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Lewis Worthington Smith
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Title: The Writing of the Short Story
Author: Lewis Worthington Smith
Release Date: November 10, 2008 [EBook #27224]
Language: English
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THE WRITING OF THE
SHORT STORY
BY
LEWIS WORTHINGTON SMITH, A.M.
DRAKE UNIVERSITY, DES MOINES, IOWA
D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS
BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO
COPYRIGHT, 1902,
BY D. C. HEATH & CO.
IT IS A PLEASURE TO BE PERMITTED TO ASSOCIATE
WITH THIS LITTLE BOOK THE NAME OF MY FRIEND
PROFESSOR L. A. SHERMAN
OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA.
SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHERS
In the author's classes the three stories in the volume entitled "Three
Hundred Dollars" are first studied because of their simplicity, and
these are followed by parts of "The Bonnie Brier Bush," and then by the
stories from Bret Harte. Mrs. Phelps Ward's "Loveliness" is especially
valuable for illustrating methods and devices for making a simple theme
dramatically interesting. Students are required to mark stories with the
symbols and discuss them with reference to the principles of which this
little book is an exposition, but no recitation on the book itself is
required. Perhaps one-third of the time in the class-room is spent in
discussion of the short themes written by the class, and when convenient
these are placed on the board before the class for that purpose. In the
theme work following the suggested subjects the effort is made to
confine instruction and practice to one thing at a time, but at the
conclusion of the work of the term each member of the class is required
to hand in a complete original story.
THE WRITING OF THE SHORT STORY
NARRATIVE FORMS
=1. Elements of the Story.=--This little volume is meant to be a
discussion of but one of the various forms that literature takes, and it
will be first in order to see what are the elements that go to the
making of a narrative having literary quality. A story may be true or
false, but we shall here be concerned primarily with fiction, and with
fiction of no great length. In writing of this sort the first essential
is that something shall happen; a story without a succession of
incidents of some kind is inconceivable. We may then settle upon
_incident_ as a first element. As a mere matter of possibility a story
may be written without any interest other than that of incident, but a
story dealing with men will not have much interest for thoughtful
readers unless it also includes some showing of _character_. Further, as
the lives of all men and women are more or less conditioned by their
surroundings and circumstance, any story will require more or less
_description_. Incidents are of but little moment, character showing may
have but slight interest, description is purposeless, unless the
happenings of the story develop in the characters _feelings_ toward
which we assume some attitude of sympathy or opposition. Including this
fourth element of the story, we shall then have _incident_,
_description_, _character_, _mood_, as the first elements of the
narrative form.
=2. A Succession of Incidents Required.=--A series of unconnected
happenings may be interesting merely from the unexpectedness--or the
hurry and movement of the events, but ordinarily a story gains greatly
in its appeal to the reader through having its separate incidents
developed in some sort of organic unity. The handling of incidents for a
definite effect gives what we call plot. A plot should work steadily
forward to the end or dénouement, and should yet conceal that end in
order that interest may be maintained to the close. Evidently a writer
who from the first has in mind the outcome of his story will subordinate
the separate incidents to that main purpose and so in that controlling
motive give unity to the whole plot. Further, the interest in the plot
will be put on a higher plane, if in the transition from incident to
incident there is seen, not chance simply, but some relation of cause
and effect. When the unfolding of the plot is thus orderly in its
development, the reader feels his kindling interest going forward to the
outcome with a keener relish because of the quickening of thought, as
well as of emotion, in piecing together the details that arouse a glow
of satisfaction.
=3. The Character Interest.=--We can hardly have any vital interest in a
story apart from an interest in the characters. It is because things
happen to them, because we are glad of their good fortune or
apprehensive of evil for them, that the incidents in their succession
gain importance in our emotions. We are concerned with things that
affect our lives, and secondarily with things that affect the lives of
others, since what touches the fortunes of others is but a part of that
complex web of destiny and environment in which our own lives are
enmeshed. In the story it is not so true as in the drama that, for the
going out of our sympathies toward the hero or the heroine, there should
be other contrasting characters; but a story gains color and movement
from having a variety of individualities. Especially if the story is one
of action, definite sympathies are heightened when they are accompanied
by emotional antagonisms. In "The Master of Ballantrae," we come to take
sides with Henry Durrie almost wholly through having found his rival,
the Master, so black a monster. Such establishment of a common bond of
interest between us and the character with whom our sympathies are to be
engaged is a most effective means of holding us to a personal
involvement in the development of the plot. There must not be too many
characters shown, the relations between them must not be too various or
too complexly conflicting, but where the interplay of feeling and
clashing motives is not too hard to grasp, a variety of characters gives
life and warmth of human interest to a story.
=4. Uses of Description.=--Inasmuch as there are other interests in our
lives than those which are established by our relations with our
fellows, interests connected with the material world about us, any
narrative will probably have occasion to include some description. It
may be necessary merely as an aid to our understanding of some of the
details upon which the plot turns, it may help us to realize the
personalities of the characters, and it is often useful in creating
background and atmosphere, giving us some of the feelings of those with
whom the story deals as they look upon the beauty, or the gray dullness,
of the changing panorama of their lives. Stevenson's description of the
"old sea-dog" in "Treasure Island" is an excellent illustration of the
effectiveness of a few lines of description in making us know something
very definite in the man.
"I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to
the inn door, his sea-chest following behind him in a
handbarrow, a tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man; his hands
ragged and scarred, with black, broken nails, and the saber cut
across one cheek, a lurid white."
=5.= Rossetti in "The Bride's Prelude," a story in verse, after merely
glancing at the opening of the tale, devotes eight stanzas to
description introduced for the purpose of background and atmosphere. Two
of them are given here.
"Within the window's heaped recess
The light was counterchanged
In blent reflexes manifold
From perfume caskets of wrought gold
And gems the bride's hair could not hold
"All thrust together: and with these
A slim-curved lute, which now,
At Amelotte's sudden passing there,
Was swept in some wise unaware,
And shook to music the close air."
This helps us to enter into the life and spirit of the time and place,
to conceive imaginatively the likings, the desires, the passions, the
purposes, and the powers that shall be potent in the story.
=6. Kinds of Description.=--Description is primarily of two kinds, that
which is to give accurate information, and that which is to produce a
definite impression not necessarily involving exactness of imagery. The
first of these forms is useful simply in the way of explanation, serving
the first purpose indicated in paragraph four. The second is useful for
other purposes than that of exposition, often appealing incidentally to
our sense of the beautiful, and requiring always nice literary skill in
its management. It should be borne in mind always that literary
description must not usurp the office of representations of the material
in the plastic arts. It should not be employed as an end in itself, but
only as subsidiary to other ends.
=7. Various Moods as Incidents.=--The moods in the characters of a story
and their changes are connected with the incidents of the story, since
they are in part happenings, and with the characters, since they reveal
character. Apart from direct statement of them, we understand the moods
of the actors in the little drama which we are made to imagine is being
played before us from the things they say, from the things they do, and
from gestures, attitudes, movements, which the author visualizes for us.
If these moods are not made clear to us or we cannot see that they are
natural, definite reactions from previous happenings in accord with
character, we do not have a sense of organic unity in the narrative. We
become confused in trying to establish the dependence of incident and
feeling upon something preceding, and our interest flags. Everything
that happens in a well-told story gives us feelings which we look to
find in those whom the happenings affect in the tale, feelings which
should call forth some sort of responsive action for our satisfaction.
Clearly, if the characters are cold, if we cannot find in them moods of
the kind and intensity that to us seem warranted, the story will be a
disappointment.
