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The short story is a kind of prose
fiction, usually more compact and intense than the novel and the short novel
(novelette). Prior to the 19th century it was not generally regarded as a
distinct literary form. But although in this sense it may seem to be a uniquely
modern genre, the fact is that short prose fiction is nearly as old as language
itself. Throughout history man has enjoyed various types of brief narratives:
jests, anecdotes, studied digressions, short allegorical romances, moralizing
fairy tales, short myths, and abbreviated historical legends. None of these
constitutes a short story as the 19th and 20th centuries have defined the term,
but they do make up a large part of the milieu from which the modern short story
emerged.
Many of the elements of storytelling
common to the short story and the novel are discussed at greater length in the
preceding section on the novel. The short stories of particular literary
cultures, along with other genres, are discussed in articles such as
LITERATURE, THE HISTORY OF WESTERN ; and in articles on the arts of
various peoples--e.g., SOUTH ASIAN ARTS.
As a genre, the short story has received
relatively little critical attention, and the most valuable studies of the form
that exist are often limited by region or era (e.g., Ray B. West's The Short
Story in America, 1900-50). One recent attempt to account for the genre has
been offered by the Irish short story writer Frank O'Connor, who suggests that
stories are a means for "submerged population groups" to address a
dominating community. Most other theoretical discussions, however, are
predicated in one way or another on Edgar Allan Poe's thesis that stories must
have a compact, unified effect. (see also literary
genre)
By far the majority of criticism on the
short story focusses on techniques of writing. Many, and often the best of the
technical works, advise the young reader--alerting him to the variety of devices
and tactics employed by the skilled writer. On the other hand, many of these
works are no more than treatises on "how to write stories" for the
young writer, and not serious critical material. (see also
literary criticism)
The prevalence in the 19th century of
two words, "sketch" and "tale," affords one way of looking
at the genre. In the United States alone there were virtually hundreds of books
claiming to be collections of sketches (Washington Irving's Sketch
Book, William Dean Howells' Suburban
Sketches) or collections of tales (Poe's Tales
of the Grotesque and Arabesque, Herman Melville's Piazza
Tales). These two terms establish the polarities of the milieu out of which
the modern short story grew. (see also literary
sketch)
The tale is much older than the sketch.
Basically, the tale is a manifestation of a culture's unaging desire to name and
conceptualize its place in the cosmos. It provides a culture's narrative
framework for such things as its vision of itself and its homeland or for
expressing its conception of its ancestors and its gods. Usually filled with
cryptic and uniquely deployed motifs, personages, and symbols, tales are
frequently fully understood only by members of the particular culture to which
they belong. Simply, tales are intracultural. Seldom created to address an
outside culture, a tale is a medium through which a culture speaks to itself and
thus perpetuates its own values and stabilizes its own identity. The old speak
to the young through tales. (see also folktale,
symbolism)
The sketch, by contrast, is
intercultural, depicting some phenomenon of one culture for the benefit or
pleasure of a second culture. Factual and journalistic, in essence the sketch is
generally more analytic or descriptive and less narrative or dramatic than the
tale. Moreover, the sketch by nature is suggestive,
incomplete; the tale is often hyperbolic,
overstated.
The primary mode of the sketch is
written; that of the tale, spoken. This difference alone accounts for their
strikingly different effects. The sketch writer can have, or pretend to have,
his eye on his subject. The tale, recounted at court or campfire--or at some
place similarly removed in time from the event--is nearly always a recreation of
the past. The tale-teller is an agent of time,
bringing together a culture's past and its present. The sketch writer is
more an agent of space, bringing an
aspect of one culture to the attention of a second. (see also
art, oral
literature)
It is only a slight oversimplification
to suggest that the tale was the only kind of short fiction until the 16th
century, when a rising middle class interest in social realism on the one hand
and in exotic lands on the other put a premium on sketches of subcultures and
foreign regions. In the 19th century certain writers--those one might call the
"fathers" of the modern story: Nikolay Gogol, Hawthorne, E.T.A.
Hoffmann, Heinrich von Kleist, Prosper Mérimée, Poe--combined
elements of the tale with elements of the sketch. Each writer worked in his own
way, but the general effect was to mitigate some of the fantasy and stultifying
conventionality of the tale and, at the same time, to liberate the sketch from
its bondage to strict factuality. The modern short story, then, ranges between
the highly imaginative tale and the photographic sketch and in some ways draws
on both.
The short stories of Ernest
Hemingway, for example, may often gain their force from an exploitation
of traditional mythic symbols (water, fish, groin wounds), but they are more
closely related to the sketch than to the tale. Indeed, Hemingway was able at
times to submit his apparently factual stories as newspaper copy. In contrast,
the stories of Hemingway's contemporary William
Faulkner more closely resemble the tale. Faulkner seldom seems to
understate, and his stories carry a heavy flavour of the past. Both his language
and his subject matter are rich in traditional material. A Southerner might well
suspect that only a reader steeped in sympathetic knowledge of the traditional
South could fully understand Faulkner. Faulkner may seem, at times, to be a
Southerner speaking to and for Southerners. But, as, by virtue of their
imaginative and symbolic qualities, Hemingway's narratives are more than
journalistic sketches, so, by virtue of their explorative and analytic
qualities, Faulkner's narratives are more than Southern tales.
