SOURCE: Niederhoff, Burkhard. “E. M. Forster and the Supersession of Plot by Leitmotif: A Reading of Aspects of the Novel and Howards End.” Anglia 112, no. 3-4 (1994): 341-63.

In the following essay, Niederhoff examines similarities between Forster's discussion of novels in Aspects of the Novel and Howards End.

In Aspects of the Novel, E. M. Forster writes about Marcel Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu, “The book is chaotic, ill-constructed, it has and will have no external shape; and yet it hangs together because it is stitched internally, because it contains rhythms.”¹ To illustrate what he means by “rhythms”, Forster mentions a leitmotif well known to the readers of the Recherche. “There are several examples […], but the most important, from the binding point of view, is his use of the ‘little phrase’ in the music of Vinteuil. This little phrase does more than anything else […] to make us...