E.M. Forster

Recent work in cognitive narratology has questioned the idea, long a truism of narratological study, that fiction is defined by its ability to give us direct access to the interiority of others, while in real life we remain on the outside looking in .  Queer theory takes a similarly "externalist" view of this "inside/out question," by problematizing the supposed interiority—or “closetedness”--of sexual identity and desire. This article explores this and other connections between queer theory and cognitivism, discussing examples from E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, the Japanese classic The Tale of Genji and Tanizaki Jun’ichirō’s novella "Captain Shigemoto’s Mother."

In this article, I look at E.M. Forster's treatment of tourism in his Italian novels, Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905) and A Room with a View (1908), by taking the figure of the tourist as a trope for the (English) liberal. Through a close reading of these works, and inspired by Pierre Macherey's A Theory of Literary Production (1978), I focus on these novels’ gaps and contradictions. My analysis endorses James Buzard's (1993) contention that Forster's position towards tourism is one of ‘internal distance’. Forster did move beyond the facile guidebook satire, revealing awareness of the pitfalls that attend to the quest for (unmediated) authenticity. Nevertheless, I reject Buzard's postmodernist premises and conclusions. Drawing on Alain Badiou's distinction between ‘being’ and ‘event’ (2005), I argue that Forster's take on tourism evolved towards the latter: if his first tourist novel is still interested in issues of identity, i.e. in depicting tourism as the site where Englishness is constructed in stark opposition to the Italian ‘Other’, his second novel illustrates the occurrence of an ‘event’. Exploring the parallels between tourism and the political culture of liberalism (to which Forster was so closely attached), I conclude with a reflection on the political implications of this shift.

Free access to full text at http://www.academia.edu/2240914/The_Linguistic_Academy_Journal_of_Interdisciplinary_Language_Studies_vol.2
The article begins with a brief presentation of the presence of English tourists in Italy, starting from the tradition of the Grand Tour to the mass tourism beginning in the mid-19th century. One of the English tourists who arrived in Italy was Edward Morgan Forster. The article concentrates on the influence of Italy upon Forster’s oeuvre, drawing upon the writer’s memoirs and speeches. This part of the article concentrates upon the image of Italy to be found in Forster’s works, often neglected in critical writings. The main part of the article is an analysis of his short story “The Eternal Moment” presented as an early example of the critical attitude towards the unexpected results of intercultural contacts. The analysis concentrates upon the multifaceted introduction of motifs connected with destruction brought unconsciously by foreign tourists.

It is a part of the conventional knowledge that E.M. Forster continuously refused to authorise movie adaptations of his novels. Consequently, the first feature film made of his novel, David Lean’s A Passage to India, was produced only in 1984. Lean’s movie was, however, not only the eighth movie adaptation of a Forster’s work, it was also the second movie the screenplay of which was based on the play written by Santha Rama Rau in 1960. The seven movies, five of which were broadcast in Forster’s lifetime, were produced and broadcasted between 1958 and 1977 by the two British TV stations: the ITV and the BBC.
The movie adaptations were only a part of Forster’s presence “on the air”. The writer’s involvement with the BBC is generally known, two selections of his radio talks were published in 2008. The collaboration, however, greatly exceeded the talks as the BBC broadcasted also Forster’s literary works, initially mostly short stories but later on also excerpts from the novels which were read either by the author himself or by actors. Forster read the first (unspecified in the available listings) short story on May 7th, 1927. The collaboration moved to a new stage in 1942 when the first radio play, The Celestial Omnibus, adapted by Leonard Cottrell (1913-1974) was broadcasted on September 1st. Cottrell went to prepare two more plays after he returned from the Mediterranean where he was a war correspondent. The task was taken over by Lance Sieveking (1896-1972) who adapted Forster’s novels as multi-episode radio-plays (e.g. Howards End in 13 episodes in 1964). Ten such radio-plays were broadcasted in Forster’s lifetime. Forster did not object to having his work adapted for the stage either. The first play adapted from his novel, Stephen Tait’s and Kenneth Allot’s A Room with a View, was produced and then published in 1951; three more such plays were written and performed by 1970. For the sake of brevity, however, the paper concentrates on their appearances on the radio and TV.
The paper will attempt to show how radio and TV adaptations kept Forster’s popularity as a writer alive in a period when he longer wrote fiction, paving the way for the Academy Awards winning movies in the 1980s and 1990s. It will be based on the available material (sadly, most of the early TV films are apparently lost), criticism, as well as Forster’s own comments on the cinema and adaptations.