Whether or not one sees the modern short
story as a fusion of sketch and tale, it is hardly disputable that today the
short story is a distinct and autonomous, though still developing, genre.
The evolution of the short story first
began before man could write. To aid himself in constructing and memorizing
tales, the early storyteller often relied on stock phrases, fixed rhythms, and
rhyme. Consequently, many of the oldest narratives in the world, such as the
famous Babylonian tale the Epic of
Gilgamesh (c. 2000 BC), are in
verse. Indeed, most major stories from the ancient Middle
East were in verse: "The War of the Gods," "The Story of
Adapa" (both Babylonian), "The Heavenly Bow," and "The King
Who Forgot" (both Canaanite). These tales were inscribed in cuneiform on
clay during the 2nd millennium BC. (see also
poetry)
The earliest tales extant from Egypt
were composed on papyrus at a comparable date. The ancient Egyptians seem to
have written their narratives largely in prose, apparently reserving verse for
their religious hymns and working songs. One of the earliest surviving Egyptian
tales, "The Shipwrecked Sailor" (c.
2000 BC), is clearly intended to be a consoling and inspiring story to
reassure its aristocratic audience that apparent misfortune can in the end
become good fortune. Also recorded during the 12th dynasty were the success
story of the exile Sinuhe and the moralizing tale called "King Cheops
[Khufu] and the Magicians." The provocative and profusely detailed story
"The Tale of Two Brothers" (or "Anpu and Bata") was written
down during the New Kingdom, probably around 1250 BC. Of all the early Egyptian
tales, most of which are baldly didactic, this story is perhaps the richest in
folk motifs and the most intricate in plot. (see also
Egyptian arts and
architecture, ancient, fable)
The earliest tales from India are not as
old as those from Egypt and the Middle East. The Brahmanas(c. 700 BC) function mostly as
theological appendixes to the Four Vedas, but a few are composed as short,
instructional parables. Perhaps more interesting as stories are the later tales
in the Pali language, The Jataka. Although
these tales have a religious frame that attempts to recast them as Buddhist
ethical teachings, their actual concern is generally with secular behaviour and
practical wisdom. Another, nearly contemporaneous collection of Indian tales, The
Pañca-tantra (c. AD 500),
has been one of the world's most popular books. This anthology of amusing and
moralistic animal tales, akin to those of "Aesop" in Greece, was
translated into Middle Persian in the 6th century; into Arabic in the 8th
century; and into Hebrew, Greek, and Latin soon thereafter. Sir Thomas North's
English translation appeared in 1570. Another noteworthy collection is Katha-saritsaqara
("Ocean of Rivers of Stories), a series of tales assembled and recounted in
narrative verse in the 11th century by the Sanskrit writer Samadeva. Most of
these tales come from much older material, and they vary from the fantastic
story of a transformed swan to a more probable tale of a loyal but misunderstood
servant. (see also Indian
literature, "Pañca-tantra,"
, "Ocean of Story,
The," )
During the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th centuries
BC, the Hebrews first wrote down some of their rather sophisticated narratives,
which are now a part of the Old
Testament and the Apocrypha. The book of Tobit displays an unprecedented
sense of ironic humour; Judith creates an unrelenting and suspenseful tension as
it builds to its bloody climax; the story of Susanna, the most compact and least
fantastic in the Apocrypha, develops a three-sided conflict involving the
innocent beauty of Susanna, the lechery of the elders, and the triumphant wisdom
of Daniel. The Old Testament books of Ruth, Esther, and Jonah hardly need
mentioning: they may well be the most famous stories in the world. (see also
Hebrew literature)
Nearly all of the ancient tales, whether
from Israel, India, Egypt, or the Middle East, were fundamentally didactic. Some
of these ancient stories preached by presenting an ideal for readers to imitate.
Others tagged with a "moral" were more direct. Most stories, however,
preached by illustrating the success and joy that was available to the
"good" man and by conveying a sense of the terror and misery that was
in store for the wayward. (see also didactic
literature)
The early Greeks contributed greatly to
the scope and art of short fiction. As in India, the moralizing animal fable was
a common form; many of these tales were collected as "Aesop's fables"
in the 6th century BC. Brief mythological
stories of the gods' adventures in love and war were also popular in the
pre-Attic age. Apollodorus of Athens
compiled a handbook of epitomes, or abstracts, of these tales around the 2nd
century BC, but the tales themselves are no longer extant in their original
form. They appear, though somewhat transformed, in the longer poetical works of
Hesiod, Homer, and the tragedians. Short tales found their way into long prose
forms as well, as in Hellanicus' Persika (5th century BC, extant only in fragments). (see also
Ancient Greek literature)
Herodotus,
the "father of history," saw himself as a maker and reciter of logoi
(things for telling, tales). His long Historyis interspersed with such fictionalized digressions as the stories of
Polycrates and his emerald ring, of Candaules' attractive wife, and of
Rhampsinitus' stolen treasure. Xenophon's
philosophical history, the Cyropaedia(4th century BC), contains the famous story of the soldier Abradates and his
lovely and loyal wife Panthea, perhaps the first Western love story. The Cyropaedia
also contains other narrative interpolations: the story of Pheraules, who
freely gave away his wealth; the tale of Gobryas' murdered son; and various
anecdotes describing the life of the Persian soldier.
