5. The plot thickens…and thins

2021 ◽  
pp. 64-80
Author(s):  
Andrew Kahn
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Short Fiction ◽  
Ghost Stories ◽  
Mass Market ◽  
The 19Th Century

‘The plot thickens…and thins’ describes the changing status of plot in the genre. For much of the 19th century, anecdote and incident inspired short fiction written for a mass market. The incident or anecdote-based short story made a virtue of brevity, and the economy of style and consequential arrangement of causes and effects well suited slice-of-life episodes, whodunits, and ghost stories. What these modes all share is a skill in building up suspense. Yet the genre has been enjoying a long postmodernist reincarnation in which it has adopted almost the opposite approach. Losing the plot has been a source of fictional experimentation and liberation from linearity. Repetition with subtle variation has become a key structure.

The Short Story: A Very Short Introduction

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Kahn
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Popular Fiction ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Short Introduction ◽  
The Press ◽  
Character Study ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Plot Design

The Short Story: A Very Short Introduction charts the rise of the short story from its original appearance in magazines and newspapers. For much of the 19th century, tales were written for the press, and the form’s history is marked by engagement with popular fiction. The short story then earned a reputation for its skilful use of plot design and character study distinct from the novel. This VSI considers the continuity and variation in key structures and techniques such as the beginning, the creation of voice, the ironic turn or plot twist, and how writers manage endings. Throughout, it draws on examples from an international and flourishing corpus of work.

British Detective Fiction in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Humpherys
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Detective Fiction ◽  
The United States ◽  
Sherlock Holmes ◽  
Auguste Dupin ◽  
Agatha Christie ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Critical Interest

From ancient Greece on, fictional narratives have entailed deciphering mystery. Sophocles’ Oedipus must solve the mystery of the plague decimating Thebes; the play is a dramatization of how he ultimately “detects” the culprit responsible for the plague, who turns out to be Oedipus himself. In the Poetics, Aristotle defines a successful plot as one that has a conflict (which can include, and often does include, a “mystery”) that rises to a climax, followed by a resolution of the conflict, a plot line that describes not only Oedipus Rex but also every Sherlock Holmes story. A particular genre of mystery writing is defined by the mystery at the center of the story that is crucially, definitively solved by a particular person known as a detective, either private or police, who by ratiocination (close observation coupled with logical patterns of thought based on material evidence) uncovers and sorts out the relevant facts essential to a determination of who did the crime and how and why. The form of detective fiction throughout most of the 19th century was the short story published in various periodicals of the period. A few longer detective fictions were published as separate books in the 19th century, but book-length detective fiction, such as that by Agatha Christie, was really a product of the 20th century. Most critics of detective fiction see the beginning of the genre in the three stories of Edgar Allan Poe which feature his amateur detective, Auguste Dupin, and were published in the 1840s. Although Poe’s 1840s stories as well as Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, which first appeared in the 1880s, are probably the most well known of 19th-century detective fictions, a number of other writers of generically recognizable detective fiction published stories in the almost fifty years between Poe and Conan Doyle, including a number that featured female detectives. Finally, from the 1890s into the early 20th century, a plethora of new detective fictions, still in short-story form for the most part, appeared not only in Britain but also in France and the United States. Detective fiction has always been popular, but serious critical interest in the genre only developed in the 20th century. In the second half of that century, this critical interest expanded into the academic world. The popularity of the genre has only continued to grow. Both detective fictions (now nearly all novel length) and critical interest in the genre from a variety of perspectives are now an international phenomenon, and detective novels dominate many best-seller lists.

scholarly journals Origins and functions of comic in feuilleton as literature phenomenon

2020 ◽  
pp. 107-117
Author(s):  
V. E. Golovchiner ◽  
◽  
T. L. Vesnina ◽  
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Short Fiction ◽  
Printing Press ◽  
Artistic Expression ◽  
Free Form ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Regulatory Trends ◽  
Slapstick Comedy

