The

SHORT STORY Story

DEFINITION

Short, brief

Fictional

Prose

Narrative, story

CHARACTERISTICS

Few characters

Single effect

O often moral

O theme

O didactic

O instructive

CHARACTERISTICS

Dictates of the FORM:

Setting =

O sparse, economical

Plot =

O concise

O simplistic (lack of complex plot)

Character =

O disclosed in action & encounter

O rarely fully developed

19th CENTURY

Short Storys short history

Relatively modern genre (19th

C.)

SKETCHES vs. TALES

O extremes

O from which modern SS grew

Poe, Hawthorne, Gogol, Hoffman, Kleist,

Merimee:

O Tale + Sketch = Short Story

O combined elements from both: less fantasy &

conventionality of Tale, less strict factuality of Sketch

HISTORY

Short prose fiction = as old as language

O Jests

O Anecdotes

O Purposeful digressions

O Allegorical romances

O Fairy tales

O Short myths

O Short legends

HISTORY

Short prose fiction = from Oral Tradition

O Early storytellers used memory aids =

Stock phrases, fixed rhythms, rhyme

O As a result

Most early stories = IN VERSE

Poetic Tales

HISTORY

EARLY SHORT TALES=

O Poetic

O Didactic, moralizing, good vs. bad behavior

ANCIENT WORLD The Short Story Story

MIDDLE EAST

Ancient BABYLONIA-

O poetic tales, in verse

O Epic of Gilgamesh

O The War of the Gods

O The Story of Adapa

CANAAN-

O The Heavenly Bow

O The King Who Forgot

c.2000BC

EGYPT

EGYPT-

O mostly in prose

O on papyrus

(verse = reserved for religious hymns & other songs)

O didactic, moralistic

O The Shipwrecked Sailor

O King Kofu & the Magicians

O Anpu & Bata (the 2 brothers)

c.2000-1000BC

INDIA

INDIA-

O instructional parables

O Buddhist ethical teachings

O secular behavior & practical wisdom

O The Brahmanas

O The Jatakas

O The Panchatantra

akin to Aesops animal fables

quite popular translated into several languages

c.900-100BC

HEBREW

BIBLE & APOCRYPHA-

O didactic

O Tobit, Judith, Susanna

O Ruth, Esther, Jonah

c.500-100BC

GREEKS

GREEKS-

O Fables = most common form (like India)

Moralizing

Didactic

O Myths = popular too

stories of GODS (love, war)

basis of later Hesiod, Homer, tragedians

c.300-100BC

GREEKS

GREEKS-

O Digressions

on-point

within larger works

narrative interpolations episodes w/in the whole

O Herodotus: History with logoi (tales, pointed digressions)

O Romances

invented by Greeks

love, catastrophe, reunion

erotic, bawdy less didactic

Parthenius of Nicaea, Aristides of Miletus

c.300-100BC

ROMANS

ROMANS-

O longer works

Rhetoric fuller, more comprehensive development

Tales = digressions

O Digressions

like the Greeks

on-point episodes within larger works

Ovids Metamorphoses

Lucius Apuleiuss The Golden Ass

Gaius Petronius Arbiters Satyricon

c.100BC

MIDDLE AGES The Short Story Story

MIDDLE AGES

Short Tale

O proliferation of the form

O a diversion, amusement

O imitation over development

SCANDINAVIA

SCANDINAVIA & ICELAND-

O invading Germanic barbarians

O myths & sagas

aggressive, violent

grim, bleak

CELTS

CELTS-

O Ireland, Wales, Brittany/Breton

O magic, myth, & splendor

O Longes mac n-Uislenn

influenced the later chivalric romances

O 3 major matters:

Matter of Britain (King Arthur & his knights)

Matter of France (Charlemagne cycle)

Matter of Rome (antiquity, Paris & Helen, Pyramus & Thisbe)

O c.800

CELTS

CELTS-

O *too LONG to be considered short stories

O shorter = c.1100s

Chretien de Troyes (French, Arthurian legend)

Marie de France

O Breton lays: short (600-800 lines) narrative poems @ love,

chivalry, supernatural, fairies

HIGH & LOW

MIDDLE AGES-

Exemplum: short , didactic tale

O lives of saints = role models

O Deeds of the Romans/Gesta Romanorum

O C.1000-1100

Popular Fiction:

O common people

O beast fables, jests, ribald fabliaux

O common sense, secular humor, sensuality

O Boccaccios & Chaucers fabliaux

O running counter to the exemplar

FRAMING

MIDDLE AGES-

FRAMING:

O frame collection of stories by a single circumstance

O unifying situation

O all stories = autonomous (added, removed)

O BUT also

O part of the whole

O The Seven Sages of Rome (link) 7 advocates tell stories to

postpone princes execution, until his innocence is proven

O Eastern & Western countries, BC to MA

O The Thousand and One Nights (700-1700) Scheherazade tells

stories to postpone her execution

http://www.maryjones.us/ctexts/seven.html

MA: REFINEMENT The Short Story Story

MA: REFINEMENT

REFINEMENT-

O still Framing

O still same types of stories (beast fables, sermons

exemplar; fabliaux, romances, exempla)

O BUT

O experimentation with FORM

mix forms

tale = reflection o f the teller

relationships between tellers

= dramatic quality

MA: REFINEMENT

REFINEMENT-

O BOCCACCIO:

Decameron (10 days) c.1349/53

height of Black Death plague in Florence

10 people, 10 stories per

character = subordinate to story

O CHAUCER:

Canterbury Tales c.1387/1400

pilgrimage to Canterbury shrine

character through actions, assertions

ITALY

growing popularity

imitation (of Boccaccio)

c.1300-1600

short story = novelle

Franco Sacchetti, Giovanni Fiorentino,

Giovanni Sercambi, Masuccio Salernitano

Matteo Bandello, Agnolo Firenzuolo

O romances, surprise, deception, ribaldry, irony - realism

Giamattista Basile (1600s) folktales w/realism

O + amusing diversion + framing The Five Days (= Boccaccio)

FRANCE

c.1400-1600

Boccaccio:

O framed

O amusing

O diversions

SPAIN

c.1300-1600

Europes most influential/powerful country

short stories = part of novels

Miguel de Cervantes Exemplary Novels

O 1613

O experimental

O not didactic

O not diversionary

O but @ mans secular existence

MA: DECLINE The Short Story Story

DECLINE

c.1600-1700

birth of novel

imitations of Boccaccio & Chaucer

same forms

escapism, amusing diversions

rebirth of drama & poetry

O Neo-Classicism

birth of journalistic sketches

DECLINE

c.1600-1700

birth of journalistic sketches

O seriousness

O realism

O fascination w/foreign countries

O interest in social conditions

travel books, sermons, biographies, essays

MIDDLE AGES RENAISSANCE &

ENLIGHTENMENT

amusing

diversionary

escapist

framing

imitations

fantasy

seriousness

fact

realism

social issues

foreign lands

rebirth of old forms

birth of new forms

MODERN SHORT STORY: 19th C.

The Short Story Story

MODERN SHORT STORY

c.1800s

simultaneously

Germany

United States

France

Russia

MODERN SHORT STORY

c.1800s

Why then?

O rise in middle class

O rise in literacy

O rise in literate middle class

realism & at the same time fantasy

O stifled by Neo-Classicism (decorum)

O back to own past myths, fables, Old Days

O [what gave birth to Romanticism]

MODERN SHORT STORY

GERMANY-

Goethe, Christoph Wieland, Friedrich

Schleiermacher

*Heinrich von Kleist

O like Poe: psychological, confrontations w/fantastic

*ETA Hoffmann

O exotic places, supernatural phenomenon

Ludwig Tieck

O some = realistic, journalistic

O others = fantastic, intense, ironic, true to character

MODERN SHORT STORY

UNITED STATES-

Realism:

O regionalism (Bret Harte, SO Jewett)

O objectivity, real places & events & people

Impressionism:

O narrators consciousness & psychological attitudes

O subjective, narrators POV (unreliable, biased, insane)

O less realistic in the sense of an objective reality

19th CENTURY

SKETCH TALE

intercultural (from culture to culture)

culturally specific motifs, characters, symbols

best understood by that culture

tales = intracultural

culture speaking to itself about itself

perpet