Moreover, the Greeks are usually
credited with originating the romance,
a long form of prose fiction with stylized plots of love, catastrophe, and
reunion. The early Greek romances frequently took shape as a series of short
tales. The Love Romances of Parthenius
of Nicaea, who wrote during the reign of Augustus Caesar, is a collection of 36
prose stories of unhappy lovers. The
Milesian Tales(no
longer extant) was an extremely popular collection of erotic and ribald stories
composed by Aristides of Miletus
in the 2nd century BC and translated almost immediately into Latin. As the
variety of these short narratives suggests, the Greeks were less insistent than
earlier cultures that short fiction be predominantly didactic.
By comparison the contribution of the
Romans to short narrative was small. Ovid's
long poem, Metamorphosesis basically a reshaping of over 100 short, popular tales into a thematic
pattern. The other major fictional narratives to come out of Rome are
novel-length works by Petronius
(Satyricon, 1st century AD) and Apuleius
(The Golden Ass, 2nd century AD). Like
Ovid these men used potential short-story material as episodes within a larger
whole. The Roman love of rhetoric, it seems, encouraged the development of
longer and more comprehensive forms of expression. Regardless, the trend away
from didacticism inaugurated by the Greeks was not reversed. (see also
Latin literature)
The Middle Ages was a time of the
proliferation, though not necessarily the refinement, of short narratives. The
short tale became an important means of diversion and amusement. From the Dark
Ages to the Renaissance, various cultures adopted short fiction for their own
purposes. Even the aggressive, grim spirit of the invading Germanic barbarians
was amenable to expression in short prose. The myths and sagas extant in
Scandinavia and Iceland indicate the kinds of bleak and violent tales the
invaders took with them into southern Europe. (see also
Germanic religion and
mythology)
In contrast, the romantic imagination
and high spirits of the Celts remained manifest in their tales. Wherever they
appeared--in Ireland, Wales, or Brittany--stories steeped in magic and splendour
also appeared. This spirit, easily recognized in such Irish mythological tales
as Longes mac n-Uislenn (probably
9th-century), infused the chivalric romances that developed somewhat later on
the Continent. The romances usually addressed one of three "Matters":
the "Matter of Britain" (stories of King Arthur and his knights), the
"Matter of France" (the Charlemagne cycle), or the "Matter of
Rome" (stories out of antiquity, such as "Pyramus and Thisbe,"
"Paris and Helen"). Many, but not all, of the romances are too long to
be considered short stories. Two of the most influential contributors of short
material to the "Matter of Britain" in the 12th century were Chrétien
de Troyes and Marie de France.
The latter was gifted as a creator of the short narrative poems known as the Breton
lays. Only occasionally did a popular short romance like Aucassin
and Nicolette (13th century) fail to address any of the three Matters. (see
also Celtic
literature, Irish literature)
Also widely respected was the exemplum,
a short didactic tale usually intended to dramatize or otherwise inspire model
behaviour. Of all the exempla, the best known in the 11th and 12th centuries
were the lives of the saints, some 200 of which are extant. The Gesta
Romanorum("Deeds
of the Romans") offered skeletal plots of exempla that preachers could
expand into moralistic stories for use in their sermons.
Among the common people of the late
Middle Ages there appeared a literary movement counter to that of the romance
and exemplum. Displaying a preference for common sense, secular humour, and
sensuality, this movement accounted in a large way for the practical-minded
animals in beast fables, the coarse and "merry" jestbooks, and the
ribald fabliaux. All were important as short narratives, but perhaps the most
intriguing of the three are the fabliaux.
First appearing around the middle of the 12th century, fabliaux remained popular
for 200 years, attracting the attention of Boccaccio and Chaucer. Some 160
fabliaux are extant, all in verse.
Often, the medieval
storyteller--regardless of the kind of tale he preferred--relied on a framing
circumstance that made possible the juxtaposition of several stories, each of
them relatively autonomous. Since there was little emphasis on organic unity,
most storytellers preferred a flexible format, one that allowed tales to be
added or removed at random with little change in effect. Such a format is found
in The Seven Sages of Rome, a
collection of stories so popular that nearly every European country had its own
translation. The framing circumstance in The
Seven Sages involves a prince condemned to death; his advocates (the seven
sages) relate a new story each day, thereby delaying the execution until his
innocence is made known. This technique is clearly similar to that of The
Arabian Nightsanother
collection to come out of the Middle Ages. The majority of the stories in The
Arabian Nights are framed by the story of Scheherazade in "A Thousand
and One Nights." Records indicate that the basis of this framing story was
a medieval Persian collection, Hezar Efsan
("Thousand Romances," no longer extant). In both the Persian and
Arabian versions of the frame, the clever Scheherazade avoids death by telling
her king-husband a thousand stories. Though the framing device is identical in
both versions, the original Persian stories within the frame were replaced or
drastically altered as the collection was adapted by the Arabs during the Muslim
Manluk period (AD 1250-1517).