The genesis of a feuilleton phenomenon in the periodic press, always attracting the readers’ attention, has not been thoroughly researched. The work aims to identify the feuilleton origins and clarify the nature of its expressive means and comic functions. The research materials include the records of the feuilleton discussions in the Soviet press (1922–1926), a collection of works “Feuilleton” (1927), later works on the feuilleton and historical poetics. The following factors are considered to have contributed to the rise of the feuilleton: increased potential of the printing press at the turn of the 19th century, emergence of commercial periodicals, publishers’ interest in increasing the subscribers’ number, growing opposition to the regulatory trends of classicism and acute interest of romanticists in folklore and freedom to use its expressive means in the artistic sphere. The feuilleton is conceptualized as a young form, independent of genre canons, developing the low farce and slapstick comedy expressive means and its comic potential. According to ancestral memory, the comic means as basic artistic expression suggests both mockery and pleasure function for the feuilleton audience and predetermines the double existence of the feuilleton text and difference in naming at different times and in different publications. Texts published in periodicals are traditionally viewed as feuilletons, though the same texts published elsewhere can be considered short fiction forms. The paper defines the feuilleton as belonging to periodicals but distinguished among official and serious papers by its wording and free form of a mostly comic statement, pleasing for readers.

scholarly journals Juan Ochoa: hacia una comprensión del relato breve

1988 ◽  
pp. 163
Author(s):  
María de los Ángeles Ezama Gil
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Short Fiction ◽  
Final Conclusion ◽  
Important Group ◽  
Literary Forms ◽  
Short Novel ◽  
Siglo Xix ◽  
Novela Corta ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Critical Interest

<p>El relato breve, una de las formas literarias más antiguas constituye en su configuración moderna, un producto del siglo XIX; momento éste en que el desarrollo del género se vio favorecido por factores tales como el auge del periodismo. Y, sin embargo, el cuento es objeto de una marginación crítica que obedece a motivos como: la inexistencia de una definición estable del género, la confusión terminológica o la diversidad metodológica. La falta de atención crítica se hace notar en el terreno del relato breve decimonónico, no abordado sino de forma parcial y a través de sus más destacados cultivadores (Alas, Pardo Bazán o Alarcón). Al lado de éstos, y en un segundo plano, se sitúa un amplio grupo de escritores, mediocres en la mayor parte de los casos, pero que contribuyen, con su obra, a escribir la historia del género. Juan Ochoa (1864-1899) es uno de estos oscuros escritores de segunda fila. Con la aproximación a su breve obra narrativa (tres novelas cortas y una docena de cuentos) se pretende, por una parte, singularizar al relato breve como género, y por otra, si bien sólo en la práctica, delimitar las áreas concernientes al cuento y a la novela corta. Al primer objetivo responde el manejo de cinco principios estructurales (cuya base fundamental es el libro de Genette, 1972): tiempo, modo, voz, personaje y recurrencias. Al segundo se llega tras el análisis de éstos, que resultan formulados de distinta manera en el cuento y en la novela corta. El trabajo concluye señalando la escasa originalidad (manifiesta especialmente en el lenguaje) de un escritor que se mueve, la mayor parte de las veces, siguiendo modelos ajenos. Con todo, lo mejor de su producción es la novelita Un alma de Dios (1898), sin duda su obra más elaborada.</p><p>Short fiction ¿one of the oldest literary forms¿ got finto its present shape during the 19th century, when the development of the genre was favoured by such a circumstance as newspapers boom.</p><p>However, short story has been set aside by criticism because of some reasons as: need for a steady genre definition, confused terminology and too much diversity in methodology.</p><p>This lack of critical interest becomes more noticeable since short story hasn't been considered other than partially and only through its most outstanding exponents (Alas, Pardo Bazán or Alarcón).</p><p>Besides them -although in a lower level as most of all are second rate- we find an important group of writers who contributed significantly to the development of this genre.</p><p>Juan Ochoa (1864-1899) is one of these very little known authors. Our approach to his short fiction works (three short novels and a dozen of short stories) intends to attain two purposes: first, to individualize short fiction as a genre; and second, to delimit -only in practice- the areas concerning particulaly short story and short novel.</p><p>For the first object, we have used five structural principies (on the basis of Genette's 1972 book): time, mode, voice, characters and concurrences. Then, we get the second aim after the analysis of these principies which show us that short story and short novel are not two different genres, but two different ways of making the same suppositions.</p><p>The final conclusion of our paper proves the scarce originality -specially concerning language- of a writer who very often followed foreign patterns. Nevertheless, we can point out that his best work was a short novel titled Un alma de Dios (1898), his most elaborated text whithout any doubt.</p>

scholarly journals Anti-transcendentalism and dark romanticism in Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death"

