The short story: History and characteristics PDF

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notities uit het hoorcollege over the short story and its history....

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THE SHORT STORY: SHORT HISTORY & THEORY HISTORY: BIRTH? Divergent views:  Old (older than novel), already in oral storytelling tradition in Europe and elsewhere  Emerged at the same time of the novel: any story that is short  Modern genre: emerged in the mid 19 th C in the US and later, towards the end of the 19th C in Britain

HISTORY  

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Oral storytelling tradition: myths, fairy tales, folk tales → supernatural element Medieval stories in verse were mostly in Latin. Profane stories were being written down with an entertainment function rather than a religious or moral message Supernatural element is important in folk tales and fairy tales. Only in the Renaissance Tales realism becomes a point of interest Novel depicts reality, versimilitude, life… so it emerged as a realist genre, but short tales were being written which continued to have a religious, didactic, moral purpose → Enlightenment: didactic and moralising tales Romantic period: fairytales were being written down and influenced contemporary stories. Gothic tales, ghost stories, supernatural tales Realism  Christmas stories, ghost stories, moral tales, regional tales Important in English: Hawthorne, Poe… → not stories about everyday life (that was the function of the novel

(I) E. A. POE First statements/definitions of the short story. Poe still uses the term ‘tale’. Unlike a novel, a short story can be read in one sitting, at once, as a whole. What stands out for him is a single mood, to which the writer contributes to. The initial sentence is very important as it should immediately get your attention. All the words are important and should contribute to meaning as there is a limited amount of words. The story should also be unified (unity). Poe also refers to the literary artist which shows that the short story is an artistic act (it’s close to poetry etc). “We allude to the short prose narrative, requiring from a half-hour to one or two hours in its perusal. The ordinary novel is objectionable, from its length, for reasons already stated in substance. As it cannot be read at one sitting, it deprives itself, of course, of the immense force derivable from totality. Worldly interests intervening during the pauses of perusal, modify, annul, or counteract, in a greater or less degree, the impressions of the book. But simple cessation in reading, would, of itself, be sufficient to destroy the true unity. In the brief tale, however, the author is enabled to carry out the fullness of his intention, be it what it may. During the hour of perusal the soul of the

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reader is at the writer's control. There are no external or extrinsic influences- resulting from weariness or interruption. A skilful literary artist has constructed a tale. 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 tends 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” (Review of Hawthorne’s Twice-Told Tales)

1. one sitting 2. single effect

3. first sentence 4. unity

TALE VS. SHORT STORY

TALE  

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Long Condensed novel (plot development, a lot of context is created…) Not realist Intricate plots Oral storytelling patterns (storyteller will point out the message to you) Shortness: negative quality (nuisance for the writer to try to squeeze everything in a shorter framework) E.g. Victorian Tales

SHORT STORY (later half 19th C)    

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Short Distinct from novel (an entire different genre) Realist (it tries to capture reality and tell something about it) Condensation (requires the writer to be very economical with his sentences) Unity Ellipsis and suggestion (rather than state: no long, extensive descriptions) Shortness: positive quality

(II) FIN DE SIÈCLE Golden age of the short story: “short stories broke out everywhere” (H. G. Wells)  The publication of the short story and development of the genre is very much tied up with material circumstances of publishing, writing: they are dependent on magazines, newspapers…  Second half 19th C in Britain: huge changes in publishing (cheaper printing methods, cheaper paper…) → enormous expansion of the magazine market: new magazines were started up (devoted to different audiences). There was an explosion of periodicals and magazines. Many more readers were now available who would buy all these. The Strand Magazine: only self-contained stories, but there weren’t enough stories in the UK (first they worked with translations from French). The Strand became the best selling magazine because of the Sherlock Holmes stories. 2

The emergence is very much tied up with these specific circumstances and publication techniques. Other factors played a role as well: influence of French and American writers who had already gone on the path of greater unity and conciseness of the short story. It could simply focus on one scene, incident, transformational moment… They started to experiment with different narrative modes (not anymore “Once upon a time…”), they started using/experimenting with stream of consciousness, focalisation, ellipsis, symbolism… Critics and reviewers commenting on this new form: Brander Matthew gives one of the first definitions of short story theories in A Philosophy of the Short Story (1901) 

