Unit-1 THE SHORT STORY: AS A MINOR FORM OF LITERATURE DEVELOPMENT, ELEMENTS AND CHARACTERISTICS Contents 1.0 Objectives 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Presentation of Subject Matter 1.2.1 Development, Elements and Characteristics 1.3 Summary 1.4 Terms to Remember 1.5 Answers to check your progress 1.6 Exercises and their Answers 1.7 Books for Further Reading 1.0 Objectives: After learning this unit you will be able to: G Understand the meaning and origin of the short story G Know the development of the short story G Learn the elements and characteristics of the short story. 1.1 Introduction: The desire to listen to stories is deeply rooted in human civilization world over. Man, being the social animal, is always interested in other man’s life. This feature of man’s mind might have created the art of story-telling. Short stories date back to oral story-telling traditions which originally produced epics such as Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey . Oral narratives were often told in the form of rhyming or rhythmic verse, often including recurring sections. Such device helped 1 to recall the stories easily. Short sections of verse might focus on individual narratives that could be told at one sitting. The origin of short story can be traced back to the oral story-telling tradition. Perhaps the oldest form of the short story is the anecdote which was popular in the Roman Empire. At the time, the anecdotes functioned as a kind of parables in the Roman Empire. Anecdote is a brief realistic narrative that embodies a point. The anecdotes remained popular in Europe well into the 18th century, when the fictional anecdotal letters of Sir Roger de Coverley were published. The another form close to the short story is the fable. Fables, concise tales with an explicit moral were, said by the Greek historian, Herodotus to have been invented in the 6th century BCE by a Greek slave named Aesop, though other times and nationalities have also been given for him. These ancient fables are today known as Aesop’s fables. In essence, the short story is a literary genre which presents a single significant event or a scene involving a limited number of characters. Short stories have no set length. In terms of word count there is no official boundary between an anecdote, a short story, and a novel. Rather, the form’s limits are given by the rhetorical and practical context in which a given story is produced and considered, so that what constitutes a short story may differ between genres, countries, eras, and commentators. The short story has been considered both an apprenticeship from preceding more lengthy works, and a crafted form in its own right, collected together in books of similar length, price, and distribution as novels. Definition of Short Story Deciding what exactly separates a short story from longer fictional formats is problematic. A classic definition of a short story is that one should be able to read it in one sitting, the point most notably made in Edgar Allan Poe’s essay “Thomas Le Moineau (Le Moile)” (1846). Interpreting this standard nowadays is problematic, since the expected length of “One sitting” may now be briefer than it was in Poe’s era. Other definitions place the maximum word count of the short story at anywhere from 1,000 to 9,000 words. For example, Harris King’s “A Solitary Man” is around 4,000 words. In contemporary usage, the term short story, most often, refers to a work of fiction no longer than 20,000 words and no shorter than 1,000 words or 5 to 2 20 pages. Stories of fewer than 1,000 words are sometimes referred to as “short short stories” or “flash fiction”. As a point of reference for the science fiction genre writer, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America define short story length for Nebula Awards for science fiction submission guidelines as having a word count of fewer than 7,500. Longer stories that cannot be called novels are sometimes considered “novellas”, and, like short stories, may be collected into the more marketable form of “collections”, often containing previously unpublished stories. For example, after Shirley Jackson died, a crate of unpublished short stories was discovered in her barn and collected into a short story collection in her memory. Sometimes, authors who do not have the time or money to write a novella or novel decide to write short stories instead, working out a deal with a popular website or magazine to publish them for profit. It is reasonable to say that a firm definition of a short story is impossible. No simple theory can encompass the diverse nature of a genre in which the only constant feature seems to be the achievement of a narrative purpose in a comparatively brief space. Each definition emphasizes some aspects and cannot cover all. However, to get some idea about the form, we can highlight some definitions: 1. “A fictional prose tale of no specified length, but too short to be published as a volume on its own, as novellas sometimes and novels unusually are. A short story will normally concentrate on a single event with only one or two characters, more economically than a novel’s sustained exploration of social background”. Chris Baldick: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms . 2. “A short story is a brief work of prose fiction, and most of the terms for analyzing the component elements, the types, and the narrative techniques of the novel are applicable to the short story as well.” M. H. Abrams, Geoffrey Galt Harpham: A Handbook of Literary Terms. 3. A prose narrative “requiring from half an hour to one or two hours in its perusal.” Edgar Allan Poe: Review of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Twice Told Tales. 3 1.2 Presentation of Subject Matter The desire to listen to stories is deeply rooted in human civilization world over. Man, being the social animal, is always interested in other men’s lives. This aspect of man’s psyche might have created the art of story-telling. Short stories date back to oral story-telling traditions which originally produced epics such as Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey . Oral narratives were often told in the form of rhyming or rhythmic verse, often composed of recurring sections. Such devices helped to recall the stories easily. Short sections of verse might focus on individual narratives that could be told at one sitting. The origin of short story can be traced back to the oral story-telling tradition. Perhaps the oldest form of short story is the anecdote, which was popular in the ancient Roman period. At the time, the anecdotes functioned as kind of parables. The anecdote is a brief realistic narrative that embodies a point. Anecdotes remained popular in Europe well into the 18th century, when the fictional anecdotal letters of Sir Roger de Coverley were published. Another form close to short story is fable. Fables, concise tales with an explicit moral were, said by the Greek historian, Herodotus to have been invented in the 6th century BCE by a Greek slave named Aesop, though other times and nationalities have also been given credit for him. These ancient fables are today known as Aesop’s fables. In essence, the short story is a literary genre which presents a single significant event or a scene involving a limited number of characters. Short stories have no set length. In terms of word count there is no official demarcation between an anecdote, a short story, and a novel. Rather, the form’s parameters are given by the rhetorical and practical context in which a given story is produced and considered, so that what constitutes a short story may differ between genres, countries, eras, and commentators. The short story has been considered both an apprenticeship from preceding more lengthy works, and a crafted form in its own right, collected together in books of similar length, price, and distribution as novels. 4 Definition of Short Story Determining what exactly separates a short story from longer fictional formats is problematic. A classic definition of a short story is that one should be able to read it in one sitting, the point most notably made in Edgar Allan Poe’s essay “Thomas Le Moineau (Le Moile)” (1846). Interpreting this standard nowadays is problematic, since the expected length of “One sitting” may now be briefer than it was in Poe’s era. Other definitions place the maximum word count of the short story at anywhere from 1,000 to 9,000 words. For example, Harris King’s “A Solitary Man” is around 4,000 words. In contemporary usage, the term short story, most often, refers to a work of fiction no longer than 20,000 words and no shorter than 1,000 words or 5 to 20 pagers. Stories of fewer than 1,000 words are sometimes referred to as “short short stories” or “flash fiction”. As a point of reference for the science fiction genre writer, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America define short story length for Nebula Awards for science fiction submission guidelines as having a word count of fewer than 7,500 words. Longer stories that cannot be called novels are sometimes considered “novellas”, and, like short stories, may be collected into the more marketable form of “collections”, often containing previously unpublished stories. After Shirley Jackson died, a crate of unpublished short stories was discovered in her barn and it was published as short story developed as a form in its own right.