Introduction to Literature
Lecture 2
Literature and Literary Studies As a
Discipline
“Only Connect”
motto of E. M. Forster, Howards End (1910)
used here: to represent how you make sense of
texts by establishing connections
– within the text
– between or among texts
– between texts and their context
Connections within the text
Repetition of a word, a concept, a feature, a
character, a scene, an action, a conflict, a
solution
for example: the phrase “only connect”
the word “connect”
repetition: straightforward repetition
repetition with a difference: variation
repetition by offering a contrast
Connections within the text
Project Gutenberg edition of Forster’s Howards End:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2891
a ”hypertextual, self-referential edition”:
http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~rac101/concord/texts/ho
wards_end/
concordance for “connect”:
http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~rac101/concord/texts/ho
wards_end/howards_end.cgi?word=connect
Connections within the text
Project Gutenberg edition of Forster’s Howards End:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2891
a ”hypertextual, self-referential edition”:
http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~rac101/concord/texts/ho
wards_end/
concordance for “connect”:
http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~rac101/concord/texts/ho
wards_end/howards_end.cgi?word=connect
concordance
Connections within the text
Project Gutenberg edition of Forster’s Howards End:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2891
a ”hypertextual, self-referential edition":
http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~rac101/concord/texts/ho
wards_end/
concordance for “connect”:
http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~rac101/concord/texts/ho
wards_end/howards_end.cgi?word=connect
Concordance for “connect”
“Connect” in Howards End, Ch 22
Mature as he was, she might yet be able to
help him to the building of the rainbow bridge
that should connect the prose in us with the
passion. Without it we are meaningless
fragments, half monks, half beasts,
unconnected arches that have never joined
into a man. With it love is born, and alights on
the highest curve, glowing against the gray,
sober against the fire.
“Only connect” in Howards End, Ch 22
Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon.
Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will
be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height.
Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the
beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life
to either, will die.
Nor was the message difficult to give. It need not take
the form of a good "talking." By quiet indications the
bridge would be built and span their lives with beauty.
But she failed. For there was one quality in Henry for
which she was never prepared, however much she
reminded herself of it: his obtuseness. He simply did
not notice things
Variation on “Only connect” in
Howards End, Ch22
Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon.
Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will
be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height.
Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the
beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life
to either, will die.
Nor was the message difficult to give. It need not take
the form of a good "talking." By quiet indications the
bridge would be built and span their lives with beauty.
But she failed. For there was one quality in Henry for
which she was never prepared, however much she
reminded herself of it: his obtuseness. He simply did
not notice things
Contrast with “Only connect” in
Howards End, Ch 22
Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon.
Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will
be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height.
Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the
beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life
to either, will die.
Nor was the message difficult to give. It need not take
the form of a good "talking." By quiet indications the
bridge would be built and span their lives with beauty.
But she failed. For there was one quality in Henry for
which she was never prepared, however much she
reminded herself of it: his obtuseness. He simply did
not notice things […]
Variations on “connect”
in Howards End, Ch 38
"Not any more of this!" she cried. "You shall see the
connection if it kills you, Henry! You have had a
mistress--I forgave you. My sister has a lover--you
drive her from the house. Do you see the
connection? Stupid, hypocritical, cruel--oh,
contemptible! --a man who insults his wife when
she's alive and cants with her memory when she's
dead. A man who ruins a woman for his pleasure,
and casts her off to ruin other men. And gives bad
financial advice, and then says he is not
responsible. These, man, are you. You can't
recognize them, because you cannot connect.
Contrast and repetition
in Howards End, Ch 40
It is those that cannot connect who hasten to cast
the first stone.
This was Helen's evening--won at what cost, and
not to be marred by the sorrows of others. Of her
own tragedy Margaret never uttered a word.
"One isolates," said Helen slowly. "I isolated Mr.