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“The difference between a Novel and a Novelet (~ novella) is one of length only: a Novelet is a brief Novel. But the difference between a Novel and a Short-story is a difference of kind. A true Short-story- is something other and something more than a mere story which is short. A true Short-story differs from the Novel chiefly in its essential unity of impression. In a far more exact and precise use of the word, a Short-story has unity and a novel cannot have it” (15) “a single character, a single event, a single emotion, or a series of emotions called forth by a single situation” (16)

Yellow Book (avant-garde, open-ended, stream of consciousness, interior monologue, symbolism…) + The Strand → 2 different kinds of short stories that developed during the period

PLOTTED VS. PLOTLESS STORIES

(final revelation at the end: e.g.

detective stories)

PLOTLESS

PLOTTED      

Popular, magazine story (huge appeal, many people read them) Closure; twist Unity, single effect Tightly plotted Realism + (fantasy, comedy, satire, gothic…) Traditional narrative modes

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‘Art’ story Plotless – mood > plot Open-ended Slice of life Psychological/social realism Symbolism Experimental narrative modes

(III) MODERNIST SHORT STORY [Sherwood Anderson, Katherine Anne Porter, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence] → Modernist short story seems to have become the norm for short story writing in general 1. Literary, elitist, experimental, ‘difficult’ 2. Implication → symbolism, metaphor, objective correlative 3

3. Mood, psychological insight > plot 4. Fragmentation, ellipsis, omissions, “short story is a question put” (Mansfield); “scrupulous meanness” (Joyce) 5. Epiphany (Joyce); moment of being (Woolf) 6. Free indirect discourse, interior monologue Modernist mantras: “show rather than tell”; “every word counts” “Be concise. Keep your eye on the ball. Create epiphanies. Focus on the single moment of revelation. Cut out all superfluous words” (Eilis Ni Dhuibhne, “Oleander”)

(IV) SHORT STORY AT MID-CENTURY [Frank O’Connor, Eudora Welty, Flannery O’Connor, Elizabeth Bowen, V. S. Pritchett, Grace Paley, Bernard Malamud]    

Integration of modernist “plotless” short story and “plotted” magazine story Realism + fantasy, satire, comedy Context important again (social realism, regionalism) Combination of traditional and modernist narrative techniques

(V) POSTMODERNIST SHORT STORY [Angela Carter, Julian Barnes, Thomas Pynchon, Donald Barthelme, John Barth, A. S. Byatt, Jorge Luis Borges] “(1) [writers] can refuse to tell a story or the story told can be inconsistent, pointless;  (2) they can compose stories that no longer automatically and inescapably refer to ‘reality’ (which can be seen as a social construction anyway), but that become self-reflexive or auto-referential;  (3) the act of narration is given special prominence or the arbitrary whims of the narrator are focused on. If this becomes the centre of attention it is called metafiction”. (Jarfe, The Postmodern Short Story” 2008, 385) 

→ Postmodernism has less influence on the short story than on the novel (not so much postmodernist experiments in short stories).

(VI) STATE OF THE SHORT STORY TODAY Decline after 1960s:  Fewer publication outlets: fewer magazines and newspapers, ‘collections don’t sell’  Seen as ‘lesser genre’: ambivalent position in literary hierarchies Renewal after 2000? 4

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New prizes: Frank O’Connor Prize, BBC short story award New magazines: The Stinging Fly, The White Review, McSweeney’s New media: online platforms (Tresholds), twitter stories… New festivals: National Short Story Week New anthologies: The Penguin Book of the British Short Story, The Granta Book of the American Short Story, The Story: Love, Loss & The Lives of Women, The Granta Book of the Irish Short Story, 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories

