TYPES OF PROSE NARRATIVES

A TEXT-BOOK FOR THE STORY WRITER

BY

HARRIOTT ELY FANSLER

Assistant Professor of English in the University of the Philippines. Formerly Instructor in English in Western Reserve University at Cleveland, Ohio

CHICAGO

ROW, PETERSON & COMPANY

Copyright, 1911, Harriott Ely Fansler.

[v]

PREFACE

Inspiration for any craftsman lies in the history of his art and in a definite problem at hand. He feels his task dignified when he knows what has been done before him, and he has a starting point when he can enumerate the essentials of what he wants to produce. He then goes to his work with a zest that is in itself creative. There is a popular misconception, especially in the minds of young people and seemingly in the minds of many teachers and critics of literature, that geniuses have sprung full-worded from the brain of Jove and have worked without antecedents. There could not be to a writer a more cramping idea than that. It is the aim of the present volume to help dispel that illusion, and to set in a convenient form before students of narrative the twofold inspiration mentioned—a feeling for the past and a series of definite problems.

There has been no attempt at minuteness in tracing the type developments; though there has been the constant ideal of exactness and trustworthiness wherever developments are suggested. In other words, this book is not a scrutiny of origins, but a setting forth of essentials in kinds of narratives already clearly established. The analysis that gives the essentials has, of course, the personal element in it, as all such analyses must have; but the work is the work of one mind and is at least consistent. Since I have not had the benefit of other texts on the subject (for there are none that I[vi] know of) and since the inquiry into narrative types with composition in view is thus made, put together with illustrations, and published for the first time, it has been my especial aim to exclude everything dogmatic. As can readily be seen, the details have been worked out in the actual classroom. The safe thing about the use of such a text by other instructors is the fact that they and their pupils can test the truth of the generalizations by first-hand inquiry of their own.

The examples chosen from literature and here printed are specific as well as typical. They have been selected not only to illustrate general principles, but for other reasons as well—some for superior intrinsic worth; some for historical position; all because of possible inspiration. But none have been selected as models.

The themes written by my present and former pupils are added for the last reason—as sure reinforcement of the inspiration, as provokers to action. Often students fail to write because there is held up to them a model, something complicated and perfect in detail. They feel their apprenticeship keenly and hesitate to attempt a likeness to a masterpiece. But, on the other hand, when they get a glimpse of history and when they see the work of a fellow tyro, they know that an equally good or even better result is within their reach and so set to work at once. The productions of pupils under this historical-illustrative method, wherever it has been tried, have been encouraging. Seldom has any one failed to present an acceptable piece of work. Once in a while a "mistake" has been made that has reassured a teacher and a class of the accuracy of the contamination theory—the historical cross-grafting or counter influence of types; that[vii] is, sometimes in the endeavor to produce a theme that should vary from those he thought the other students

would write, an earnest worker has unconsciously produced an example of the next succeeding type to be studied; unconsciously, because hitherto, of course, the classes have gone forward without a printed text.

This statement leads to the question, Why publish the literary examples? Why not merely give the references? Because school and even town libraries are limited. Twenty-five card-holders can scarcely get the same volume within the same week. Besides, the plan I consider good to insure the pupil's thorough acquaintance with the library accessible to him and with library methods and possibilities is quite other than this. This book is meant as a work-table guide for the student and as a time-saver for the teacher; hence all the necessary material should be immediately at hand. The instructor's concern in the teaching of narrative writing is just the twofold one mentioned before—to orientate the young scribbler and to give him a quick and sure inspiration. After that he is to be left alone to write, and the fewer the books around him the better.

The bibliography is added for two other classes of persons: those who desire to make a somewhat further and more minute study of type developments, and those who wish merely to read extensively or selectively in the works of fiction and history themselves. The list of books and authors is intended simply to be helpful, not exhaustive, and consequently contains, with but few exceptions, only those works that one might reasonably expect to find in a well-stocked college or city library.

I confess I hope that some amateur writer out of[viii] college or high school may chance upon the book and be encouraged by it to persevere. There are many delightful hours possible for one who enjoys composition, if he can but get a bit of a lift here and there or a new impulse to an occasionally flagging imagination. All but the very earliest literature has been produced thus—namely, by a conscious writing to a type, with an idea either of direct imitation, as in the case of Chaucer, who gloried in his "authorities;" or of variation and combination, as in the case of Walpole; or of equaling or surpassing in excellence, as in the case of James Fenimore Cooper; or of satire and supersedence, as in the case of Cervantes.

But to go back to the student themes here presented. They were written, with the exception of two, for regular class credit. These two were printed in a college paper as sophomore work. A number of the remaining came out in school publications after serving in the English theme box. All in all, they are the productions of actual students; from whom, it is hoped, other young writers may get some help and a good deal of entertainment. In each case the name of the author is affixed to his narrative, since he alone is responsible for the merits and faults of the piece.

