is limitless, from an Oriental fairy scene or an impossible Gulliver land to the commonplace life of the next street; but, the scene once determined, all must be congruous and probable, effect proceeding clearly from cause. Freaks and monstrosi ties, of being or action, occur only in actual life; if they occur in the course of invented narrative, they destroy the truth of the portrayal. The aphorism that "truth is stranger than fiction" is no mere epigram but a literal and necessary fact.1 Romance and Novel. - Both of these forms of fiction represent natural and healthy tendencies of human nature. Now one, now the other may have the greater vogue; each finds its own order of mind or its own region of popularity; but to pronounce a preference for one or the other, as some think were desirable, would be simply to pronounce on the tendency of one's own mind. 1. Romance obeys the tendency to emphasize the liberties of fiction. It deals with scenes and events more striking and wonderful than everyday life, with adventure, mystery, emphatic contrasts, surprising incidents, or if with common scenes, it seeks to invest them with a hue and picturesqueness beyond the ordinary. The traits with which it deals are not so much minute shades of motive and sentiment as the more elemental passions,—love, revenge, jealousy, hatred, selfsacrificing courage. Thus with romance is especially associated another muchdiscussed matter - idealism. Romance is more idealistic than the novel; it conceives of life as a kind of poetic creation, 1 "The common saying, that truth is stranger than fiction, should properly be expressed as an axiom that fiction ought not to be so strange as truth. A marvellous event is interesting in real life, simply because we know that it happened. In a fiction we know that it did not happen; and therefore it is interesting only as far as it is explained. Anybody can invent a giant or a genius by the simple process of altering figures or piling up superlatives. The artist has to make the existence of the giant or the genius conceivable." — STEPHEN, Hours in a Library, Vol. i, p. 217. See also quotation from James, footnote, p. 517, above. wherein character is made up as it were on a plan and principle, and wherein real events receive a new light from their source in motive and their goal in conduct. In idealism character is suffused to greater or less degree by the portrayer's fancy. EXAMPLES. Typical examples of the romantic in fiction may be found in Dumas's D'Artagnan cycle, The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After, and The Vicomte de Bragelonne. In English Sir Walter Scott is the great master of romance. Other examples are Cervantes's Don Quixote, Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame and Les Misérables. Examples of stories made romantic by poetic treatment of common themes are found in Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, and The Marble Faun. See the preface to The House of the Seven Gables for some interesting remarks on romance. 2. The novel holds itself more strictly within the limitations of fiction. It aims to produce not so much the interest of something new as of something recognizable as true to ordinary experience. Dealing with common life and events, it yet penetrates more into the finer motives and sentiments of character, and with the manners of the society in which we all move. As romance is naturally connected with idealism, so the novel tends to the realistic; that is, in recounting the elements of common life, it tends to give them as they appear, uncolored by fancy. Realism is to idealism somewhat as photography is to painting: it aims at a faithful transcript of facts, the small and homely along with the more imposing. Its abuse is to think too much, relatively, of dull detail, or of unsavory facts, under plea of faithfulness to nature, an abuse to be remedied by a higher estimate of values in life. EXAMPLES OF NOVEL. — Typical examples of the novel, as distinguished from the romance, may be found in the works of Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, etc. Other examples are: George Eliot's Adam Bede and The Mill on the Floss; Thackeray's Vanity Fair and The Newcomes; Howells's The Rise of Silas Lapham and A Hazard of New Fortunes. Drama. This is to be regarded as narrative wherein the characters speak and act for themselves, making the story before the spectators' eyes; while all the descriptive background is supplied by scenery and costume, or incidentally through the action and dialogue. 1. The plot of the drama must be more rigorous and interrelated, less tolerant of episode, than that of any other form of story. Every part must contribute clearly and obviously to the completed whole, and the action must be such as can be displayed on a stage. Hence drama must deal with the large and external elements of character, rather than with subtleties of sentiment and thought. 2. The characters reveal themselves more quickly, and results come about by directer means than in real life. This comes of course from the limited time available for representation; the result is that they reveal themselves in more pointed and significant terms than in the novel. 3. In movement, the drama must keep its audience aware of the working of cause and effect. It is not sufficient that an event occur; we must be able to see what previous conditions or circumstances brought it about. This excludes the element of accident, as a means of solving a plot; any event, to be dramatic, must have its cause and agencies in some way indicated before the spectator's eyes. CHAPTER XVI. EXPOSITION. WITH the coming two chapters we enter upon an important new phase of invention. We make transition from particularized objects to generalized, from things seen, heard, depicted, as matters of observation, to things conceived, identified, classified, as matters of penetrative and systematized thinking. We have been considering traits and acts that distinguish objects as individuals; we are now to look for the traits and acts that unite individuals into classes.1 And as we did in description and narration, so here we consider our subject first, so to say, in its statical, then in its dynamical aspect, first as something at rest, to be set forth as it is, and then as something in movement to an end; which distinction gives rise to the two literary types, exposition and argumentation. Definition of Exposition. Exposition is the fixing of meanings by generalization, that is, the exhibiting of objects, material or spiritual, as conceived and organized in thought. Let us briefly analyze this definition. 1. It is solely with the exhibiting of objects—that is, setting forth their meaning, without taking sides that exposition is concerned. It does not raise the question of the truth or falsity of a thing; that belongs to another process; it seeks rather what the thing is, what is its real nature, its purport, its range and bounds. It is time enough, when this is ascertained, to consider whether the thing, as 1 Compare what is said about description, p. 477, 2, above. thus fully revealed, proves itself, or whether further proof of argument is needed. NOTE. — As related to argumentation, exposition is like preparing a term or question for debate; or, to use another comparison, like coming to an understanding on a question of litigation, without bringing it into court. How important this preliminary may be, can be seen from the following description of Abraham Lincoln's method as a jury lawyer: "His more usual and more successful manner was to rely upon a clear, strong, lucid statement, keeping details in proper subordination and bringing forward, in a way which fastened the attention of court and jury alike, the essential point on which he claimed a decision. 'Indeed,' says one of his colleagues, 'his statement often rendered argument unnecessary, and often the court would stop him and say, "if that is the case, we will hear the other side."'" 1 2. The objects of exposition, like those of description, are material or spiritual; but while in description we look for unique traits, here we look for general. Exposition is merely a different approach to its object, an approach by way of the class rather than by way of the individual. Not the thing itself, in fact, but the notion of the thing, with all the essential parts and qualities covered by the name, is what exposition deals with. EXAMPLES OF CONTRASTED TREATMENT. The difference of principle in description and exposition may be illustrated by the following extracts, which both deal with the same object, — the one treating it as an individual, the other as a generalized notion. 1. Tennyson thus describes an oak: "A storm was coming, but the winds were still, And in the wild woods of Broceliande, Before an oak, so hollow, huge, and old, It look'd a tower of ivied mason-work, At Merlin's feet the wily Vivien lay." 2 Here the qualities selected for mention are only such as can be attributed to some one oak. — true of some oaks, but not necessarily true; an oak is just as truly an oak if it is neither hollow, huge, old, nor like an ivied tower. - 1 NICOLAY AND HAY, Life of Lincoln, Vol. i, p. 307. 2 TENNYSON, Merlin and Vivien, 11, 1-5. |