History of Short Story

Short story:

According to Literary critical terms a short story can be defined as:

“A prose narrative of shorter length than the novel that concentrates on a single theme.”

According to Britannica Encyclopedia:

“A short story is a brief fictional prose narrative. It usually presents a single significant episode or scene involving a limited number of characters. A short story concentrates on the creation of mood rather than the telling of a story.”

According to Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms a short story is defined as:

“A fictional prose tale of no specified length, but too short to be published as a volume on its own.”

Short story can also be defined as:

“A kind of story shorter than the novel or novelette, characteristically developing a single central theme and limited in scope and number of characters.”

            There is a common point in above definitions that the short story is a work of prose tale or fiction which is shorter in length but has a central theme. So these short stories are shorter in length but they do have a theme.

The aspects of a Short Story:

            A short story is similar to a novel in many aspects. The elements of a short story includes: plot, character, setting, theme, moral values.

            In short stories the plot is the sequence of events namely; the beginning, middle and end. Characters are people in the story; there could be major characters and minor characters. In short story the setting is the place and the time that where and when a story takes place. The theme is a general idea of what the story is about and the moral values are principles that convey important messages.

Characteristics of a Short Story:

• It is shorter in length and could be read usually in one sitting.
• The information offered in a short story is relevant to the tale being told.
• It is unlike a novel where a story can diverge from the main plot.
• It usually tries to leave behind a single impression or effect.
• As these stories are concise so, the writers depend on the reader bringing personal experiences and prior knowledge to the story.
• The authority of the narrator is questioned while writing a short story.
• In terms of language patterning of symbols, multiplicity of voices, indirect language, and stream of consciousness are the techniques which are followed by the modern writers.

Conflict as an important element:

            Conflict is the struggle between opposing forces in a short story. There could be an external conflict in which a character struggles against some outside force or there could be an internal conflict which exists within the mind of the character. The common applications in a conflict could be:

• Man vs man.
• Man vs self.
• Man vs nature.
• Man vs society.
• Man vs technology.
• Man vs fate.

Introduction to the history of short stories:

            As a form date back to the oral tradition of the tale, the written tales were written in the poetic form. We have an example of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and after that Boccaccio’s Decameron (1351-1353) often cited as the precursor of the short story form, as is the French translation of The Thousand and One Nights (1704).

            The first examples of tales that would help in the emerging process of a modern short story in the United States are Charles Brockden Brown's "Somnambulism" (1805), Washington Irving's Rip van Winkle (1819) and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820), Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840) and Nathaniel Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales (1842).

The emphasis on short story starts from the early 19^th Century and it begins to emerge as a form in the Late 19^th Century. Early and mid 19^th century saw the rise of the short stories in America as Hawthorne and Poe were famous for their work of fiction with respect to short stories. Hawthorne was famous for his Twice Told Tales written in 1842 and Poe’s Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque written in 1836. These two set a standard for one branch of the short fiction.

Some important and early writers of short stories:

          There were some writers who pave the way towards short story writing. These writers wrote with conviction, technical brilliance and power of expression. Most famous of them are:

1. Edgar Allan Poe
2. Gogol and Turgenev
3. Robert Louis Stevenson
4. O’ Henry

1. Edgar Allan Poe:

            Edgar Poe was born on 19 January 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of actors Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins (1787-1811) and David Poe (1784-1810). Poe was the first person to set down specific rules relating to the construction of a short story. These rules have been adopted almost universally. Poe’s own short stories show evidence of his critical paradigm, leading towards the surprise ending of O. Henry at the close of the nineteenth century.

            His important works regarding short stories are:

• "The Angel of the Odd" (1844)
• "The Black Cat" (1845)
• "The Cask of Amontillado" (1846)
• "The Island of the Fay" (1850)
• "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841)
• "The Purloined Letter" (1845)
• "Silence - A Fable" (1838)
• "The Spectacles" (1850)
• "The Tell-Tale Heart" (1850)

Edgar Allen Poe described certain rules for construction of a short story. According to him a short story must create one impression and is capable of being read in one session and every word must contribute to the total effect and the effect must be created immediately and then gradually developed throughout the story and when this effect reaches at a climax the story must end and only essential and important characters should be used to gain effect.

Poe is probably the most famous English short story writer of all time. Poe only wrote one complete novel in his lifetime, and it is not very well known, however his short stories are. His most famous stories are “The Tell Tale Heart”, “The Masque of the Red Death,” and “The Pit and the Pendulum”. Poe has over 65 short stories to his name and he is also considered to have invented the detective genre.

2. Gogol and Turgenev:

In the 19th Century two Russian writers, Gogol and Turgenev, emphasised character rather than actions. Between them, they created realistic portrayals of human sufferings, passions and grief of everyday people. Gogol insisted that the short story must attempt to do one thing only, and must allow the plot to develop naturally without being forced into a conventional pattern.

3. Robert Louis Stevenson:

Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on 13 November 1850, the only child born to Margaret Isabella Balfour (1829-1897) and Thomas Stevenson (1818-1887), a civil engineer and pioneering designer of lighthouses.

Stevenson claimed that a short story should be written in three different ways that is you make a plot and fit the characters to it and then choose incidents to develop a character and at last he said that you may take a certain atmosphere and get actions and persons to realize and express it.

            His important works regarding short stories are:

• "A Lodging for the Night"  (1877)
• "Providence and the Guitar" (1878)                  
• "The Pavilion on the Links" (1880)
• "The Merry Men" (1882)                     
• "The Body Snatcher" (1884)    
• "Markheim" (1885)
• "The Misadventures of John Nicholson: A Christmas Story" (1887)

4. O’ Henry:

His real name was William Sydney Porter. He was born in Greenboro, North Carolina. His father, Algernon Sidney Porter, was a physician. He was a prolific American short story writer and a master of surprise endings. He wrote about the life of ordinary people in New York City. Typical for O. Henry’s stories is a twist of plot, which turns on ironic or coincidental circumstances.

