The Renaissance theories of epic poetry were partially followed in heroic romance, and had a definite place in the conception of the novel held by Fielding and his contemporaries. Esthetic theory largely shaped the pastoral romance, and all later embodiments of the " art for art's sake" doctrine. See also the prefaces of Bulwer Lytton for application of broad æsthetic principle to the novel.

(3) The spirit and method of journalism have had a general influence on much modern fiction, and are the immediate ancestors of the roman feuilleton and the novel of "reportage."

(4) The relations of the drama and the novel are noticed in the chapter on Comparative Æsthetics.-The Sir Roger de Coverley papers may be considered as transitional from the "character" to the complete novel.

(5) The short story of the Renaissance type has furnished the novel with many situations and germs of plot; the short story of the last century has probably aided the development of unity, clear structure, and finished style in the novel. Romance has influenced the novel by way of reaction, and every type of novel has had its dynamic relations to all its contemporaries and successors. Religious literature, including the Bible, has been a shaping force in early "spiritual romance," and in didactic allegory.

The reading of the early church fathers probably suggested Callista to Newman. D'Annunzio urges that in order to improve their style the Italian psychologists "debbono ricercare gli asceti, i casuisti, i volgarizzatori di sermoni, di omelìe e di soliloquii.” 1

See also the note on Pepita Jiménez in Section 139.

Particularly concrete study of the relation of cause and effect is possible in the case of direct imitation, as in parody and burlesque.

Compare the romance of chivalry with Don Quixote; the heroic romance with the pseudo-heroic Female Quixote; and the parodies of Thackeray with their original models.

1 Preface to Il Trionfo della Morte.

An important influence is often exerted after a long period, either directly or through a series of intermediary works.

Tristram Shandy is greatly indebted to the Anatomy of Melancholy. - Fielding was a master of Thackeray. — Greek romance is one ancestor of heroic romance. Don Quixote was a general model for Dead Souls. The following long line of inheritance is given in Matthews's Historical Novel: Lazarillo and Guzman, Lesage, Smollett, Dickens, Bret Harte, Kipling. Another interesting chain given in the same work, though not long in time, is, Turgenieff, Henry James, Bourget, d'Annunzio. —A sequence little suspected by the casual reader is the Adelphi of Terence, Shadwell's Squire of Alsatia, The Fortunes of Nigel.

156. Historical Influence. While all forms of human expression are influenced by the Zeitgeist, Robiati calls the novel "the form of art which most resembles the time in which it is produced." An earlier and more cautious writer 1 considers it as "perhaps the most complete expression of the moral and social state of an epoch and a country." Every great movement in the history of fiction, though modified by race and nationality, is one phase of a general cultural episode in modern civilization.

The rationalism and pseudo-classicism of the eighteenth century appear in essentially the same manner in the fiction of Russia, Scandinavia, and Holland, as in the major literatures of the period. Royce, in The Spirit of Modern Philosophy, associates the idealistic philosophy of Germany with its literature of the romantic movement; and Gates, in his editorial essay on Newman, discusses the relations of the Oxford Movement to the spirit of romanticism. (Compare Section 166.) Realism, democracy, and the scientific spirit are characteristic of the nineteenth century from Iceland to Greece, and from Japan to Chili. There are common elements, due to historical conditions, in the Catholicism of Manzoni, Newman, Fogazzaro, and Sienkiewicz.

1 De Loménie: Revue des Deux Mondes, December, 1857. (Maigron.)

The general method of conceiving an historical episode belongs to social psychology, the identification of particular periods belongs to history; but a few points may be noted here, as having a direct bearing on the study of fiction.

An epoch may be characterized by a single condensed formula. Carlyle summarized the age of Hume and Voltaire as "the century of scepticism." Garnett affirms that in all countries the present time is "an age of literary anarchy." Such brilliant critical formulas are often extremely helpful, but in mature study they are associated with more extensive criticism, and with patient inductive analysis of the literature itself. It may be confusing at first to attempt to unify the various critical conceptions of the romantic movement, and its various artistic expressions in fiction, but such a process has finally a rich reward.

