Book description
It is because we learn from the writers who have either got into
difficulties or who have a certain vanity in creating them, that I have
chosen Meredith as my subject , says Mr. Pritchett at the beginning of
these Clark Lectures for 1969. The Meredith who, as Henry James
remarked, did the best things best , but whose novels some critics have
written off, was in some ways the forerunner of the contemporary novel,
its erratic movement, its profusion of metaphor. His strange style was a
device for linking his Romance to a real world, and Mr. Pritchett
believes that the difficulties of this style have been in any case
exaggerated. What he aimed at was comedy; but comedy conceived of as
theatre . The business of comedy is ruthlessly to expose the false
emotions and the false image of oneself. Meredith s great virtues as a
writer of comedy were his power to analyse states of mind and his gift
for slipping out of one mind into another. Mr. Pritchett illuminates
these virtues no less than Meredith s defects with brilliant
commentaries on Beauchamp s Career, The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, Evan
Harrington, Harry Richmond and The Egoist. A passionate feminist, a
romantic poet with a leaning to the mythic, a champion of intelligence
and the values which spring from it, Meredith wrote novels whose
originality can be clearly seen from Mr. Pritchett s fresh viewpoint.
It is because we learn from the writers who have either got into
difficulties or who have a certain vanity in creating them, that I have
chosen Meredith as my subject , says Mr. Pritchett at the beginning of
these Clark Lectures for 1969. The Meredith who, as Henry James
remarked, did the best things best , but whose novels some critics have
written off, was in some ways the forerunner of the contemporary novel,
its erratic movement, its profusion of metaphor. His strange style was a
device for linking his Romance to a real world, and Mr. Pritchett
believes that the difficulties of this style have been in any case
exaggerated. What he aimed at was comedy; but comedy conceived of as
theatre . The business of comedy is ruthlessly to expose the false
emotions and the false image of oneself. Meredith s great virtues as a
writer of comedy were his power to analyse states of mind and his gift
for slipping out of one mind into another. Mr. Pritchett illuminates
these virtues no less than Meredith s defects with brilliant
commentaries on Beauchamp s Career, The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, Evan
Harrington, Harry Richmond and The Egoist. A passionate feminist, a
romantic poet with a leaning to the mythic, a champion of intelligence
and the values which spring from it, Meredith wrote novels whose
originality can be clearly seen from Mr. Pritchett s fresh viewpoint.
