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Sri Krishnadevaraya University, Anantapur

Though literatures of the ancient world are rich in tales bewildering in their variety of form and substance, the short story as a distinct artistic form is only of recent growth. In the East, the short story is of great antiquity as a fable, an allegory, or a romance. The “Upanishads,� make frequent use of allegorical tales to point a moral. The “Hitopadesa� is an inexhaustible storehouse of interlinked stories that aim at realistic treatment of human nature through the medium of conventional beast-lore. “Panchatantra� and “Arabian Nights� are only a few of the many types of tales that distinguish the literatures of the East. In the West, the short story has had a very long and chequered career. Even if we do not take into account numerous Greek and Roman myths and fables, there remains a mass of medieval story literature.

The medieval short story reached its perfection in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, which represent a rare genius working on human nature and contemporary life and through his extraordinary gift of humour transforming even the crudest part of his material into an excellent work of art.

The Elizabethans produced no perfect specimens of the short story. For, all the literary vigour of the nation was directed in the channel of poetry and drama. In the hands of Greene, Lodge and Lyly prose fiction soon developed into tedious and high-flown romance. Though it retained some traces of its original interest in substance, in form it became hopelessly entangled and prolix. Curiously enough only an obscure writer among them, namely, Thomas Deloney, stands out now as the best writer of short stories. In the Gentle Craft he gives us a collection of short stories with a realistic presentation of the life of the lower classes, especially shoemakers, in a business-like form of English prose.

It is ironical that writers of the seventeenth century made little use of the example of Thomas Deloney. Instead, they fell under the influence of classical models both in form and substance. Though the practice of Earle, Onerbury and Herbert in characteri­sation had an undoubted influence on the course of fiction in the following century, their method of elaborating single tract of character can hardly be connected with the unity and suggestiveness of characters in the short story today.

With the restoration, however, England had fallen under French influence. The new translations brought in a story that was simpler and more unified in plot than the Elizabethan romances. Nevertheless, their popularity was due not to any literary excellence and merit but to the unmoral atmosphere in which the fashionable authors presented the pictures of contemporary life with all its profligacy, extravagance, will and decadent chivalry.

Although this type of fiction still held the field during the first few decades of the eighteenth century, the rise of the new magazine literature with the Taflerand the Spectator gave the first real start to the short story. The new critical spirit and simple English prose with its precision and fine phrase gained in strength and currency as the years rolled on. In the wake of this new spirit and this new style, there came a new conception of art that demanded realism, commonsense and logic to be the ultimate bases on which it should rest.

The Tafterand the Spectator gave shape to the periodical essay. And the growth of the periodical essay along more, imagina­tive and personal lines, in turn, fostered the habit of story­telling. The rapid increase in the number of Christmas gift books, magazines and annuals provided for the short story an easy channel of publication.

The great achievement of the early decades of the nineteenth century lay not only in isolated examples of the successful short story as in Irving’s Rip Van Winkle and Legend of the Sleepy Hollow, but mainly in the emancipation of the short story from the bondage of moral purpose. As a result, the short story was able to stand by itself and to acquire an artistic value. The short story writers of the nineteenth century like Hawthorne were able to follow the dictates of their genius, to create stories almost perfect in every part, and yet ultimately serving all the moral purposes of the less finished forms of the eighteenth century.

As we reach the middle of the nineteenth century the development of the short story becomes so quick and varied both in America and in England that it is difficult to keep pace with it or chronicle it. Poe and Hawthorne, Bret Harte and Henry James in America; Dickens, Wilkie Collins, and above all, Stevenson in England, contributed to make the short story what it is today–a thing of remarkable beauty, simplicity and profoundness.

Recognized in its own right, the short story today is published in volumes by such prominent writers as H. G. Wells, E. M. Forster, Kipling, Somerset Maugham and Saki. Translations of Chekhov’s short stories and the influence they exerted on such writers as Katherine Mansfield really innovated a new art-form. It is shown that brevity need not mean superficiality. What is more, scene, mood, feeling and character have taken overfrom the contrived plot and the conventional surprise ending. Katherine Mansfield brought to the short story the sensibility of a poet and breathed into it the life spirit of poetry. She extended the range of short story by developing new methods of capturing and conveying the atmosphere of the mind and trans­lating the subtle nuances of human thought and feeling.