Some periods are more easily unified than others; but all may be viewed as transitional, in all appear the phenomena of current and undercurrent, of reminiscence and foreshadowing. In poetical language,

"... each age is a dream that is dying,

Or one that is coming to birth."1

The simplest studies of historical influence are found in fiction representative of the complete, unvexed mastery of clearly defined ideas; but there is deeper human interest in works revealing a movement in faint process of formation or of unconscious decline, or works in which two distinct forces rise into conflict or agree on coöperation.

The rationalism of the eighteenth century is found, in comparatively pure form, in Defoe; its cynical scepticism in Swift. The Castle of Otranto, while considered the original Gothic romance in English fiction, is still plainly under the influence of pseudo-classicism. Fielding is

1 O'Shaughnessy.

a pronounced realist, but he is influenced by reaction from Richardson. In Smollett there are traces of Gothic imagination, interpreted in both serious and burlesque spirit. The realism of Jane Austen is consciously hostile to the sentimental novel. Scott is not free from the eighteenth century manner. — In historical fiction, it is interesting to compare the influence of the period in which the novelist imagines with that of the time in which he lives. Some transformation of the historical into the contemporary is inevitable, though not always as clear and conscious as it is in the Idylls of the King.

The foliage and blossoms of the historical growth may be political, religious, or artistic; but the psychological roots are deeper than all such distinctions, and are often difficult to discover. The general philosophical attitude of a period, and its dominant form of social organization always influence its fiction, but not always in simple and direct manner. The Zeitgeist may mould the outline of plot, the grouping of characters, and other obvious elements of structure; or it may be traced only in the emotional tone and the stylistic quality of the work as a whole.

The identification of very limited periods is usually a task for the specialist. As one's acquaintance with general history and with the history of fiction deepens, it may be possible to discern the special note of a single generation or even a single decade. The climactic vogue of English sentimentalism probably endured for little more than a generation. In another field, Professor Felix Schelling marks the last decade of the sixteenth century as the "time of the sonnet."1

157. Immediate Social Environment. A novelist is probably always influenced during composition by the social environment in which he has lived or is living. This fact may be most apparent when such environment is directly studied in a novel, or is consciously selected for the sake of artistic stimulus. Individual novels show the special influences of domestic, industrial, or professional 1 Elizabethan Lyrics.

conditions, of city or country residence, of the court or the frontier, of social prestige or exile.

The influence of immediate social environment is particularly clear in Jane Austen. —Note also the effect of domestic life on George Eliot; of political ostracism on Bunyan, Defoe, Pushkin, and Hugo; — of court life on The Princess of Cleves; - of country residence on Hardy; - of intimate acquaintance with both the aristocracy and the peasantry on Tolstoi ;-of Abbotsford and Edinburgh on Scott;- of London on Fielding and Dickens; - of Madrid society on La Espuma ; — of club-life on Sir Roger de Coverley; — of legal environment on Fielding and Scott; - of medical environment on Smollett; - of ecclesiastical environment on Charles Kingsley, Newman, and Trollope; - of the free social life of the West on Hamlin Garland.

158. Human Nature. Every artist is a unique individual, and at the same time representative of limited areas of national, racial, and historical conditions; he is never an "Everyman" or a "Humanum Genus." Yet, in the belief of many critics, the more deeply he is influenced by human nature in general, the greater is his artistic significance. The idea of a direct supernatural influence upon the artist has little weight at present.

In subject and in form, most novels embody some of the familiar conceptions of human nature found in poetry, sociology, or ethics. Among the creative forces in fiction, are love of story; craving for emotion, for self-expression, and for sympathy; practical or speculative interest in the relations of body and soul, and in man's destiny; rebellion against the irrational element in life, sense of illusion, and eager search for reality.

In some novels of social reform, one could imagine the Lancelot reader exclaiming,

"... What name hast thou

That ridest here so blindly and so hard ?"

and the Pelleas author crying in answer,