The novel as a "moral playground"

Last Friday's lecture given at St. John's by one of our faculty and the subsequent conversation focused on the thesis, here paraphrased: The novel is a moral playground, not a pulpit. The reader experiences life in all its moral complexity vicariously through the characters in a (good) novel, but the author does not preach to him/her about which moral choice should prevail.

I question the universality of such a statement, but apart from that, here are a few questions worth considering on the topic, some of which emerged from the post-lecture conversation:

• Is it possible to have beauty (e.g. in poetry, music etc.) without meaning or message?
• In what way do/don't poets/novelists instruct?
• Are there species of meaning, e.g. philosophical, musical, poetic...? If so, can one exist apart from the other?