Short narrative received its most
refined treatment in the Middle Ages from Chaucer and Boccaccio. Chaucer's versatility
reflects the versatility of the age. In "The Miller's Tale" he
artistically combines two fabliaux; in "The Nun's Priest's Tale" he
draws upon material common to beast fables; in "The Pardoner's Tale"
he creates a brilliantly revealing sermon, complete with a narrative exemplum.
This short list hardly exhausts the catalogue of forms Chaucer experimented
with. By relating tale to teller and by exploiting relationships among the
various tellers, Chaucer endowed The Canterbury Taleswith a unique, dramatic vitality.
Boccaccio's
genius, geared more toward narrative than
drama, is of a different sort. Where
Chaucer reveals a character through actions and assertions, Boccaccio seems more
interested in stories as pieces of action. With Boccaccio, the characters
telling the stories, and usually the characters within, are of subordinate
interest. Like Chaucer, Boccaccio frames his well-wrought tales in a metaphoric
context. The trip to the shrine at Canterbury provides a meaningful backdrop
against which Chaucer juxtaposes his earthy and pious characters. The frame of
the Decameron(from the Greek deka, 10, and hemera, day)
has relevance as well: during the height of the Black Plague in Florence, Italy,
10 people meet and agree to amuse and divert each other by telling 10 stories
each. Behind every story, in effect, is the inescapable presence of the Black
Death. The Decameron is fashioned out
of a variety of sources, including fabliaux, exempla, and short romances. (see
also Italian
literature)
Immediately popular, the Decameron
produced imitations nearly everywhere. In Italy alone, there appeared at
least 50 writers of novelle (as short
narratives were called) after Boccaccio. (see also
novella)
Learning from the success and artistry
of Boccaccio and, to a lesser degree, his contemporary Franco
Sacchetti, Italian writers for three centuries kept the Western world
supplied with short narratives. Sacchetti was no mere imitator of Boccaccio.
More of a frank and unadorned realist, he wrote--or planned to write--300
stories (200 of the Trecentonovelle ["300 Short Stories"] are extant) dealing
in a rather anecdotal way with ordinary Florentine life. Two other well-known
narrative writers of the 14th century, Giovanni Fiorentino and Giovanni
Sercambi, freely acknowledged their imitation of Boccaccio. In the 15th century
Masuccio Salernitano's collection of 50 stories, Il novellino (1475), attracted much attention. Though verbosity
often substitutes for eloquence in Masuccio's stories, they are witty and lively
tales of lovers and clerics. (see also Renaissance
art)
With Masuccio the popularity of short
stories was just beginning to spread. Almost every Italian in the 16th century,
it has been suggested, tried his hand at novelle.
Matteo Bandello, the most
influential and prolific writer, attempted nearly everything from brief
histories and anecdotes to short romances, but he was most interested in tales
of deception. Various other kinds of stories appeared. Agnolo
Firenzuolo's popular Ragionamenti
diamore ("The Reasoning of Love") is characterized by a graceful
style unique in tales of ribaldry; Anton Francesco Doni included several tales
of surprise and irony in his miscellany, I
marmi ("The Marbles"); and Gianfrancesco
Straparola experimented with common folktales and with dialects in his
collection, Le piacevoli notti ("The
Pleasant Nights"). In the early 17th century, Giambattista
Basile attempted to infuse stock situations (often of the fairy-tale
type, such as "Puss and Boots") with realistic details. The result was
often remarkable--a tale of hags or princes with very real motives and feelings.
Perhaps it is the amusing and diverting nature of Basile's collection of 50
stories that has reminded readers of Boccaccio. Or, it may be his use of a frame
similar to that in the Decameron. Whatever
the reason, Basile's Cunto de li cunti (1634;
The Story of Stories) is traditionally
linked with Boccaccio and referred to as The
Pentamerone ("The Five Days"). Basile's similarities to Boccaccio
suggest that in the 300 years between them the short story may have gained
repute and circulation, but its basic shape and effect hardly changed.
This pattern was repeated in France,
though the impetus provided by Boccaccio was not felt until the 15th century. A
collection of 100 racy anecdotes, Les Cent
Nouvelles Nouvelles, "The Hundred New Short Stories" (c.
1460), outwardly resembles the Decameron.
Margaret of Angoulême's Heptaméron
(1558-59; "The Seven Days"), an unfinished collection of 72
amorous tales, admits a similar indebtedness. (see also
French literature)
In the early 17th century Béroalde
de Verville placed his own Rabelaisian tales within a banquet frame in a
collection called Le Moyen de parvenir, "The
Way of Succeeding" (c. 1610).
Showing great narrative skill, Béroalde's stories are still very much in
the tradition of Boccaccio; as a collection of framed stories, their main intent
is to amuse and divert the reader.
