DIY History | Transcribe | Scholarship at Iowa | The Ethical Tendency of the English Novel by Helen M. Harney, 1897 | The Ethical Tendency of the English Novel by Helen M. Harney, 1897, Page 13

Transcribe
Translate

The Ethical Tendency of the English Novel by Helen M. Harney, 1897

The Ethical Tendency of the English Novel by Helen M. Harney, 1897, Page 13

(and) therefore permanent must appeal.
The foundation of good fiction seems to be ethic rather than aesthetic. Everything which appeals to the taste, to the aesthetic side, may ultimately perish as a mere matter of fashion; but what speaks to man as man, independently of his fashions, his habits and his tastes must live and find a hearing with humanity so long as humanity is human.
The literature of the English people has always had the idea that there is a necessary connection between art and ethics. True, it has contained many mischievous or frivolous books; it has wavered between the austerity of Bunyan and the license of the dramatists of the Restoration; it has been successively influenced by Norman French, Italian, Latin and Greek culture: but it has never lost sight of the principle that
10.

Saving...

(and) therefore permanent must appeal. The foundation of good fiction seems to be ethic rather than aesthetic. Everything which appeals to the taste, to the aesthetic side, may ultimately perish as a mere matter of fashion; but what speaks to man as man, independently of his fashions, his habits and his tastes must live and find a hearing with humanity so long as humanity is human. The literature of the English people has always had the idea that there is a necessary connection between art and ethics. True, it has contained many mischievous or frivolous books; it has wavered between the austerity of Bunyan and the license of the dramatists of the Restoration; it has been successively influenced by Norman French, Italian, Latin and Greek culture: but it has never lost sight of the principle that 10.