The ability to construct a nuanced narrative or complex character in the constrained form of the short story has sometimes been seen as the ultimate test of an author's creativity. Yet during the time when the short story was at its most popular - the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries - even the greatest writers followed strict generic conventions that were far from subtle. This expanded and updated translation of Florence Goyet's influential La Nouvelle, 1870-1925: Description d'un genre à son apogée (Paris, 1993) is the only study to focus exclusively on this classic period across different continents. Ranging through French, English, Italian, Russian and Japanese writing - particularly the stories of Guy de Maupassant, Henry James, Giovanni Verga, Anton Chekhov and Akutagawa Ryūnosuke - Goyet shows that these authors were able to create brilliant and successful short stories using the very simple 'tools of brevity' of that period. In this challenging and far-reaching study, Goyet looks at classic short stories in the context in which they were read at the time: cheap newspapers and higher-end periodicals. She demonstrates that, despite the apparent intention of these stories to question bourgeois ideals, they mostly affirmed the prejudices of their readers. In doing so, her book forces us to re-think our preconceptions about this 'forgotten' genre.
Author(s): Florence Goyet
Publisher: Open Book Publisher
Year: 2014
Language: English
Pages: 222
Tags: akutagawa ryūnosuke; guy de maupassant; giovanni verga; henry james; florence goyet; short stories; anton chekhov
Table of Contents......Page 8
Acknowledgements......Page 10
Introduction......Page 12
1. Paroxystic Characterisation......Page 22
Extremes in the fantastic short story......Page 33
2. Antithetic Structure......Page 36
Secondary tensions......Page 44
Editing antithetic tension: Maupassant and James......Page 47
3. Ending with a Twist......Page 52
The “twist-in-the-tail” and antithetic tension......Page 54
The “Twist-in-the-tail” and retroreading......Page 56
“Open” texts and tension......Page 61
4. The Tools of Brevity......Page 64
Preconstructed material......Page 65
Character types......Page 68
Recurring characters and empty characters......Page 73
Tight focus......Page 75
Permanence of types......Page 78
Hypotyposis and schematisation......Page 82
Short stories, sensational news items and serials......Page 84
The short story: privileged object of narratology......Page 86
6. Exoticism in the Classic Short Story......Page 92
The role of the press......Page 93
Exotic subjects......Page 95
The constraints of the newspapers......Page 101
Exceptions to the rule......Page 107
7. Short Stories and the Travelogue......Page 110
Praise of nature, criticism of culture......Page 111
From vision to judgement: guidelines for description......Page 119
8. A Foreign World......Page 126
An explicit distance......Page 128
The use of types: subversion or immersion?......Page 133
“Deceptive representations” of reality......Page 136
The great man......Page 140
“We are simply the case”: James and abstract entities......Page 141
Reading at face value: the double distance......Page 143
9. Dialogue and Character Discreditation......Page 146
Direct and indirect speech: Verga’s novel
versus short stories......Page 149
Dialect and distancing......Page 152
Foreign terms......Page 156
10. The Narrator, the Reflector and the Reader......Page 162
Unreliable narrators and reflectors......Page 165
Reliable narrators and reflectors......Page 168
The short story with a dilemma......Page 174
Readers’ emotional response to the classic short story......Page 181
12. Conclusion to Part III: Are Dostoevsky’s Short Stories Polyphonic?......Page 192
Epilogue: Beyond the Classic Short Story......Page 196
Lengthy stories: the long Yvette after the brief Yveline......Page 197
Fantastic tales: the deconstruction of the self......Page 199
Authors at a crossroads......Page 200
Bibliography......Page 206
Index......Page 216
