The World of the Novels of H. G. Wells

Abstract

Several factors have led to a trivial and incomplete understanding of the voluminous literary works of H.G.Weils : the hostile criticism of G. B. Shaw, who denigrated his fellow-Fabian as a shallow author veering between contrary opinions and attitudes; the hostile criticism of Victorian and Christian traditionalists; and the reworking of some of Wells's novels into scenarios for numerous shocking film and radio entertainments. In fact, however, Wells was a devoted and largely consistent sceptical philosopher in touch with the philosophical movements and institutions of his time. His epistemological nominalism and perspectivism, and his personal negation of natural norms and forms as well as providential purposes, found their expression in his grotesque or even pre-absurd inventions of plot and character. Thus, his prose fiction was in unison with the artistic currents of early modernism. It is to be expected that the years after the fiftieth anniversary of his death will find him re-established in the pantheon of world literature.As the originally ontological term 'romantic' came chiefly to denote a limited literary period, so the originally ontological term 'absurd' came chiefly to denote a limited literary genre of a limited literary period, that is, the theatre of the absurd since 1950. l The latter usage involves an even more restrictive