GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT OF SHORT STORY

 

INTRODUCTION:

Short prose fiction is one of the oldest forms of literature. The earliest examples of the short story can be seen in the stories written in 3000 BCE in ancient Egypt. The parables of the Bible are another examples of short prose fiction. These impart moral lessons to the reader. Yet another example of this genre is the Sanskrit collection of ‘Panchtantra’ from India. Other examples from the East include the Arabic collections Thousand and One Nights and The Book of Sindbad. Two of the most well-known collections of early short stories from the West are the Decameron, a collection of a hundred tales by the Italian writer Boccaccio, and The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. Both were written in the fourteenth century.

FOREFATHERS OF SHORT STORY:
It can be said that the forefathers of the short story are myth, legend, parable, fairy tale, fable, anecdote, character study and even the ballad. The features of short story as a literary form are similar to that of the French ‘conte’ and ‘novelle’, the Spanish ‘novela’, the Italian ‘novella’ and the German ‘Novelle’.

In second half of the 18^th century the short story was being developed and established in Britain. It was partly as a result of the popularity of the oriental tale but more so as a result of the popularity of the Gothic novel. In the opening years of the 19^th century the short story as a form was highly evolved, especially in the shape of the ghost story and the horror story, and the stories which had to do with the supernatural.

The short story was recognised as a major literary form in the nineteenth century. The form first became popular not in England, but in America. Even there the term ‘short story’ was used only in 1880s. Edgar Allan Poe was the first important author to analyse this form and discuss the various effects that a short story could have, such as surprise and fear.

Other American writers include Nathaniel Hawthrone, Herman Melville and O. Henry. Some examples of well known short stories are ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’ by Washington Irving, ‘The Gift of Magi’ by O. Henry, ‘The Necklace’ by Guy de Maupassant, and ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’ by James Thurber. Famous collections of short stories include Poe’s ‘Tales of Mystery and Imagination’(1902), ‘Dubliners (1914) by James Joyce, and ‘Interpreter of Maladies’ (1999) by Jhumpa Lahiri.

CONCLUSION:

Today,  the short story is a very popular form all over the world and appears in almost every language. Famous writers of short stories include Anton Chekhov, Arthur Conan Doyle, D.H. Lawrence, Leo Tolstoy, Earnest Hemingway, Flannery O’ Connor, Franz Kafka, R.K. Narayan, Ray Bradbury, Saadat Hasan Manto, Isaac Asimov, Khushwant Singh and Alice Munroe, to name just a few.