Wilcox from the other forces that were pulling
Leonard downhill. Consequently, I was full of pity,
and almost of revenge. For weeks I had blamed
Mr. Wilcox only, and so, when your letters came--"
Howards End (1992)
Mrs Wilcox
Producer: Ismail Merchant; Dirctor: James Ivory,
Screenplay: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
Art Direction-Set Decoration by Luciana Arrighi, Ian Whittaker
Emma Thompson
Anthony Hopkins
Vanessa Redgrave
Helena Bonham Carter
Margaret and Helen
Margaret and Mr Wilcox
Connections between or among texts
- among works by the same author
- among works by various authors
- within a genre,
- within the literature of a period,
- within English literature,
- within literature written in English
- within literature available in English (not
necessarily limited to Western culture)
Selected works by E.M. Forster
Novels:
• Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905)
• The Longest Journey (1907)
• A Room with a View (1908)
• Howards End (1910)
• A Passage to India (1924)
• Maurice (written in 1913–14, published
posthumously in 1971)
• Arctic Summer (an incomplete fragment, written in
1912–13, published posthumously in 2003)
Literary criticisim: Aspects of the Novel (1927)
Novels of the same genre: the
“condition-of-England” novel
Condition of England novel: A type of novel reflecting concern
about the ‘Condition of England’ in the 19th century, particularly
in the restless and insecure 1840s. The concern was largely
stimulated by [Thomas] Carlyle’s message in Chartism (1839) and
Past and Present (1843) that laissez-faire policies, combined with
neglect of the industrial poor, were driving the ranks of society
further apart and could easily lead to revolution. Recurrent
preoccupations of the Condition of England novel are: the use of
power, mechanical and social; the sense of a breach between
man and man and the importance of healing it; the need for
education; and the fear of revolution. Examples include: Disraeli’s
Coningsby (1844) and Sybil (1845); Charles Kingsley’s Yeast (1848)
and Alton Locke (1850); Gaskell’s Mary Barton (1848) and North
and South (1855); Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley (1849); Dickens’s
Hard Times (1854) and Dinah Mulock’s John Halifax. Gentleman
(1857) (The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English, ed. Ian
Ousby, 1988, 1993)
More recent literary references to
Howards End
David Lodge, literary theorist and writer of
comic novels, in Nice Work (1988) creates
another learned woman character, Robyn, and
matches her with Vic, another unlikely partner
from the world of industry
(wikipedia refers to this genre as the “industrial
novel”)
Connections between texts and their
contexts
- between (among) literary texts and the sister
arts
- between (among) literary texts and other
spheres of language and culture, including
philosophy, history, law, medicine,
natural sciences, as well as the daily
life, politics, or popular culture
characteristic of a period at any given
time/place
Novels by E.M. Forster, adapted for
film
• by Merchant-Ivory:
Maurice (1987)
A Room With a View (1985)
• by David Lean (dir.): A Passage to India (1984)
• by Charles Sturridge (dir.) Where Angels Fear
to Tread (1991)
(also note: Heat and Dust (1983), a MerchantIvory film, adapted by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
from her own novel)
“Only Connect”
References from professional to popular:
A sociological analysis of types of computermediated communities:
http://web.mit.edu/gtmarx/www/connect.html
Only Connect…, the unofficial E. M. Forster site:
http://musicandmeaning.com/forster/
Essay on the goal of liberal education:
http://www.williamcronon.net/writing/Cronon_
Only_Connect.pdf
“Only Connect”
“Only Connect…”: The Goals of a Liberal Education, by
William Cronon – a motto or an epigraph from Forster
From The American Scholar, Volume 67, No. 4, Autumn
1998. Copyright © 1998 by William Cronon.
William Cronon, Frederick Jackson Turner Professor of
History, Geography, and Environmental Studies at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison, is the author of
Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in
Nature and Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great
West, which won the Bancroft Prize in 1992.
http://www.williamcronon.net/writing/Cronon_Only_Con
nect.pdf
motto
epigraph
epigraph Four meanings may be distinguished: (a)
an inscription on a statue, stone or building; (b)
the writing (legend) on a coin; (c) a quotation on
the title pages of a book; (d) a motto (q.v.)
heading a new section or paragraph
(Definitions from ADictionary of Literary Terms and
Literary Theory, byJ. A. Cuddon, revised by C. E.
Preston, 4th edition, 1998, Penguin edition 1999.)
“Only Connect”
by William Cronon
What does it mean to be a liberally educated person? […]
Liberal education is built on these values: it aspires to
nurture the growth of human talent in the service of
human freedom. So one very simple answer to my
question is that liberally educated people have been
liberated by their education to explore and fulfill the
promise of their own highest talents.
See also: “Life Skills” by Martha Nussbaum, TLS, April 30,
2010, No 5587 13-15 – an extract from her book Not
For Profit: Why democracy needs the humanities,
Princeton University Press, 2010
Nussbaum on the humanities
The cultivation of imagination is closely linked
to the Socratic capacity for criticism of dead or
inadequate traditions, and provides essential
support for that critical activity. … Yet, as with
critical thinking, so too with the arts: we
discover that they are essential for the goal of
economic growth. … Innovation requires
minds that are flexible, open, and creative;
literature and the arts cultivate these
capacities. (TLS No 5587)