The History of the Short Story, Research Paper Example

In the contemporary field of short story studies, one of the main enigmas and the source of controversy is a seemingly easy task of giving a definition to what the short story is and what the impact its historical context has on the contemporary short story. It may seem quite easy to distinguish a short from a novel, but how it should be distinguished from a novella, for instance. The importance of giving a definition is conditioned by the necessity of categorization of historical features of the short story and its consequent development within each epoch and country specifics. Various literary critics have their own approaches to categorization of the short story according to their perception of the short story. The academic field of short story criticism is divided into two categories: those who argues that the generic definition of the short story is of little value if possible at all, and those who suggest that giving an evaluative definition is essential for the very understanding and study of the short story historical and cultural dynamics. Charles E. May belongs to the second category. His main aim of research of definition of the short story can be summarized as follows:

“I do not need to argue for a definition that satisfies necessary conditions to distinguish  the short story from the novel. I do argue, however, that if we develop an understanding of the generic characteristics of the short story, we will be able to read individual short stories with more appreciation and understanding” (I am you 27).

Based on this rationale, May structures his argument in terms of the inevitable features of the form and constancy of the genre of the short story. However, he remains convinced that the characteristic features of the short story that assists understanding evolve and change with time. In his perception, the understanding and reading of the meaning of the short story is conditioned by its history. He is convinced that the main impact of the literary history on the short story is that it defines it and explains in its evolutionary context. For this purpose, May gives the following definition of the short story:

“The one thing that does not change is the fact that short stories are both stories and short. What does change, however, is the understanding and recognition of what makes a story a story and how the short story writer manipulates the limitations of shortness” (I am your 50).

In other words, Charles May suggests that the short story as any literary genre is a historical phenomenon, which has specifics features according to the  trends and requirements of the short story in a certain epoch and culture. Each period in the history of the short story would be characterized by the difference in those trends and techniques the writers used in order to make the most of the inevitable shortness of this genre. On the other hand, the author does not argue that characteristic features of the short story are erased entirely with each epoch. On the contrary, certain features remain. They can evolve and be brushed the lens of time and cultural perceptions but tend to remain, which can be explained by the expectation from the short story or by the constancy of its shortness that conditions certain techniques. For instance, the short nature of the short story requires the spatial development of events instead of temporal, which is more attainable in the form of a novel.

In his analysis of the history the short story May outlines that of the manifestations of the form of the short story is what Cassier called the “momentary deity” (I am your 60). This suggests that the short story as a religion creates a certain deity around which the fiction or religious world would turn around. In this case, just as immediately perceived spiritual deities gradually are shaped into “structural theological frameworks,” the short story begins with a single momentary perception which is further conceptualized into a complete structured narrative form (The Reality 2). The author is convinced that the element of sacredness and certain spirituality that unites religious framework and the short story make the perception of the last a truly theological in its conception.

In the course of characterizing the short story May outlines that the short story a genre is on-going and development in its characteristics. On the other hand, these characteristics are periodical in their reoccurrence in the literary trends just as the reoccurrence in cultural trends are conditioned by historical contexts (I am your 79).  Although May provided aforementioned definition of the short story, in the analysis of each epoch and behind the names of the prominent writers and critics he uses a certain implicit notion for the benefit of the analysis of each period and the short story itself. It can defined as an individual work of art written for the audience to explore the mystery of human life and the purpose of belonging to humanity and the word around, laconically fitted into a short form of a story. Although this definition seems to be quite vague in its very nature, but it the hidden theme behind May’s analysis that is used not only for the sake of narration but also in order to demonstrate the endurance of the genre within diverse changes of the features.

In terms of the stages of the short story development, May argues that the starting point should be considered the moment when the short narrative and storytelling came out of the shadow of the folk oral tradition and overruled the predominant religious allegories of the literature. This was the publication of Boccaccio’s Decameron in the fourteenth century. The main rationale for outlining these events as the beginning of the short story was in its singularity and uniqueness in contrast to the existing oral and folk tradition of the story telling. The main accomplishment of Boccaccio was to use the existing “vulgar popular folktales… to transform meaningless everyday reality into a meaningful teleological event with a formal unifying pattern” (I am your 33). Thus, the achievement here was the concentration of attention on real human being and their real problems instead of previously praised religious morality. In other words, the crucial features that distinguished the first short story and which can be further traced is a human-centered perspective of the narration in a formalized manner of the genre of the short.

On the other hand, each epoch in the history of the short had a different perspective on the functionality of the narration. May argues that the Romanticism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was characterized by the tendency “to naturalize the supernatural and to humanize the divine” (I am your 36). May suggests that from the time of Boccaccio the stories remained formulaic; however, the main difference was the presence of the subjective figure and the opinion of the narrator. The introduction of the individual perspective on the world and its perception characterized the shift of the short story from the mythical storytelling to a formalized literary narration. The next stage is the nineteenth century characterized by works of Irving, Poe, and Hawthorne. The main distinctive feature of their works is that they took the romantics trend from the previous century and depended it further in their works. May outlines that the connection with the folklore was even vaguer since “Washington Irving’s focus on tone rather incident illustrates this new emphasis on the teller and accounts for the combination of attitudes that come together to create the short story in America” (The Reality 6). He suggests that the new stage of the short story was in the new trends of its development in terms of the American rather than British literary culture. The main distinctive feature of this period was demonstrated in works of Poe and Hawthorne, who concentrated their attention on psychological aspects of human perceptive on life and motives for actions. While it seldom mattered where in the physical world the stories of Poe or Hawthorne could occur, “they always seem to take place in the mind of the character” (The Reality 10).