The article concentrates on two small and little known dramatic texts (pageants) written by E. M. Forster in the late 1930s entitled The Abinger Pageant and England’s Pleasant Land. The introductory part introduces the history of pageant in the early 20th century. The article presents briefly Forster’s earlier, mostly unsuccessful, dramatic experiments, analyses the two texts, their staging and publishing history of the two playlets, as well as their place in Forster’s further development as an artist as well as their place in Forsterian criticism. Certain consideration is also given to their musical setting as well as their author’s cooperation with the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams.

Το 1909, ενώ δεν είχαν ακόμα τελειώσει τα "Ωραία Χρόνια" της Belle Epoque, δημοσιεύθηκε στην καρδιά της διανοούμενης Αγγλίας το μεγάλο διήγημα (νουβέλα) του Edward Morgan Forster, "Η Μηχανή σταματάει" (The Machine stops). Η δημοσίευση έγινε στο περίφημο περιοδικό "The Oxford and Cambridge Review", λογοτεχνικό όργανο σπουδαστών και αποφοίτων των δύο κορυφαίων πανεπιστημίων. Προφητικό το έργο; Ο Forster υπήρξε ένας από τους μεγάλους Βρετανούς συγγραφείς. Γεννήθηκε το 1879 στο Λονδίνο και πέθανε το 1970 στα Midlands, περιοχή της Κεντρικής Αγγλίας φορτωμένη με μνήμες του Μεσαίωνα

The article presents the operatic motives in the oeuvre of E. M. Forster. It concentrates especially on the scene in the opera house in Monteriano from 'Where Angels Fear to Tread" but other allusions to various operas are also detailed. In Polish.

This study presents the formative period of the English novelist E. M. Forster (1879-1970) with a special stress on the usage of symbolism in his early fiction. The book offers a new approach to Forster's symbolism derived from the theoretical studies of Michael Riffaterre and his concept of symbolic systems - subtext and syllepsis. The author presents the most important symbols as used in the discussed novels and their usage in Forster's later works. A further part of the study concentrates on the issue of spatial symbolism. The symbolism of the Italian novels A Room with a View and Where Angels Fear to Tread is presented as an artistic means for the introduction of social issues especially important for the writer, as well as a method of concealed presentation of issues which for social and personal reasons Forster could not include openly in his works such as homosexuality.

This thesis explores the literary, cultural and psychological landscape of the “the other”, as the phenomenon has prevailed throughout human history, in varying forms and functions. Employing postcolonial theories (emphasizing the writings of Edward Said, Frantz Fanon and Homi Bhabha) alongside works of fiction, the thesis seeks to explore four
instances of stereotyping.
Focusing my efforts on the powers which enable the concept, I attempt to prove the validity of a hypothesis, wherein the concept of “othering” is linked to the colonial forces, rather than the colonized subjects. Consequently, trough the aid of two short stories –“Is There Nowhere Else Where We Can Meet?” and “The Catch” – and two novels – Robinson Crusoe and A Passage to India – this dissertation endeavour to link the differing instances of “ohering” together into a single cohesive truth

Given ahead of the roundtable discussion 'Alexandria Still' with Hala Halim and Dimitris Papanikolaou at the Letters and Arts' Centre, Onassis Foundation, 15 April 2015.

"Modern Alexandria is an interesting, but not unique Mediterranean city. Its much discussed and controversial 'cosmopolitanism' is something we can find elsewhere. However, what makes the city a reference point in modern culture is that it gave birth to an important modern literature, mainly around Cavafy, but also the British E.M.Forster and Lawrence Durrell, the Italian Fausta Cialente, [the Greek] Stratis Tsirkas and the Egyptians Naguib Mahfouz, Edward Kharrat and others.
Regarding the book of the Egyptian scholar Hala Halim, "it attempts - correctly in my view - to question the colonial (chiefly British) myth of cosmopolitan Alexandria and reconstruct it through the inclusion of the neglected Egyptian element. For us Greeks, this perspective carries major significance because it sheds light on the overlooked role played by Egypt, but also European colonialism, in the formation of an important part of our modern literature. The context of Greek literature was never strictly national".