As the most influential nation in Europe
in the 15th and 16th centuries, Spain contributed to the proliferation of short
prose fiction. Especially noteworthy are: Don
Juan Manuel's collection of lively exempla Libro
de los enxiemplos del conde Lucanor et de Patronio (1328-35),
which antedates the Decameron; the
anonymous story "The Abencerraje," which was interpolated into a
pastoral novel of 1559; and, most importantly, Miguel
de Cervantes' experimental Novelas
ejemplares(1613;
"Exemplary Novels"). Cervantes' short fictions vary in style and
seriousness, but their single concern is clear: to explore the nature of man's
secular existence. This focus was somewhat new for short fiction, heretofore
either didactic or escapist. (see also Spanish
literature)
Despite the presence of these and other
popular collections, short narrative in Spain was eventually overshadowed by a
new form that began to emerge in the 16th century--the novel. Like the earlier
Romans, the Spanish writers of the early Renaissance often incorporated short
story material as episodes in a larger whole.
The 17th and 18th centuries mark the
temporary decline of short fiction. The causes of this phenomenon are many: the
emergence of the novel; the
failure of the Boccaccio tradition to produce in three centuries much more than
variations or imitations of older, well-worn material; and a renaissant
fascination with drama and poetry, the superior forms of classical antiquity.
Another cause for the disappearance of major works of short fiction is suggested
by the growing preference for journalistic
sketches. The increasing awareness of other lands and the growing interest in
social conditions (accommodated by a publication boom) produced a plethora of
descriptive and biographical sketches. Although these journalistic elements
later were incorporated in the fictional short story, for the time being fact
held sway over the imagination. Travel books, criminal biographies, social
description, sermons, and essays occupied the market. Only occasionally did a
serious story find its way into print, and then it was usually a production of
an established writer like Voltaire or Addison.
Perhaps the decline is clearest in
England, where the short story had its least secure foothold. It took little to
obscure the faint tradition established in the 16th and 17th centuries by the
popular jestbooks, by the Palace of
Pleasure (an anthology of stories, mostly European), and by the few rough
stories written by Englishmen (e.g., Barnabe
Rich's Farewell to Military Profession, 1581).
During the Middle Ages short fiction had
become primarily an amusing and diverting medium. The Renaissance and
Enlightenment, however, made different demands of the form. The awakening
concern with secular issues called for a new attention to actual conditions.
Simply, the diverting stories were no longer relevant or viable. At first only
the journalists and pamphleteers responded to the new demand. Short fiction
disappeared, in effect, because it did not respond. When it did shake off its
escapist trappings in the 19th century, it reappeared as the "modern short
story." This was a new stage in the evolution of short fiction, one in
which the short form undertook a new seriousness and gained a new vitality and
respect.
The modern short story emerged almost
simultaneously in Germany, the United States, France, and Russia. In Germany
there had been relatively little difference between the stories of the late 18th
century and those in the older tradition of Boccaccio. In 1795 Goethe
contributed a set of stories to Schiller's journal, Die
Horen, that were obviously created with the Decameron in mind. Significantly, Goethe did not call them
"short stories" (Novellen)
although the term was available to him. Rather, he thought of them as
"entertainments" for German travellers (Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten). Friedrich
Schlegel's early discussion of the short narrative form, appearing soon
after Goethe's "entertainments," also focussed on Boccaccio (Nachrichten
von den poetischen Werken des G. Boccaccio, 1801). (see also
German literature)
But a new type of short fiction was near
at hand--a type that accepted some of the realistic properties of popular
journalism. In 1827, 32 years after publishing his own
"entertainments," Goethe commented on the difference between the newly
emergent story and the older kind. "What is a short story," he asked,
"but an event which, though unheard of, has occurred? Many a work which
passes in Germany under the title 'short story' is not a short story at all, but
merely a tale or what else you would like to call it." Two influential
critics, Christoph Wieland and
Friedrich Schleiermacher, also
argued that a short story properly concerned itself with events that actually
happened or could happen. A short story, for them, had to be realistic.
Perhaps sensitive to this qualification,
Heinrich von Kleist and E.T.A.
Hoffmann called their short works on fabulous themes "tales" (Erzählungen). Somewhat like Poe, Kleist created an expression
of human problems, partly metaphysical and partly psychological, by dramatizing
man's confrontations with a fantastic, chaotic world. Hoffmann's intriguing
tales of exotic places and of supernatural phenomena were very likely his most
influential. Another important writer, Ludwig
Tieck, explicitly rejected realism as the definitive element in a short
story. As he noted in his preface to the 1829 collection of his works and as he
demonstrated in his stories, Tieck envisioned the short story as primarily a
matter of intensity and ironic inversion. A story did not have to be realistic
in any outward sense, he claimed, so long as the chain of consequences was
"entirely in keeping with character and circumstances." By allowing
the writer to pursue an inner, and perhaps bizarre, reality and order, Tieck and
the others kept the modern story open to nonjournalistic techniques.
