eface to "Pierre et Jean."

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS: "Criticism and Fiction."

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON: "The Lantern-Bearers."

BRANDER MATTHEWS: "Romance Against Romanticism," in "The Historical
Novel."

CHAPTER III

THE NATURE OF NARRATIVE

Transition from Material to Method--The Four Methods of Discourse--1.
Argumentation; 2. Exposition; 3. Description; 4. Narration, the
Natural Mood of Fiction--Series and Succession--Life Is Chronological,
Art Is Logical--The Narrative Sense--The Joy of Telling Tales--The
Missing of This Joy--Developing the Sense of Narrative--The
Meaning of the Word "Event"--How to Make Things Happen--The
Narrative of Action--The Narrative of Character--Recapitulation.

=Transition from Material to Method.=--We have now considered the
subject-matter of fiction and also the contrasted attitudes of mind of
the two great schools of fiction-writers toward setting forth that
subject-matter. We must next turn our attention to the technical
methods of presenting the materials of fiction, and notice in detail
the most important devices employed by all fiction-writers in order to
fulfil the purpose of their art.

=The Four Methods of Discourse=--=1. Argumentation.=--Rhetoricians, as
everybody knows, arbitrarily but conveniently distinguish four forms,
or moods, or methods, of discourse: namely, narration, description,
exposition, and argumentation. It may be stated without fear of
well-founded contradiction that the natural mood, or method, of
fiction is the first of these,--narration. Argumentation, for its own
sake, has no place in a work of fiction. There is, to be sure, a type
of novel, which is generally called in English "the novel with a
purpose," the aim of which is to persuade the reader to accept some
special thesis that the author holds concerning politics, religion,
social ethics, or some other of the phases of life that are readily
open to discussion. But such a novel usually fails of its purpose if
it attempts to accomplish it by employing the technical devices of
argument. It can best fulfil its purpose by exhibiting indisputable
truths of life, without persuasive comment, _ex cathedra_, on the part
of the novelist. In vain he argues, denounces, or defends, appeals to
us or coaxes us, unless his story in the first place convinces by its
very truthfulness. If his thesis be as incontestable as the author
thinks it is, it can prove itself by narrative alone.

=2. Ex