THEORIES OF THE SHORT STORY ESSENTIALIST APPROACHES  

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E.A. Poe (1842): “single effect” Brander Matthews (1901): “a short story deals with a single character, a single event, a single emotion, or the series of emotions called forth by a single situation”. Frank O’Connor (1963): “loneliness, the one subject a storyteller must write about” Charles May (1983): “the novel exists to reaffirm the world of ‘everyday’ reality; the short story exists to ‘defamiliarize’ the everyday”. Clare Hanson (1989): “Is it not the case that the short story is or has been notably a form of the margins, a form which is in some sense ex-centric, not part of official or ‘high’ cultural hegemony? […] The short story has offered itself to losers and loners, exiles, women, blacks – writers who for one reason or another have not been part of the ruling narrative or epistemological/experiential framework of their society”

DESCRIPTIVE APPROACHES 

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“it seems reasonable to say that a firm definition of the genre is impossible. No single theory can encompass the multifarious nature of a genre in which the only constant feature seems to be the achievement of a narrative purpose in a comparatively short space” (Valerie Shaw 1983, 21). “If a genre is a cluster of characteristics […] borderline and original works can be handled easily and naturally. We can speak of ways in which a work partakes of the short story and ways in which it does not, and the discrimination will enhance a fine description of what the work actually does”. (Austin Wright 1989, 48)

→ SHORT STORY:  Tends to be between 500 words and length of “The Dead”  Tends to deal with character and action in its fictional world  This action tends to be externally simple, with few developed episodes and no subplots or secondary lines of action  Tends to be more strongly unified than other short prose narrative forms

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BREVITY  Small, limited plot  Few characters  Omission, suggestion, symbolism  End-directedness and unity

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Flexibility and adaptability Innovation and experimentation Hybridity Polytextual publication context

READER-RESPONSE THEORIES  

Susan Lohafer, Reading for Storyness: Preclosure Theory, Empirical Poetics, and Culture in the Short Story (2003) John Gerlach, Towards the End: Closure and Structure in the American Short Story (1985)

STYLISTICS 

Michael Toolan, Narrative Progression in the Short Story (2009)

MATERIALIST CRITICISM; HISTORY OF THE BOOK  

Winnie Chan, The economy of the short story in British periodicals of the 1890s (2007) Dean Baldwin, Art and commerce in the British short story, 1880-1950 (2013)

WRITERS ON THE SHORT STORY 

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ELIZABETH BOWEN: “the short story, by virtue of its shortness, may thus more nearly than the novel approach aesthetic and moral truth” (Bowen 1937: 15) JAMES LASDUN: “omisson, occlusion, cropping: the ability to cultivate a kind of force-field of negative space within a narrative” (Lasdun 1996 23) LORRIE MOORE: “A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film.” MARY LAVIN: “arrow in flight, or a flash of forked lightning: you know the way a flash of lightning appears to be there all in the sky at once? Beginning, middle and end, all there at once.”

CANADIAN SHORT STORIES ALICE MUNRO Exceptional: she has written only short stories (see slide) Lives of Girls and Women: short story cycle (linked stories, it was her attempt to write a novel but it didn’t work out)

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Who Do You Think You Are? (same ^) The View from Castle Rock (autobiographical)

PASSION Older narrator/focaliser who goes back to her past, revisiting meaningful events Odd way to open the story (“not too long ago” for whom?)  Narrative perspective: 3rd person omniscient narrator Is the narrator really omniscient (saying general statements, describing things omnisciently)? The narrator describes about the older Grace also, but there’s very little distance between older Grace and the narrator. The narrator stays very close to Grace’s perspective throughout (whether it’s the old or young Grace).  Focaliser: Grace (shifts from older to younger etc., e.g. she tells what it meant to her life) → the experiencing Grace vs. mature Grace who’s coming back E.g. experience of younger Grace but older Grace is putting into use (she now understands it was rage at the movies, p. 164) Looking for the houses in the first paragraphs: she finds things changed and this reflects how she has changed (it’s 14 years ago). This also shows her distortion of memory (1 lake, 1 house… while there may have been many more). This also reveals the questionnable trustworthiness of her memories. Everything seems diminished. Interesting reflection (paragraph before white line on p. 161): what was she really looking for? Maybe things being diminished is what she really wanted? Strange shift to 2nd person, end of the opening paragraphs. There is a sense of revisiting something painful, problematic → it sets the stage for the story that will follow. Two parts with a different temporal dimension: description during the Summer → holidays (Thanksgiving) when she goes on a trip with Neil. The whole Summer experience is summarized (routine: going to the house every Sunday, waitressing…). The event in the holidays (crucial event) only takes up 1 day but is given the same amount of space as the two or three months of Summer are given. Why are these events so important enough for her to go back? → turning point in her life. There is a decreasing distance and there is maturation (because of the two parts of the story: process of growth during Summer (low class waitress with very little expectation, then she discovers new middle class ways of life at the end of the Summer) and a process on Thanksgivings day which will determine her life). She realizes during the Summer that she does not want to go back to her uncle’s house. This certainly is also a class issue (low class but very bright – prospect of becoming a middle class housewife → admiration for his mother, idealization). Then there is a break: the mother has a nervous breakdown. Grace is dismayed by her situation and realizes she doesn’t want to be like Mrs. Travers anymore (p. 181: the ideal is no longer an ideal, she becomes a sorry figure).