LITERARY DIVISIONS AND GENERAL PRINCIPLES
=8. The Conceptual and Emotional.=--Theoretically all writing is divided
easily into two classes, conceptual and emotional, the literature of
thought and the literature of feeling. In the actual attempt to classify
written composition on this basis, however, no sharp distinction can be
maintained. Even matters of fact, certainly such matters of fact as we
care to write about, are of more or less moment to us; we cannot deal
with them in a wholly unemotional way. In our daily lives we are
continually reaching conclusions that differ from the conclusions
reached by others about the same matters of fact, and are trying to make
these matters of fact have the same value for others that they have for
us. This is true of our business life as well as of our social and home
life. It always will be so. It is doubtless true that if our knowledge
of matters of fact embraced a knowledge of the universe, and if the
experience of each of us were just like that of his fellow and included
all possible experience, we might reach identical conclusions. This is
not true and never can be true. It is in effect true of a small portion
of the things about which we think,--the addition of one to two makes
three for every one,--but outside of these things, writing need not be
and seldom is purely conceptual.
=9. Subject-matter.=--Various as are the things about which we write and
manifold as are our interests in them, they may be classified for our
purposes under four heads: Matters of Fact, Experience, Beauty, Truth.
Again, we shall find difficulty in separating each of these from each of
the others. Some of our experiences have certainly been revelations of
matters of fact; without our experiences, we should hardly have acquired
any real sense of the beautiful; save for them we could not have known
anything of truth. No accurate definition of these things carefully
distinguishing between them can be attempted here. It may be assumed
that what is meant by matters of fact will be understood without
definition. As we read the story in great measure for the purpose of
enlarging our experience, this part of our possible literary material is
worth considering further. In the child we are able to detect very early
a growing curiosity. That curiosity does not disappear when the child
has grown from boy to man; he is still asking questions of the universe,
still trying to piece the fragments of his knowledge into a law-ordered
and will-ordered whole. What he knows has been the product of
experience, what he may yet know further must be the product of
experience. This experience may not all be personal, but even that which
he gets at second hand is so far useful in helping him toward that
understanding of the universe for which he hopes. He never will reach
that understanding, all his experience will make but a fraction of
things to be known matters of fact to him; and yet a deathless interest
in the scarcely recognized belief that the facts and forces of which he
has known have some unifying principle makes his emotions quicken at
every new experience that may have possible significance.
=10. Appeal of Experience, Beauty, and Truth.=--It will be evident,
then, that experience which somehow makes the impression of superior
importance may be presented inorganically and yet gain an interested
hearing. The method of creating this impression, whether through the
appearance of conviction in the writer or by various literary devices,
need not detain us here. We shall be concerned merely with noting that
the possible relation of the particular to the general, of this
experience to the whole of experience, makes it a thing of moment. In
just what way experience develops in us the sense of the beautiful, just
what it is in anything that makes us distinguish beauty in it, cannot
now be determined. It will be enough for us to know that literature
makes a large appeal to a sense of the beautiful in us, a sense not
fortuitous and irrational, though varying, but normal and almost
universal, dependent upon natural laws of development. Truth is also
difficult of definition, but we may understand that when out of
experience, as through a process of reasoning, we have reached a
conclusion that is something more than a matter of fact, a conclusion
touching our emotions and having vital spiritual interest to us, the
experience, whether our own directly or at second hand, has brought us
to a truth. Truth is, perhaps, that matter of fact of universal
intelligence that transcends the matter of fact of the finite mind.
=11. Literary Principles and Qualities.=--There are some fundamental
principles of literary presentation which we may briefly review here.
All our study of science, and in a less obvious fashion, of all the
physical, social, and artistic world about us, is more or less an
attempt to classify, simplify, and unify facts whose relations we do not
see at a glance. We must observe and learn the facts first, but they
will be of no great utility to us as unrelated items of knowledge. The
need of establishing some sort of law and order in our understanding of
the mass of phenomena of which we must take cognizance is so insistent
that we early acquire the habit of attempting to hold in mind any new
fact through its relation to some other fact or facts. In other words,
we can retain the knowledge we acquire only by making one fact do duty
for a great many other facts included in it. Our writing must not
violate what is at once a necessity and a pleasure of the mind. Unity,
simplicity, coherence, harmony, or congruity, must all be sought as
essential qualities of any writing. We must also indicate our sense of
the relative values of the things with which we deal by a proper
selection of details for presentation, a careful subordination of the
less important to the more important through the proportion of space and
attention given to each, and through other devices for securing
emphasis. Let us keep in mind value, selection, subordination,
proportion, emphasis, as a second group of terms for principles involved
in writing. We may also wish to give our subject further elements of
appeal through what may be suggested beyond the telling, through the
melody and rhythm of the words, or through a quickening of the sense of
the beautiful. Suggestion, melody, rhythm, beauty, are to be included,
then, in a third group of qualities that may contribute to the
effectiveness of what we write.
=12. Conceptual Writing.=--Of the literary qualities that have just been
discussed, only the first group is perhaps essential to what has been
designated as conceptual writing. Here we may place expository writing
on subjects wholly matter of fact, mathematical discussions, scientific
treatises largely, though not necessarily, and other writing of like
character. As unity is the quality of importance here, we may well
consider the units of discourse. Our first unit is that of the whole
composition, the second that of the paragraph, and the third that of the
sentence. Which of these is the prime unit, as the dollar is the prime
unit of our medium of exchange, may not be evident at once; but if we
examine the writing of clear thinkers carefully, without attempting to
settle the matter in any doctrinaire fashion, we shall find that the
paragraph, and not the sentence, is the more unified whole. I turn to
Cardinal Newman, and in the middle of a paragraph find the sentence,
"This should be carefully observed," a sentence meaningless when taken
from the context. As a part of the paragraph it has a function, but it
is certainly as a unit of detail and not as a prime unit. A writer like
Carlyle makes these lesser units more important, but they are still
subordinate to their use in the paragraph. In all our writing we shall
do much for the unity, simplicity, and coherence of our work by seeing
to it that our paragraphs are properly arranged and that each fulfills
this function of a prime unit in the composition.
=13. The Sense of Value.=--When, in addition to statement of mere
matters of fact, an author wishes to impress his readers with his own
sense of the importance and the value of what he has to say, or of some
special phase of his subject, he will employ the principles of the
second group spoken of in a preceding paragraph. They cannot be ignored,
indeed, in explanation of the simplest matters of fact, but a writer who
means to convince and persuade will make more use of them. His
personality will express itself in the selection of details and in the
emphasis he places upon one detail or another. Among the literary forms
which, besides being conceptual, are also concerned with persuasion, we
find the oration, the essay, a great deal of business correspondence,
and much of what we read in magazines and newspapers.
=14. Writing having Artistic Quality.=--When in addition to expressing
matters of fact or truth, appealing perhaps to experience, we wish to
arouse some sense of the beautiful and the artistic, we shall give our
writing some or all of the qualities of the third group. Evidently,
writing of this sort is in many respects the most difficult, since the
writer must have regard for unity and the related principles, as well as
for the qualities which peculiarly distinguish it. Experience, beauty,
and truth are all available as subject-matter, and all the principles
governing literary composition are concerned. Here we shall find the
poem, the drama, the oration in some of its forms, most essays of the
better sort, the greater part of good critical writing, literary
description, and all narrative forms except the matter-of-fact
historical writing of unliterary scholars.
