Forster begins by clarifying the unifying idea behind this series of lectures. He says there are “two forces” at work in the novel: “human beings and a bundle of things not human beings” (156). Through these lectures, Forster aims to analyze how the novelist can balance the sometimes contrasting pulls of these two forces. He uses the metaphor of a bird ascending into the skies, leaving its shadow increasingly distant, to illustrate these dual forces that run into the danger of becoming so separate that they no longer resemble one another. He says the next step to defining and illuminating this idea is to turn from story, character, and plot, all of which are building blocks of the novel, to fantasy and prophecy, which are the web holding the novel together as art.

The novels Forster chooses to illustrate the move from plot to fantasy are Jules Sterne’s Tristram Shandy and Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. As with the other aspects of the novel, Forster first turns to reader expectations as he begins to define fantasy. Given that the innate nature of fantasy is that it depicts the impossible, he says the reader must be willing to accept impossible things in a novel if they are to experience the elements of fantasy.