Entrelinhas ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 104-106
Author(s):  
Sofia Lopes
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Edgar Allan Poe ◽  
Writing Style ◽  
The 19Th Century

This review seeks to analyse the short story “The Masque of the Red Death”, by Edgar Allan Poe, and to study its connection to the anti-transcendentalist and dark romantic movements. Through an examination of the literary aspects contained in the story, this work aims to inspect Poe's writing style, notedly marked by a bold approach of the themes of death, mourning and decay, and to compare his aesthetic decisions - such as the strong symbolic streak, the reliance on colour and architecture and the artistic depiction of death - to the chief tenets that influenced anti-transcendentalist writers over the 19th century.

scholarly journals Językowe oraz pozawerbalne wyróżniki XIX-wiecznego savoir-vivre’u i rozmów salonowych w opowiadaniu Stefanii Ulanowskiej Babie lato

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 289-299
Author(s):  
Dorota Krystyna Rembiszewska ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Status ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Rank 2 ◽  
Asymmetrical Setup ◽  
The 19Th Century

The article discusses linguistic and non-verbal features of 19th-century savoir-ivre. Babie lato [Indian Summer] by Stefania Ulanowska (1839–?), the source text under scrutiny, is a 21-page short story, which has most probably never come out in print. There are four conversation situations in the text: 1) a symmetrical setup (the interlocutors have equal social status and comparable pragmatic rank), 2) a symmetrical setup with asymmetrical features, related to the conversation between a man and a woman, 3) a less distanced asymmetrical setup, where the participants of the conversation are the mother and children, 4) a full asymmetric setup, in which the mistress of the house addresses the maid. The short story moreover features non-verbal etiquette features, such as a man tipping over his hat when he sees a woman and a man kissing a woman’s hand. The characteristics of etiquette observed in Babie lato are a supplement to the deliberations on savoir-vivre in the 19th century and confirm the changes that took place at that time in terms of courtesy in comparison with the old Polish period. They are also a testimony to the old culture of the nobility, transferred to bourgeoisie houses.

scholarly journals براہوئی افسانہ مسافر؛ نا فنی او تنقیدی جاچ اس

Al-Burz ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-19
Author(s):  
Muneer Ahmed Hanfi
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Contemporary Fiction ◽  
Thought Process ◽  
Fiction Writing ◽  
Descriptive Research ◽  
Literary Magazine ◽  
The 19Th Century

In the 19th century, Haibat Khan crafted "Musaafir" the premier fiction, a historical short story in the Brahui language and it was published in the year 1957, in the monthly literary magazine Nawaiy-e-Watan. The author employed content analysis, a branch of descriptive research to critically review fiction writing techniques, in comparison with the modern day fictions.  The investigation revealed that the ‘Musaafir’ is a masterpiece of literary work in Brahui language, which focuses the portrayal of nature, characterizations, narration skills, theme and plot development, dialog formation, thought process, description of events and climax based fictitious short story. This study represents the culture of the society in Balochistan, and also reflects the writers’ insight of fiction drafting skills in line with contemporary fiction writing techniques

scholarly journals Gender Subtexts in Collusive Linkages between Bhadralok Ethos and Colonial Law in Select Daroga Daptor Narratives

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tapti Roy ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Women Characters ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Popular Fiction ◽  
Criminal Investigation ◽  
Popular Imagination ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Narrative Techniques ◽  
The 19Th Century