=15. Two Things Requisite in Writing.=--It is to be borne in mind that
the foregoing classifications are by no means absolute. Gardiner in his
"Forms of Prose Literature" says very truly that the "essential
elements, not only of literature, but of all the fine arts, are: first,
an organic unity of conception; and second, the pervasive personality of
the artist." It is true that much of our writing does not aspire to
literary character, but in very little of our writing of any sort can we
afford to neglect the first of these elements, and in very little of it
do we care to leave the second out of account. Even in exposition of the
simpler sort we may give to our writing the distinction of a more
luminous style and the stronger appeal of a warmer personal interest, if
we shape it into organic unity and make evident in it "the pervasive
personality of the artist."
THE STORY IN PARTICULAR
=16. The Art of the Story.=--However abstract the thinking of civilized
man may become, "all our intelligence," to quote Ladd's "Outlines of
Physiological Psychology," "is intelligence about something or other,
... resting on a basis of sensations and volitions." Difficult as it is
and difficult as are the problems involved in its construction, the
story is from some points of view the most elementary of literary forms.
It is concerned directly with matters of sensation and volition. If it
is to play upon our emotions, it must revive sensations and volitions,
make us in some degree part of the action. Experience is at once its
warp and woof, but while it gives us new experiences, it must, in
connection with them, revive old ones and so become tangible and real
for us.
Of the memories that have come to us through the senses of sight,
hearing, touch, smell, and taste, those that are visual are probably the
most clearly defined and persistent for most people. The sensation of
hearing doubtless comes next, and then those of touch, smell, and taste.
A name will suffice to make us see the face of an absent friend; a few
words, or the sight of a music roll, is enough to make us hear a
favorite melody; a line or two on a printed page brings back to us the
scent of the hayfield or the heavy odor of hyacinths in a conservatory.
We must remember, too, that this may be in each case, not simply a
bringing back of the idea of the things, but a reviving of the
sensations themselves. The seat of sensation is after all the brain.
Originally we experience sensation through some excitation of the end
organs of sense, the ear, the nerves of touch, the retina; but these
sensations become associated with verbal images in the mind, and finally
the excitation of the verbal images results also in the revival of the
original sensation. There is perhaps no one of us who has not seen
wholly imaginary moving shadows or flashing lights in the dark. Such
cases are not good illustrations of the point, possibly, but most of us
can at will hear a connected succession of notes with which we have
familiarized ourselves. In my own recent experience there occurred a
very clear and wholly unexpected subjective sense of smell when reading
of an experiment with frogs which recalled the distinctive odor of slimy
water. Mr. James Sully, in "Illusions," says, "Stories are told of
portrait painters who could summon visual images of their sitters with a
vividness equal to that of reality, and serving all the purposes of
their art." The same writer says again, and this is peculiarly
significant, that "the physiologist Gruithuisen had a dream in which the
principal feature was a violet flame, and which left behind it, _after
waking_ for an appreciable duration, a complementary image of a yellow
spot." Here a purely subjective impression had been reproduced in the
nerves of sense.
=17. The Place of Sensation in Writing.=--The thing that it seems
important to dwell upon here is that subjective sensations do go out
from the brain and stimulate in a very real fashion the sensations that
are naturally excited by external stimuli localizing themselves in the
end organs of sense. As these sensations, while not the all of emotion,
are largely involved in emotion as its more poignant element, and as
emotion is a first requisite in the appeal of a story, it is evident
that the writer of stories will do well to acquire the art of reviving
sensations. Further, as in the quickening of sensations our ideas
become more tangible and real, writers who employ other literary forms
will find that their style gains clarity and distinction by a like
appeal to sensation when possible. Just how successful story-writers
make appeal to sensation, revive experience, give new experience, and
touch the sense of the beautiful is to be taken up more definitely in
the following pages. We can understand, of course, that subjective
sensations are not as strong as those which we experience directly, but
on the other hand they may be more varied, they may crowd in upon us
more rapidly, they may be more congruously chosen for a definite effect
than in our actual life. The total effect may then be no less
pronounced. In discovering how this is brought about we shall find the
art of the short story.
SPECIAL STUDY OF THE STORY
=18. Symbols for Visualization.=--On analyzing a story for the purpose
of discovering the elements of which it is composed, and the kind and
degree of appeal which they have for us, we shall find it convenient to
employ a few symbols for the purpose of labeling our findings for
discussion in the class room. Some of the directions which we make will
be based upon differences in the way in which the things presented are
effective in our minds, others upon differences in the things presented,
themselves. First we shall work with symbols of description and
visualization, of which for convenience we may distinguish four sorts
shading one into the other, not clearly defined, and yet worth
discussing, that we may cultivate a sharper sense of qualities of
effectiveness in visualization. For these four sorts of visualization we
may employ the symbols, _V__1, _V__2, _V__3, _VB__3. For the first of
these the symbol _V__1 is not very satisfactory, since we will employ it
for simple description which presents rather the idea of the thing than
a mental picture, but it will perhaps be simpler to use it than to use a
symbol for the word description. Having in mind the idea of a thing, we
may by mental effort, if the idea is defined with sufficient clearness,
call up the image of the object. _V__2 is the symbol for a visualization
through a suggestion which the mind, by reason of the interest kindled,
fills out to something more than the mere idea, more or less definite
imagery resulting. In the _V__3 form, we are, as it were, compelled to
see the image without mental effort, so swiftly and surely do the verbal
memory images reëstablish old sensations or combine with old sensations
to the formation of new. In the fourth form, we will add the _B_
(Beauty) when the image which we see is such as to appeal pleasurably to
the æsthetic sense. That there should be perfect agreement in the use of
any one of these symbols in any particular case is, of course, not to be
expected. Our individual experiences have been so different and the
associations of sensation are so varied that the character and intensity
of any visualization must differ in each individual. This, of course, is
one of the things that complicate the problem of literary composition
and make study of these things of particular importance.
=19. Audition and Other Sensations.=--As the problem of audition is of
less moment than that of visualization, we will make but the one
distinction between such presentation of sound as calls up the idea of
the sound only, _a__1 and such as produces in us the sense of the sound
itself, _a__2, premising that any one who chooses may make the three
divisions preceding.
Appeals to the other senses as occurring less often, we may group
together under the symbol _S_, using 1 with this, as with _a_, when it
comes to us in the conceptual way, and 2 when it comes as an excitant of
sensation.
=20. Instances of Visualization.=--Before we go farther, it will be well
to examine briefly an example or two of literary description.
"The rim of the sun was burning the hilltops, and already _V__2
the vanguard of his strength stemming the morning mists,
when I and my companion first trod the dust of a small _V__2
town which stood in our path. It still lay very hard and
white, however, and sharply edged to its girdle of olive _V__1
and mulberry trees drenched in dew, a compactly folded
town well fortified by strong walls and many towers, with
the mist upon it and softly over it like a veil. For it _V__2
lay well under the shade of the hills awaiting the sun's
coming. In the streets, though they were by no means _V__1
asleep, but, contrariwise, busy with the traffic of men _S__2
and pack mules, there was a shrewd bite as of night air; _V__2
looking up we could perceive how faint the blue of the
sky was, and the cloud-flaw how rosy yet with the flush
of Aurora's beauty-sleep. Therefore we were glad to get
into the market place, filled with people and set around
with goodly brick buildings, and to feel the light and _S__2
warmth steal about our limbs."
--MAURICE HEWLETT, "Earthwork out of Tuscany."