In regard to the Filipino pupils no word is necessary: they speak for themselves. The work here given as theirs is theirs. I have not treated it in any way different from the way I treat all school themes, American or other. It is everyday work—criticized by the instructor, corrected by the pupil, and returned to the English office. The examples could be replaced from my present stock to the extent literally of some ten,[ix] some twenty, some two hundred fold. Naturally, of course, as is true of all persons using a foreign language, the Filipinos mistake idiom more often than anything else, and they write more fluently than they talk; but there is among them no dearth of material and no lack of thought. Indeed, the publishers have been embarrassed by the supply of interesting stories, especially in the earlier types. The temptation has been to add beyond the limits of the merely helpful and illustrative and to pass into the realm of the curious and entertaining. Regardless of literary quality, Filipino themes have today an historic value; many of them are the

first written form of hitherto only oral tradition.

To say to how great an extent a writer and talker is indebted to his everyday working library is difficult. Like a sculptor to an excellent quarry, a teacher can indeed forget to give credit where credit is due, especially to the more general books of reference such as encyclopedias and histories of literature—Saintsbury, Chambers, Ticknor, Jusserand. I would speak of the "Standard Dictionary," that does all my spelling for me and not a little of my defining; and the "Encyclopedia Britannica," which in these days of special treatises is sometimes superciliously passed over, though it offers in its pages not only much valuable literary information, but some of that information in the form of very valuable literature. Next to these might be placed Dunlop's "History of Fiction;" and last, particular and occasional compilations like Brewer's and Blumentritt's, and criticism like Murray's, Keightley's and Newbigging's. Then there is the "World's Great Classics Series." Just how much I owe to these general texts I cannot perhaps[x] tell definitely; though I am not conscious of borrowing

where I have not given full credit. As I have said before, direct treatises on my subject are lacking; so I shall have to bear alone the brunt of criticism on the analysis, or the main body of the book. I know of no one else to blame.

Grateful acknowledgment is due to my husband, Dean Spruill Fansler, for long-suffering kindness in answering appeals to his opinion and for reading the manuscript, compiling the bibliography, and making the index. Without his generous help I should hardly have found time or courage to put the chapters together.

In justice to former assistant English instructors in the United States who have successfully followed earlier unpublished outlines, and to my colleagues in the University of the Philippines who have been teaching from the book in manuscript form for nine months, it ought to be said that, whatever faults the work may have—and I fear they are all too many—it can hardly be dismissed as an immature and untried theory.

If there should be found any merit in the content of the book in general, I should like to have that ascribed to the influence of the department of English and Comparative Literature of Columbia University, where I had the privilege of graduate study with such scholars as Ashley Horace Thorndike, William Peterfield Trent and Jefferson Butler Fletcher.

My chief material debt is to the publishing firms who have very courteously permitted the reprinting of narratives selected from their copyrighted editions.

H. E. F.

University of the Philippines, Manila, 1911.

[xi]

LIST OF STORIES

NARRATIVES OF FICTITIOUS EVENTS

Myths

Legends

Fairy Tales

Nursery Tales

Fables

Parables

Allegories

Tales of Mere Wonder

Imaginary Voyages

Tale of Scientific Discovery and Mechanical Invention

Detective Story and Tale of Mere Plot

Tales of More-or-Less Probable Adventure

Society Stories

Humorous Stories

Occasional Stories

Moral Story

Pedagogical Narratives

[xviii] Stories of Present-Day Realism

Psychological Weird Tales

Stories That Emphasize Character and Environment

Stories That Emphasize Character and Events

NARRATIVES OF ACTUAL EVENTS

Incidents

Anecdotes

Eye-Witness Accounts

Tales of Actual Adventures

Travellers' Sketches

Journals and Diaries

Autobiography and Memoirs

[xx] Biographies

Annals

Chronicles

[xxi]

INTRODUCTION

There are many interesting possibilities for both the reader and the writer in a study of narrative types. It is a truism to say that everybody loves a story. Every race, every nation, every tribe, every family, has its favorite narratives. Every person has his and likes to repeat them. Even the driest old matter-of-fact curmudgeon delights in relating an incident if nothing else. Perhaps he tells you of how he lost and found again his pocket talisman—a buckeye, maybe, or a Portuguese cruzado. He will assure you that he does not really believe that the unfortunate events that followed his loss of it were occasioned by its absence, or the return of good-luck casually connected with its recovery; but still, he adds, he feels much better with the old thing in his pocket. "And that was a queer coincidence, wasn't it?" he insists, starting again over the details of the happening. So with us all: we all know and love stories, our own or another person's.

It is a fine thing to write a story. It is good through one's imagination and skill to entertain one's fellows or through one's accurate observation of life and history to benefit society. The narrator has always been honored. In earliest times he was the seer and prophet, forming the religion of his wandering tribe; later he was the welcomed guest, for whom alone the frowning castle's gate stood always open; and after the dark ages, in the time of the revival-of-the-love-of-written-things, he was[xxii] the favorite at the court of favoring princes, who lavished upon him preferment and money and humbly offered him the laurel crown, their highest tribute. In our own day his reward surpasses that of kings and presidents. They come to him, and for immortality invoke his name. In earliest times he composed in verse so that his story might be remembered and handed down. In latest times he writes most often in prose—a more difficult medium to handle with distinction, but one more widely understood and more readily appreciated than poetry.

