ABSTRACT
St. Joan's in Shaw's drama, show the excellence of the elaborate contrapuntal structure of these main themes and variations-and of the many not mentioned-and remind us of the method of music. The many ideas of this novel become doubly and trebly meaningful by such an elaboration, in his mastery of narration, characterization, dramatic moment. But more than this: I believe Huxley was attempting to develop or evolve further a new form for fiction-the 'essay' novel. I mean that he used the essay in the service of his fiction as Samuel Richardson had used the 'letter' in the service of his fiction which we call the epistolary novel. Huxley uses his materials and sources and documents differently from those which Sterne in Tristram Shandy had ventured to use; and equally as different from Scott; and it differs also from the writers of the naturalistic 'novel of ideas'; or from the pastoral novel-the name William Empson called the proletarian novel. Nor can we say Gide has done it before.
