SOURCE: "Eternal Moments in the Short Fiction of E. M. Forster," in College English, Vol. 27, No. 3, December 1965, pp. 209-15.

In this laudatory essay, Hagopian focuses on Forster's ironic yet sympathetic portrayal of his principal characters in "The Road from Colonus" and "The Eternal Moment."

Forster's short stories can be divided into two groups: the allegorical fantasies such as "The Celestial Omnibus" and "The Other Side of the Hedge" which have become standard anthology pieces; and the realistic psycho-moral narratives such as "The Eternal Moment" and "The Road from Colonus" which, despite the fact that they most resemble his novels, have been neglected even though no less an authority than Lionel Trilling has judged them to be Forster's best stories. Perhaps the reason for such neglect is that, according to G. D. Klingopulos, "there is something in the stories themselves which discourages and seems to mock the whole business...