The short story; a technical and literary study

Preface

The Aim of the Booh. — The Short Story is a literaryform as distinct as the novel or epic poem and almost as uniformly true to its technical type as the ballade or sonnet. This book is written for the numerous readers who enjoy the best short stories in the magazines, in the hope that it may be an aid to them in getting at the meaning of these stories through an understanding of their construction. One who occasionally reads poetry may get some pleasure from the reading of a poem composed in one of the standard poetic forms without knowing anything about the kinds of lyrics, but the reader who understands the technic of the sonnet or ballade derives an added pleasure from reading poems in these forms when he is aware that the author's meaning, his theme, has been embodied skillfully in an exquisite fixed form. An observer who is acquainted with the details of architecture delights in looking upon a finished structure, beautiful, stately, well adapted to its intended use, in which he recognizes a conformity to the laws of construction, an embodiment of historic lines in the decoration and total effect, and the successful conquest of difficulties in order to accomplish the result in the standard technical requirements of architecture. We all get more or less pleasure out of music ; but how much greater is the enjoyment of the trained musician over that of one who merely ' ' knows what he likes, ' ' as these two listen to Aida, or, better still as an illustration, the Quintet from the Meistersinger of Von Bulow, or Edward MacDowell's Brer Rabbit.

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PREFACE

The technic of the Short Story, as it is written today by the best of its masters, is quite definite in its essential features and yet so flexible in the non-essentials as to give to the careless reader the impression of lawlessness. The purpose of the book, then, to be a little more specific, is to point out those technical features of the Short Story which are generally recognized by the best writers, and to prepare the reader for the variations in form which the flexibility in the non-essential parts admits, and yet to make clear the fact that, there is such a thing as The Technic of the Short Story, the understanding of which opens up the possibilities of comprehension and enjoyment just as the perception of the technical elements of other forms of literary art, of architecture, or of music increases the sweep of one's appreciation of an ode, a public building, or a symphony.

In the preparation of this book there has been no effort made to get together a manual for the beginner in the writing of short stories. A number of these already exist. But it is possible that the analysis of the structure of the short story from the reader 's point of view may be helpful to the beginner in writing by clarifying his notions about tHe handling of plot, theme, suspense, and the other elements of technic.

The historical development of this form of art has been touched only superficially. The author's purpose has been to exhibit the story as it is now. We all recognize in these days of exact biological calculation that heredity has much to do with the living youth who flourishes among us ; and so, to a certain extent, it is with a literary form. In an attempt to keep the peace with the literary scientists and at the same time to avoid any long delay in getting at the serious business of the book a short paragraph has been devoted to each of the more important branches of the family tree of the Short Story.

PREFACE

Acknowledgments. — The publication of this book would have been impossible without the personal permission given generously and freely by a number of authors to use their copyright material, some of it their most recent work. I wish to thank most heartily James B. Connolly, Joseph Conrad, A. Conan Doyle, Hamlin Garland, A. H. Hawkins, Jack London, Arthur Morrison, Ruth Sawyer, and Archibald J. Wolfe.

Publishers owning copyrights have been gracious in allowing me to use selections from their books and magazines. I gratefully acknowledge my indebtedness to Current Literature Publishing Company, Doubleday, Page & Company, Henry Holt and Company, Houghton Mifflin Company, The Macmillan Company, The Outlook Company, G. P. Putnam's Sons, and Charles Scribner's Sons.

For assistance in reading manuscript and proof and for criticism I am indebted to Dr. Edward Fulton, Professor of Rhetoric, The University of Illinois. And last, an author should be free in acknowledging the assistance which comes to him from all who have written on a similar subject before him. This I do, naming, especially, Clayton Hamilton, Evelyn May Albright, Bliss Perry, Charles Raymond Barrett, J. Berg Esenwein, Charles F. Home, Hamilton W. Mabie, Brander Matthews, and Henry Seidel Canby.

E. A. C.

The State Teachers College op Colorado,

Greeley, Colorado.

October, 1914.

