Short Story: Introduction
Updated September 10 2002, incorporating students' comments
Narratives are everywhere -- probably among the earliest forms of communication. Evolutionary arguments, e.g., adaptive advantages of sharing experience without risk: narrative imbued with feeling, more memorable, can be passed down the generations, etc. And to conceptualize major life events and our relation to nature (birth, courtship, hunting, etc.). Co-evolution of language, brain, and story.
Role of feelings central: whether negative or positive, to evoke the self concept, put it in process.
Oral narrative (Miall), for features of narrative:
- Imagery -- what do you see? Helps to evoke setting, even if you are unfamiliar with where the story is set.
- Point of view -- share narrator's perspective (in this case); see what he or she sees; role of empathy, i.e., living through the events in the role of the protagonist
- Tone -- primarily given by tone of voice and bodily gestures; must be translated into style in written narratives
- Form -- economy with which story is told, must match the point of the story; good form will evoke appreciation of listener
- Character -- narrator, what type of person? (our ability to form judgements about a person rapidly). Psychological liabilities, implications for action and relationships. Plus other characters in story
- Personifying -- tendency to animate non-human agents
- Setting -- influence on characters; sympathetic weather
Chopin, "The Story of an Hour" -- what are literary features (paragraph numbers are cited).
Gender of writer and reader -- sandwich structure: objective (masculinist) voice in first and last sections, with female issues in between when we are privy to the mind of the character; ambiguity of judgement this creates
Style: effect of punctuation and sentence structure in evoking reader's feelings; discourse style of #15, example of merging of narrator and character voices (example of free indirect discourse); abruptness of ending in #23 (wouldn't occur in oral narrative, and ending more likely to be signalled)
Point of view: limited omniscient narrator, scope for irony (narrator knows more than the character)
Setting: use of blue sky, rain, street sounds, #5: to suspend the moment; but also to anticipate the sense of liberation to come (symbolism of looking though the open window)
Plot: story usually centres on a protagonist; raises question about who the antagonist might be. In Chopin: the woman's own repression, #8? the social constraints? probably not the husband, despite his oppositional role
Title of story: helps create poignancy of events (oral story wouldn't have a title)
Time (as setting): oral is usually specifically dated (my story could be specifically dated), whereas literary stories are often undated, or only vaguely set in a time (cf. beginning of some novels: On August 25th, 18-- ); endows the story with greater generalizing power (may have to check publication date to gain a fix on time)
Time -- as chronology. Consider departures from real time in how a narrative is told:
1. Real time vs. time of reading:
scene (unfolds roughly in real time) vs. summary (foreshortens time); "The Story of an Hour" takes about 12 minutes to read, so there must be much foreshortening
scene: examples #4, #5, etc.; summary: #1-#3; #7
2. Departures from the narrative present:
flashback: reference to past at #15
flashforward: reference to future in #13, #14, #19 (in particular sentences)
Importance of these to point of story? e.g., in #14 conveying obstructive nature of a "normal" marriage (relates to Chopin's interest in feminist issues, unusual for her period; but also to note that people oppress one another in #14-- more than feminist?)
Issues:
1. What is literary about Chopin? Disclosure of character's mind and feelings (wouldn't be possible in oral narrative).
2. Three terms: story, narrative, fiction -- should we attempt to distinguish them?
Document prepared September 4th 2002 / updated January 4th 2004