Focus on Forster: Studies in the Fiction of Edward Morgan Forster

A collection of ten essays on various aspects of E. M. Forster’s literary oeuvre ranging from his use of mythological elements, film adaptations, the use of emotions and happy endings, to the reception of Forster’s works in Poland. Some of them attempt to offer a broad and general view of Forster’s literary achievement, other concentrate on minor issues or less known texts. Many of the essays have been formerly published, some have only been presented at conferences, they are now published in corrected, expanded, and updated versions. The publication is expected in the Spring of 2016 and it will be available as an e-book and in printed version.

List of Contents

Introduction
A Personal Olympus: Ancient Greek and Roman Mythology as a Source of Symbolism in E. M. Forster's Fiction
Self-imposed Exile as a Happy Ending in the Fiction of E. M. Forster
E. M. Forster and the English Ways of Ex(Sup)pressing Emotions
Homoerotic Functions of Foreign Settings in E. M. Forster’s Early Fiction
Opera and Opera Motives in the Novels and Essays of E. M. Forster
Tourism as a Destructive Force in E. M. Forster’s Early “Italian” Fiction
Maurice and religion
Two Minor Dramatic Experiments: E. M. Forster and His Pageants.
The Symbolic Patterns in E. M. Forster's A Room with a View and Their Rendering in the Films by James Ivory and Nicholas Renton.
Polish Aspects of E. M. Forster
Conclusion
Bibliography

We know that Hitler and the Nazis consistently called themselves Christian--they state this directly in their Party Program, and Hitler makes this clear in many of his speeches.  But what version of Christianity did they adopt?  And how did that version enable them to justify their atrocities against the Jews?  In this book, I use literature to examine various versions of Christianity that were operational in Nazi Germany.  Some versions were tolerant and humane, while others, such as the one the Nazis adopted, were intolerant and inhumane.  My ultimate claim is this: it is impossible to understand why the Holocaust happened without taking into account the Nazis' version of Christianity.  The main writers that I discuss include Martin Luther, Immanuel Kant, Mikhail Bakunin, Joseph Conrad, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Adolf Hitler, Dietrich Eckart, Joseph Goebbels, Alfred Rosenberg, King Leopold II, Mark Twain, T.S. Eliot, E.M. Forster, Friedrich Nietzsche, William Styron, David Mamet, Alice Walker, Louise Erdrich, William Faulkner, Milan Kundera, Richard Wright, and Ralph Ellison.

Smart homes in speculative fiction (SF) range from the ominously sinister to the strategically life-saving, revealing our hopes and fears for science: possibilities we envision for artificial intelligence (AI), yet also dangers of such technology. Within these narratives, we can also see the cracks in our conceptions, where it may be time to rethink our assumptions about intelligence, ethics, motives.

Hardly more than one century after British writer E. M. Forster’s first novels were published, this international conference will question the artistic, aesthetic, political and ethical legacy of novels that have often been defined as generically blurred, oscillating as they do between the Victorian and Edwardian legacy and Modernist drives.
Since Forster’s death in 1970, many British novelists and film directors have acknowledged and even claimed the influence of the novelist of the English soul (in Woolf’s terms) and of a renewed faith in both human relationships and a quintessentially British liberal-humanism. We may think here of the film adaptations by James Ivory (A Room with a View, Maurice, Howards End) and David Lean (A Passage to India), and of Zadie Smith paying homage to Howards End in her On Beauty (2005).
After the ethical turn at the end of the twentieth century, British literature today seems to go back even more drastically to the figure of the individual human being, and to turn the narrative space into some laboratory of a new form of empowerment of the other’s political autonomy. It is in this context that the references to Forster are more and more frequent, both in the British letters and academia. Jonathan Coe says that in his latest novel Expo 58 (2013) he wanted to work on the Forsterian motif of the British abroad, losing their bearings. In The Guardian Laurence Scott shows how relevant the issues Forster raised in his secret novel about homosexuality, Maurice, are today. In 2014 Palgrave Macmillan published a study by Alberto Fernandez Carbajal entitled Compromise and Resistance in Postcolonial Writing: E. M. Forster’s Legacy. Last year too Damon Galgut, one of the most prominent contemporary South-African writers, turned the Indian periods of Forster’s life and literary output into a novel (Arctic Summer, Atlantic Books).
This conference will not only aim at spotting and theorising about this return to Forster today. Rather we will endeavour to trace its genealogy and shed light on the successive modes of the legacy, from Forster’s first novel onwards, Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905) to the novelisation of Forster himself by Damon Galgut. We know that the history of British fiction in the twentieth century teems with novelists and artists who claimed to adhere to and follow Forsterian ethics. In the light of the striking echoes of Forster in contemporary British culture, how can we analyse his aesthetic and literary legacy in writers as significant as Christopher Isherwood, George Orwell, Evelyn Waugh, Angus Wilson, and today, Kazuo Ishiguro, Alan Hollinghurst, Zadie Smith, or Jonathan Coe? How can the principle of the connection, of correspondences and echoes, which informed Forster’s private life and approach to writing so much, equally characterise the aesthetic and political influence of his oeuvre? Which Forsterian legacy (ideological, aesthetic, critical) do Postrealist, Postmodernist and contemporary British literature and arts claim?
We might explore the following lines:
- an analysis of the ethical and aesthetic echoes of the Forsterian choices
- the evolution of Forster’s redefinitions of Englishness
- the genealogy of his main ideological and aesthetic patterns (liberal-humanism, only connect, secrecy)
- a new critical approach to the logical structuring of British literature from Modernism to the present
- conversely, the possibility to think anew the process of intertextuality and rewriting
- the Forsterian echoes in contemporary literary theory
- intermediality/transmediality of the legacy (cinema, opera)

