Days of Peculiar Splendour: Howards End and The Sea, The Sea in the Context of the Poetics of Summer House Fiction
Abstract
This article explores the ways in which E.M. Forster's 1910 novel, Howards End, and Iris Murdoch's 1978 novel, The Sea, The Sea, elaborate the constitutive elements of the poetics of summer house fiction.
While reflecting major ecological, cultural, social and political concerns of their individual periods, these novels reverberate with timeless issues, including unfulfilled desire for the pastoral and the fruitless search for eternal summer with its promise of spiritual and physical regeneration if not rebirth. The thematic connection between the two works is intensified by their focus on the quest for authenticity, including compromises stemming from the inevitable failure of any idealised or definitive solution to the fundamental existential struggle.
This endeavour is reflected in the circular character permeating all aspects of the novels, from imagery and motifs to the overall arrangement of the plot and its philosophical interpretation.