.

Furthermore, since he is not obliged to think of actors, the

novelist has a greater freedom in creating characters than the

dramatist. The great characters of the drama have been devised by

playwrights who have already attained command of the theatre of

their place and time, and who therefore have fashioned their parts to

fit the individual actors they have found ready to perform them.

Consequently they have endowed their characters with the physical, and

even to some extent the mental, characteristics of certain actual

actors. M. Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac is not merely Cyrano, but

also Constant Coquelin; Sardou's La Tosca is not merely La Tosca, but

also Mme. Sarah Bernhardt; Molière's Célimène is not merely Célimène,

but also Mlle. Molière; Shakespeare's Hamlet is not merely Hamlet,

but also Richard Burbage. In working thus with one eye upon the

actual, the dramatist is extremely likely to be betrayed into

untruthfulness. In the last scene of "Hamlet," the Queen says of

the Prince, "He's fat and scant of breath." This line was of course

occasioned by the fact that Richard Burbage was corpulent during the

season of 1602. But the eternal truth is that Prince Hamlet is a

slender man; and Shakespeare has here been forced to belie the

truth in order to subserve the fact. On the other hand, the

dramatist is undoubtedly aided in his great aim of creating

characters by holding in mind certain actual people who have been

selected to represent them; and what the novelist gains in range and

freedom of characterization, he is likely to lose in concreteness

of delineation.

=2. Influence of the Theatre.=--Secondly, the form and structure of

the drama in any age is imposed upon the dramatist by the size and

shape and physical appointments of the theatre he is writing for.

Plays must be built in one way to fit the theatre of Dionysus, in

another way to fit the Globe upon the Bankside, in still another way

to fit the modern electric-lighted stage behind a picture-frame

proscenium. The dramatist in constructing his story is hedged in by a

multitude of physical restrictions, of which he must make a special

study in order to force them to contribute to the presentation of his

truth instead of detracting from it. In this regard, again, the

novelist works with greater freedom. Seldom is his labor subjected to

merely physical restrictions from without. Sometimes, to be sure,

certain arbitrary conditions of the trade of publishing have exercised

an influence over the structure of the novel. In England, early in the

nineteenth century, it was easier to sell a three-volume novel than a

tale of lesser compass; and many a story of the time had to be pieced

out beyond its natural and truthful length in order to meet the

demands of the public and the publishers. But such a case, in the

history of the novel, is exceptional. In general, the novelist may

build as he chooses. He may tell a tale, long or short, happening in

few places or in many; and is not, like the modern dramatist, confined

in place to no more than four or five different settings, and in time

to the two hours' traffic of the stage. The novel, therefore, is far

more serviceable than the drama as a medium for exhibiting the gradual

growth of character,--the development of personality under influences

extending over long periods of time and exerted in many different

places.

=3. Influence of the Audience.=--Thirdly, the very content of the

drama is determined by the fact that a play must be devised to

interest a multitude rather than an individual. The novelist writes

for a reader sitting alone in his library: whether ten such readers or

a hundred thousand ultimately read a book, the author speaks to each

of them apart from all the others. But the dramatist must plan his

story to interest simultaneously a multitude of heterogeneous

observers. The drama, therefore, must be richer in popular appeal; but

the novel may be subtler in appealing to the one instead of to the

many. Since the novelist addresses himself to a single person only, or

to a limitless succession of single persons, he may choose the sort of

reader he will write for; but the dramatist must please the many, and

is therefore at the mercy of the multitude. He writes less freely than

the novelist, since he cannot pick his auditors. His themes, his

thoughts, and his emotions are restricted by the limits of popular

appreciation.

This important condition is potent in determining the proper content

of dramatic fiction. For it has been found in practice that the one

thing most likely to interest a crowd is a struggle between character

and character. Speaking empirically, the late Ferdinand Brunetière, in

his preface to "_Annales du Théâtre et de la Musique_" for 1893,

stated that the drama has dealt always with a struggle between human

wills; and his statement, formulated in the catch-phrase, "No

struggle, no drama," has since become a commonplace of dramatic

criticism. The reason for this is simply that characters are

interesting to a crowd mainly in those crises of emotion that bring

them to the grapple. A single individual, like the reader of a novel,

may be interested intellectually in those gentle influences beneath

which a character unfolds itself as mildly as a blowing rose; but to

the gathered multitude a character does not appeal except in moments

of contention. Hence the drama, to interest an audience, must present

its characters in some struggle of the wills,--whether it be merely

flippant, as in the case of Benedick and Beatrice, or gentle, as in

that of Viola and Orsino, or terrible, with Macbeth, or piteous, with

Lear. The drama, therefore, is akin to the epic, in that it must

represent a struggle; but it is more akin to the novel, in that it

deals with human character in its individual, rather than its

communal, aspects. But in range of representing characters, the drama

is more restricted than the novel; for though the novelist is at

liberty to exhibit a struggle of individual human wills whenever he

may choose to do so, he is not, like the dramatist, prohibited from

representing anything else. In covering this special province, the

drama is undeniably more vivid and emphatic; but many momentous phases

of human experience are not contentious but contemplative; and these

the novel may reveal serenely, without employment of the sound and

fury of the drama.

