Allegory And Symbolism In 'The Road From Colonus'

Introduction

In his introduction to Collected Short Stories E. M. Forster writes: “These fantasies were written at various dates previous to the First World War, and represent all that I have accomplished in a particular line.”1 John Colmer observes: “Fantasy occupies a curious middle ground between allegory and symbolism. It establishes its own laws, revels in swift flights of fancy, is playful, often, witty, makes great demands on its readers. This is the central critical question to be asked about Forster; and the short stories are the first of his works to pose it.”2 Forster has used fantasy as a technique with his characteristic ironic prose style combining poetry and symbolism. So it is necessary to define fantasy and examine its use as a fictional technique in general and E. M. Forster in

Sitting in it, Lucas undergoes a feeling of eternity. Everything assumes a new significance for him. The hollow of the tree is like a womb from which Lucas is reborn with a new wisdom. But its significance completely eludes his daughter, Ethel, who drags him back to the mundane world. Harold in “Albergo Empedocle” is so much possessed by the spirit of the place that, having fallen asleep in the ruins of Acragas, he wakes up convinced that he had lived there before. His men unfortunately do not understand him and he is declared insane. In “The Story of a Panic” the picnickers, sitting in a romantic valley, are so much over-awed by the spirit of the place, visualized as the cat’s-paw that they ran away in moral fear. Eustace, who envisages Pan, is liberated from the fetters of his guardians. Thus in the short stories and the novels of Forster the place works like a living