The Short-story

The Short-story, by William Patterson Atkinson

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Title: The Short-story
Author: William Patterson Atkinson
Release Date: June 29, 2007 [EBook #21964]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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[Illustration: WASHINGTON IRVING]
THE SHORT-STORY
With Introduction and Notes
BY
W. PATTERSON ATKINSON, A.M.
VICE-PRINCIPAL OF THE LINCOLN HIGH SCHOOL JERSEY CITY
ALLYN AND BACON
Boston New York Chicago
COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY ALLYN AND BACON.
Norwood Press J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

FOREWORD
This book is the result of actual work with first year High School pupils. Furthermore, the completed text has been tried out with them. Their difficulties, standards of reading, and the average development of their minds and taste have constantly been remembered. Whatever teaching quality the book may possess is due to their criticisms.
Hearty thanks are due Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons, Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons, The Thomas Y. Crowell Company, and The Houghton Mifflin Company for gracious permission to use copyrighted material.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PORTRAITS OF AUTHORS vii
INTRODUCTION
I. Definition and Development ix
II. Forms xvi
III. The Short-story as Narration xvii
IV. Representative Short-stories xxi
V. Bibliography xxv
WASHINGTON IRVING: Rip Van Winkle (1820) 1
EDGAR ALLAN POE: The Gold Bug (1842) 23
The Purloined Letter (1845) 69
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE: Howe's Masquerade (1838) 93
The Birthmark (1843) 112
FRANCIS BRET HARTE: The Outcasts of Poker Flat (1869) 134
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON: The Sire de Mal��troit's Door (1878) 148
Markheim (1885) 174
RUDYARD KIPLING: Wee Willie Winkie (1888) 196
NOTES 211
LIST OF PORTRAITS
WASHINGTON IRVING Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
EDGAR ALLAN POE 23
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 93
FRANCIS BRET HARTE 134
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 148
RUDYARD KIPLING 196

INTRODUCTION
I
DEFINITION AND DEVELOPMENT
Mankind has always loved to tell stories and to listen to them. The most primitive and unlettered peoples and tribes have always shown and still show this universal characteristic. As far back as written records go we find stories; even before that time, they were handed down from remote generations by oral tradition. The wandering minstrel followed a very ancient profession. Before him was his prototype--the man with the gift of telling stories over the fire at night, perhaps at the mouth of a cave. The Greeks, who ever loved to hear some new thing, were merely typical of the ready listeners.
In the course of time the story passed through many forms and many phases--the myth, e.g. The Labors of Hercules; the legend, e.g. St. George and the Dragon; the fairy tale, e.g. Cinderella; the fable, e.g. The Fox and the Grapes; the allegory, e.g. Addison's The Vision of Mirza; the parable, e.g. The Prodigal Son. Sometimes it was merely to amuse, sometimes to instruct. With this process are intimately connected famous books, such as "The Gesta Romanorum" (which, by the way, has nothing to do with the Romans) and famous writers like Boccaccio.
Gradually there grew a body of rules and a technique, and men began to write about the way stories should be composed, as is seen in Aristotle's statement that a story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Definitions were made and the elements named. In the fullness of time story-telling became an art.
Similar stories are to be found in many different literatures because human nature is fundamentally the same the world over; that is, people are swayed by the same motives, such as love, hate, fear, and the like. Another reason for this similarity is the fact that nations borrowed stories from other nations, changing the names and circumstances. Writers of power took old and crude stories and made of them matchless tales which endure in their new form, e.g. Hawthorne's Rappaccini's Daughter. Finally the present day dawned and with it what we call the short-story.
The short-story--Prof. Brander Matthews has suggested the hyphen to differentiate it from the story which is merely short and to indicate that it is a new species[1]--is a narrative which is short and has unity, compression, originality, and ingenuity, each in a high degree.[2] The notion of shortness as used in this definition may be inexactly though easily grasped by considering the length of the average magazine story. Compression means that nothing must be included that can be left out. Clayton Hamilton expresses this idea by the convenient phrase "economy of means."[3] By originality is meant something new in plot, point, outcome, or character. (See Introduction III for a discussion of these terms.) Ingenuity suggests cleverness in handling the theme. The short-story also is impressionistic because it leaves to the reader the reconstruction from hints of much of the setting and details.
[Footnote 1: The Philosophy of the Short-Story in Pen and Ink, page