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Second part: she is no longer going to marry with Maury, Neil kills himself… There is an enormous moral question. In her memory it feels like they were the only person on the road etc.She just goes along with anything Neil does. Also symbols: she can’t go with Maury to the shop because the children want to play with her → strap of her sandal breaks, she goes barefoot → hurts her foot… : chain of unavoidable events, fate. Maury always protects her etc, but Neil hands over to her, puts himself in her care, which gives her agency (e.g. driving the car). She was rather passive throughout but with Neil she takes the wheel. There is also agency in the letter at the end: it’s a conscious decision to not go back to that ‘other’ life. Structural: classical build-up  Elaborate scene setting, meeting with the stranger (which transforms the life)  Mythical elements: nighttime journey through a mythical landscape  Opposites: Neil (nihilism, attraction) vs. Maury (respectable); middle class life vs. low class life; life vs. death  Feminist dimension: her options are very limited (not allowed to study, she can only become a housewife). Not choosing to marry Maury is also a leap in the dark for her: what will she do next? Typical Munro elements:  Long story, very often with jumbled chronology and different time moments being juxtaposed  Focus on psychology, unconsciousness → probing into a person’s motivations  Female protagonist (bright girl growing up with limited expectations)  Setting: Ottowa valley with the lakes

DIMENSIONS Specifity: descriptions seem superfluous, but they tell you about the main protagonist – waiting, she has to take 3 busses because she moved far away, lack of attention to self or selflessness (related to the passivity, but she’s also uncertain, quiet etc.). There is a strong sense of foreboding: you know something has happened but you’re just waiting for her to tell it. Focalisation through Doree: the Doree of now – she’s going back to the events (reflections on her marriage with Lloyd, why she fell for him…) but the distance isn’t that big. The story builds up to when you find out what happened, but it doesn’t end here. Here the question of the relation with her husband is central: will she break away from him or not? She hides the fact from her social worker, and why does she keep on visiting him? He’s the last link to her children. She helps somebody, she’s wondering why she keeps going back to him. What other use was she here for if it wasn’t for him? She wants to give purpose to her life again. The only role she knows is being submissive. Reference to destiny and submission, but then she comes useful because she saves a boy. Lloyd had told her what to do, so it’s true that he told her what to do. Psychological story combined with moral questioning

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Redemption: saving another child’s life (boy in the accident ~ her children) Moral philosophy of Lloyd (“know thyself”): very self-centred, while Doree is very selfless, her life is centred around her children etc. At the end she’s able to stand up for herself

MARGARET ATWOOD Versatile writer: poetry, novels, short stories, children’s literature… Outgoing writer: likes to make public performances, comment on events… (see slide) A lot of her stories are rewritings of other stories and fairytales Hybrid texts, dramatic monologues… → different to classify because they stretch genre boundaries Flash fiction = very short short stories Wit, ironical, satirical, metafiction…

MY LAST DUCHESS Collection Moral Disorder → short story cycle (response to Munro’s short story cycles?) Coming-of-age story Narrative situation: 1st person narrator → foregrounded: experiencing...