Here we shall first use the symbol _V__2, because the image presented is
one that appeals at once to experience, experience too that has not been
dimmed by frequence. The instant when the _rim_ of the sun comes up
bright and red is the instant when our expectation is most kindled
toward the glory of the dawn and of the day which it foretokens. "The
vanguard of his strength" in the next clause suggests the purely
fanciful. This mixture of the concrete and the abstract does not go back
to sensation, a thing worth noting and so the visualization is
destroyed. The dependent clause brings up a new visualization, a _V__2,
in the "dust of a small town." The second sentence is _V__1, until the
close when it becomes _V__2 through the quickening of memories that have
been emotional. The vagueness of a village hidden in the mist has
appealed to our imagination in the assurance of a something unknown. The
next sentence is _V__1, and so also is the next until in "the shrewd
bite as of night air" we get an _S__2. The _V__2 of the faint blue of
the sky is destroyed, as in the first sentence, by the merely
intellectual playing of fancy in "Aurora's beauty-sleep." The next
sentence gives us an _S__2 in the closing clause, for which the two
preceding have been a preparation.
"Solemn and vast at all times, in spite of pettiness in the near
details, the impression becomes more solemn and vast towards
evening. The sun goes down, a swollen orange, as it were, into
the sea. A blue-clad peasant rides home, with a harrow smoking
behind him among the dry clods."
In this from Robert Louis Stevenson the last sentence brings the
description to a _V__3; the smoking harrow is suggestive of so much more
than the cloud of dust that has not yet settled to the earth in the
stillness of the approaching twilight when the work of the day is done.
=21. Motor Effects of Visualization.=--There is another way in which
things seen touch sensation. Look at a picture of the Laocoön for a
moment. Fix your eyes upon the contortions of the limbs, see the agony
of the face, note the fangs of the serpent ready to embed themselves in
the flesh. While fastening these fearful details in your mind have you
not felt some of the horror of it, and has not that feeling shown a
tendency to innervate some of the muscles, has not your face shown some
of the suffering which you have been studying, and have you not felt a
tendency toward the muscular movements of one writhing in agony?
Certainly, such motor impulses do result from certain kinds of
visualization, and it need hardly be said that they are peculiarly
effective in making us really alive with the emotion which inheres in
the movement or the attitude which we see. If the gestures of a speaker
are to be effective, they must seem natural to us; that is, they must be
such as we would make if we were in that fashion attempting to express a
similar emotion. Otherwise the motor suggestions of the words and the
motor suggestion of the gestures may inhibit or neutralize each other,
or at least produce a feeling of confusion. Halleck, in his "Education
of the Central Nervous System," says, "All states of consciousness
contain a motor element." When a visualization or an audition, as that
of a sharp command, seems to have motor effects, we may add to the
symbols of kind and degree of sensation the symbol _x_.
=22. Inference in Literature.=--It was apparent in the visualization
quoted from Stevenson that some of the impressions which we get from
literature we get as inferences. Dust does not arise from a harrow so as
to have the appearance of smoke on a windy day, and therefore we know
that it is quiet. In the opening of a story some things must be
explained directly, and for such explanatory matter, matter from which
we infer nothing beyond the statement, we will employ the symbol _Exp._;
but for other presentation of matters of fact we will employ the symbol
_F__1. From facts as presented--and we will use the term in a
comprehensive sense--we may or may not draw inferences, and we will
distinguish facts from which no inference is drawn by the symbol _F__1,
and those from which inference is drawn by the symbol _F__2. An
inference may be preponderatingly intellectual or emotional; we may,
when desirable, add the symbol _a_ for one and _b_ for the other. An
inference we may call an "effect," and a fact as effect, whether the
effect be emotional or conceptual, is clearly more potent in a literary
way than a mere fact.
=23. Effects of Incident and Mood.=--Allied to the fact as effect is the
incident which makes us know something more than the happening itself.
All incidents we may distinguish under the symbols _In__1, _In__2_a_,
_In__2_b_, the secondary symbols having the significance as with _F_
above. Mood effects are, in general, more important, and it will be
worth while to distinguish three sorts, _m__1, an inference which we
draw regarding the mood of the writer, _m__2, a like inference which
becomes infectious, creating in us in some degree a like feeling, and
_m__3, an "effect" enabling us to draw an inference regarding the mood
of a character in the story. In addition to this we shall find direct
statement of mood, but that we shall mark with some of the preceding
symbols, generally _F__1, perhaps. We may understand further that the
mood effects are of both kind and degree. When the showing of mood is
such as to make us realize in it the intensity of strong emotion or
passion, we may indicate the heightening of the feeling by the addition
of the symbol _d_, using _k_ alone, or with _d_ to indicate that the
character of the mood is shown.
=24. Methods of Characterization.=--In our everyday life we are
continually drawing inferences in regard to the characters of those
about us, and we do the same thing in a story. Some writers tell us as
clearly as they can the natures of the men and women they are revealing
to us, while others leave that almost wholly for us to conjecture. We
shall employ, then, two sets of symbols for character, one for direct
statement of character, and one for character effects. The realization
of character through direct statement may include presentation of
motives, ideas, passions, will, special phases of development. It may
come through report of the talk of others, or through statement of
opinion generally entertained. _c__1 we will use for direct statement of
character,--"John was a hard old miser,"--and we will add to this symbol
the symbol _a_ to indicate that this is only so far potent with us as to
make us know the writer's understanding of the character merely, _b_ to
indicate that we recognize the writer's feeling for the character but do
not share it, and _c_ to indicate that the writer's feeling for his
character affects us sympathetically to a like feeling. Another group of
symbols, _c__2, _c__3, and _c__4, we will use for character "effects,"
for such knowledge of character as we gain by inference. _c__2 is a
symbol for a general inference regarding a group of people or a
community; _c__3 and _c__4 are symbols for inferences regarding the
individual, _c__3 indicating the recognition of type or class qualities,
_c__4, the recognition of more individual traits of character. The
distinction here is merely one of matter of fact, a distinction not
always to be made with sureness, since it is one of degree rather than
altogether one of kind. When the way in which a man is good or cheerful
or avaricious is differentiated for us from the way in which another man
is good or cheerful or avaricious, he is so far individualized. Class
characterization, _c__3, may be found along with individualization. The
extreme accentuation of one or a few characteristics to the disregard of
others gives the effect of individualization, but we shall understand
this as in fact type characterization, since our natures are so complex
that in almost no case can the conduct of any one be understood through
knowledge of a few dominant traits of character. Individualization gives
us intimacy of acquaintance; type or class characterization makes us see
merely the striking, peculiar, or controlling expressions of
personality. Guy Mannering in Scott's "Guy Mannering" is but a type of
the conventional soldier. Tito Milema in George Eliot's "Romola"
presents so many sides of a complex nature that we easily distinguish
him from all other characters in fiction whatever.
=25. The Subjective and Objective.=--Writers, in their methods of
presentation, may be broadly divided into two classes, those who write
subjectively and those who write objectively. A subjective writer is one
whose own personality, point of view, feeling, is insistent in what he
writes. An objective writer, on the other hand, is one who leaves the
things of which he makes record to produce their own impression, the
writer himself remaining an almost impassive spectator, telling the
story with little or no comment. Chaucer, in the prologue to the
"Canterbury Tales," betrays his personal feeling for his characters
continually, and so is subjective. Shakespeare in his plays is
objective, presenting all sorts of men and women without show of his own
attitude toward them.