Chapter I Page

The History of the Short Story ... 3 The Prose Tale and the Short Story — The Tales of the Magicians — The Arabian Nights' Entertainments — Old Testament Stories — Greek and Roman Tales — Gesta Romanorum- — Beast Fables and Picaresque Tales — Boccaccio's Decameron — Sir Thomas Malory's Morte D' Arthur — Episodes in Longer Stories — The Influence of the Essayists — Hawthorne and Poe — The Modern Short Story — The Chronological Development of the Short Story — References.

Chapter II

The Materials prom Which Stories are Made 17 People, Incidents, Setting — Stories of Character, of Incident, or of Setting — The Predominant Element — Suggestions for Study.

CHAPTER III The Short Story is an Impression from Life 25

How the Impression is Made — What is Meant

by the Theme — The Means Used in Developing

a Theme — A Classification of Themes —

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CONTENTS

PAGE

Groups of Themes — The Writer's Primary Purpose — The Greatest Themes — Suggestions for Study.

CHAPTER IV Plot 39

A Typical Plot Diagram — Other Plot Diagrams

— The Plot in a Detective Story — Summary — An Example for the Study of Plot — The Piece of String, by Guy de Maupassant — The Plot Diagram for The Piece of String — Suggestions for Study.

CHAPTER V How Many Characters — What Kind of People

— The Characters Must be Worth Knowing — Unusual People — People in Unusual Situations

— Unusual Impressions of Characters and Life

— Condensations of Experience — Character Portrayal and Development — The Two Methods of Delineating Character — Suggestions for Study.

CHAPTER VI The Remaining Means Used in Developing a

Theme 69

Setting — Emotion — Tone — Style — Appearance of Truth — Some Definitions and Distinc-

CONTENTS

PAGE

tions — Realism and Romance — Idealism and Symbolism — Distinctions in Terms — The Short Story, the Novelette, and the Novel — References — Suggestions for Study.

CHAPTER VII The Management of Materials . . .80

Point of View — Titles — Beginnings — Conversation — Suspense — Suggestion and Restraint — Endings — References — Suggestions for Study.

Chapter VIII

A Plan for the Study of any Short Story . 92 The Whirligig of Life, by 0. Henry — The Plan Applied to the Study of The Whirligig of Life.

SHORT STORIES FOR STUDY

Ligeia, by Edgar Allan Poe 109

Dr. Heiddegger's Experiment, by Nathaniel Hawthorne 131

The Necklace, by Guy de Maupassant . . . 146 Three Arshms of Land, by Lyof N. Tolstoi . . 158 Where Love is, There God is Also, by Lyof N. Tolstoi ........ 173

The Father, by Bjornstjerne Bjornson . . 191 The Mysterious Bride, by James Hogg . . 196 The Prodigal Son, The New Testament . . 217 The Taking of the Redoubt, by Prosper Merimee 220

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CONTENTS

PAGE

On the Stairs, by Arthur Morrison . . . 228 The House Opposite, by Anthony Hope . . 234 The Adventure of the Speckled Band, by Arthur

Conan Doyle 241

Will o' the MM, by Robert Louis Stevenson . . 277 The Truth of the Oliver Cromwell, by James B.

Connolly 313

Samuel, by Jack London 361

The Princess and the Vagabone, by Ruth Sawyer 389 Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad . . . 406 Martha's Fireplace, by Hamlin Garland . . 450

List of Short Stories 480

Index 492 xiv

Chapter I

Two facts about the short story are very significant: it is probably the oldest literary form, and it was the latest in point of time to receive exact definition of its purpose and scope, and full unfolding of its artistic and dramatic resources. The first fact means that the short story is a vital and not an artificial form of literature, and fits itself instinctively to certain impulses and interests of men; the second fact — the fact that the short story had to wait for the insight and skill of men of the genius of Poe, Hawthorne, Stevenson, Kipling, and Maupassant — means that as a literary form the short story ranks with the highest and most exacting forms of art. — Hamilton ~W. Mabie. Introduction to "Stories New and Old.**

