The Man of Property, first published in 1906, later became the first volume of John Galsworthy's extended portrait of the Forsyte family, The Forsyte Chronicles. Composed of two trilogies with transitional interludes, the Chronicles is a unified, sustained work of art in the tradition of what Joseph Warren Beach calls the "sequence novel." Although the novels following The Man of Property were written and published in the 1920's, the entire work is essentially an Edwardian product. John Galsworthy as an apprentice writer in the 1890's was exposed to the historical and literary influences of the crucial period often known as "The Age of Transition." His literary technique and aesthetic later emerged during the Edwardian decade as a curious blend of the "old" and the "new," the Victorian and the modern, and they never changed. The philosophy which pervaded both Galsworthy's life and all his works was liberal humanism, a philosophy representing a break with the early Victorian belief in duty and God but without rejecting the idea of progress. This essentially secular philosophy led Galsworthy to criticize those institutions, conventions, and individual personality traits which he saw as stifling man's ability to improve himself and others. Thus, Galsworthy's belief in liberal humanism found perfect expression in The Forsyte Chronicles, which can be categorized as a work of social protest. The entire series is unified by common characters and themes. Young Jolyon, Irene, and Michael Mont, for instance, are positive liberal humanist models; and the entire work is a protest against two recurring ideas: possessiveness and declining morality. / By the 1920's, however, Galsworthy's philosophy of liberal humanism seemed increasingly superficial to many avant garde authors, such as Virginia Woolf and D. H. Lawrence, who were turning in their own works to a different vision of truth. They focused on an inner psychological reality and denounced the philosophical doctrine of progress. Ironically, during the Edwardian decade when The Man of Property appeared, Galsworthy himself had been considered an avant garde writer. In the 1920's, however, The Forsyte Chronicles became a best seller, exemplifying one of the many crucial splits during "The Age of Transition"--the gap between "popular" or "middlebrow" fiction and "elite" or "highbrow" fiction. / The Forsyte Chronicles, not seriously examined as a unit since a 1933 study, thus has significance in three areas: the historical, the sociological, and the artistic. Its historical value is twofold. The six novels exactly mirror topical occurences and attitudes from 1886 to 1926, and they are therefore of interest to the historian as a literary reflection of actual events. They are also significant in the history of ideas because as novels whose philosophy and literary technique are neither wholly Victorian nor wholly "modern," they shed significant light on "The Age of Transition" and on the English literary tradition itself. From a sociological perspective, The Forsyte Chronicles as a best seller reflecting Edwardian values in a post-world-war era, is valuable because, as James Hart notes, "In some way or another the popular author is always the one who expresses the people's minds and paraphrases what they consider their private feeling." Finally, in an artistic sense, the Chronicles, when closely examined as a unit, is revealed to be a carefully structured literary work, balanced by vital characters and significant themes. The Forsyte Chronicles is therefore of more than passing interest in the modern world. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 42-06, Section: A, page: 2687. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1981.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_74512 |
| Contributors | MILLIS, BARBARA JUNE., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 253 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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