BBL3216 THE NOVEL AND SHORT STORY IN ENGLISH

1. BBL3216 THE NOVEL AND SHORT STORY IN ENGLISH MEETING 1 22.2.2014

2. Dr. Manimangai Mani • E-mail : manimanggai@hotmail.com • Contact no: 016-5316715 • Room : No. 4, MakmalSiber 1,Muzium WarisanMelayu.

3. The Texts • Baker, S., Frye, N., Perkins, M.B. (1997). The Harper Handbook to Literature. New York:Longman. • Hemingway, E. (1952). The Old Man and the Sea. United Kingdom: Jonathan Cape Ltd. • Kennedy, X.J.&Gioia, D. (2003). Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry and Drama. New York: Harper Collins College Publishers. • Lawrence, D.H. (2000). The Rainbow. London:Penguin Popular Classics.

4. Peck, J. and Coyle, M. (1993) Literary Terms and Criticism. Houndmills: The MacMillan Press Ltd.

5. Short Stories • A Worn Path – Eudora Welty • The Yellow Wall Paper- Charlotte Perkins Gilman • The Lottery – Shirley Jackson • Araby - James Joyce • The Storm- Kate Chopin • The Old Man with the Enormous Wings- • To Hell with Dying – Alice Walker • The Serpent’s Tooth -

6. The Novels • The Old Man and the Sea – Earnest Hemingway • The Rainbow – D.H. Lawrence

7. Evaluation • Test 1 - 10% • Quiz - 20% • Written Assignment - 30% (due Week 10) • Final Exam - 40%

8. Lesson 1 • Historical development of novels and short stories in America and Britain

9. Objectives • To understand the historical development of the short stories and novels in Britain and America. • To Identify novels and short stories

10. History of novels • The roots of the novel come from a number of sources: • Elizabethan prose fiction • French heroic romance--vast baroque narratives about thinly disguised contemporaries (mid-17th century) who always acted nobly and spoke high-flown sentiment • Spanish picaresque tales--strings of episodic adventures held together by the personality of the central figure; Don Quixote is the best known of these tales.

11. The word "novel" (which wasn't even used until the end of the 18th century) is an English transliteration of the Italian word "novella"--used to describe a short, compact, broadly realistic tale popular during the medieval period (e.g. The Decameron). • The novel deals with a human character in a social situation, man as a social being. • The novel places more emphasis on character, especially one well-rounded character, than on plot. • Another initial major characteristic of the novel is realism--a full and authentic report of human life.

12. The traditional novel has: • a unified and plausible plot structure • sharply individualized and believable characters • a pervasive illusion of reality

13. What is a novel? • E.M. Forster in Aspects of the Novel cites the definition of a Frenchman named Abel Chevalley: "a fiction in prose of a certain extent" and adds that he defines "extent" as over 50,000 words. • The novel, however, arises from the desire to depict and interpret human character. The reader of a novel is both entertained and aided in a deeper perception of life's problems.

14. What is a novel? • A novel is a long prose narrative that describes fictional characters and events, usually in the form of a sequential story, written by a novelist. The genre has historical roots in antiquity and the fields of medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The novella is an Italian word used to describe short stories, supplied the present generic English term in the 18th century.

15. Characteristics of novels • Further definition of the genre is historically difficult. The construction of the narrative, the plot, the relation to reality, the characterization, and the use of language are usually discussed to show a novel's artistic merits. • Most of these requirements were introduced to literary prose in the 16th and 17th centuries, in order to give fiction a justification outside the field of factual history.

16. History of short stories • Short stories date back to oral storytelling traditions which originally produced epics such as Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. Oral narratives were often told in the form of rhyming or rhythmic verse, often including recurring sections or, in the case of Homer, Homeric epithets. • Such stylistic devices often acted as mnemonics for easier recall, rendition and adaptation of the story. Short sections of verse might focus on individual narratives that could be told at one sitting. The overall arc of the tale would emerge only through the telling of multiple such sections.

17. Short story in Europe • In Europe, the oral story-telling tradition began to develop into written stories in the early 14th century, most notably with Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron. • Both of these books are composed of individual short stories (which range from farce or humorous anecdotes to well-crafted literary fictions) set within a larger narrative story (a frame story ), although the frame-tale device was not adopted by all writers.

