E.M.フォースターの小説とその結末 : 開かれた結末の意味

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Generally speaking, the conclusion of the novel accords with the end of the experiences which the characters share with us in the fictional world of traditional novels. The development of the work stops, when the flux of the characters' experiences comes to an end without any remaining unsolved matters. Thus marriage and death are especially expedient and it is conventional that the death or marriage of a character puts an end to the flow of his experience. For example, Henry Fielding and Jane Austen close their works at the moment of the marriage of their heroes and heroines. E. M. Forster speaks bitterly against this convention in his essay on the novel, Aspects of the Novel (originally a course of Clark Lectures at Cambridge). Certainly the conclusions of Forster's novels do not mean the end of inner movement in the fictional world. When the work closes itself formally, the problem which the characters have undertaken in the collision between their inner lives and the outer world is left unsolved befor us, with remaining power for new development. In his first novel, Where Angels Fear to Tread, the heroine, Caroline pursues a true personal relationship with Gino. Her experience takes the concrete form of her awareness of her love for an Italian youth. The work proceeds through their encounter and develops further with her perception of his inner values, which are quite different from her neighbour's values at Sawston in England. But their personal relationship remains still incompletely developed at the end of the work. Forster would not suggest the future of their relationship: he defines the problem of personal relationships but does not solve it in this work. One may feel that his other works are unfinished, too. This leads to an important key to accurate interpretation of his novels if we ask the reason why Forster should have concluded his novels in such a way. We shall clarify, in this paper, Forster's method of concluding his novels and its meaning in comparison with traditional writers' methods, inquiring as a clue about "the symbolic moment", which is a phrase pregnant with great significance describing his view of human relationships, and the pattern of inheritance of the subject from one character to another that appears so often in his novels.
横浜国立大学の論文
1973-10-31

著者

鮎沢乗光
英語教室

E.M.フォースターの小説とその結末 : 開かれた結末の意味

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