A MONG unlettered people of our own time the prac- 11 tice of telling and retelling stories of their experiences, stories that they have heard, or stories that they have imagined is a most common form of diversion. This custom of telling brief tales is perhaps as old as oral speech, for man seems to find in fiction, however crude, a means of diversion and entertainment. Men -dwelling in caves in the stone age, men gathered around savage camp fires, men " sitting at the gates of Damascus or Bagdad ' ' whiled away the time and entertained those within earshot with diverting tales — crude pieces of fiction; but the evolution of the Short Story from these earliest pieces of oral fiction to the artistic Short Story of the present day has been a long and slow process reaching its culmination in the tales and stories of Poe and Hawthorne, not more than seventy years ago — within the memory of men now living — and coming to its perfection in those of De Maupassant, Stevenson, and Kipling in the time of the present generation.

Dr. William J. Dawson in his Makers of English Fiction calls fiction a kind of lie told in such a manner as to seem true. With some such idea in mind Professor Charles F. Home in The Technique of the Novel shows that fiction is literally older than speech, for even the cat, he says, practices a cunning fiction when she strolls away from the half-dead mouse with a disinterested, somewhat bored look, only to turn and spring lightly upon it again as it tries to drag itself away. But for a study of the actual beginnings of prose fiction in speech we must rely upon the records of the earliest tales set down in writing.

The Prose Tale and the Short Story. — The men who told the tales around the savage camp fires perhaps had no other aim than to entertain by rehearsing an actual occurrence. They had not even so much skill in arranging their stories, in omitting irrelevant matters, in coloring with imagination, as the loafer around the rusty stove in a village store exhibits today as he offers his worn stock of fiction to his companions for the tenth or sixtieth time. The ordinary tale in prose is very different from the artistic Short Story. Everyone is familiar with the back-fence conversation — ' ' cackleization," Dr. Stanley Hall calls it — which cannot omit irrelevant details, but which must include every circumstance in time-sequence between the beginning and culmination of the delectable gossip. There is a vast difference between such narrations and the real Short Story.

The Tales of the Magicians. — The most ancient record of prose stories is an Egyptian collection of tales contained in the ancient papyri. These stories are called by English scholars The Tales of the Magicians, and are published in two volumes by Professor Petrie. The collection is as old as 2700 B. C, and most scholars believe that its true date is approximately 4000 B. C. The sons of King Cheops (the great pyramid builder) are trying to entertain their father with some interesting stories. When one son has told the king some marvelous tale that he has heard, another steps forward and begins his story of " strange things." Perhaps the best known of these tales is one called The Shipwrecked Sailor. A translation of this may be read in Jessup and Canby's The Book of the Short Story. A sailor is shipwrecked upon a mysterious island, all his companions perishing. The island is ruled by a great serpent, and inhabited only by serpents. These treat the unfortunate sailor kindly, and send him home with rich gifts when the next ship passes that way.

In brief this is the story. What it lacks of meeting the technical requirements of the Short Story in the modern sense will be apparent after reading the chapters in this book on the technic of the Short Story.

The Arabian Nights' Entertainments. — To try to make a list of the collections of oriental tales in the order of their age would be unprofitable, for exact dates are not known. The oldest reference to The Thousand and One Nights is B. C. 987. The stories are doubtless much older than that. Many devices have been employed by writers, ancient and modern, to give some degree of unity to a series of unrelated tales. The need of such devices is seen in The Tales of the Magicians, The Canterbury Tales, and the Tales of a Wayside Inn, to take an ancient, a medieval, and a modern instance. Perhaps, none of the devices has exceeded in cleverness that of the Arabian Nights. Schariar, Sultan of India, is accustomed to select a new wife for each new day, and to have her put to death the following morning. Scheherazade, daughter of the grand vizier, being selected one day, tells the sultan an interesting story at night and promises another for the following night. The sultan spares her life in order to hear the next story. This is kept up for a thousand and one nights (till the author of the volume has exhausted his stock of stories) and then the law requiring the sacrifice of the bride of a day is repealed, since it has been so long disregarded. Probably the best known of the stories from The Arabian Night s f Entertainments are Aladdin and his Wonderful Lamp, and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.