            His important works regarding short stories are:

• "Girl" from 'Whirligigs'
• Brief Debut Of Tildy,  (from the Four Million collection)
• Cactus,  (from the collection Waifs and Strays)
• Caught (from the Cabbages and Kings collection)
• Confessions of a Humorist (from the collection Waifs and Strays)
• Gift Of The Magi (from the Four Million collection)

O. Henry is known for writing flash fiction with wit and a strange twist ending. His most well known story is “The Gift of the Magi” which is a story about a young poor couple who each sells their most precious object in order to buy a Christmas gift for their partner, but in doing so they end up making each others gift worthless. This story has been retold in many different forms over the years. The O. Henry Award was established in his honor, it is a very prestigious award given to outstanding short story writers. Two writers on this list have won this award.

     

Short Stories in 19^th century:

            In 19^th century short story writing challenges the conventions in terms of plot, narration, character and language.

            There was a strong demand for short stories in the late 19^th century and the print magazines and journals were in a need of such short stories.

The famous short story writers of this period include Boleslaw Prus and Anton Cehkov. “A legend of Old Egypt” (1888) was the famous work by Boleslaw Prus and “Ward No.6” (1892) was the famous work by Anton Cehkov.

In 1884, Brander Matthews published “The Philosophy of the Short-Story”. He as the First American professor of dramatic literature and he was the man who gave the name to this emerging genre in 1884 as “short story”.

In the nineteenth-century British magazine that popularized the dominant forms of the short story was Blackwood's and it encounters three types: the humorous-satirical story, the re-told legend, and the ghost story or tale of the supernatural and it was a narrative of curious events often with a foreign or colonial setting.

For the most part, the authors present their pieces as "sober accounts of actual if unusual happenings" (Harris 28). Because fiction was associated with pleasure rather than intellectual and improving content, the general denial of the fictional nature of a short story was a necessary antidote to the common prejudice against reading fiction. The editors of Victorian periodicals regarded their publications as socially improving, as vehicles for disseminating knowledge about culture, science, history, religion, and politics, so short story writers often attempted to suggest that their stories were reminiscences.

Harold Orel in The Victorian Short Story (1986) contends that in such mass periodicals as the Penny Magazine, the Saturday Magazine, and Chamber's Edinburgh Journal, the thrust was primarily educational, and that short stories were therefore "regarded as a useful sugaring"

H. E. Bates in The Modern Short Story, A Critical Survey (1942), feels that until the last quarter of the nineteenth century the genre languished in Great Britain, even while it flourished in America, because "no single writer applied to it a technique different from that of the novel".

Short stories in 20^th century:

            THE period between the Civil War in America and the outbreak of the Great War in Europe in 1914 may be termed in the history of prose fiction the Era of the Short Story. Everywhere, in France, in Russia, in England, in America, more and more the impressionistic prose tale of short, effective and the glimpse at a climactic instant came especially in the magazines to dominate fictional literature. The modern short story is only the latest fashion in story telling.

In 20^th century the demand for the quality short stories was so great and the money paid for writing short stories was so high. In earlier 20^th century some high profile magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker Scribner’s and Saturday Evening Post used to publish short stories in their each issue.

The period during the World War 2 was of great importance for short story writing in United States. The writers from New York published many works regarding short story writing. Shirley Jackson wrote, “The Lottery” which was published in 1948 and his story got a great response from the public. The other writers of the late 1940’s were John Cheever, John Steinbeck, Jean Stafford and Eudora Welty.

J.D. Salinger wrote “Nine Stories” in 1953 and tested with the point of view and voice. Flannery O’ Connor’ wrote “A Good Man is Hard to Find” in 1955.

In 1952, Life magazine published the short story of Ernest Hemingway named as “The Old Man and the Sea”.

In the 1960’s cultural and social identities starts playing an important role with respect to short story writing. Philip Roth, Grace Paley, Tillie Olsen and James Baldwin are some prominent writers of that time. Some of the stories were about feminism and some were about African-American life.

In 1970 there was a rise of the post modern short story and the work of Donald Barthelme and John Barth were of prime importance. Stephen King who is one of the best novelists of all the time also started his career by publishing numerous short stories in Men’s Magazines of the Era in late 70s.

In 1980s, most notable works were of Raymond Carver, Ann Beattie, Bobbi Ann Mason, John Updike and Joyce Carol Oates who maintained significant influence in short story writing. John Gardner’s famous work, “The Art of Fiction” also appeared in 1983.

In 1990s the writers like Steven Millhauser, Robert Olen Butler, Stuart Dybek, Tim O’Brien, Louise Erdrich, T. C. Boyle and David Foster Wallace were famous for their work in fiction.

In 21^st Century we saw the emergence of new young short story writers in the form of Jhumpa Lahiri, Karen Russell, Nathan Englander and the German-American bilingual writers like Paul Henri Campbell and Den Chao.

Difference between a short story and a novel:

A short story is an indivisible unit in which every sentence points to the single climax that fulfills the entire work. One moment in the story controls all the rest. But in a novel, that single climax is replaced by many smaller climaxes, by many side trips or pauses to explore.

Conclusion:

Short stories were popular entertainment since before the written word. Each culture had their favourites and ancient and modern writers crafted many classic tales. One can read a short story easily in a single sit and can understand the theme more easily instead of reading long  stories and novels.