represented in extreme form by the "once upon a time" of fairy tales. The general time setting of a realistic novel is always in a true sense historical, though historical time may be viewed against a background of biological time, as in many naturalistic novels; or of eternity, as in some philosophical and religious novels. The historical period usually has some special imaginative value for the reader, before he is acquainted with the individual novel; as in QuatreVingt-Treize, The Talisman, and Romola.

Certain theories of the novel suggest some definite conception of the duration of the action, especially as compared with that of the short story and the drama. One important theory considers the novel as primarily concerned with a single individual life, in its complete development. As the German critic Spielhagen expresses it, the short story normally requires only a "Lebensausschnitt"; the novel, 'den ganzen Strom des Lebens.' Again, the novel is a description or interpretation of a unified social group, the novel of manners being the typical form. Both these theories indicate an action covering approximately a generation, and many representative novels show their influence clearly. Probably the Renaissance idea that one year was the proper time for an epic action has also had some influence upon the "modern epic." Various as is the duration of action in the novel, the average is distinctly longer than in the drama and short story. Probably there are no important novels limited to the traditional dramatic unity of twenty-four hours-found, for example, in The Tempest and Master and Man.

65. Detailed Time Settings. A general idea of the narrative distribution of time the time perspective - in an individual novel may be gained by an examination of the principal terms in the time analysis. Occasionally the

external divisions are based on uniform periods of time. If comprehensiveness is a characteristic of the novel, one may expect some special consideration of day and night, of each of the four seasons, etc. The single day is the most natural and the most frequent setting for individual scenes or well-unified events. There are distinct traditional background values for the early morning, noon, evening, and night.

The action of Silas Marner covers about a generation; but chaptergroups XI to XIII and XVI to XX record the events of single days. Jane Austen uses the single day with more regularity in Pride and Prejudice; "the next morning" being a frequent formula.

Romanticism, for obvious reasons, has taken special delight in the background effects of evening and night. The "sentimental school" associated the evening with reflection, "sensibility" and melancholy of a gentle type; Gothic romance developed the mystery, the tragic solemnity, and the supernatural atmosphere of the deeper night. Both of these romantic settings are often found in the works of Mrs. Radcliffe and Scott. In Mrs. Radcliffe's Italian, for example, many of the important incidents are given a very artistic evening or night setting. The special values given to these and other portions of the natural day may sometimes be treated conventionally, but a little thought shows that they have some real basis in social, psychological, and physiological fact.

Distinct effects may be gained by sudden changescontraction or expansion - in the time perspective. Such effects may be in the service of romantic weirdness, or of realistic humor or pathos.

The death of Paul Dombey is in pathetic contrast with the bright Sunday afternoon in summer on which it occurs, but Dickens increases the solemnity by association of this particular tragedy with "the old,

old fashion! The fashion that came in with our first garments, and will last unchanged until our race has run its course, and the wide firmament is rolled up like a scroll."

66. General Place Setting. So far as it follows the traditions of the epic, the novel is characterized by a broad spatial background. This is conspicuous in the romance of chivalry, the picaresque novel, and in the more modern types of "international" fiction. The influence of the drama and of dramatic criticism has probably been in the other direction, but the novel has never submitted to the dramatic unity of place, strictly interpreted, as in the single room settings of Hedda Gabler and Magda. While in the novel devoted to an intensive study of the individual or society spatial range is less significant than in the novel of action, the weight of criticism and of practise indicates the short story as the normal type for purely local fiction.

Romance inclines to escape the limitations of locality, either by imaginative transformation of real place, or by selection of purely ideal place. It finds a congenial background in Arcadia, Utopia, the stars, the center of the earth, and nameless islands of remote seas. The new world attracted the writers of the Romantic Movement, as the home of the natural, elemental man,' or the golden hope of the social dreamer. Modern realism prefers in general the great centers of social complexity – the London of Dickens, the Paris of Balzac, the Madrid of Valdés' La Espuma, etc. Often, however, the intricate life of the capital is emphasized by contrast with the simpler manners and ideas of the provinces; and in this respect as in others the law of imaginative reaction can be traced.

Many countries and regions have a more or less determinate value for the imagination. Italy is a conspicuous example. The Italy of

Roman and Catholic tradition, of Renaissance influence, of art, of landscape, of rich political experience, and of cosmopolitan life, has in one way or another made a special appeal to both romancer and realist. Compare Corinne, Andersen's Improvisatore, Romola, The Last Days of Pompeii, Paul Heyse's stories, Bourget's Cosmopolis, Quo Vadis, etc.

67. Detailed Place Settings. These may be conveniently classified as exteriors (in the main, natural) and interiors (in the main, social). The typical novel combines the two, though certain varieties incline to emphasize one or the other. Pastoral romance has its retired valleys, with conventional accessories; the romance of chivalry its princely palace, its cell of hermit or monk; Gothic romance its castle, with haunted chamber, gloomy dungeon, and secret passages. Romanticism in general has explored the ideal values of forest, sea, and mountain solitude. Picaresque fiction has made special use of such settings as the prison, the thieves' den, and the tavern. The novel of manners leads the reader to places of routine domestic and social life, such as homes, offices, theatres, legislative halls, court-rooms, ball-rooms, parks and streets.

It is mainly within doors that modern society eats, sleeps, marries, visits, worships, and dies. Many fictions include the name of a building in their title, though this is never the most general setting - House of the Seven Gables, Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Old Curiosity Shop, Castle Rackrent, The Small House at Allington, etc. Such realists as Balzac and Dickens are prolific in detailed description of city quarters, streets, houses, and individualized rooms. In the eighteenth century novels there are frequent scenes in the stagecoach; nineteenth century realism finds the railroad train quite as useful, as in Dombey and Son, and Anna Karénina.

In detailed landscape settings, Mrs. Radcliffe had a wide influence, through Scott and his school. The landscape of the realists is generally more accurate, if not more artistic, and is more completely humanized by association with individual or social experience, or by scientific and philosophical interpretation.

68. Circumstantial Settings. The most general circumstances environing the action of a novel are the permanent conditions of society, nature, and the supernatural. In novels of a philosophical quality, the broader aspects of these conditions are often of great value as background. Novelists of various schools show a tendency towards mysticism, and touch with more or less emphasis such vast conceptions as the struggle for existence, the Everlasting No, lacrymæ rerum, das ewig Weibliche, the things that are eternal are unseen, etc. Zola and his school often make the deepest human experiences seem trivial against the majestic background of natural processes. They ring the changes, not always orthodox or hopeful, upon the old question: "What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?" Ethical thinkers like George Eliot find apparently insignificant human actions intimately related to sublime moral laws. Bunyan, in his fiction as in his life, almost loses sight of the concrete material facts in the sense of the enveloping spiritual universe.

In all novels, but notably in historical fiction and in the novel of manners and allied types, the detailed background includes the temporary conditions of a social group, with various emphasis upon political, religious, industrial, and other circumstances. In social realists like Jane Austen and Trollope the elaborated settings rarely extend beyond such data.

If one chooses to give so subjective a meaning to the term "circumstantial settings," it may include something of the psychological condition of the characters. A mood of memory may serve as background for the present experience; the emotions of secondary characters may intensify those of the principal characters, or lessen the tension, as in Chapters VI and XIII of Silas Marner. (See Section 35.)