Section 7 Summary and Analysis

"Prophecy" Forster states at the beginning of this lecture that for him, Prophecy does not mean foretelling or foreseeing the future. Rather, Prophecy as an aspect of the novel refers to "an accent in the novelist's voice ... [the presence of] the universe, or something universal ... [the novelist] proposes to sing, and the strangeness of song arising in the halls of fiction is bound to give [the reader] a shock." The quality of Prophecy, he writes, transcends the various traditional faiths, simply offering the implication of a meaning and depth to existence beyond ... not heaven, not hell, not nirvana, simply beyond. He suggests considerations of style, the novelist's state of mind, attitude and word choice, come into play here, adding that the novelist is not seeing the nuts and bolts ("the tables and chairs," as Forster puts it) of the world and...