Short story


A short story is a piece of narrative fiction in prose that can typically be read in a single sitting. It focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest types of literature and has existed in the form of legends, mythic tales, folk tales, fairy tales, tall tales, fables, and anecdotes in various ancient communities around the world. The modern short story developed in the early 19th century.

Definition

The short story is a crafted form in its own right. Short stories make use of plot, resonance and other dynamic components as in a novel, but typically to a lesser degree. While the short story is largely distinct from the novel or novella/short novel, authors generally draw from a common pool of literary techniques. The short story is sometimes referred to as a genre.
Determining what exactly defines a short story remains problematic. A classic definition of a short story is that one should be able to read it in one sitting, a point most notably made in Edgar Allan Poe's essay "The Philosophy of Composition". H. G. Wells described the purpose of the short story as "The jolly art, of making something very bright and moving; it may be horrible or pathetic or funny or profoundly illuminating, having only this essential, that it should take from fifteen to fifty minutes to read aloud." According to William Faulkner, a short story is character-driven and a writer's job is to "...trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does."
Some authors have argued that a short story must have a strict form. Somerset Maugham thought that the short story "must have a definite design, which includes a point of departure, a climax and a point of test; in other words, it must have a plot". Hugh Walpole had a similar view: "A story should be a story; a record of things happening full of incidents, swift movements, unexpected development, leading through suspense to a climax and a satisfying denouement."
This view of the short story as a finished product of art is however opposed by Anton Chekhov, who thought that a story should have neither a beginning nor an end. It should just be a "slice of life", presented suggestively. In his stories, Chekhov does not round off the end but leaves it to the readers to draw their own conclusions.
Sukumar Azhikode defined a short story as "a brief prose narrative with an intense episodic or anecdotal effect". Flannery O'Connor emphasized the need to consider what is exactly meant by the descriptor short. Short story writers may define their works as part of the artistic and personal expression of the form. They may also attempt to resist categorization by genre and fixed formation.
William Boyd, a British author and short story writer, has said:
seem to answer something very deep in our nature as if, for the duration of its telling, something special has been created, some essence of our experience extrapolated, some temporary sense has been made of our common, turbulent journey towards the grave and oblivion.

In the 1880s, the term "short story" acquired its modern meaning – having initially referred to children's tales. During the early to mid-20th century, the short story underwent expansive experimentation which further hindered attempts to comprehensively provide a definition. Longer stories that cannot be called novels are sometimes considered "novellas" or novelettes and, like short stories, may be collected into the more marketable form of "collections". Around the world, the modern short story is comparable to lyrics, dramas, novels and essays – although examination of it as a major literary form remains diminished.

Length

In terms of length, word count is typically anywhere from 1,000 to 4,000 for short stories; however, some works classified as short stories have up to 15,000 words. Stories of fewer than 1,000 words are sometimes referred to as "short short stories", or "flash fiction".
Short stories have no set length. What constitutes a short story may differ between genres, countries, eras, and commentators. Like the novel, the short story's predominant shape reflects the demands of the available markets for publication, and the evolution of the form seems closely tied to the evolution of the publishing industry and the submission guidelines of its constituent houses.
As a point of reference for the genre writer, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America define short story length in the Nebula Awards for science fiction submission guidelines as having fewer than 7,500 words.

History

Prehistory – 1790 CE

Short stories date back to oral storytelling traditions which originally produced epics such as the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, and Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. Oral narratives were often told in the form of rhyming or rhythmic verse, often including recurring sections or, in the case of Homer, Homeric epithets. Such stylistic devices often acted as mnemonics for easier recall, rendition, and adaptation of the story. While the overall arc of the tale was told over the course of several performances, short sections of verse could focus on individual narratives that were the duration of a single telling. It may be helpful to classify such sections as oral short stories.
Another ancient form of short story popular during the Roman Empire was the anecdote, a brief realistic narrative that embodies a point. Many surviving Roman anecdotes were collected in the 13th or 14th century as the Gesta Romanorum. Anecdotes remained popular throughout Europe well into the 18th century with the publication of the fictional anecdotal letters of Sir Roger de Coverley.
In Europe, the oral story-telling tradition began to develop into written form in the early 14th century, most notably with Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron and Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Both of these books are composed of individual short stories, which range from farce or humorous anecdotes to well-crafted literary fiction, set within a larger narrative story, although the frame-tale device was not adopted by all writers. At the end of the 16th century, some of the most popular short stories in Europe were the darkly tragic "novella" of Italian author Matteo Bandello, especially in their French translation.
The mid 17th century in France saw the development of a refined short novel, the "nouvelle", by such authors as Madame de Lafayette. Traditional fairy tales began to be published in the late 17th century; one of the most famous collections was by Charles Perrault. The appearance of Antoine Galland's first modern translation of the 1001 Arabian Nights, a storehouse of Middle Eastern folk and fairy tales, is the Thousand and One Nights . His translation would have an enormous influence on the 18th-century European short stories of Voltaire, Diderot and others.
In India, there is a rich heritage of ancient folktales as well as a compiled body of short fiction which shaped the sensibility of modern Indian short story. Some of the famous Sanskrit collections of legends, folktales, fairy tales, and fables are Panchatantra, Hitopadesha and Kathasaritsagara. Jataka tales, originally written in Pali, is a compilation of tales concerning the previous births of Lord Gautama Buddha. The Frame story, also known as the frame narrative or story within a story, is a narrative technique that probably originated in ancient Indian works such as Panchatantra.
The evolution of printing technologies and periodical editions were among the factors contributing to the increasing importance of short story publications. Pioneering the rules of the genre in the Western canon were, among others, Rudyard Kipling, Anton Chekhov, Guy de Maupassant, Rabindranath Tagore, Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera and Rubén Darío.

