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 32

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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 32

been supplied with, more and more purposive fiction.  The demand and the supply still continue to increase, therefore I infer that the literature of the twentieth century in turn will be increasingly purposive, and in being so, it will also be right. It will follow a law of literary development from the beginning of all things; for every literature begins with naive and somewhat childish narration - the myth, the epic, the fairy-tale, the saga. As it progresses, it grows deeper, more philosophic, more ethical, more purposive. The best never comes out of a civilized man, unless he is profoundly stirred by some overpowering social or moral emotion. Our test of the higher as opposed to the lower art is just other things equal, the proportion of this philosophic and ethical interest to the mere aesthetic element. I do not mean to say, that the highest literature,
29.

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been supplied with, more and more purposive fiction. The demand and the supply still continue to increase, therefore I infer that the literature of the twentieth century in turn will be increasingly purposive, and in being so, it will also be right. It will follow a law of literary development from the beginning of all things; for every literature begins with naive and somewhat childish narration - the myth, the epic, the fairy-tale, the saga. As it progresses, it grows deeper, more philosophic, more ethical, more purposive. The best never comes out of a civilized man, unless he is profoundly stirred by some overpowering social or moral emotion. Our test of the higher as opposed to the lower art is just other things equal, the proportion of this philosophic and ethical interest to the mere aesthetic element. I do not mean to say, that the highest literature, 29.