Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Of or relating to E. M. Forster (1879–1970), English writer known for ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Forster +‎ -ian

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word Forsterian.

Examples

  • Above all, he uses the school, whose tutors include a Russian-Jewish emigre, a sensitive Forsterian aesthete and a down-to-earth Aussie, to capture the cosmopolitan confusion of postwar Europe.

    Lingua Franca 2010

  • Here, Eileen Joy picks up on my Forsterian theme, suggesting that scholarly work at its very best is always a process of collaboration.

    Archive 2008-01-01 Mary Kate Hurley 2008

  • This kind of interaction often encourages imaginative juxtapositions in what I call a “Forsterian” scholarship, drawing on the epigraph to the E.M. Forster novel Howards End. Our work is to “only connect”: to connect ideas, people, cultures and texts in a network that might, in the end, be best described not only as human but also as humane:

    Archive 2008-01-01 Mary Kate Hurley 2008

  • Here, Eileen Joy picks up on my Forsterian theme, suggesting that scholarly work at its very best is always a process of collaboration.

    Old English, New Media: or, Friday Night Meta-Blogging Mary Kate Hurley 2008

  • This kind of interaction often encourages imaginative juxtapositions in what I call a “Forsterian” scholarship, drawing on the epigraph to the E.M. Forster novel Howards End. Our work is to “only connect”: to connect ideas, people, cultures and texts in a network that might, in the end, be best described not only as human but also as humane:

    Old English, New Media: or, Friday Night Meta-Blogging Mary Kate Hurley 2008

  • In my oddly Forsterian approach to scholarship then, perhaps compassion is not only possible but necessary to forge the connection with the past that allows one to bear witness to something other than "a personal life" -- to avoid the end Rich (fore) saw to such self-concern:

    Archive 2007-01-01 Mary Kate Hurley 2007

  • Isherwood tried dressing up his desertion in a lot of Forsterian finery (is it really braver to betray one's country than one's friend?), but he eventually admitted the irresponsibility of his having left.

    Darling Me 2005

  • Isherwood tried dressing up his desertion in a lot of Forsterian finery (is it really braver to betray one's country than one's friend?), but he eventually admitted the irresponsibility of his having left.

    Darling Me 2005

  • Smith’s earlier books may have suggested that her commitment to this novelistic doctrine was merely formal (in White Teeth, for instance, the Forsterian injunction “only connect” is recast as a post-colonial, multicultural platitude); but On Beauty follows Forster’s example by allowing its characters to fail at knowing themselves - and others.

    Book Reviewing 2010

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.