After a brief account of the origin, growth and development of the English short story, it may be profitable to have a peep into its characteristic features. The short story is a piece of fiction dealing with a single incident that can be read at a sitting. It is original. It must sparkle, excite or impress. Above all, it must have unity of effect. A short story can be a fable or a parable, real or fantasy, a true presentation or a parody, sentimental or satirical, serious in intent or light-hearted diversion � it can be any of these, but to be memorable it must catch the eternal in casual, invest a moment with the immensity of time. There is a tendency to regard the short story as a novel in miniature, as the stunted growth of a tall, majestic tree. Nothing can be more misleading than a confusion of the aims and methods of the short story with those of the novel. It is true that both of them deal with life. So does all literature. Yet we never mistake one form of literature for another.

The novelist looks at life as a whole, Action, sentiment and character are studied in detail. Stroke after stroke reveals now elements in the life that is being portrayed before us. We are taken through the tangled walks of life. But the short story is less ambitious, though more catholic. It seeks to arrest our attention for a moment so much so we have one rapid, intense look at a situation in life or a peep into the feeling or mood of a character.

This does not necessarily mean that the short story condenses a whole life into a small scope or economises time and space for us. The short story intensifies life for us. It moves us more effectively than a work of fiction because it strikes at once and strikes home.

Again, the short story is not necessarily static because it presents isolated aspects and situations. It is more dynamic, more highly charged with emotion than a novel, the very length of which gives it, of necessity, something of a leisurely movement. Its range can be anything from a prose-poem to an analysis of the most complex human emotions.

Short stories can roughly be classified into two groups � the short story without plot and the short story with plot. The short story without plot is a method of writing in which a unity of impression, or a unity of mood, leads to a climax and to the conclusion or resolution of this point. It depends on irony or overtone for its emotional effect. The short story with plot differs from the short story without plot, in the sense that it depends primarily for its emotional effect, not on irony or overtone, but on the resolution of a specific problem which the protagonist faces. Some of the greatest achievements in the modern short story like the masterpieces of Katherine Mansfield, are not based on formal plot narrative but on the ironic or symbolic overtone.

The short story is not necessarily short. For instance, Meredith’s short story, Strange Case of Lady Camper and General Ople is more than 20,000 words in length, and yet it is only a short story, not a novel. So; length as such gives us no criterion to say whether a work of fiction is a short story or a novel. It is rather the feeling of length that makes a work of fiction a novel or a short story There is no feeling of length in short story because there is no waste of words, no attempt to digress to illustrate a character, or to relieve a situation. The short story moves in a single direction, straight for its goal and reaches it by the quickest route.

So, the short story writer must have an exquisite command of language to select just the one word that conveys his meaning and, what is more, defines his thought. The single word like the right incident, is of the greatest importance to him because he cannot multiply words just as he cannot amplify incidents. He has to avoid all superfluous description and concentrate on dialogue through which he seeks to delineate character.

Verisimilitude is yet another essential requisite of a short story. I must be true to life it presents. If it is not felt to be realistic, all other virtues are of little avail. The literary artist can invent incidents but he does not exaggerate or falsify them. Whatever he shows must be within the limits of probability and possibility. However, the very movement of the short story gives its writer means whereby he may skilfully touch the incidents of life with a heightened imagination. So, the short story can readily blend realism with romance just as it combines the individual character with the typical.

The essence of the short story as an artistic form lies in the unity of effect or impression it achieves by giving us the idea of oneness. It has, therefore, got to be a neat, compact and sincere literary endeavour which is unified into an organic whole of plot, character, setting and overtone only one must predominate unlike in a novel or a play. And the profoundness of the short story resides in the scrupulousness with which writers avoid all attempts at minute description of plot or character. Its method is of suggestion and stimulation rather than of exhaustion. What it aims at is a totality of effect through simplicity of design and directness of utterance.

The short story has come into its own. Hundreds of writers among whom are some of the foremost of our novelists, dramatists, poets and even scientists attempt the short story to work off an idea, a happening or even a mood. All knowledge and all life seem to have become its province. Moreover, it has developed a very high standard of technical perfection. Its art and technique are receiving increased attention not only in Europe and America but also in India.

Recent developments in the short story seem to parallel the new trends of contemporary art. The short story has, however, not been able to go as far out as the theatre of Absurd for the simple reason that the short story cannot deny language as a means of communication or do without words. Since it has to make predicate statements, it cannot simply present a series of images as some modern poems do. None the less, it has done nearly everything else. Its art-forms have stretched all the way from the entertaining adventure story to the most symbolic and multi-dimensional statement, which may contain at one and the same time social criticism, comedy and tragedy, theme and counter-theme, overstatement, suggestive statement, and no statement at all. It may resolve a tension at the end, or leave it unresolved, suggesting that the narrative just slips into life, life that goes on.