Old Testament Stories. — The Hebrews were a religious people. It is not at all strange, then, that when they tell stories, they should have in mind a purpose beyond mere entertainment. Most of their stories have a distinct lesson to teach. Jotham's parable of The Trees Choosing a King (Judges 9:7-15) is an ironical reminder of how the people have chosen the worst of the sons of Jerubaal to be his successor and their king. The purpose of The

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Book of Ruth may have been any one of three or four : To show the lineage of David ; to show that Jehovah of the Israelites might also be the God of a Moabite — a foreigner; to show how faithfulness and service are rewarded; or some similar theme. The Book of Jonah is probably as pure a piece of fiction as Jesus' parable of The Prodigal Son. The Israelites had all along thought of Jehovah as a national deity. Some prophet with a wider vision than the mass of his countrymen wished to teach them that there are no village gods and national gods, but that Jehovah is God of the whole world — of the solid land, of the sea and the creatures of the deep, of even distant heathen Nineveh, as well as of Canaan. To impress this truth he told the story of a prophet who did everything he could to avoid that conclusion and to disregard God's command to preach in Nineveh, and closed his tale on a half -humorous note — Jonah sulking in the shade of the gourd vine because God had shown mercy to a people not of Israel. The Prodigal Son differs from this story in that it avoids actual names and places. It is presented as pure fiction to impress a definite theme. Just as an earthly father forgives a wayward son, so does the Heavenly Father forgive his own wayward ones when they return repentant from their wanderings. In The Book of Jonah the prophet veiled his fiction behind the fact that somewhere in the indistinct past there had been a lesser prophet named Jonah to whom he could ascribe his imaginary experiences. These books of The Old Testament were probably written somewhere between B. C. 350 and B. C. 750.

Greek and Roman Tales. — Although the Greeks were masters in other forms of art and literature, their contribution to fiction is so small and so little known as to have made little or no impression upon subsequent writers of tales. What little was done by the Greeks and Romans is briefly reviewed both as to matter and treatment in Home's The Technique of the Novel, Chapter iv. Students who wish to go into that subject should read the chapter. There is, however, one book which should not be omitted from this account. Early in the second Christian century Lucius Apuleius, a Roman Platonic philosopher, born in Africa, wrote in Latin a book called Metamorphoses, or The Golden Ass. It is a loosely connected narrative with occasionally a detached episode, standing out as a distinct tale. The story of Cupid and Psyche is such an episode, and one which has survived to the present time.

Gesta Romanorum. — There are two remarkable circumstances about the collection of stories called Gesta Romanorum (Deeds of the Romans). The first is that this Latin book was probably written in England (about 1300) ; and the second, that only a few of the 181 tales in the common text have anything* to do with the Romans. This book, to which we look with great respect as the inspiration of many a writer of tales and the source of many a plot still used in fiction, is a collection of about all the good stories known to the medieval man at that time. Dr. W. J. Dawson, in his Great English Short Story Writers, gives a hint of the influence of these stories when he shows how the germ of one of Aristotle's stories was preserved in the eleventh tale of Gesta Romanorum. This tale called, Of the Poison of Sin, subsequently furnished the plot used by Hawthorne in Rappicinni's Daughter, by Holmes in Elsie Tenner, and by

Richard Garnett in The Poison Maid. Other of these plots may easily be traced in modern stories.

This book was not prepared for mere entertainment, however. Each of the tales is followed by a moral application. One may readily surmise that the medieval parish priest used these stories to illustrate his sermons, much as the Lives of the Saints formed the nucleus of their homilies.

The reader must remember that these stories were not invented by the compiler of the book. They were merely collected from all known sources, and some of them, at least, are as old as the love of fiction itself.

Beast Fables and Picaresque Tales. — Two other forms of ancient fiction helped to mould the love for short tales in prose. These are the Beast Fables, such as Aesop's Fables, the Stories of Reynard the Fox, and Joel Chandler Harris' modern Uncle Remus Stories; and Rogue Stories (called picaresque from the Spanish picar, a rogue), such as the German Hans Eulenspiegel, the Spanish Little Lazarus of Tormes, the English adventure stories of Sir John Mandeville, and those of that other cheerful and picturesque liar, Baron Munchausen. Each of these, and the fairy tale too, has contributed something, either of character, setting, or incident to the technic of the modern Short Story.

