Forster made his chief contribution to the subject [of the novel] in the Clark Lectures which he delivered in the spring of 1927. [They were printed unrevised as Aspects of the Novel.] (p. 73)

[What we find in this collection] is an idea of the novel which will stand beside the great celebrations of the epic form. It might have helped if Forster had edited away quotations and discussions of contemporary books now forgotten, if some listener had made notes of the fine things and left the rest, as happened to Aristotle, for then we might have found it easier to realize that here we have one of the great appreciations of the most lively organism in words that genius has developed during the past two hundred years. (p. 74)

Between the invocation and the conclusion, the lectures deal with the usual aspects, the story and the plot and the characters...