DEVOTO SHOWS TREND OF HISTORICAL NOVEL

Distinction between the imaginative recreation of history "as it must have happened" and the old romanticized treatment of great men and brave deeds formed the basis of the second in a series of talks on the "American Historical Novel" given in New Lecture Hall last night by Bernard DeVoto '20.

Illustrative of the new trend, DeVoto named the writings of James Boyd, which he described as "first-rate fiction that happens to be written about a different era.

"There is no period work, no costume effects, none of the pageantry and formal tableaus which the romantic novel used. When we read his books we feel that they are not daydreams, but the way life was."

There is a "realism of the whole which aims at the truth of history as the imaginative artist conceives it to be, which tries to present things as they are in their true relationships." Whenever the romantic convention enters the books, it cheapens their contents.

Boyd is the "best historical novelist of our generation because the romantic vestiges are so few--he achieves his eminence in spite of them."