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In Lubbock's The Craft of Fiction (1921), chapters III-IV, what is a novel's 'subject', and does his reading of War and Peace allow one book to have two centres?

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[Labelled 1921 criticism of one novel; not a tested rule] Lubbock (1921) says a novel needs a subject that is 'one and whole and irreducible' and can be put into a phrase (he says 'ten words') however large or complex the book; the form depends on it. In ch. III he reads War and Peace as carrying two subjects, which he words as the story of youth and age (the generations) and the story of War and Peace itself (the national and historical strife), and concludes 'It has no centre'. The two stories are not the war scenes and the peace scenes: the break lines run through both kinds of scene. He does not state a flat rule that a book can never have two centres; he states that he could find nothing joining these two (see C3-B275-S86-02 and -03).

[Labelled 1921 criticism of one novel; not a tested rule] Lubbock (1921) says a novel needs a subject that is 'one and whole and irreducible' and can be put into a phrase (he says 'ten words') however large or complex the book; the form depends on it. In ch. III he reads War and Peace as carrying two subjects, which he words as the story of youth and age (the generations) and the story of War and Peace itself (the national and historical strife), and concludes 'It has no centre'. The two stories are not the war scenes and the peace scenes: the break lines run through both kinds of scene. He does not state a flat rule that a book can never have two centres; he states that he could find nothing joining these two (see C3-B275-S86-02 and -03). Curator qualifications: Subject 'one and whole and irreducible', statable in a phrase; 1921 criticism of one novel, labelled as such. Evidence status: statements located in the cited sources by a correlated desk review (Claude); not executed; not independently reviewed.
Structured fields
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  "citations": [
    {
      "url": "https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/18961/pg18961.txt",
      "note": "candidate evidence excerpts"
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Evidence claims

  • [sourced_fact] [Labelled 1921 criticism of one novel; not a tested rule] Lubbock (1921) says a novel needs a subject that is 'one and whole and irreducible' and can be put into a phrase (he says 'ten words') however large or complex the book; the form depends on it. In ch. III he reads War and Peace as carrying two subjects, which he words as the story of youth and age (the generations) and the story of War and Peace itself (the national and historical strife), and concludes 'It has no centre'. The two stories are not the war scenes and the peace scenes: the break lines run through both kinds of scene. He does not state a flat rule that a book can never have two centres; he states that he could find nothing joining these two (see C3-B275-S86-02 and -03). · locator: candidate evidence excerpts source

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