1790–1850

Early examples of short stories were published separately between 1790 and 1810, but the first true collections of short stories appeared between 1810 and 1830 in several countries.
The first short stories in the United Kingdom were gothic tales like Richard Cumberland's "remarkable narrative", "The Poisoner of Montremos". Novelists such as Sir Walter Scott and Charles Dickens also wrote influential short stories during this time. Germany soon followed the United Kingdom's example by producing short stories; the first collection of short stories was by Heinrich von Kleist in 1810 and 1811. In the United States, Washington Irving was responsible for creating some of the first short stories of American origin, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle".
Edgar Allan Poe became another early American short story writer. His concise technique, deemed the "single effect", has had tremendous influence on the formation of the modern short story.
Examples include:
  • France
  • * Prosper Mérimée
  • ** Mateo Falcone
  • Germany
  • * E. T. A. Hoffmann
  • ** "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King",
  • ** "The Sandman",
  • * Brothers Grimm
  • ** Grimms' Fairy Tales
  • United States
  • * Edgar Allan Poe
  • ** "The Fall of the House of Usher",
  • ** "The Tell-Tale Heart",
  • ** "The Cask of Amontillado",
  • ** "The Pit and the Pendulum",
  • ** "The Gold Bug",
  • ** "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" – one of the first detective stories
  • ** "The Purloined Letter" – one of the first detective stories
  • * Nathaniel Hawthorne
  • ** Twice-Told Tales
  • *John Neal
  • **"Otter-Bag, the Oneida Chief"
  • **"David Whicher"

    1850–1900

In the latter half of the 19th century, the growth of print magazines and journals created a strong demand for short fiction of between 3,000 and 15,000 words. In 1890s Britain, literary periodicals such as The Yellow Book, Black & White, and The Strand Magazine popularized the short story. Britain was not alone in the endeavor to strengthen the short story movement. French author Guy de Maupassant composed the short stories "Boule de Suif" and "L'Inutile Beauté", which are important examples of French realism. Russian author Anton Chekhov was also influential in the movement.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in India, many writers created short stories centered on daily life and the social scene of the different socioeconomic groups. Rabindranath Tagore published more than 150 short stories on the lives of the poor and oppressed such as peasants, women, and villagers under colonial misrule and exploitation. Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, Tagore's contemporary, was another pioneer in Bengali short stories. Chattopadhyay's stories focused on the social scenario of rural Bengal and the lives of common people, especially the oppressed classes. The prolific Indian author of short stories Munshi Premchand, pioneered the genre in the Hindustani language, writing over 200 short stories and many novels in a style characterized by realism and an unsentimental and authentic introspection into the complexities of Indian society.
In 1884, Brander Matthews, the first American professor of dramatic literature, published The Philosophy of the Short-Story. During that same year, Matthews was the first one to name the emerging genre "short story". Another theorist of narrative fiction was Henry James, who produced some of the most influential short narratives of the time.
The spread of the short story movement continued into South America, specifically Brazil. The novelist Machado de Assis was an important short story writer from Brazil at the time, under the influences of Xavier de Maistre, Laurence Sterne, Guy de Maupassant, among others. At the end of the 19th century, the writer João do Rio became popular by short stories about the bohemianism. Lima Barreto wrote about the former slaves and nationalism in Brazil, with his most recognized work being Triste Fim de Policarpo Quaresma.
Examples include:
  • India
  • *Rabindranath Tagore
  • **"The Kabuliwala"
  • **"The Hungry Stone"
  • **"The Wife's Letter"
  • **"The Parrot's Training"
  • **"Punishment"
  • *Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay
  • **"Bindu's Son"
  • **"Abhagi's Heaven"
  • **"Mahesh"
  • **"Ram's Good Lesson"
  • **"Lalu"
  • **"The Husband"
  • *Premchand
  • **"The Shroud"
  • **"The Cost of Milk"
  • **"Lottery"
  • Poland
  • * Bolesław Prus
  • ** "A Legend of Old Egypt"
  • * Eliza Orzeszkowa
  • **"Panna Antonina"
  • **"W zimowy wieczór"
  • * Henryk Sienkiewicz
  • **"The Lighthouse keeper"
  • **"Charcoal Sketches"
  • Portugal
  • *Almeida Garrett
  • *Alexandre Herculano
  • *Eça de Queiroz
  • Russia
  • * Ivan Turgenev
  • ** A Sportsman's Sketches
  • * Fyodor Dostoyevski
  • ** "The Meek One"
  • ** "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man"
  • * Leo Tolstoy
  • ** "Ivan the Fool"
  • ** "How Much Land Does a Man Need?"
  • ** "Alyosha the Pot"
  • * Anton Chekhov
  • ** "The Bet"
  • ** "Ward No. 6"
  • ** "The Lady with the Dog"
  • * Maxim Gorky
  • ** "Twenty-six Men and a Girl"
  • United Kingdom
  • * Thomas Hardy
  • ** "The Three Strangers",
  • ** "A Mere Interlude",
  • ** "Barbara of the House of Grebe"
  • * Rudyard Kipling
  • ** Plain Tales from the Hills
  • ** The Jungle Book
  • * Arthur Conan Doyle
  • ** The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – detective story
  • * H. G. Wells – science fiction
  • ** "The Country of the Blind"
  • United States
  • * Herman Melville
  • ** The Piazza Tales
  • * Mark Twain
  • ** "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County"
  • * Henry James
  • ** "The Real Thing"
  • ** "Maud-Evelyn"
  • ** The Beast in the Jungle
  • *Kate Chopin
  • *Stephen Crane