A Very Different Room with a Completely Different View
Kevin Kwan’s Sex and Vanity as an „Update” of E. M. Forster

The publication of Kevin Kwan’s Sex and Vanity in the end of June 2020 coincided with the 50thanniversary of E. M. Forster’s death. After a series of three extremely successful novels about affluent inhabitants of the Far East, starting with Crazy Rich Asians (2013), Kwan was apparently inspired by Forster’s A Room with a View. Consequently, he decided to transfer the 1908 novel to the 2010s, replacing in the process Tuscany with Capri and Surrey with New York. The adaptation is a perfect example of how one can murder a Forster’s novel in three easy strokes – by changing the time of its action, the location, and, most importantly, the social origins of the main characters. The conflict which drives the original novel turns out surprisingly trivial in the world of the top 1% a century later. The novel, promoted by its publisher as “women’s fiction” and “Kevin Kwan’s most decadent book yet”, reads like a glossy magazine blown out of proportion, full of detailed descriptions of expensive dresses (each and every one comes with the label of a famous designer) and extravagant interiors. The novel does, however, have a single saving grace albeit for a fairly limited group of readers. Accomplished Forsterians will certainly enjoy the ingenious ways in which Kwan tries to reinvent Forster’s char-acters and plot twists. Unfortunately, the joy comes at a price –342 pages of quite tedious fiction

English version from 2010 is available here: https://www.academia.edu/387838/Polish_Aspects_of_E._M._Forster_A_Postscript
Artykuł poświęcony związkom angielskiego pisarza Edwarda Morgana Forstera z Polską. Na podstawie zachowanych materiałów omawia dwie wizyty Forstera na polskim terytorium i ich ślady w twórczości pisarza, zarówno we wspomnieniach i korespondencji, jak i tekstach publicystycznych, esejach i pogadankach radiowych. Druga część artykułu poświęcona jest obecności twórczości Forstera w Polsce od okresu międzywojennego (szczegółowo omówiona została krytyczna recepcja pierwszej wydanej w Polsce powieści pisarza Droga do Indii w roku 1938) do współczesności. Artykuł zamyka omówienie opublikowanych w Polsce prac naukowych o twórczości Forstera.

Adapting E. M. Forster to the Page, the Stage, and the Screen
PowerPoint presentation for the course based on the paper Fordoński, Krzysztof. 2020. “Inspiration, Influence, Dialogue. E. M. Forster and His Oeuvre in Contemporary Culture”, Language and Literary Studies of Warsaw, 10, 11-45 (available from Academia website) with some new data collected during 2021.
The course was presented for the first time at the University of Turku, Finland, in September 2021.

Part 1 - Literature
Part 2 - The Radio
Part 3 - The Theatre and Television
Part 4 - Movies
Part 5 – Movies and Shorts
Part 6 – Opera and Other Musical Inspirations

Adapting E. M. Forster to the Page, the Stage, and the Screen
PowerPoint presentation for the course based on the paper Fordoński, Krzysztof. 2020. “Inspiration, Influence, Dialogue. E. M. Forster and His Oeuvre in Contemporary Culture”, Language and Literary Studies of Warsaw, 10, 11-45 (available from Academia website) with some new data collected during 2021.
The course was presented for the first time at the University of Turku, Finland, in September 2021.