=26. Interest of the Plot and its Purpose.=--We have seen that interest
in incident is a first interest in the story. This interest, we must
understand further, is not to be maintained by having things happen in a
matter regulated only by chance or the exigencies of the author's
invention at the moment. The unification of a story that results from
the subordination of minor incidents to a final outcome is an essential
necessity of the plot. The plot, indeed, is the arrangement of incidents
with reference to the dénouement. The development of the plot should be
such as to indicate an end toward which the succession of incidents is
tending, and yet such as to keep the reader in suspense with regard to
the nature of that end. There must be novelty in the happenings, and yet
the novelty must not be so great as to keep the reader confused or
strain belief. The permanent hold upon us of a piece of fiction is
enhanced if it embodies some central truth, illustrating the working out
of some law of life, or involved in the personal attitude of the writer
toward some problem of existence. Only dilettanteism and superficiality
forget that an artist, giving the form of beauty to his conceptions, is
trying to make them as significant to others as they are to him, and
that æsthetic and ethical, or spiritual, significance are inextricably
interwoven. It will, of course, be the care of the artist to see that
any didactic purpose is not obtrusive.
_F_2b_ 1. A tray of glasses was placed on the table with great
solemnity by the "wricht," who made no sign and invited
none. 2. You might have supposed that the circumstance
_F_2b_ had escaped the notice of the company, so abstracted and
unconscious was their manner, had it not been that two
graven images a minute later are standing by the table.
_m_3k_ 3. "Ye 'ill taste, Tammas," with settled melancholy.
_m_3k_ 4. "Na, na; I've nae incleenation the day; it's an awful
_F_2a_ dispensation, this, Jeems. 5. She wuld be barely saxty."
_m_3k_ 6. "Ay, ay, but we maun keep up the body sae lang as we're
here, Tammas."
_c_2/c_4_ 7. "Weel, puttin' it that way, a'm not sayin' but yir
_m__2 richt," yielding unwillingly to the force of circumstance.
_c_4/m_3_ 8. "We're here the day and there the morn, Tammas. 9. She
_m__3 was a fine wumman--Mistress Stirton--a weel-livin' wumman:
this will be a blend, a'm thinkin'."
_c_4/m_3_ 10. "She slippit aff sudden in the end; a'm judgin' it's
_m__3 frae the Muirtown grocer; but a body canna discreeminate
on a day like this."
11. It was George Howe's funeral that broke the custom and
_F_2b_ closed the "service." 12. When I came into the garden
where the neighbors were gathered, the "wricht" was
Exp.+_m_2_ removing his tray and not a glass had been touched. 13.
Then I guessed that Drumtochty had a sense of the fitness
of things and was stirred to its depths.
14. "Ye saw the wricht carry in his tray," said Drumsheigh
as he went home from the kirkyard.
_m_3d_ 15. "Weel, yon's the last sicht o't ye' ill get or a'm no
_m_3k_ Drumsheigh. 16. I've nae objection masel' to a neighbor
tastin' at a funeral, a' the more if he's come from the
upper end o' the pairish, and ye ken I dinna hold wi' thae
_m_3d_ teetotal fouk. 17. A'm ower auld in the horn to change noo.
_m_3/F_2b_ 18. But there's times and seasons, as the Gude Buik says,
and it wud hae been an awfu' like business tae luik at a
gless in Marget's Garden, and puir Domsie standing in ahent
the brier bush as if he cud never lift his heid again."
=27. Interpretative Application of the Symbols.=--A little discussion of
the foregoing from a "A Scholar's Funeral" in the "Bonnie Brier Bush"
may serve to make some of these things clearer. The fact that the
"wricht" is silent here in the first sentence makes us know that this is
the usual custom and that these people have an underlying sense of
decorum. Sentence two has the same effect in their abstraction, and this
is emphasized again in the "two graven images." The third sentence is a
mood "effect" of kind, since we recognize the conventionally sobered
feeling without the "settled melancholy." This is true again in sentence
four, and in five we have a "fact as effect," drawing the inference that
they are a long-lived race in Drumtochty. From the yielding to an
invitation so framed as to put aside the semblance of yielding to
inclination, we get a knowledge of character which seems to us
individual, but which is used by the author to indicate a local
community characteristic. The author's mood of amused observation is
evident here, too, in his unbelieving acquiescence in Tammas's point of
view. In sentences eight and nine we come to know Jeems in a more
individual way, through the mingling in him of moods of conventional
solemnity and everyday discussion. This is repeated in sentence ten. In
sentence twelve we draw an emotional inference concerning the degree of
their feeling from the fact that "not a glass had been touched." This is
told in the explanatory way in thirteen with the addition of a
suggestion of the author's sympathetic understanding and appreciation.
Knowing Drumsheigh's reserve, from things that have gone before this in
the story, we feel that only strong emotion could have called out
sentence fifteen; and the apologetic tone of sixteen and seventeen
indicates rather mood than such heightened feeling. Sentence eighteen
returns to the mood of fifteen and sixteen, and through the fact of
Domsie's standing "ahent the brier bush" reveals both Domsie's mood and
Drumsheigh's own in our knowledge of its emotional appeal to him.
=28. Different Forms of the Story.=--It is to be understood that certain
types of the short story are not included in this study as not being
available for detailed work. Stories in which the interest is almost
wholly dependent upon the succession of incidents can profitably be
studied only with relation to the plot. Generally in such cases the
things that make the story effective will be readily apparent, and they
can be brought out by a few questions. To give variety and interest to
the work the teacher will occasionally find it desirable to call
attention to stories in current periodicals, requiring the class to
bring in analyses of them showing structure of the plot, methods of
managing the reader's sympathies, fundamental motive of the story, the
treatment of character and methods of presenting it, and such other
things as seem most of moment in the story in question. When library
facilities permit, it will be found worth while to make some comparison
of the short story as it is now written in America with the short
stories of fifty years ago and of the present day in England and France.
No classification of stories is attempted here, since such
classification is of no particular moment to the writer of stories.
A FEW CAUTIONS
=29.= The suggestions that follow are phrased to cover the matter of
visualization, but they touch upon general principles which are of wider
application. It has seemed more convenient at this point to give them
this specific treatment.
=30. Author's Purpose should be Concealed.=--An attempt to bring about a
visualization or any other artistic effect in the mind of the reader is
foredoomed to failure when in any way the writer's purpose too evidently
betrays itself as such. Too much in the way of direct statement or
predication is one indication of such purpose, and is therefore more or
less ineffectual. For effective visualization some sort of preparation
of the mood or sympathies of the reader is generally required. This,
however, should be concealed, being accomplished through suggestion, as
is the visualization itself.
=31. Unity in Visualization.=--A visualization should be so managed as
to bring the whole picture, or nearly all of it, into the mind at once.
It is partly because it does not do this that the method by details is
not generally effective. A string of incomplete images passing through
the mind, each one taking the place of the preceding and effacing it, is
not artistically satisfying. It is possible to retain such separate
images and at the end bring them together in a complete picture, but
this will require effort on the part of the reader; and it is
fundamentally important in all writing to reduce the conscious attention
and effort of the reader to the lowest point. Only extreme literary art
can so nullify this effort in effect as to make description by detail
pleasurable, if of any length. Description by detail is, perhaps, more
admissible in writing having a meditative tone than in any other,
except, of course, technical description.
=32. Fine Writing.=--Fine writing is especially to be avoided in
visualization, since the tone of artificiality is immediately
destructive of the reader's confidence in the sincerity of the writer.
It betrays the author's purpose of producing an effect. The appearance
of truth free from any semblance of over-statement is a first requisite.
=33.= In any visualization harmony of detail is of prime importance.
Even in describing something actually seen it will sometimes be
necessary to leave out items really present, but not of a kind to
contribute to the general effect. The saying that "Truth is stranger
than fiction" should read that fiction may not be as strange as truth.
Harmony of mood is important, as well as harmony of detail, in the thing
described. If the picture is a quiet one, exclamatory excitement on the
part of the writer, however affecting the scene may be supposed to be,
will prevent its becoming real to the reader. These things are, then, to
be borne in mind with regard to the elements of a visualization: the
details presented must be so far true to common knowledge and
experience as to gain ready belief, they must have unity in fact and in
effect, and they must also be sufficiently individual to appeal to the
mind with something of the sense of novelty.
