Section 8 Summary and Analysis

"Pattern and Rhythm" This lecture begins with Forster expressing his intention to leave the world of the fantastical and return to consideration of the novelist's tools—in particular, an aspect of the novel "which springs mainly out of the plot, and to which the characters and any other element present also contribute." He describes this aspect in visual terms as Pattern, and in musical terms as Rhythm. Before examining literary definitions of these two terms in detail, he offers two examples of novels with very clear patterns. Thais by Anatole France he describes as having the pattern of an hourglass (characters begin the novel separated, converge, and then separate again). Roman Pictures by Percy Lubbock has, Forster says, the pattern of a chain (characters meet at the beginning, separate, one of the characters has several encounters and experiences, and at...