Part 1 - Literature
Part 2 - The Radio
Part 3 - The Theatre and Television
Part 4 - Movies
Part 5 – Movies and Shorts
Part 6 – Opera and Other Musical Inspirations

Application of the notion of spatial deixis as propounded by the linguist Stephen C. Levinson, to Forster’s best-known text. A theoretical preliminary to the work on Forster contained in my doctoral thesis, emerging from the recognition that Forster's presentation of India makes no sense if the reader does not know that there is such a place as India and it has been ruled by Britain. Works through the chapter paragraph by paragraph.

"The article discusses the influence of mass tourism, especially originating from Great Britain, upon Italy at the turn of the 19th and the 20th century as presented in the early fiction of Edward Morgan Forster, especially the short story “The Eternal Moment”. The article opens with a historical overview of the presence of British tourists in the Apennine Peninsula. A further part recounts the place of Italy in Forster’s oeuvre. The author claims that inasmuch as the influence of Italy upon English visitors has already been discussed in detail, the other influence, that of the English upon Italy, has been largely neglected. The article quotes examples of the latter influence from Forster’s novels. “The Eternal Moment” is closely analysed as a vivid presentation of the destructive force of international mass tourism, exemplified by the lot of an Italian village which became famous after being mentioned in a popular novel. The author concludes that although the catastrophic image presented in the story is exaggerated, Forster managed on the one hand to foresee coming changes, still the very early stages when the story was written. On the other hand, however, Forster presents here for the first time the subject matter which later became one of the trademarks of his writing – risks and perils of intercultural communication.
English version was published as http://www.academia.edu/1016779/Tourism_as_a_Destructive_Force_in_E._M._Forsters_Early_Italian_Fiction" or (the published version) at http://www.academia.edu/2240914/The_Linguistic_Academy_Journal_of_Interdisciplinary_Language_Studies_vol.2 """"

Critics of E.M. Forster have often commented on the conflict between stagnated intellectualism and a mystified nature in his work. They have traced that conflict to cultural influences, or simply described it metaphorically. In contrast, an evolutionary perspective can help explain the conflict on a fundamental level, while accounting for the effect of particular stories. Forster’s short story “The Machine Stops” centers on basic relationships among human beings, tools and the environment. I show that Forster suppresses normative human universals in that story in order to create an aversive atmosphere in the dystopian society he depicts. Further, I argue that though Forster misunderstands basic features of the human condition, he evokes real dangers in systems so inflexible that they cannot deal with the unexpected. Analyzing the deep but narrow vision in “The Machine Stops” can illuminate the sources of strength, and also the limitations, in Forster’s authorial perspective.

Les hommages à Alexandrie, individuels et collectifs, ne manquent pas. Mais tous se focalisent sur une période restreinte, antique ou moderne. À une exception, illustre : Pharos and Pharillon de E. M. Forster, recueil où l'essai côtoie la fiction sans segmenter l'histoire de la ville. De même, les contributions de ce volume s'étagent de l'Antiquité au XXe siècle, sans renoncer à la cohérence. Dans son principe, cet ouvrage s'inspire d'une entreprise qui a fait date : la collecte des « lieux de mémoire », immatériels ou monumentaux, qui ont marqué l'histoire d'Alexandrie et qui ont façonné son image dans la culture européenne. L'archéologie côtoie donc ici la littérature, les arts, la musique, inséparables pour éclairer l'importance du mythe alexandrin.

In 1909, E.M. Forster gave a lecture about Rudyard Kipling.  Forster considered Kipling a skillful but dangerous poet.  For postcolonial scholars, this lecture will be extremely useful, as it indicates that Forster and other modernists formulated a coherent critique of the authoritarian politics on which colonialism is premised.

In an undated manuscript from the 1920s, E. M. Forster sketched out notes towards a theory he called ‘writing to the body with the body’, a ‘melting’ of sentiment into disinterested aesthetics, he identified as pornographic. The ‘On Pornography and Sentiment’ fragment not only reframes our understanding of Forster’s emerging stance during this period as a champion of free speech but also highlights his less well-known status as the nodal figure for a younger generation of gay writers with whom he shared drafts of his erotic short stories. My close readings of selections from Forster’s unfinished notes, his roughly contemporary work of criticism, Aspects of the Novel (1927), as well as his posthumously published short story, ‘Dr Woolacott’, suggest that Forster’s theory of sentimentalized aesthetics made the beginnings of a capable critique. By circulating his short stories, Forster sought to check mainstream censoriousness concerning ‘obscene’ texts; moreover, his ‘refunctioning’ of illicit desires to an ethical purpose enlivened the ‘phantom’ potential of the modernist public sphere (Robbins) and actively facilitated the formation of an inter-generational intimate public (Berlant).