In the United States, the short story,
as in Germany, evolved in two strains. On the one hand there appeared the
realistic story that sought objectively to deal with seemingly real places,
events, or persons. The regionalist stories of the second half of the 19th
century (including those by G.W. Cable, Bret Harte, Sarah Orne Jewett) are of
this kind. On the other hand, there developed the impressionist story, a tale
shaped and given meaning by the consciousness and psychological attitudes of the
narrator. Predicated upon this element of subjectivity, these stories seem less
objective and are less realistic in the outward sense. Of this sort are Poe's
tales in which the hallucinations of a central character or narrator provide the
details and facts of the story. Like the narrators in "The Tell-Tale
Heart" (1843) and "The Imp of the Perverse" (1845), the narrator
of "The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839) so distorts and transforms
what he sees that the reader cannot hope to look objectively at the scene.
Looking through an intermediary's eyes, the reader can see only the narrator's impressions
of the scene. (see also American
literature, Midwestern
Regionalism)
Some writers contributed to the
development of both types of story. Washington
Irving wrote several realistic sketches (The Sketch-Book, 1819-20; The
Alhambra, 1832) in which he carefully recorded appearances and actions.
Irving also wrote stories in which the details were taken not from ostensible
reality but from within a character's mind. Much of the substance of "The
Stout Gentleman" (1821), for example, is reshaped and recharged by the
narrator's fertile imagination; "Rip Van Winkle" (1819) draws upon the
symbolic surreality of Rip's dreams.
The short prose of Nathaniel
Hawthorne illustrates that neither type of modern story, however, has
exclusive rights to the use of symbol. On a few occasions, as in "My
Kinsman, Major Molineux" (1832), Hawthorne's stories are about symbolic
events as they are viewed subjectively by the central character. Hawthorne's
greater gift, however, was for creating scenes, persons, and events that strike
the reader as being actual historical facts and also as being rich in symbolic
import. "Endicott and the Red Cross" (1837) may seem little more than
a photographic sketch of a tableau out of history (the 17th-century Puritan
leader cuts the red cross of St. George out of the colonial flag, the first act
of rebellion against England), but the details are symbols of an underground of
conflicting values and ideologies.
Several American writers, from Poe to
James, were interested in the "impressionist" story that focusses on
the impressions registered by events on the characters' minds, rather than the
objective reality of the events themselves. In Herman
Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener" (1856) the narrator is a
man who unintentionally reveals his own moral weaknesses through his telling of
the story of Bartleby. Mark Twain's
tales of animals ("The Celebrated Jumping Frog," 1865; "The Story
of Old Ram," 1872; "Baker's Blue Jay Yarn," 1879), all
impressionist stories, distort ostensible reality in a way that reflects on the
men who are speaking. Ambrose
Bierce's famous "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" (1891) is
another example of this type of story in which the reader sees a mind at
work--distorting, fabricating, and fantasizing--rather than an objective picture
of actuality. In contrast, William
Dean Howells usually sought an objectifying aesthetic distance. Though
Howells was as interested in human psychology and behaviour as any of the
impressionist writers, he did not want his details filtered through a biassed,
and thus distorting, narrator. Impressionism, he felt, gave license for
falsifications; in the hands of many writers of his day, it did in fact result
in sentimental romanticizing.
But in other hands the impressionist
technique could subtly delineate human responses. Henry
James was such a writer. Throughout his prefaces to the New York edition
of his works, the use of an interpreting "central intelligence" is
constantly emphasized. "Again and again, on review," James observes,
"the shorter things in especial that I have gathered into [the Edition]
have ranged themselves not as my own impersonal account of the affair in hand,
but as my account of somebody's impression of it." This use of a central
intelligence, who is the "impersonal author's concrete deputy or
delegate" in the story, allows James all the advantages of impressionism
and, simultaneously, the freedom and mobility common to stories narrated by a
disembodied voice.
In at least one way, 19th-century
America resembled 16th-century Italy: there was an abundance of second- and
third-rate short stories. And, yet, respect for the form grew substantially, and
most of the great artists of the century were actively participating in its
development. The seriousness with which many writers and readers regarded the
short story is perhaps most clearly evident in the amount and kind of critical
attention it received. James, Howells, Harte, Twain, Melville, and Hawthorne all
discussed it as an art form, usually offering valuable insights, though
sometimes shedding more light on their own work than on the art as a whole.
But the foremost American critic of the
short story was Edgar Allan Poe.
Himself a creator of influential impressionist techniques, Poe believed that the
definitive characteristic of the short story was its unity of effect. "A
skillful literary artist has constructed a tale," Poe wrote in his review
of Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales in
1842.
If wise, he has not fashioned his
thoughts to accommodate his incidents; but having conceived, with deliberate
care, a certain unique or single effect to
be wrought out, he then invents such incidents--he then combines such events as
may best aid him in establishing this preconceived effect. If his very initial
sentence tend not to the out-bringing of this effect, then he has failed in his
first step. In the whole composition there should be no word written of which
the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design.
Poe's polemic primarily concerns
craftsmanship and artistic integrity; it hardly prescribes limits on subject
matter or dictates technique. As such, Poe's thesis leaves the story form open
to experimentation and to growth while it demands that the form show evidence of
artistic diligence and seriousness.
