Bernard Shaw's Novels: His Drama of Ideas in Embryo

Rosalie Rahal Haddad

Bernard Shaw's Novels. His Drama of Ideas in Embryo

ISBN 978-3-88476-654-5, ISBN 3-88476-654-6, 168 S., kt., € 21,50 (2004)

(Schriftenreihe Literaturwissenschaft, Bd. 63)

Bernard Shaw has always swum against the stream. His viewpoint as an Anglo-Irish writer enabled him to observe and evaluate British culture from a position of independence. His main accomplishment was the unprecedented criticism, filled with humor and optimism, of the established morality of the day. From his early days as a novelist he contested the Victorian status quo.
The novels though rejected by critics and publishers are important not only because they give us glimpses of Shaw the dramatist but also because they offer a fascinating portrait of a young artist with an open mind.
Bound to no particular convention in art or science, unlike most other English authors of his time, Shaw welcomed every new revolutionary point of view or idea he came across. In the young Shaw one can see a rebel against the accepted traditions and mores of his time, an individualist determined to think for himself, who has yet to find his philosophy. His novels provided training, discipline and a social, political and cultural background for his future drama. The purpose of this study is to contribute to a re-evaluation of these important early works in the career of one of the twentieth century’s most significant playwrights and to show that the novels can be considered his later drama of ideas in embryo.