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    A Short History of the Short Story: Western and Asian Traditions
    A Short History of the Short Story: Western and Asian Traditions
    A Short History of the Short Story: Western and Asian Traditions
    Ebook55 pages44 minutes

    A Short History of the Short Story: Western and Asian Traditions

    By Gulnaz Fatma

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    About this ebook

    Worldwide Appreciation of the Short Story Form Spans Cultures and Centuries!
    In this concise volume, Gulnaz Fatma traces the short story from its origins in fables, ancient poetry, and tales such as The Arabian Nights, to its modern form in the early American stories of Irving, Poe, and Hawthorne, and then through the twentieth century and throughout the world. The elements of what makes a short story are presented along with a discussion of the difficulties in defining the genre. The short story's relation to the novel as well as its uniqueness as its own form are deftly presented.
    While the American and European traditions of the short story take up much of this book, the final chapter is a thorough presentation of the short story's development in India. Anyone interested in the short story--teachers, students, writers, and readers--will find this volume informative, thoughtful, and a welcome addition to our understanding of one of literature's most dynamic forms.
    Gulnaz Fatma is an Indian writer and author. She is a research scholar in the Department of English at Aligarh Muslim University in Aligarh, India.
    "As a fiction writer who has also taught the short story form, I was impressed by the thoroughness and insight presented in this concise book. Fatma's broad exploration of the short story form is backed by numerous supporting examples and her chapter on the short story in India will introduce many readers to that country's own literary gems."
    --Tyler R. Tichelaar, Ph.D. and author of the award-winning Narrow Lives
    Literary Criticism: Short Stories
    Literary Criticism: Asian - General

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherModern History Press
    Release dateSep 1, 2012
    ISBN9781615991778
    A Short History of the Short Story: Western and Asian Traditions
    Author

    Gulnaz Fatma

    Gulnaz Fatma, PhD is an Indian writer and author. She is a research scholar in the Department of English at Aligarh Muslim University in Aligarh, India. Fatma is a dynamic personality in literature studies who has published many articles in national and international journals. She is the author of a critical book titled A Short History of the Short Story: Western and Asian Traditions published by Modern History Press, USA, and she is currently writing a novel on the themes of immigration and multiculturalism.

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    • 5/5
      In fewer than fifty pages, author Glunaz Fatma successfully gives us the basic history of short fiction stories from Western and Asian Traditions. Being an author of short stories myself, I was very eager to review this book courtesy of Modern History Press. Many famous writers, such as H.G. Wells, Edgar Allan Poe, Alphonse Daudet, Miguel de Cervantes, Shirley Jackson, Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Rabindranath Tagore, and many others, have written numerous short stories as it gives them more freedom to express their creativeness without being classified by a genre. Just like a novel, a short story must has a well-written plot that leads to a conclusion. A short story is between 1,000 to 20,000 words. Anything over is either a novella or a novel, and anything under is considered as short stories or flash fiction. What were some of the earliest short stories? Author Glunaz Fatma suggests that one of the earliest short stories is Homer's Odyssey, which is a mandatory read in most high schools. Of course there are also fables, myths, and fairy tales that have been around probably even longer. A Short History of the Short Story is written in laymen terms so anybody from any background can read it. Every high school student has to read and do homework from a short story text book and I think this book would make a good companion to it. I recommend the book to students, teachers, schools and all scholars.

    Book preview

    A Short History of the Short Story - Gulnaz Fatma

    Preface

    In this book, I have tried to present a brief and clear account of the short story in the literature of the East and the West. I have attempted to provide wide references to short story literature, with full bibliographical details. My intention has been to produce a book in simple form for the use of college students, research scholars, and for such readers as might be interested in knowing the short story’s historical background.

    I hope my endeavor will be found useful. Any suggestions for this book’s improvement will be most welcome.

    Gulnaz Fatma

    MA, MBA, PhD (Pursuing)

    Aligarh Muslim University

    Aligarh, India

    May 26, 2012

    Chapter 1 - The Short Story: An Overview

    The short story is one of the oldest types of literature, and it has existed in many forms, including myths, fairy tales, ballads, and parables. The modern short story, in an improved form, originated in the first quarter of the nineteenth century first in the United States of America. Before the short story came into existence, different genres of literature had been popular in different periods. For example, in the sixteenth century, drama was the dominant form of literature, and in the eighteenth century, the essay was the center of interest, but in the nineteenth century, these forms lost much of their popularity as novels and short stories replaced them.

    The short story took a long time to reach its modern form. It was very much influenced by the novel because it is a miniature form of that art of prose fiction. It is difficult to trace the earliest form of prose literature because with the passage of time, many forms of literature lost their identity and the process of change gave them an altogether new appearance.

    A short story sometimes contains little or no dialogue, but it may also be made up of dialogue while the description is brief, as in Stevenson’s collection Island Nights’ Entertainments (1893) where local color is dominant. A modern short story describes all kinds of problems. In Washington Irving’s The Stout Gentleman (1822), a whimsical fancy is worked out with admirable skill. Poe’s The Gold-Bug (1843) is based on a puzzle, Stevenson’s Olalla (1885) is an excursion into morbid psychology.

    H.G. Wells describes the purpose and art 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. (Mundra and Sahani 139)

    Somerset Maugham thinks that the short story’s desired effect can be achieved by a strict adherence to form:

    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, the plot pins down and presents a piece of life within the confines of its own construction; in so doing it exhibits life to us, as it were under a microscope and enables us to view it more clearly than we can do in the raw. (Mundra and Sahani 139)

    Hugh Walpole supports this view:

    A story should be a story; a record

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