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Literary theory and criticism concerned with the novel are much inferior in both quantity and quality to theory and criticism of poetry.*

In the modem period, as far as English studies are concerned, critical theory and practice have been dominated by what may be called the New Criticism, in the widest sense of that term-that is, the critical effort extending from T. S. Eliot and I. A. Richards to, say, W. K. Wimsatt, characterized by the belief that a poem acquires its meaning and unique identity by virtue of its verbal organization, and that good critical practice depends above all on close and sensitive reading. We might say, therefore, that if what Wellek and Warren alleged in 1949 was true, it was because the New Criticism had not shown its principles and procedures to be as effective when applied to prose fiction as when applied to poetry. At that time, however, there was some disagreement about whether (to borrow Chesterton’s epigram on Christianity) the application had been tried and found wanting, or simply not tried. Mark Schorer, writing in 1948, was of the latter opinion. Summarizing the principles of modem criticism, founded on the ‘exacting scrutiny of literary texts’, and leading to a view of form (or ‘technique’) and content as inseparable, he says:

We are no longer able to regard as seriously intended criticism of poetry which does not assume these generalisations; but the case for fiction has not yet been established. The novel is still read as though its content has some value in itself, as though the subject matter of fiction has greater or lesser value in itself, and as though technique were not a primary but a supplementary element, capable perhaps of not unattractive embellishments upon the surface of the subject, but hardly of its essence. Or technique is thought of in blunter terms than those which one associates with poetry, as such relatively obvious matters as the arrangement of events to create plot; or, within plot, of suspense and climax; or as the means of revealing character motivation, relationship and development, or as the use of point of view. . . . As for the resources of language, these, somehow, we almost never think of as part of the technique of fiction-language as used to create a certain texture and tone which in themselves state and define themes and meanings; or language, the counters of our ordinary speech, as forced, through conscious manipulation, into all those larger meanings which our ordinary speech almost never intends.