Just when, where, and by whom story-telling was begun no one can say.
From the first use of speech, no doubt, our ancestors have told stories
of war, love, mysteries, and the miraculous performances of lower
animals and inanimate objects. The ultimate source of all stories lies
in a thorough democracy, unhampered by the restrictions of a higher
civilization. Many tales spring from a loathsome filth that is
extremely obnoxious to our present day tastes. The remarkable and
gratifying truth is, however, that the short-story, beginning in the
crude and brutal stages of man's development, has gradually unfolded to
greater and more useful possibilities, until in our own time it is a
most flexible and moral literary form.
The first historical evidence in the development of the story shows no
conception of a short-story other than that it is not so long as other
narratives. This judgment of the short-story obtained until the
beginning of the nineteenth century, when a new version of its meaning
was given, and an enlarged vision of its possibilities was experienced
by a number of writers almost simultaneously. In the early centuries of
story-telling there was only one purpose in mind—that of narrating for
the joy of the telling and hearing. The story-tellers sacrificed unity
and totality of effect as well as originality for an entertaining
method of reciting their incidents.
The story of _Ruth_ and the _Prodigal Son_ are excellent short tales,
but they do not fulfill the requirements of our modern short-story for
the reason that they are not constructed for one single impression, but
are in reality parts of possible longer stories. They are, as it were,
parts of stories not unlike _Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_ and _A Lear of
the Steppes_, and lack those complete and concise artistic effects
found in the short-stories, _Markheim_ and _Mumu_, by the same authors.
Both _Ruth_ and the _Prodigal Son_ are exceptionally well told, possess
a splendid moral tone, and are excellent prophecies of what the
nineteenth century has developed for us in the art of short-story
writing.
The Greeks did very little writing in prose until the era of their
decadence, and showed little instinct to use the concise and unified
form of the short-story. The conquering Romans followed closely in the
paths of their predecessors and did little work in the shorter
narratives. The myths of Greece and Rome were not bound by facts, and
opened a wonderland where writers were free to roam. The epics were
slow in movement, and presented a list of loosely organized stories
arranged about some character like Ulysses or AEneas.
During the mediaeval period story-tellers and stories appeared
everywhere. The more ignorant of these story-tellers produced the
fable, and the educated monks produced the simple, crude and disjointed
tales. The _Gesta Romanorum_ is a wonderful storehouse of these
mediaeval stories. In the _Decameron_ Boccaccio deals with traditional
and contemporary materials. He is a born story-teller and presents many
interesting and well-told narratives, but as Professor Baldwin[1] has
said, more than half are merely anecdotes, and the remaining stories
are bare plots, ingeniously done in a kind of scenario form. Three
approach our modern idea of the short-story, and two, the second story
of the second day and the sixth story of the ninth day, actually attain
to our standard. Boccaccio was not conscious of a standard in
short-story telling, for he had none in the sense that Poe and
Maupassant defined and practiced it. Chaucer in England told his
stories in verse and added the charm of humor and well defined
characters to the development of story-telling.
In the seventeenth century Cervantes gave the world its first great
novel, _Don Quixote_. Cervantes was careless in his work and did not
write short-stories, but tales that are fairly brief. Spain added to
the story a high sense of chivalry and a richness of character that the
Greek romance and the Italian novella did not possess. France followed
this loose composition and lack of beauty in form. Scarron and Le Sage,
the two French fiction writers of this period, contributed little or
nothing to the advancement of story-telling. Cervantes' _The Liberal
Lover_ is as near as this period came to producing a real short-story.
The story-telling of the seventeenth century was largely shaped by the
popularity of the drama. In the eighteenth century the drama gave place
to the essay, and it is to the sketch and essay that we must go to
trace the evolution of the story during this period. Voltaire in France
had a burning message in every essay, and he paid far greater attention
to the development of the thought of his message than to the story he
was telling. Addison and Steele in the _Spectator_ developed some real
characters of the fiction type and told some good stories, but even
their best, like _Theodosius and Constantia_, fall far short of
developing all the dramatic possibilities, and lack the focusing of
interest found in the nineteenth century stories. Some of Lamb's
_Essays of Elia_, especially the _Dream Children_, introduce a delicate
fancy and an essayist's clearness of thought and statement into the
story. At the close of this century German romanticism began to seep
into English thought and prepare the way for things new in literary
thought and treatment.
The nineteenth century opened with a decided preference for fiction.
Washington Irving, reverting to the _Spectator_, produced his sketches,
and, following the trend of his time, looked forward to a new form and
wrote _The Spectre Bridegroom_ and _Rip Van Winkle_. It is only by a
precise definition of short-story that Irving is robbed of the honor of
being the founder of the modern short-story. He loved to meander and to
fit his materials to his story scheme in a leisurely manner. He did not
quite see what Hawthorne instinctively followed and Poe consciously
defined and practiced, and he did not realize that terseness of
statement and totality of impression were the chief qualities he needed
to make him the father of a new literary form. Poe and Maupassant have
reduced the form of the short-story to an exact science; Hawthorne and
Harte have done successfully in the field of romanticism what the
Germans, Tieck and Hoffman, did not do so well; Bjornson and Henry
James have analyzed character psychologically in their short-stories;
Kipling has used the short-story as a vehicle for the conveyance of
specific knowledge; Stevenson has gathered most, if not all, of the
literary possibilities adaptable to short-story use, and has
incorporated them in his _Markheim_.
France with her literary newspapers and artistic tendencies, and the
United States with magazines calling incessantly for good
short-stories, and with every section of its conglomerate life
clamoring to express itself, lead in the production and rank of
short-stories. Maupassant and Stevenson and Hawthorne and Poe are the
great names in the ranks of short-story writers. The list of present
day writers is interminable, and high school students can best acquire
a reasonable appreciation of the great work these writers are doing by
reading regularly some of the better grade literary magazines.
For a comprehensive view of specimens representing the history and
development of the short-story, students should have access to Brander
Matthews' _The Short Story_, Jessup and Canby's _The Book of the
Short-Story_, and Waite and Taylor's _Modern Masterpieces of Short
Prose Fiction_.
NOTE: [1] _American Short-Stories_, by Charles Sears Baldwin, New York:
Longmans, Green, & Company, 1904.