Crime writings can be said to have originated in Bengal in the last decades of the 19th century with the emergence of narratives of seemingly true criminal investigations compiled by real-life darogas like Girish Chandra Bose, Priyanath Mukhopadhyay, and Bakaullah. These non-canonical accounts though rendered in simplistic narrative techniques to report cases that may appear inconsequential to present-day readership not only set the field for more complex fictional works of criminal investigation but also laid the foundations of a new genre of vernacular popular fiction favoured till date. It can be mentioned here that the criminal investigation accounts of Priyanath Mukhopadhyay were serialised as Daroga Daptor for a significant span of a decade which owing to its elements of thrill, mystery, and instruction were immensely coveted by the readers. The significance of the Daroga Daptor narratives for the purpose of the paper however lies in its reflections of the contemporary socio-legal setup comprised of responses towards sexual mores, socio-ethical strictures, and gender positions. In this context, the objective of the paper is to analyse select narratives of Daroga Daptor with females as victims or accused, namely the novel Adarini and the short story “Promoda”. Initiating the process with an overview of the office of the daroga emphasising on the popular associations of daroga with sloth and corruption, the paper will note the manner in which Daroga Daptor marked a paradigm shift in the popular imagination with regards to the intellectual abilities and sensibilities of daroga. Proceeding with the analysis of the aforesaid narratives, the paper by emphasising the 19th-century gender roles with respect to hypermasculine bhadralok norms and tenets of colonial law will situate the women characters as existing in an ambiguous position within the colluding grounds of the two apparently opposite masculine factions. The paper thus will establish the 19th-century native female body as a passive pliable vessel for various ideological experimentations reading them as perpetually incarcerated within the dynamic limits of an efficient, promptly adaptive, and multifariously hegemonic masculine order.

scholarly journals The types of the chronotope in the short story «The Murders in the Rue Morgue» by Edgar Poe

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Edgar Allan Poe ◽  
Deep Understanding ◽  
Psychological Factor ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Auguste Dupin ◽  
The Right ◽  
The 19Th Century

The article is devoted to the analysis of the time and space peculiarities in the short story «The Murders in the Rue Morgue» by the American writer of the 19th century Edgar Allan Poe. The aim of the article is a analysis of artistic chronotope as a special way of influencing the reader and distinguishing the features of time and space in the analyzed work. E. Poe was the initiator of the «detective short story», the genre features of which are the description of the deduction of the character, the analysis of the event, generalized logical, mathematically accurate reasoning. The image of detective Auguste Dupin is the main in the short story. There are the real and historical chronotope in this detective short story. The author repeatedly focuses on spatial topos that form a unique authorial style. The character, through the perspective of the narrator's vision, is portrayed in detail, with the psychological factor closer to the finale intensifying, which allows to distinguish the features of personal chronotope. Real historical chronotope uses fictional topos or objects that represent a certain space that carry a symbolic load (the non-existent streets of Paris, the library, the room, etc.). The author skillfully combines real and fictional events to create a unique detective story. All topos are interconnected and complementary, leading to a deep understanding of artistic reality. Real, mystical, historical and social chronotopes are associated with deep psychology, which makes it possible to recreate events and find the right solution to solve the crime. The perspectives of the narrator and the short story's characters on the same event extend the boundaries of the chronotope, giving it additional features. This interconnection of chronotopes in the short story not only shapes the complex artistic world of the nineteenth century, but also makes it possible to refer the analyzed work to the literature of romanticism.

1. The rise of the short story

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Andrew Kahn
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Print Culture ◽  
Short Story ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Literary Marketplace ◽  
Industrial Age ◽  
The 19Th Century

‘The rise of the short story’ discusses the rise of the short story from the Industrial Age, which occurred largely in the context of British and American print culture. That development traces a long arc from the establishment of the genre as a staple of 19th-century newspapers and magazines to its autonomy as a mode of literature viewed on the same level as the novel. In the 19th century, the short story catered to the taste of growing readerships for entertainment. Moreover, its brevity and easy supply appealed to editors. Ultimately, the form was shaped critically by the literary marketplace.

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