SOURCE: "Poetic Truth in 'Too Late the Phalarope,'" in English Studies in Africa, Vol. 24, No. 1, March, 1981, pp. 37-44.

Below, Thompson explains how Too Late the Phalarope manifests universality despite the contemporary relevance of the novel's historical aspects.

Instead of entitling this essay as I have done, I might simply have said an 'interpretation' of the novel, or more confidently (and, probably, more honestly) 'its meaning' or 'its value for us'. But what I wanted to stress were the limitations of focusing on the mere 'historic truth' of the novel. By historic truth I mean of course something much broader than what Aristotle had in mind in his Poetics and what historiographers aim at. Any novel offers itself not as fact but as fiction, but it is nevertheless possible to limit its significance to a particular time and place, to the social situation it purports to describe, or...