Finally, the modern stage of the short story starts with works of Chekhov, Hemingway, and Carver. The main feature of this period is concentration on reality as “a purely objective event” which is intensified by the selection of settings and other narrative techniques that make it feel like “hyperrealism” and even surreal to a certain extent (I am your 45). This is finally the time where the elements of the form become the most functional since the described objects and events become incredibly “meaningful metaphors by the motivating force of the story’s own thematic and structural demands” (I am your 148). Thus, every aspect of the story became integrated with the author’s intended functionality and purpose of the narration. May argues that this trend dominates the contemporary short story discourse. From the critical perspective, the historical thresholds of the stages of the short story development are justified by the introduction of the new trends in the short story writing in each epoch and deepening of the outlined pattern in human-centered approach of the short story. May’s choice of this qualitative pattern of historical analysis is conditioned by the diversity of all other factors and differentiated trends in short story writing of each epoch, which would simply make the historical categorization virtually impossible.

In terms of the origins of the short story, May argues that they originate in the folk culture of myths and legends. The short stories are born from the oral storytelling and mystery of them. The mythic thinking of unraveling what is hidden behind the sacredness of the narration is what characterized the word of myths and legends and remained a crucial feature in the understanding of the contemporary short stories (I am your 59). In terms of the thematic dominance, myths influence the short story in two ways. From the cognitive perspective, May argues that the dominant theme of all stories is the desire of belonging and returning to the unity with everyone else of which the humanity was deprived by the original sin (I am your 62). Thus, in this or that way the short story outlines that necessity of belonging in various plot interpretations and twists. On the other hand, the second influence of myths is that they are the source of themes and strong symbolical images which are continuously reproduced in the new patterns of the contemporary world (I am your 181). It assists in triggering desired emotions and filing the characters and images with the desired complexity and content (I am your 241).

The role of the oral narration was fundamental to the origins of the genre, since it defined its survival and future transformation pattern. On the other hand, as it was demonstrated on a few occasions oral tradition is not just an old memory of the past. It found its way in few contemporary works. May particularly concentrates analysis on Bernard Malamud works, suggesting that the author combined the oral tradition of the folk tales combined with the modern elements of the short story such as “the tight symbolic structure and ironic and distanced point of view we have come to associate with the short story since Chekhov and Joyce” (The Reality 71). May suggests that the genre has a memory, and it can combine certain features of the past together with the contemporary elements of the short story narrative. According to May, the contemporary short story preserved allegory, a certain degree of mysticism, and fantasies combined with the contemporary elements like naturalism and highly sophisticated psychological patterning of the narration. May concludes that “the short story from its beginning been hybrid form of combining both the metaphoric mode of the old romance and the metonymic mode of the new realism” (The Reality 71).

One of the curious aspects of May’s analysis is in terms of the British/American bias in view on the short story and its history. Although it may seem that May has an American point of view on the subject, he tries to preserve neutrality of analysis. He does not attempt to argue that American short story is better or more sophisticated, rather he outlines that the age of popularity of the short story in the UK preceded its active development in America. He argues that the short story as a genre can flourish in an environment of diversity of ideas and differentiation of values, which might have been difficult in the conditions of the British conservatism. May writes “this geographical and social fragmentation of people and values has often been cited as one reason why the short story became quickly popular in the nineteenth century in America” (I am your 24). It can be argued that the short story was European before its bloom in the nineteenth century America. Thus, although it can be concluded that the founding fathers of the genre were European and the American authors became the forerunners, May does not suggest that any of them are imitators rather that this shift is conditioned by the historical context of genre’s development.

In his books, May also emphasized the crucial role of Chekhov in the development of the modern short story. May argued that “the lyricizing of the slice-of-life story by the realists in the early twentieth century, most clearly exemplified in the stories of Chekhov” (I am your 145). He suggests that Chekhov managed to depict realism through the literary technique of the compression of reality, which is rhetorical method aimed at demonstrating the meaning by leaving out all the unnecessary rest. He emphasized the style that could create a metaphor with the means of metonymy.  In terms of May’s statement that the short story is latently present behind the historical discussion, Chekhov demonstrates that the short story was and remains the means of expressing reality either in the context of the mythological narration or humanization of divine, or exploration of human psychological nature through gothic contest of the hidden psyche. It does not mean that it should not be artificial in its structure or described events; however, it always appeals to a certain aspect of the reality in which the audience exists.

Chekhov managed to demonstrate that realism in a very strict manner of structuring dry facts in the functional composition of the short story, which might be less mysterious in its narration, nerveless, is not less sophisticated or metaphoric in its nature than works of Poe. In this regard, May’s equation of Chekhov and Poe is conditioned not by their writing styles and detailed structuring of their short stories or even the use of symbolism or metaphor. It also was not in stresses they placed in their description of reality. The commonality between two was in their contribution to the revival of the aesthetics of the short story. While Poe argued that the short story triggers unique emotions and has a unique impact on the reader than the novel, Chekhov made a step forward in that same direction by deepening the impression the short story could make on the reader. May argues that “Chekhov’s stories were more “nakedly aesthetic” than those of any writer before him” (I am your 148).

Overall, from all mentioned above, it can be concluded that Charles May managed to outline the main trends in the development of the short story. Although he does not give a strict scientific definition of the genre, which could be exhaustive and unchanging in its nature, it serves a purpose of his analysis. The definition he gives and the historical conditionality what is meant by the story explained the diversity of perspectives on the short story criticism nowadays. It also assisted May in his qualitative analysis of the main trends in the short story writing rather than trying to quantify something that functions in the realms of human perception and explanation of human reality and or fantasy.

Works Cited

May, C.E. I am your brother. Charleston: CreateSpace. 2013. Print.

The Reality of Artifice. New York: Routledge. 2003. Print.