18. At the end of the 16th century, some of the most popular short stories in Europe were the darkly tragic "novella" of Matteo Bandello (especially in their French translation).

19. The first short stories in the United Kingdom were gothic tales like Richard Cumberland's "remarkable narrative" "The Poisoner of Montremos" (1791). • Great novelists like Sir Walter Scott and Charles Dickens also wrote some short stories.

20. Short stories in America • One of the earliest short stories in the United States was Charles Brockden Brown's "Somnambulism" from 1805. Washington Irving wrote mysterious tales including "Rip van Winkle" (1819) and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (1820). • Nathaniel Hawthorne published the first part of his Twice-Told Tales in 1837. Edgar Allan Poe wrote his tales of mystery and imagination between 1832 and 1849.

21. Classic stories are "The Fall of the House of Usher", "The Tell-Tale Heart", "The Cask of Amontillado", "The Pit and the Pendulum", and the first detective story, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue". • In "The Philosophy of Composition" (1846) Poe argued that a literary work should be short enough for a reader to finish in one sitting.

22. Characteristics of short stories • Short stories tend to be less complex than novels. Usually a short story focuses on one incident; has a single plot, a single setting, and a small number of characters; and covers a short period of time. • The modern short story form emerged from oral story-telling traditions, the brief moralistic narratives of parables and fables, and the prose anecdote, all of these being forms of a swiftly sketched situation that quickly comes to its point.

23. Identifying novels and short stories • A short story is a brief work of literature, usually written in narrative prose. Emerging from earlier oral storytelling traditions in the 17th century, the short story has grown to encompass a body of work so diverse as to defy easy characterization. • At its most prototypical the short story features a small cast of named characters, and focuses on a self-contained incident with the intent of evoking a "single effect" or mood.

24. In doing so, short stories make use of plot, resonance, and other dynamic components to a far greater degree than is typical of an anecdote, yet to a far lesser degree than a novel. • While the short story is largely distinct from the novel, authors of both generally draw from a common pool of literary techniques.

25. Short stories have no set length. In terms of word count there is no official demarcation between an anecdote, a short story, and a novel. • Rather, the form's parameters are given by the rhetorical and practical context in which a given story is produced and considered, so that what constitutes a short story may differ between genres, countries, eras, and commentators.]

26. Like the novel, the short story's predominant shape reflects the demands of the available markets for publication, and the evolution of the form seems closely tied to the evolution of the publishing industry and the submission guidelines of its constituent houses.

27. Lesson 2 • Identifying themes, setting and characterization

28. What is theme? • theme is an idea or concept that is central to a story, which can often be summed in a single word (e.g. love, death, betrayal). Typical examples of themes of this type are conflict between the individual and society; coming of age; humans in conflict with technology; nostalgia; and the dangers of unchecked ambition.

29. A theme may be exemplified by the actions, utterances, or thoughts of a character in a novel. An example of this would be the theme loneliness in John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, wherein many of the characters seem to be lonely. It may differ from the thesis—the text's or author's implied worldview.

30. A story may have several themes. Themes often explore historically common or cross-culturally recognizable ideas, such as ethical questions, and are usually implied rather than stated explicitly. An example of this would be whether one should live a seemingly better life, at the price of giving up parts of ones humanity, which is a theme in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Along with plot, character, setting, and style, theme is considered one of the fundamental components of fiction.

31. What is setting? • n works of narrative (especially fictional), the literary element setting includes the historical moment in time and geographic location in which a story takes place, and helps initiate the main backdrop and mood for a story. • Setting has been referred to as story world or milieu to include a context (especially society) beyond the immediate surroundings of the story.

32. Elements of setting may include culture, historical period, geography, and hour. • Along with the plot, character, theme, and style, setting is considered one of the fundamental components of fiction.

33. Setting is a critical component for assisting the story, as in man vs. nature or man vs. society stories. • In some stories the setting becomes a character itself. The term "setting" is often used to refer to the social milieu in which the events of a novel occur.