Since the mind of the multitude is more emotional than intellectual,

the dramatist, for his most effective moments, is obliged to set forth

action with emotion for its motive. But the novelist, in motivating

action, may be more considerate and intellectual, since his appeal is

made to the individual mind. In its psychologic processes, the crowd

is more commonplace and more traditional than is the individual. The

drama, therefore, is less serviceable than the novel as a vehicle for

conveying unaccustomed and advanced ideas of life. The crowd has no

speculation in its eyes: it is impatient of original thought, and of

any but inherited emotion: it evinces little favor for the original,

the questioning, the new. Therefore if an author holds ideas of

religion, or of politics, or of social law that are in advance of his

time, he will do better to embody them in a novel than in a drama;

because the former makes its appeal to the individual mind, which has

more patience for intellectual consideration.

Furthermore, the novelist need not, like the dramatist, subserve the

immediate necessity for popular appeal. The dramatic author, since he

plans his story for a heterogeneous multitude of people, must

incorporate in the same single work of art elements that will interest

all classes of mankind. But the novelistic author, since he is at

liberty to pick his auditors at will, may, if he choose, write only

for the best-developed minds. It is an element of Shakespeare's

greatness that his most momentous plays, like "Hamlet" and "Othello,"

are of interest to people who can neither read nor write, as well as

to people of educated sensibilities. But it is an evidence of

Meredith's greatness that his novels are caviare to the general. Mr.

Kipling's "They" is the greater story because it defends itself from

being understood by those it is not really for. In exhibiting the

subtler and more delicate phases of human experience, the novel far

transcends the drama. The drama, at its deepest, is more poignant; but

the novel, at its highest, is more exquisite.

=Dramatized Novels.=--The proper material for the drama is, as we

have seen, a struggle between individual human wills, motivated by

emotion rather than by intellect, and expressed in terms of

objective action. In representing such material, the drama is supreme.

But the novel is wider in range; for besides exhibiting (though

less emphatically) this special aspect of human life, it may embody

many other and scarcely less important phases of individual

experience. Of late, an effort has been made to break down the

barrier between the novel and the drama: many stories, which have

been told first in the novelistic mood, have afterward been

reconstructed and retold for presentation in the theatre. This

attempt has succeeded sometimes, but has more often failed. Yet it

ought to be very easy to distinguish a novel that may be dramatized

from a novel that may not. Certain scenes in novelistic literature,

like the duel in "The Master of Ballantrae," are essentially dramatic

both in content and in mood. Such scenes may be adapted with very

little labor to the uses of the theatre. Certain novels, like "Jane

Eyre," which exhibit an emphatic struggle between individual human

wills, are inherently capable of theatric representment. But any novel

in which the main source of interest is not the clash of character

on character, in which the element of action is subordinate, or in

which the chief appeal is made to the individual (instead of the

collective) mind, is not capable of being dramatized successfully.

=III. The Novelistic Mood.=--It is impossible to determine whether, at

the present day, the novel or the drama is the more effective medium

for embodying the truths of human life in a series of imagined facts.

Dramatic fiction has the greater depth, and novelistic fiction has the

greater breadth. The latter is more extensive, the former more

intensive, in its artistry. This much, however, may be decided

definitely. The novel, at its greatest, may require a vaster sweep of

wisdom on the part of the author; but the drama is technically more

difficult, since the dramatist, besides mastering all of the general

methods of fiction which he necessarily employs in common with the

novelist, must labor in conformity with a special set of conditions to

which the novelist is not submitted. George Meredith may be a greater

author than Sir Arthur Wing Pinero; but Pinero is of necessity more

rigid in his mastery of structure.

REVIEW QUESTIONS

1. Define the three moods of fiction,--epic, dramatic, and

novelistic.

2. What are the advantages and disadvantages of the epic mood?

3. Explain the three influences under which the dramatist must always

do his work,--that of the actor, that of the theatre, and that of

the audience.

4. What sort of novel can be dramatized successfully?