REFERENCE TABLE OF SYMBOLS
Exp. = Explanatory matter.
_F_1_ = Statement of fact from which no inference is drawn.
_F_2_ = Statement of fact from which an inference is drawn.
_F_2a_ = Statement of fact with inference mainly logical.
_F_2b_ = Statement of fact with inference mainly emotional.
_In._ = Statement of incident, secondary symbols as with _F_.
_As_1_ = Anticipatory suggestion, a foretelling of something to
happen, leaving the reader in doubt as to how it is to
be brought about.
_As_2_ = Anticipatory suggestion, a foreshowing of something
definite to happen, exciting the reader's curiosity to
know what it is and how it is to be brought about.
_As_3_ = Anticipatory suggestion, a foreshadowing of something
to be expected in the way of character development and
consequent happening.
_V_1_ = Description in which the mere idea of the thing
described is presented.
_V_2_ = A kindling hint by which the mind is enabled to piece
together a visualization of the object.
_V_3_ = Visualization of so vivid a kind as to possess the mind
completely. This becomes
_Vb_3_ when it pleasurably affects the sensibilities.
_A_1_ = Audition in the way of simple idea of the thing to be
heard.
_A_2_ = Audition as a reviving of the sense of sound.
_S_1_ = Sensation, the mere presentation of the idea of an
appeal to one of the other senses.
_S_2_ = Sensation, a subjective reviving of the sensation
itself.
_x_ used to indicate that a subjective excitation of some one
of the senses has motor effects, as in the shiver at the
thought of a file upon the teeth.
_m_1_ = Mood "effect," from which we learn the feeling of the
writer without experiencing it ourselves.
_m_2_ = Mood "effect" from which we sympathetically experience
the feeling of the writer.
_m_3_ = Mood "effect," a revelation of the feeling of a
character in the story.
_c_1_ = Direct statement of character.
_c_1a_ = Direct statement of character that does not reveal the
author's attitude toward the character.
_c_1b_ = Direct statement in which we are made aware of the
author's attitude toward the character, but are not
affected by it.
_c_1c_ = Direct statement of character sympathetically
influencing us to the author's attitude toward the
character.
_c_2_ = Character "effect," characterization of a group or
community of people.
_c_3_ = Character "effect," class or type characterization of
the individual.
_c_4_ = Character "effect" in the way of individualization.
_d_ = Degree, added to symbol for mood effect to indicate
intensity of the feeling.
_k_ = Kind, used to indicate that the inference concerns itself
with character and not intensity.
_/_ = A symbol employed (see section 26) to indicate that one
inference is drawn as an ultimate conclusion from
another more immediate inference.
SUBJECTS FOR DAILY THEMES
Subjects for visualization and the reviving of other sensations.
1. A sunset sky. 2. A group in the park. 3. A spring freshet. 4. The man
at the threshing machine. 5. The city across the river: night. 6.
Moonlight among the hills. 7. A city street. 8. The college campus. 9.
Eleanor's rose garden. 10. The witch of Endor (1 Sam. xxviii: 6-25). 11.
Mt. Pelée in eruption. 12. The woods at night. 13. David playing before
Saul. 14. A ferny water course among the trees. 15. A bluebird in the
orchard. 16. The violinist. 17. In time of apple blossoms. 18. The scent
of new-mown hay. 19. Barbara at the piano. 20. The first watermelon. 21.
Sailing with the wind. 22. Dawn in the mountains. 23. The wind among the
pines. 24. The blacksmith and the forge.
Subjects for presentation of mood.
1. Uncle Dick hears the news. 2. Balboa catches sight of the Pacific. 3.
Silas explains himself. 4. Napoleon looking back at Moscow. 5.
Congressman Norris is refused the floor of the convention. 6. Johnnie is
told that he may go to the circus. 7. Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga. 8.
Bamba, king of an island in the south seas, sees the first ship of the
white man. 9. Alfred meets a Hallowe'en obstacle.
Subjects for visualization and presentation of facts as "effects."
1. A deserted house. 2. In the second-hand store. 3. The railroad wreck.
4. The beggar at the door. 5. Representative Dongan reads a letter from
"The Corners." 6. A woman at the station. 7. Mrs. Humphrey's kitchen. 8.
The trail of war.
Subjects for character studies.
1. The village oracle. 2. The landlord of the Lion Inn. 3. The old
stage-driver. 4. The conductor. 5. An old-fashioned music-master. 6. A
pirate captain. 7. A country beau. 8. Deacon Bradley. 9. The school
bully. 10. The female suffragist. 11. One of the four hundred. 12. A
disciple of Mrs. Eddy. 13. "The man with the hoe." 14. The scissors
grinder. 15. Captain Doty of the police. 16. A candidate for office.
THE COMPLETE STORY
The invention of situations and plots can hardly be a matter of
class-room instruction. If stories come to one, it is well. Study of the
detailed means of making them living for the reader will then be worth
while. The student should be encouraged to invent plots of his own, but
as a simplification of this difficulty, to the end that some exercise in
the writing of a complete story may be had, plots of some successful
published stories are here given with suggestions regarding methods of
treatment.
I
Scene, a saloon where both men and women are drinking. One of
them, a girl, thinks she sees at the window the face of Christ
with his tender eyes. She leaves and will not permit the others
to go with her.
At a little distance she comes upon the stranger waiting for
her. He tells her that when she wakes it will be to a new life
and she will be his, bidding her go to a house he points out and
remain for the night. She obeys, and the man passes into the
shadow.
Introductory sentence in the original, giving the atmosphere of
the story: "This was the story the mystic told." Concluding
sentence in the original, connecting it with our sense of
unfathomable mysteries: "And this the listener gravely asked,
'One was chosen, the others left. Were the others less in need
of grace?'"
Divisions of the story. 1. Visualizing description of the saloon
and of the street outside through which the stranger passes.
2. Appearance of the face at the pane and its effect on the
young girl (_m_3_ "effect"). This is the difficult part of the
story, and the reader can be made to believe in it only through
sympathy with the girl's feeling.
3. The talk of her companions and her answers (_m_3_).
4. Her search for the stranger in the night (_m_3_).
5. His talk to her when she finds him.
This story in the original contains a little less than two thousand
words. It will be seen at once that unless handled in such fashion as to
appeal vividly to the imagination, a story with this for its theme will
seem weak and unreal. It must be made as suggestive as possible or it
will fail. It preaches, but it must avoid the air of preaching. Consider
carefully how you would present the stranger--whether first at the
window or before--so as to affect the reader with a sense of something
more than human in him.
II
Scene of the story is the prairie desert of the West in time of
drouth. A party of men, including two who are not yet through
their work in an eastern college, are riding in search of water,
having had none for two days. Water is found, but shortly
afterwards one of the two young men is missing. The talk of the
others reveals the absent one's unselfishness and friendly
devotion to his chum. Soon he is seen riding up excitedly and
beckoning. The others follow him to a rough eminence, where he
stops and listens, imploring them to tell him whether they can
hear a voice calling. When they hear it too, he is assured that
he has not lost his reason from the thirst, and together they
begin a search which results in their discerning a cavern in the
side of an embankment where a man lies on a couch moaning for
water. As they try to enter, he warns them away with the cry of
"smallpox."
The story is told to a group of friends gathered together of an
evening, and the narrator draws from among his books a copy of
Shakespeare found in the cavern by one of the men, bearing on
its fly leaf, in addition to the owner's name, the word
_Brasenose_, the name of one of the colleges at Oxford. The
pathos of the story is in this last touch, an Oxford student
dying so loathsome a death in a strange and desert land, and
dying so heroically.