В статье исследуется магистральная для всего творчества Э.М. Форстера проблема «неразвитого английского сердца», отчетливо проявляющаяся в контексте столкновения «свой – чужой». Одним из важнейших образов, служащих реализации авторской концепции в «итальянском» романе «Комната с видом», становится образ сада, который вписывается в канон «идеального пейзажа» / locus amoenos. Созданный одновременно с учетом языческих и христианских коннотаций, «идеальный пейзаж» в романе Форстера из категории места переходит в категорию времени и становится одним из «великих мгновений», связанных в эстетике писателя с обретением его героями полноты бытия. Ключевые слова: Форстер, «неразвитое английское сердце», «свой – чужой», тема Италии, «идеальный пейзаж», сад, эдем, аллюзии. This article is aimed at investigating the problem of the undeveloped English heart as the main topic of E. M. Forster's novels, which becomes utterly transparent in the opposition of one's own / alien. One of the most important images, that contributes to the elaboration of the main idea in the "Italian" novel A Room with a View, is a garden which can be regarded within the framework of locus amoenos (the idealised landscape). Based on Christian as well as pagan interpretations, this idealised landscape in Forster's novel is transferred to the category of time and becomes one of the great moments, that according to Forster should be considered as the moments of grasping the integrity of entity. Key words: E. M. Forster, the undeveloped English heart, one's own / alien, Italy, the idealised landscape, garden, Eden, allusions.

Adapting E. M. Forster to the Page, the Stage, and the Screen
PowerPoint presentation for the course based on the paper Fordoński, Krzysztof. 2020. “Inspiration, Influence, Dialogue. E. M. Forster and His Oeuvre in Contemporary Culture”, Language and Literary Studies of Warsaw, 10, 11-45 (available from Academia website) with some new data collected during 2021.
The course was presented for the first time at the University of Turku, Finland, in September 2021.

Part 1 - Literature
Part 2 - The Radio
Part 3 - The Theatre and Television
Part 4 - Movies
Part 5 – Movies and Shorts
Part 6 – Opera and Other Musical Inspirations

We would like to invite you to an international conference on the life and works of E. M. Forster, the first on-line forum to be organised by the International E. M. Forster Society. The idea to organize the meeting of Forster scholars and fans on the 51st anniversary of Forster's death and the 11th anniversary of the funding of the Society, originated partially from the cancellation of the Cambridge anniversary conference which was to be held in April 2020 (awaited by many of us so anxiously) and partially from the desire expressed by several members of IEMFS to meet and share the ideas despite the circumstances and against the odds.

Retired from active scholarship, a long-time student of SF presents some final comments  on the set of topics identified in the long title, starting with the high frequency of the hexagon shape, especially in SF visuals. Without getting overtly political or asserting priority, Erlich stakes a claim for himself and Thomas P. Dunn to early consideration of the trope of the mechanical hive and invites debate on arguably masculinist 20th-c. views on some extreme forms of boundary transgression blending vs. more flexible views becoming more powerful in the 21st (suggesting a significant shift).

Relates ‘West Hackhurst’ to debates over notions of cultural memory, asking how cultural and individual memory are related and arguing for a memory poetics that would incorporate non-traumatic memories more fully. 'West Hackhurst' (written c. 1943-48) is a vital text of Forster's later period, perhaps the most sustained effort at creative, narrative writing he managed to produce between 1924 (/A Passage to India/) and 1956 (/Marianne Thornton: A Domestic Biography/).

Explains my thesis to a broad, public audience: a version of the lecture given at my doctoral defence on 15 April 2011. Divided into two sections, the first entitled 'Reconceptualising Literary Place', proposing an approach that I call archaeological engaged on the peeling back of different temporal layers on the same site, and the second 'Specifics of Twentieth-Century English Place: Metropolis, Home Counties, Beyond'.

Erlich, initial compiler of CLOCKWORKS 2, an on-line wiki on "The Human/Machine Interface in SF," brings together briefly often-made points on 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY and "The Machine Stops," stressing the usefulness of the middle part of Kubrick's SPACE ODYSSEY as a ready-made thought experiment on self-sufficiency. Contrasts and balances transcending the flesh and matter in SPACE ODYSSEY with Forster's call to return to the body and "only connect," with glances at Clarke and H. D. Thoreau on humans and our tools.