34. Setting includes three closely related aspects of a work of fiction. • The physical, sensuous world of the work.   • The time in which the action of the work takes place.   • The social environment of the characters (i.e. the manners, customs, and moral values of the characters' society).

35. Setting and character • Setting can also help to reveal character. • The environment in which the character lives may help the reader to understand the character's motives and behavior. (e.g. The theft of a loaf of bread from the rich by a poor, starving person would give one interpretation of a character, whereas the same theft from other poor people would give another. The theft by a rich person of that same loaf of bread would lead to a different impression.)   • The way that the setting is described can also show the inner feelings of a character.

36.  Setting in literature is the location and time frame in which the action of a narrative takes place. • The makeup and behaviour of fictional characters often depend on their environment quite as much as on their personal characteristics. • Setting is of great importance in Émile Zola’s novels, for example, because he believed that environment determines character. In some cases the entire action of a novel is determined by the locale in which it is set.

37. Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (1857) could hardly have been placed in Paris, because the tragic life and death of the heroine have a great deal to do with the circumscriptions of her provincial milieu. It sometimes happens that the main locale of a novel assumes an importance in the reader’s imagination comparable to that of the characters. Wessex is a giant, brooding presence in Thomas Hardy’s novels.

38. The popularity of Sir Walter Scott’s “Waverley” novels is due in part to their evocation of a romanticized Scotland. Setting may be the prime consideration of some readers, who can be drawn to Joseph Conrad because he depicts life at sea or in the East Indies; they may be less interested in the complexity of human relationships that he presents.

39. The setting of a novel may be an actual city or region made greater than life, as in James Joyce’s characterization of Dublin. But settings may also be completely the work of an author’s imagination: in Vladimir Nabokov’s Ada (1969), for example, there is an entirely new space-time continuum, and in The Lord of the Rings (1954–55) J.R.R. Tolkien created an “alternative world” in his Middle Earth.

40. Characterization • Flat and Round characters • Flat characters are two-dimensional in that they are relatively uncomplicated and do not change throughout the course of a work. • Round characters are complex and undergo development, sometimes sufficiently to surprise the reader.

41. Lesson 3 • Identifying the use of symbols and metaphors in short story - A Worn Path by Eudora Welty

42. Objective • To understand the nature of love • To understand the choice of words • To draw a parallel between the story and the legendary life cycle of the phoenix

43. Summary • Phoenix Jackson is an old, poor black woman. She is on a journey to a clinic to get free medicine for her sick grandson. The route which she takes is dotted with obstacles and we are given detailed narration of the old woman overcoming these obstacles. The bleak surrounding laden with images of further emphasizes the tormenting journey of her journey. She even falls into a ditch when startled by a dog. When she finally arrives at the clinic, a strange quietness envelopes her. When jolted out of her trance, she collects the medicine and turns to start the journey home.

44. The nature of love • Phoenix’s unconditional love for her grandson

45. Choice of words • Words used to describe the difficult path: • A very cold, windy morning • A thorny bush which she got entangled • A barbed-wire fence which she had to crawl under • A scarecrow which she thought was a ghost • A ditch in which she falls • A log across a creek which she crossed with her eyes closed.

46. The Phoenix • The phoenix is a mystical bird that has a very long life span which can live for 500 years. • When the phoenix approaches death, it will build a nest on the branches of a tree. Then the nest will burst into flames and burn the phoenix. A new phoenix will arise from the ashes and flies forth to begin a new life cycle. • The cycle goes on repeatedly every 500 years.

47. Lesson 4 • Identifying the protagonist’s emotions in short story - The Yellow Wall Paper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

48. Objective • To understand the social setting of the women in 19th century • To observe how a person gradually moves towards insanity • To identify the reasons for the character’s irrational behavior

49. Summary • It is a passionate account of a distraught woman over her marital situation. It is told in the first person narrative where this woman wants to be independent through her work to maintain her sanity. However, her wishes are ignored by the male chauvinistic in her life, her husband, brother and her doctor.

50. She is emotionally and intellectually violated. She finds herself imprisoned in her room with yellow wallpaper and the patterns on it seem to permeate a negative influence upon herself. And as she fights a futile battle for her identity and independence, she succumbs to madness.