The new respect for the short story was
also evident in France, as Henry James observed, when in 1844 Prosper
"Mérimée with his handful of little stories was
appointed to the French Academy." As illustrated by "Columbia"
(1841) or "Carmen" (1845), which gained additional fame as an opera, Mérimée's
stories are masterpieces of detached and dry observation, though the subject
matter itself is often emotionally charged. Nineteenth-century France produced
short stories as various as 19th-century America--although the impressionist
tale was generally less common in France. (It is as if, not having an
outstanding impressionist storyteller themselves, the French adopted Poe, who
was being ignored by the critics in his own country.) The two major French
impressionist writers were Charles
Nodier, who experimented with symbolic fantasies, and Gérard
de Nerval, whose collection Les
Filles du feu (1854; "Daughters of Fire") grew out of
recollections of his childhood. Artists primarily known for their work in other
forms also attempted the short story--novelists like Honoré de Balzac and
Gustave Flaubert and poets like Alfred de Vigny and Théophile Gautier.
One of the most interesting writers of
19th-century France is Alphonse
Daudet, whose stories reflect the spectrum of interest and techniques of
the entire century. His earliest and most popular stories (Lettres
de mon moulin, 1866; "Letters from My Mill") create a romantic,
picturesque fantasy; his stories of the Franco-Prussian War (Contes
du Lundi, 1873; "Monday's Tales") are more objectively realistic,
and the sociological concern of his last works betrays his increasing interest
in naturalistic determinism.
The greatest French storywriter, by far,
is Guy de Maupassant, a master
of the objective short story. Basically, Maupassant's stories are anecdotes that
capture a revealing moment in the lives of middle class citizens. This crucial
moment is typically recounted in a well-plotted design, though perhaps in some
stories like "Boule de suif" (1880; "Ball of Tallow") and
"The Necklace" (1881) the plot is too contrived, the reversing irony
too neat, and the artifice too apparent. In other stories, like "The House
of Madame Tellier" (1881), Maupassant's easy and fluid prose captures the
innocence and the corruption of human behaviour.
During the first two decades of the 19th
century in Russia, fable writing became a fad. By all accounts the most widely
read fabulist was Ivan Krylov
whose stories borrowed heavily from Aesop, La Fontaine, and various Germanic
sources. If Krylov's tales made short prose popular in Russia, the stories of
the revered poet Aleksandr Pushkin
gained serious attention for the form. Somewhat like Mérimée in
France (who was one of the first to translate Pushkin, Gogol, and Turgenev into
French), Pushkin cultivated a detached, rather classical style for his stories
of emotional conflicts (The Queen of
Spades, 1834). Also very popular and respected was Mikhail Lermontov's
"novel," A Hero of Our Time (1840),
which actually consists of five stories that are more or less related.
But it is Nikolay
Gogol who stands at the headwaters of the Russian short story;
Dostoyevsky noted that all Russian short story writers "emerged from
Gogol's overcoat," a punning allusion to the master's best known story. In
a manner all his own, Gogol was developing impressionist techniques in Russia
simultaneously with Poe in America. Gogol published his Arabesques(1835) five years before Poe collected some of his tales under a similar
title. Like those of Poe, Gogol's tales of hallucination, confusing reality and
dream, are among his best stories ("Nevsky Prospect" and "Diary
of a Madman," both 1835). The single most influential story in the first
half of the 19th century in Russia was undoubtedly Gogol's "Overcoat"
(1842). Blending elements of realism (natural details from the characters' daily
lives) with elements of fantasy (the central character returns as a ghost),
Gogol's story seems to anticipate both the impressionism of Dostoyevsky's
"Underground Man" and the realism of Tolstoy's "Ivan Ilich."
(see also "Overcoat,
The," )
Ivan
Turgenev appears, at first glance, antithetical to
Gogol. In A Sportsman's Notebook (1852)
Turgenev's simple use of language, his calm pace, and his restraint clearly
differentiate him from Gogol. But like Gogol, Turgenev was more interested in
capturing qualities of people and places than in building elaborate plots. A
remaining difference between the two Russians, however, tends to make Turgenev
more acceptable to 20th-century readers: Turgenev studiously avoided anything
artificial. Though he may have brought into his realistic scenes a tale of a
ghost ("Bezhin Meadow," 1852), he did not attempt to bring in a ghost
(as Gogol had done in "The Overcoat"). In effect, Turgenev's
allegiance was wholly to detached observation.
Developing some of the interests of
Gogol, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
experimented with the impressionist story. The early story "White
Nights" (1848), for example, is a "Tale of Love from the Reminiscence
of a Dreamer" as the subtitle states; the title of one of his last stories,
"The Dream of the Ridiculous Man" (1877), also echoes Poe and Gogol.
Though sharing Dostoyevsky's interest in human motives, Leo
Tolstoy used vastly different techniques. He usually sought psychological
veracity through a more detached and, presumably, objective narrator ("The
Death of Ivan Ilich," 1886; "The Kreutzer Sonata," 1891). Perhaps
somewhat perplexed by Tolstoy's nonimpressionist means of capturing and
delineating psychological impressions, Henry James pronounced Tolstoy the
masterhand of the disconnection of method from matter.
