2.2.4 Other Characters 8

2.3 Setting 9

2.3.1 Social Background 9

2.3.2 Social Environment 9

2.3.3 Music 10

3. The Comparison of Discourse in Different Media 11

3.1 Narrative Time 11

3.1.1 Order 11

3.1.2 Duration 12

3.1.3 Frequency 13

3.2 Focalization 14

3.2.1 Zero Focalization 14

3.2.2 Internal Focalization 14

4. Conclusion 16

References 17

1. Introduction

1.1 Brief Introduction to E.M. Forster

Edward Morgan Forster (1879-1970) is one of the greatest British novelists in the 20th century and an excellent essayist and arts critic in the meantime. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy of the British society in the early 20th century. He has been regarded as the significant writer as the coetaneous writers, Joyce, D.H Lawrence and Virginia Woolf. Blending tradition with innovation, he has made great contributions to the bloom of the modernist novels. Literary critic Lionel Trilling, in his work E. M. Forster, appraises him as “the only living novelist who can be read again and again and who, after each reading, gives me what few writers can give us after our first days of novel-reading, the sensation of having learned something”. And referring to Wikipedia, Forster was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 16 different years. During his lifetime, he wrote six novels, several short stories, essays, travel notes, comments and so on. The novel A Room with a View, Howards End and his essay Aspects of Novel are the famous ones.

1.2 Brief Introduction to the Novel A Room with a View and the Film Adaption

Among Forster’s works, A Room with a View is his earliest, lightest and most optimistic work, he wrote in the appendix to the novel: "this novel is not my favorite... But it can be said to be the nicest novel". It is both a romance and a critique of English society at the beginning of the 20th century. And showing on Wikipedia, the Modern Library ranked A Room with a View 79th on its list of the Top 100 English-language novels of the 20th century in 1998. Furthermore, since the publication of the novel in 1908, it has never ceased to be popular among the readers and scholars. Up till now, this novel has been extensively studied from different aspects, such as the humanism, symbolism, feminism and other writing techniques, etc.

In 1985, the film A Room with a View based on the novel was directed by James Ivory and produced by Ismail Merchant. Set in England and Italy, it is about a young lady named Lucy Honeychurch in the restrictive and repressed culture of Edwardian era England and her developing love for free-spirited young man George Emerson. The film adaption is faithful to the original novel and makes some reasonable extensions in specific details. It not only fully reproduces the main contents of the novel, but also vividly expresses its spirit. This seemingly ordinary love movie is actually an excellent literary film that profoundly reveals the connotation of human nature. And the film was a great success at the box office and won a number of awards, including Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design in Academy Awards. And in 1999 the British Film Institute voted the A Room with a View73rd greatest British film of the 20th Century.

1.3 Literature Review

Since the publication of the novel A Room with a View in 1908, it has never ceased to be popular among the readers and has always remained to be an important work to be studied by the scholars from both home and abroad. It is a successful work for its delicate plot, unique writing skill, vivid character molding and much reflection of the moral awareness.

Foreign academic studies of this novel are more extensive and have a much longer history. Most critics put insight into the following aspects: the theme of “undeveloped heart” (Echeruo, 1962:151) and feminism, the use of art and music, the plot, the symbolism and the women’s status.