Divisions of the story. 1. Visualization of the desert and the
men. The scent of water. Drinking from the muddied stream.
2. One of the young men starts off alone in a delirium of pain
(_m_3_). He returns suffering from the fear that he has lost his
reason (_m_3_).
3. The discovery of the cave (_V_3_ and _F_2b_). The delirious
talk of the sick man. His sudden joy in the unexpected presence
of human beings (_V_3_ and _m_3_). His final "G'way! G'way!
Smallpox!"
4. The narrator of the story shows the copy of Shakespeare and
the inscription on the fly leaf.
The story in the original contains about three thousand words. It is
important that the suffering of the men be developed at some length in a
convincing fashion. It serves as a preparation for the more terrible
suffering of the one man who moans for water as he tears the foul
smallpox sores. This should be presented in as visualizing a way as
possible and with as full showing of mood as may be. The conclusion in
division 4 must be altogether different in tone from the preceding.
Narrator and listeners are in a world of ease and comfort, and their
interest in the story is an interest in something pathetically remote.
SITUATIONS TO BE DEVELOPED INTO PLOTS
(Adapted from published stories not original)
1. Rome in the early centuries after Christ. Three persons are involved,
one man and two women, one of whom has just pledged troth to the man.
The man and the other woman are devotees of a mystic faith, whose priest
residing in a dark cavern in the hills calls now one, now another
devotee to pass through the "void" to eternal fellowship with God.
2. Oklahoma at the time of the opening of the strip for settlement. A
man and his wife and two children come from Kansas to find land in the
strip on the day of the run. They have failed in Kansas and are almost
out of money. The husband, who is to make the run for the strip on
horseback when the signal guns are fired, falls sick.
3. A lumber camp. In addition to the men, a man and his wife who cook
and take care of the camp, and a half-witted chore boy. The chore boy
tries to take care of the men and keep them from drinking. A number of
the men go off to a neighboring town for a spree, and the chore boy goes
with them.
4. Some place in the region of the mountain whites of the Carolinas and
Tennessee. A beautiful girl with a tinge of negro blood that does not
show in nature, intellectual endowment, or appearance. A mountain white
to whom she is betrothed. A young man from the North visiting the family
with whom she is staying is attracted by her. The contrast of the life
of the mountain whites to which her betrothal if fulfilled dooms her,
and that of the world of taste and culture which her nature demands.
QUESTIONS ON "A DOCTOR OF THE OLD SCHOOL," FROM THE "BONNIE BRIER BUSH"
I
1. _a._ What has been accomplished in your sympathies by this? 2. _b._
Has this been through direct statement of things calling for your
sympathies, or through "effects"? _c._ Is the method cumulative and
gradual, or direct and insistent? _d._ Would you say that the method
here is objective or subjective? _e._ What symbols do you find that you
have employed largely, and for what purpose have the devices for which
two of these stand been employed? _f._ Would you say that the author
puts much or little meaning into his words? Is the style diffuse and
thin, or does it accomplish much with few words? Indicate a paragraph or
page that justifies your conclusion and say how. _g._ Are the inferences
which you are made to draw logical or emotional, and do they seem to you
delicate and subtle or simple and direct? Indicate some of them in
confirmation of your conclusion.
II
1. _a._ Do you see any change in the method of presenting MacLure here?
_b._ How is it an advance in the development of the story or not? _c._
Was Part I. preparation for this or not, and if so, how? _d._ Does this
have a definite climax and dénouement, and if so, where?
III
1. _a._ How does this make an advance upon the preceding in the
revelation of MacLure? _b._ Does it in any way get nearer to elemental
human feeling? _c._ Does it anywhere appeal directly to sensation? _d._
Do you find in this any feeling for the mystery of existence? Does it
seem to be an integral part of the story, coming from its essential
emotion and free from obtrusive moralizing, or not? _e._ Is there any
increase in intensity of feeling in this or not, and if so, how is it
indicated in the symbols you have employed? _f._ Has MacLure now been
presented to us with full showing of his distinguishing characteristics
or not? and do we find in him a vital human nature?
IV
1. _a._ Do you think a death-bed scene a good subject for literary
presentation or not? Why? _b._ Would you call it a difficult thing to
present or not? _c._ Do you find anything objectionable here? _d._ Has
the interest of the whole story depended upon incident or upon showing
of character? _e._ Does this Part IV. serve in any particular way to
round out our knowledge of MacLure, and if so, in what way? _f._ What is
the especially appealing thing in the portrait of MacLure? And what in
the fortune and circumstance of his life? _g._ Does this appeal touch in
any fashion upon our sense of a something inscrutable governing our
lives? _h._ Which of the different sorts of subject-matter (see section
9) seem to you to be the more largely employed here? So far as it is
concerned with experience, is it a reviving of what we have experienced
or an addition to our knowledge of life? Is there in it a truth that you
could formulate into a law of life, or is the truth so much a matter of
emotion as merely to touch the sensibilities and so give us a wider
vision?
QUESTIONS ON "LOVELINESS," BY ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS-WARD
(_Atlantic Monthly_, August, 1899)
1. _a._ Do you detect in this story any purpose beyond that of
recounting a series of happenings? If so, what? _b._ If you were to
write the story, would you think it prospectively a difficult thing to
arouse interest in a dog? _c._ Has that been done here or not? _d._ If
so, what are some of the author's devices and how successfully employed?
2. _a._ What is the artistic purpose of the first two paragraphs? Why
does the author delay so long in telling us that she is writing of a
dog? _b._ Does she let her own feeling for the girl and dog appear or
not? If so, is it obtrusive or not? Effective or not, as your markings
indicate? _c._ Are there any incidents in the story that a reader might
for any reason be unwilling to accept? _d._ If so, how is the handling
such as to disguise the difficulty or not, as the case may be?
3. _a._ What devices are employed to make us interested in Adah? _b._
Are we made to feel that her dependence upon the dog is natural and
deserving of sympathy or not, and if so, how? _c._ Are the incidents so
managed as to maintain interest in the expectation of the dénouement or
not? _d._ Does the story seem to have sufficient unity of purpose and
plan or not?
4. _a._ What symbols do you notice that you have employed most largely?
_b._ Is the story written in the way of direct statement or of
suggestion? _c._ For what frequent purpose would you say that the writer
employs _F_2_? _M_3_? _M_2_? _d._ Can you say in what the art of the
story especially consists? _e._ What would you probably have thought of
the story were its art less delicate and sure?
GENERAL OUTLINE QUESTIONS FOR STUDY OF STORIES IN CURRENT MAGAZINES,
ETC.
1. _a._ Upon what is the interest of the story especially dependent?
_b._ Are the incidents presented rapidly and coherently, or slowly and
disconnectedly? _c._ Is there a clearly defined plot or not? _d._ Does
the plot have a climax of entanglement, or does it fail in developing
this feature of the story interest?
2. _a._ How is character presented? _b._ Are the characters well chosen
for their reactions among themselves? _c._ Are the things they do and
say continually consistent or not? _d._ Are they sufficiently
individualized to escape the appearance of the conventional and to hold
interest?
3. _a._ Does the story state facts and happenings merely, or does it get
hold of vital sensations and revive them? _b._ If so, in what ways does
it seem to do that? _c._ In general does it seem to you subjective or
objective in method?
4. _a._ How much of the interest of the story is in the development of
the plot and how much in the stirring of vital sensations, including
sympathetic moods? _b._ Does the development of the story center about
any idea or attitude toward life? _c._ What excellences and what faults
do you find in the story?