Boccaccio's The Decameron (1353). — There is an Italian collection of stories in prose which exerted as great an influence upon the makers of fiction as the Gesta Romanorum. This is the hundred tales (Decameron) of the Italian poet, Boccaccio, 1313-1375. Like the Gesta Romanorum this is again just a collection of well-known tales held together by an enveloping plot similar to those used later by Chaucer, in The Canterbury Tales, and Longfellow, in The Tales of a Wayside Inn. One of the most famous of these stories of The Decameron is The Story of Patient Griselda used by Chaucer about 1386 as The Clerk's Tale. Chaucer says in his prologue to this tale that he learned it from the Laureate Poet Frauncys Petrarch at Padua. Petrarch was a friend of Boccaccio, and was probably visited by Chaucer on one of his trips to Italy.

The passion for collecting old tales and weaving them together after the fashion of The Decameron was wide-spread. Similar books were made by Gower (Confessio Amantis), by Lydgate (Fall of Princes), and by others in England in the early fifteenth century.

Sir Thomas Malory f s Morte d' Arthur. — More important than any other of these medieval books, and the one which has exerted the largest influence on English literature, is one which has been used but little by the writers of fiction — the Morte d' Arthur (about 1470) of Sir Thomas Malory. This book is the final medieval form of the stories of King Arthur, and was the principal source of Tennyson's Arthurian Cycle, The Idylls of the King.

Episodes in Longer Stories. — In these paragraphs the progress of short tales in prose has been sketched from the earliest known beginnings to comparatively modern times. Before we begin to consider the change from the ancient prose tale to the modern Short Story, however, some account must be taken of episodes which occasionally appeared as chapters in longer works of fiction. There are chapters in Cervantes' Don Quixote, in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, and in other early works of fiction, which, taken from the book, make distinct units. The technic of the modern novel does not admit the digression of the detached episode, but after the advent of the real novel, while yet its form was plastic, such unrelated episodes were admitted. The Tale of the Old Man of the Hill, in Fielding's Tom Jones (1748), Wandering Willie's Tale in Scott's Bedgauntlet (1824), and The Princess' Tragedy in Thackeray's Barry Lyndon illustrate the employment of this device. Had there been public taste and a vehicle for publication for the Short Story such as we have in our modern magazines, it is probable that these novelists would have omitted such digressions from their larger stories and published them in the magazines as Short Stories, just as many of our novelists now use the chips from their workshops, the episodes in their larger pieces of fiction.

The Influence of the Essayists. — Printing had come to be comparatively inexpensive, and readers quite numerous by the beginning of the eighteenth century. There was, accordingly, a demand for cheap periodical publications by a body of readers large enough to warrant the experiment. The contents of such papers as The Spectator and The Tatler of Addison and Steele, and The Guardian of Johnson were news of the town and social comment, and commonly an essay, usually light in tone, concerning some topic which the author thought would be of general interest. Occasionally one of these essays was presented in the form of fiction — a brief tale. Sometimes these sketches were loosely joined together by an enveloping fiction, as in the series of essays by Addison called The Sir Roger de Coverly Papers. A better example of fiction in these periodical

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publications is the detached story called The Vision of Mirza.

No doubt such pieces as these inspired the writers of fiction of the early years of the nineteenth century and turned them toward the tale, refined and polished in style, but still lacking some of the essential qualities of the Short Story. Prominent among these writers was the Scotch poet, James Hogg (1770-1885), " The Ettrick Shepherd "; and the American, Washington Irving (1783-1859 ) . From the volume of Tales and Sketches of the former Dr. Dawson selects the story of The Mysterious Bride as a typical Short Story. Irving 's tales, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle, are familiar to all.