The Russian master of the objective
story was Anton Chekhov. No
other storywriter so consistently as Chekhov turned out first-rate works. Though
often compared to Maupassant, Chekhov is much less interested in constructing a
well-plotted story; nothing much actually happens in Chekhov's stories, though
much is revealed about his characters and the quality of their lives. While
Maupassant focusses on event, Chekhov keeps his eye on character. Stories like
"The Grasshopper" (1892), "The Darling" (1898), and "In
the Ravine" (1900)--to name only three--all reveal Chekhov's perception,
his compassion, and his subtle humour and irony. One critic says of Chekhov that
he is no moralist--he simply says "you live badly, ladies and
gentlemen," but his smile has the indulgence of a very wise man.
In the first half of the 20th century
the appeal of the short story continued to grow. Literally hundreds of
writers--including, as it seems, nearly every major dramatist, poet, and
novelist--published thousands of excellent stories. William Faulkner suggested
that writers often try their hand at poetry, find it too difficult, go on to the
next most demanding form, the short story, fail at that, and only then settle
for the novel. In the 20th century Germany, France, Russia, and the U.S. lost
what had once appeared to be their exclusive domination of the form. Innovative
and commanding writers emerged in countries that had previously exerted little
influence on the genre: Sicily, for example, produced Luigi Pirandello;
Czechoslovakia, Franz Kafka; Japan, Akutagawa Ryunosuke; Argentina, Jorge
Luis Borges. Literary journals with international circulation, such as Ford
Madox Ford's Transatlantic Review,
Scribner's Magazine, and Harriet Weaver's Egoist, provided a steady and prime exposure for young writers.
As the familiarity with it increased,
the short story form itself became more varied and complex. The fundamental
means of structuring a story underwent a significant change. The overwhelming or
unique event that usually informed the 19th-century story fell out of favour
with the storywriter of the early 20th century. He grew more interested in
subtle actions and unspectacular events. Sherwood
Anderson, one of the most influential U.S. writers of the early 20th
century, observed that the common belief in his day was that stories had to be
built around a plot, a notion that, in Anderson's opinion, appeared to poison
all storytelling. His own aim was to achieve form, not plot, although form was
more elusive and difficult. The record of the short story in the 20th century is
dominated by this increased sensitivity to--and experimentation with--form.
Although the popular writers of the century (like O. Henry in the U.S. and Paul
Morand in France) may have continued to structure stories according to plot, the
greater artists turned elsewhere for structure, frequently eliciting the
response from cursory readers that "nothing happens
in these stories." Narratives like Ernest
Hemingway's "A Clean Well-Lighted Place" may seem to have no
structure at all, so little physical action develops; but stories of this kind
are actually structured around a psychological, rather than physical, conflict.
In several of Hemingway's stories (as in many by D.H. Lawrence, Katherine
Mansfield, and others), physical action and event are unimportant except insofar
as the actions reveal the psychological underpinnings of the story. Stories came
to be structured, also, in accordance with an underlying archetypal
model: the specific plot and characters are important insofar as they allude to
a traditional plot or figure, or to patterns that have recurred with wide
implications in the history of mankind. Katherine
Anne Porter's "Flowering Judas," for example, echoes and
ironically inverts the traditional Christian legend. Still other stories are
formed by means of motif, usually a thematic repetition of an image or detail
that represents the dominant idea of the story. "The Dead," the final
story in James Joyce's Dublinersbuilds from a casual mention of death and snow early in the story to a
culminating paragraph that links them in a profound vision. Seldom, of course,
is the specific structure of one story appropriate for a different story.
Faulkner, for example, used the traditional pattern of the knightly quest (in an
ironic way) for his story "Was," but for "Barn Burning" he
relied on a psychologically organic form to reveal the story of young Sarty
Snopes.
No single form provided the 20th-century
writer with the answer to structural problems. As the primary structuring agent,
spectacular and suspenseful action was rather universally rejected around
midcentury since motion pictures and television could present it much more
vividly. As the periodicals that had supplied escapist stories to mass audiences
declined, the short story became the favoured form of a smaller but
intellectually more demanding readership. The Argentine Borges,
for example, attracted an international following with his Ficcionesstories that involved the reader in dazzling displays of erudition and
imagination, unlike anything previously encountered in the genre. Similarly, the
American Donald Barthelme's
composition consisted of bits and pieces of, e.g.,
television commercials, political speeches, literary allusions, eavesdropped
conversations, graphic symbols, dialogue from Hollywood movies--all interspersed
with his own original prose in a manner that defied easy comprehension and yet
compelled the full attention of the reader. The short story also lent itself to
the rhetoric of student protest in the 1960s and was found in a bewildering
variety of mixed-media forms in the "underground" press that
publicized this life style throughout the world. In his deep concern with such a
fundamental matter as form, the 20th-century writer unwittingly affirmed the
maturation and popularity of the genre; only a secure and valued (not to mention
flexible) genre could withstand and, moreover, encourage such experimentation.
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