SOME STORIES AVAILABLE FOR STUDY
"Five Hundred Dollars," "The Village Convict," and "Eli," all in a
volume under the title of the first, Heman White Chaplin, Little, Brown
& Co., $1.00.
"Loveliness," Elizabeth Stuart Phelps-Ward, _Atlantic Monthly_, August,
1899.
"The Flail of Time," Helen Choate Prince, _Atlantic Monthly_, August,
1899.
"A Christmas Carol," Dickens, Cassel's National Library, 10 cents.
"Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush," Ian MacLaren, David C. Cook, Elgin and
Chicago, paper, 5 cents.
"The Luck of Roaring Camp," "Tennessee's Partner," Bret Harte, Houghton,
Mifflin & Co., $1.00, _Overland Monthly_, September, 1902.
"Bonaventure" (Chapters XVI-XVIII), George W. Cable, copyrighted, but
obtainable in a cheap reprint.
"The Game and the Nation," Owen Wister, _Harper's Monthly_, May, 1900.
Nettleton's "Specimens of the Short Story," Henry Holt & Co., 50 cents.
BOOKS THAT MAY PROFITABLY BE CONSULTED
"Education of the Central Nervous System," R. P. Halleck, The Macmillan
Co.
"The Philosophy of the Short Story," Brander Matthews, Longmans, Green &
Co.
"The Short Story," Yale Studies in English, Henry Holt & Co.
"Forms of Prose Literature," J. H. Gardiner, Chas. Scribner's Sons.
"Working Principles of Rhetoric," J. F. Genung, Ginn & Co.
"Outline of Psychology," E. B. Titchener, The Macmillan Co.
"Short Story Writing," C. R. Barrett, Baker & Taylor Co., $ 1.00.
Chapter XII, "A Study of Prose Fiction," Bliss Perry, Houghton, Mifflin
& Co.
* * * * *
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
_The Arden Shakespeare._
The Greater Plays in their literary aspect. One play in each
volume, with Introduction, Notes, Essay on Metre, and Glossary.
Based on the Globe text. From 144 to 224 pages. Cloth. Price, 25
cents a volume.
This edition presents the greater plays in their literary aspect, and
not merely as material for the study of philology or grammar. Verbal and
textual criticism has been included only so far as may serve to help the
student in his appreciation of the poetry.
Questions of date and literary history have been fully dealt with in the
Introductions, but the larger space has been devoted to the
interpretative rather than to the matter-of-fact order of scholarship.
Æsthetic judgments are never final, but the editors have attempted to
suggest points of view from which the analysis of dramatic motive and
dramatic character may be profitably undertaken.
In the Notes likewise, though it is hoped that unfamiliar expressions
and allusions have been adequately explained, it has been thought more
important to consider the dramatic value of each scene, and the part
that it plays in relation to the whole.
Each volume has a Glossary, an Essay upon Metre, and an Index.
Appendices are added upon points of interest that could not be treated
in the Introduction or the Notes. The text is based on that of the Globe
edition. The following plays are ready:--
HAMLET.--Edited by Edmund K. Chambers, B.A.
MACBETH.--Edited by Edmund K. Chambers, B.A., Oxford.
JULIUS CÆSAR.--Edited by Arthur D. Innes, M.A., Oxford.
THE MERCHANT OF VENICE.--Edited by H. L. Withers, B.A., Oxford.
TWELFTH NIGHT.--Edited by Arthur D. Innes, M.A., Oxford.
AS YOU LIKE IT.--Edited by J. C. Smith, M.A., Edinburgh.
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM.--Edited by Edmund K. Chambers, B.A.
CYMBELINE.--Edited by A. J. Wyatt, M.A., Cambridge.
THE TEMPEST.--Edited by F. S. Boas, M.A., Oxford.
KING JOHN.--Edited by G. C. Moore Smith, M.A., Cambridge.
RICHARD II.--Edited by C. H. Herford, L.H.D., Cambridge.
RICHARD III.--Edited by George Macdonald, M.A., Oxford.
HENRY V.--Edited by G. C. Moore Smith, M.A., Cambridge.
HENRY VIII.--Edited by D. Nichol Smith, M.A., Edinburgh.
CORIOLANUS.--Edited by Edmund K. Chambers, B.A., Oxford.
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.--Edited by J. C. Smith, M.A., Oxford.
KING LEAR.--Edited by D. Nichol Smith, M.A., Edinburgh.
_Introduction to Shakespeare._
By HIRAM CORSON, LL.D., Professor of Rhetoric and English
Literature in Cornell University. Cloth. 400 pages. Introduction
price, $1.00.
This work indicates some lines of Shakespearean thought which serve
to introduce to the study of the plays as plays. The introductory
chapter is followed by chapters on: The Shakespeare-Bacon
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of the Plays,--Shakespeare's Verse,--The Latin and Anglo-Saxon
Elements of Shakespeare's English. The larger portion of the book is
devoted to commentaries and critical chapters upon Romeo and Juliet,
King John, Much Ado about Nothing, Hamlet, Macbeth, and Anthony and
Cleopatra. These aim to present the points of view demanded for a
proper appreciation of Shakespeare's general attitude toward things,
and his resultant dramatic art, rather than the textual study of the
plays.
_Introduction to Browning._
By HIRAM CORSON, LL.D., Professor of Rhetoric and English
Literature in Cornell University. Cloth. 348 pages. Introduction
price, $1.00.
This volume affords aid and guidance to the study of Robert Browning's
poetry, which, being the most complexly subjective of all English
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management of the dramatic monologue and the Arguments given to the
several poems included in this volume, will, it is hoped, reduce, if not
altogether remove, the difficulties of this kind. In the same section of
the Introduction certain peculiarities of the poet's diction are
presented and illustrated.
The following is the Table of Contents:--
I. The Spiritual Ebb and Flow exhibited in English Poetry from
Chaucer to Tennyson and Browning. II. The Idea of Personality
and of Art, as an intermediate agency of Personality, as
embodied in Browning's Poetry. (Read before the Browning Society
of London in 1882.) III. Browning's Obscurity. IV. Browning's
Verse. V. Arguments of the Poems. VI. Poems. (Under this head
are thirty-three representative poems, the Arguments of which
are given in the preceding section.)
A Source Book of Greek History
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Introduction price, $1.00.
This book serves several purposes. It (1) supplies illustrative
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that is possible through the use of translations; (5) the illustrations
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A Day in Ancient Rome
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This attractive little book gives a picture of the famous old city as
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Studies in General History
(1000 B.C. to 1880 A.D.) By MARY D. SHELDON, formerly Professor
of History in Wellesley College, and Assistant Professor in
Leland Stanford Jr. University. Half leather, xvi + 556 pages.
Introduction price, $1.60.
This book gives a collection of historic material, which may be dealt
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Greek and Roman History
Or, _Studies in General History_, from 1000 B.C. to 476 A.D. By
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cents. Also bound with the _Teacher's Manual_.
_English Etymology._
A select glossary, serving as an introduction to the history of
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at Albion College, Mich. Cloth. 242 pages. Introduction price,
60 cents.
The purpose of this work is to serve as an introduction to the study of
the historical development of the English language. The scope of the
book is sufficient to give the student an insight into the main
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has been taken to include all words the history of which bears on the
development of the language at large. The authors have, in the first
place, traced back to the older periods loanwords of Scandinavian,
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_A History of English Critical Terms._
By J. W. BRAY. Cloth. 352 pages. Retail price, $1.00.
In literary criticism, and in the discussion of art, there are more than
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