Hawthorne and Poe* — As any form of art is growing toward perfection, those who practice it are usually unconscious of the technical processes which they employ. The genius, once in a long while, manages his materials in such a way as to produce the artistic result ; but even the genius in the formative period of the art follows no law but the law of necessity, which he instinctively feels will produce the effect he desires. When such an artistic effect has been produced a few dozens of times, then men of analytic minds study the processes employed by the great artists and deduce the technical principles involved in the production of the artistic effect. Such a body of technical knowledge once having been established is the common property ever after of both the true artist and the mere craftsman. The greatest genius of all is

♦For a discriminating criticism of Poe and Hawthorne see American Prose Masters by Brownell, W. C. — Charles Scribner's Sons.

the one who has the instinctive power to create, and then becomes conscious of the means which he has used. In dramatic literature Shakespeare was such a genius. He had the creative mind of the unconscious artist ; then he became consciously aware of the means which were needed to produce a given effect — of the minute details of the technic of dramatic poetry and stage craft — and so he is reckoned the greatest dramatic poet of the world.

The honor of producing the genius, who first became conscious of the technic of the Short Story is perhaps due to America. In a measure Hawthorne (1804-1864) was conscious of the means he used. In a greater measure this consciousness of means was Poe 's ( 1809-1849 ) . Short Stories were produced before the time of these men, but when a writer succeeded in producing such a story, it seemed by chance that he did so, for he did not follow up his success by writing other stories in which he employed the elements of artistic technic seized by chance in the successful Short Story.

If we reduce the technical requirements of the real story to the very lowest terms — say the necessity of producing a single narrative effect — we shall find a number of tales before Hawthorne's and Poe's which meet this single technical specification : Defoe 's The Apparition of Mrs. Veal (1706), Addison's The Vision of Mirza (1711), Hogg's The Mysterious Bride (1820), Scott's Wandering Willie's Tale (1824), Austin's Peter Rugg, The Missing Man (1824), Irving 's Rip Van Winkle (1819), and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1819) — each of these succeeds in producing a single narrative effect. But when we add to this singleness of impression other elements which we now consider essential, such as the greatest economy of means, the embodiment of a theme, unity of tone, the use of fitting background, truth in the portrayal of characters, etc., we find that most of them, perhaps all, fall short in one or more of these particular requirements.

Admitting that there were many delightful tales before the time of Poe and Hawthorne, even some true short stories, we must reassert that it was these men who became conscious of the art of story writing and made use of their knowledge time after time in writing their stories.

The Modem Short Story. — Since Poe pointed out the way, there have been thousands of writers of Short Stories the world over, and hundreds of these — first, second, and maybe tenth-rate writers — have understood the art better than either Poe or Hawthorne. Among these hundreds there have been a few men and women of genius with great stories to tell and a thorough mastery of the mechanics of their art who have, as a consequence, surpassed even the greatest geniuses, men who had the materials without the conscious knowledge of technic.

The Short Story in recent years has become so effective a means of representing life that no one today needs to feel that the serious novel is the only form of fiction worthy of study and consideration. Compared with the more extensive novel, the Short Story is what the sonnet is to the longer lyric poem — an artistic vessel of a definite form into which an author may pour his plastic material and fix some great and worthy idea as in a mould of beauty.

The technic once established, masters of the art of Short Story writing have sprung up in nearly every civilized country; but America and France have led, with England, Russia, and Germany closely following. In all these countries the writers have recognized the essentials of Short Story technic, but mechanical perfection has been approached most nearly in France and America. The present treatise does not assert that every piece of fiction worthy of the name of Short Story will conform to every technical detail of the typical Short Story, but it does set up certain standards to which the Short Story as a type of fiction must conform, making due allowances for individuality in authors and in pieces of work. To make clear what those technical elements of the Short Story are will be the business of the following chapters.

The Chronological Development of the Short Story. — Those who are interested in the development of the Short Story from its beginnings in English until the present time may find a scholarly and illuminating treatment of this phase of the subject in Dr. Henry Seidel Canby's The Short Story in English. This book is an exhaustive account, a * ' documented investigation, ' ' of the evolution of this phase of fiction in English.