Short Story: Theoretical Proposals

-- in anticipation of the Project --

Proposals of Charles E. May:

If the novel creates the illusion of reality by presenting a literal authenticity to the material facts of the external world, as Ian Watt suggests, the short story attempts to be authentic to the immaterial reality of the inner world of the self in its relation to eternal rather than temporal reality. If the novel's quest for extensional reality takes place in the social world and the material of its analyses are manners as the indication of one's soul, as Lionel Trilling says, the field of research for the short story is the primitive, antisocial world of the unconscious, and the material of its analysis are not manners, but dreams. The results of this distinction are that whereas the novel is primarily a social and public form, the short story is mythic and spiritual. While the novel is primarily structured on a conceptual and philosophical framework, the short story is intuitive and lyrical. The novel exists to reaffirm the world of 'everyday' reality; the short story exists to 'defamiliarize' the everyday. Storytelling does not spring from one's confrontation with the everyday world, but rather from one's encounter with the sacred (in which true reality is revealed in all its plenitude) or with the absurd (in which true reality is revealed in all its vacuity). (Charles E. May, "The Nature of Knowledge in Short Fiction." Studies in Short Fiction, 21 (1984): 327-338. pp. 328-9)

This series of contrasts can be represented in a matrix:

 
novel
short story
reality authenticity to the material facts the immaterial reality of the inner world
self social, manners individual: primitive, antisocial, unconscious, dreams
form a social and public form mythic and spiritual
structure conceptual and philosophical intuitive and lyrical
focus confrontation with the everyday world encounter with the sacred / or the absurd

This offers a coherent overview of the short story, but how widely does it apply?

Other comments:

The novelist may juggle about with chronology and throw narrative overboard; all the time his characters have the reader by the hand, there is a consistency of relationship throughout the experience that cannot and does not convey the quality of human life, where contact is more like the flash of fire-flies, in and out, now here, now there, in darkness. Short story writers see by the light of the flash; theirs is the art of the only thing one can be sure of -- the present moment. Ideally, they have learned to do without explanation of what went before, and what happens beyond this point. (Geddes 360)

Man has to live how he can: overlooked and dwarfed he makes himself his own theatre. Is the drama inside heroic or pathological? Outward acts have often an inside magnitude. The short story, with its shorter span than the novel's, with its freedom from forced complexity, its possible lucidness, is able, like the poetic drama, to measure man by his aspirations and dreams and place him alone on that stage which, inwardly, every man is conscious of occupying alone. (Elizabeth Bowen, Collected Stories (1980) 16)

On postmodernism:

There has been a general movement away from conventional social and behavioural codes, the sense of a common grammar of experience, and a new concern with the individual units of language. Hence the 'difficulty' of much postmodernist writing. The characteristic fragmentation of postmodernist discourse is the direct result of a confrontation with language as itself problematic. The primary question is that of the ability of language to express. In asking -- or expressing -- this question, postmodernist writers have involved themselves in the kind of paradox we night legitimately expect from a 'literature of exhaustion.' (Hanson 141)

In postmodernist fiction there is no obligation for us to believe any story, on any level: we are not necessarily required, even, to construct a sense of metaphysical coherence in a story in which physical coherence is lacking. Postmodernism presents us with a sense of infinite possibility, the other aspect of which is a sense of limitless futility: where we can choose anything, choice and shape may cease to have meaning and value. (Clare Hanson, Short Stories & Short Fictions 1880-1980. London: Macmillan, 1985, 142)

Unity? Beyond Poe's insistence on "totality," the single effect" (Geddes 377): from Dominic Head, The Modernist Short Story: A Study in Theory and Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992):

These capacities of modernist short fiction conform to the accepted characteristics of modernist literature in general: the limited action and an associated ambiguity and preoccupation with personality; and the self-conscious foregrounding of form and the concomitant reliance on pattern -- paradigmatic devices -- to express that which is absent from the surface, or syntagmatic level of the narrative. It is in the interpretation of these elements, however, that the real problems of short story criticism present themselves. There has been a tendency to unify these elements, to view them as constitutive of an implicit formal unity not explicitly emphasized in the narrative. The modernist project, however, is far more radical than this would suggest, and actually gives rise to highly unstable work in which many elements are problematized. The notion of a single exemplary action, for instance, is often taken as a structural centre, the validity of which is implicitly questioned. Indeed, most familiar tenets of short story criticism correspond to devices which the modernists employed in an ambiguous way. (8)

[My premise] has been that the literary effects generated in modernist stories derive from a tension between formal convention and formal disruption, and that this paradoxical dual essence has been recognized ,but not adequately theorized in existing short story theory. A more coherent approach, and one which removes the apparent paradox, can be achieved through an application of the Althusserian concept of 'relative autonomy'. Basically, this involves seeing the disruptive literary gesture as an instance of relative autonomy; as something which is simultaneously conditioned by, yet critical of its ideological context, a context which can be equated with literary conventions and whatever world-view they encompass. This element of criticism need not always be an overt aspect of the text, and may be the product of a contemporary reinterpretation; for the modernists, however, the disclosure of ideological context is often an integral part of their formal experimentation. (26)

The 'aesthetic effect', in essence, is relatively autonomous, but is simultaneously delimited by the ideological factors bearing upon it. The 'knowledge of art' is accorded a privileged status, but this is dependent upon an external political understanding of ideology. . . . The dual essence of art -- its simultaneous contextual dependence and contextual critique -- is only viable if the content in question can be made available (at least partially) through the text. History, that is to say, has to exist as an extra-textual reality which locates and defines literary production. (28)

Theoretical domains:

Theory of short story:

Critical frameworks:

Project aim: to propose your own theory of the short story. This can be limited to a selection of stories, specific to a particular genre, period, or style. You don't have to account for every story in the Anthology (but if you think you can -- fine!). For examples of previous projects, see Archived Courses on my home page, such as these from the Shelleys course (most of which made use of a poster).


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Document prepared September 4th 2002 / updated October 7th 2002