Narrative as a general type needs no definition. What pure description is the ordinary reader might hesitate to assert, or exposition, or argumentation; but not story: he knows that. Let an author combine these others with a series of events, let him put them in as aids to the understanding or as ornaments on the thread of his recital, and they are accepted without question as elements of narration, be it prose or verse in form, true or fictitious in content. That is to say, though a story often contains to some extent all the other forms of writing too, we think of it as narrative because it carries us along a course of events. Frequently the teller spends much time in studying different styles and kinds of description and in analyzing various devices used to secure definite effects, because he wishes to call to his aid every bit of skill possible in portraying his characters and places; but general readers take his fine points of description and exposition as matters of course and are crudely interested in the happenings he has to

relate. They are unconscious of the fact that much of their enjoyment comes from knowing how a hero looks,[xxiii] what his surroundings are, and what his disposition and usual character. A story-writer gives no small amount of attention also to transcribing conversations; but the ordinary reader takes these likewise as expected parts of narrative. But there is one thing that the author and the reader agree on at the outset as necessary to be settled; namely, the kind of story to be written or to be read.

It is pleasant to know that there are definite types of narratives that the world has always loved, and that there are new forms growing up as civilization becomes more complex. Some of the kinds of stories discussed in this book are older than the English language, older than Christianity, older even than the divisions of Aryan speech. They seem to be inherent forms of all literatures, to be as ancient as thought and as young as inspiration. They are in use to-day in every tongue.

This book attempts to set forth the distinguishing elements of the types that have persisted, those matters that a writer must take into account when producing or a critic when judging. Though its title emphasizes the fact that now-a-days most persons think of stories as being always in prose, the book discriminates but little in this respect. In reality a student of narrative cares hardly at all whether the vehicle be meter or not. He is concerned with something else. Language form is rather an accident of the time and the fashion than anything essential. It is not dependent on the author's personality even. Chaucer undoubtedly would write in prose to-day, whereas our modern idealists would certainly have lisped in numbers a hundred years ago. We study narrative types, therefore, with the idea that[xxiv] verse tales are but measured and rhythmical expression of the same forms—sometimes the best, sometimes merely the most popular expression—but that the development in presentation has been toward prose, especially for the more psychological and complex material.

On the basis of content, narratives fall naturally into two large divisions: those that recount imaginary happenings and those that recount actual happenings. These large divisions in turn fall into smaller and still smaller groups upon one basis or another—source, purpose, method, or what not.

Under the division of narratives of fictitious events we notice six groups, when we are thinking of source and purpose: (1) the primitive-religious; (2) the symbolic-didactic; (3) the ingenious-astonishing; (4) the merely entertaining; (5) the instructive; (6) the artistic. Within these groups come the following individual types: (1) myth, legend, fairy tale, nursery saga; (2) fable, parable, allegory; (3) the tale of mere wonder, the imaginary voyage with a satiric or expository purpose, the tale of scientific discovery and mechanical invention, the detective story; (4) the probable adventure, the society story, the humorous and picaresque story, the occasional story; (5) the moral tale, the pedagogical narrative, the realistic sketch; (6) the psychological weird tale; the story that emphasises place and character, the story that emphasizes events and character.

On the basis of form and of the attitude of the teller, narratives of actual events fall into three groups. The first set has five types: incident, anecdote, eye-witness account, traveler's sketch, and the tale of actual[xxv] adventure. The second set includes journal and diary, autobiography and memoirs, biography. The third set is composed of annals, and chronicles and true relations. Instead of naming these sets, we might describe them thus: The first is made up of particular accounts of the doings of the writer and others in chance groups; the second, of more-or-less extended accounts of the sayings and doings of individual personages who for the time are important and either write about themselves or are written about; the third, of impersonal accounts of the doings of larger or smaller sections of mankind as units.

Of course, the types fade into one another, and it is only in analyzing that a person would draw a hard and fast line between any two of them; but it is permissible to draw this line for the convenience of study and discussion. After an investigator has learned all the kinds, he may classify a given story into one or the other group according to the predominating characteristics, or he may make a group of narratives of mixed kinds, and consider the various elements.

If he is trying, however, to write also, as well as to study according to the suggestions of this book, it would be a good plan for him to endeavor to produce at each attempt a rather more than less pure example of the type under consideration, so as to get as a result not only an interesting narrative, but a working model either for criticism or further production. For a person to have studied carefully an analysis of a type, to have read a distinct literary example of it, and to have attempted to put together a narrative that contains the essential elements, ought to mean that he has in his possession a piece of knowledge that will be valuable to him all his life, irrespective[xxvi] of any purely artistic quality of his achievement. That quality will probably be present much more surely than he at first expects; for a large part of the excellence of a piece of literature results from definite knowledge on the part of the writer, a clear aim to produce a particular kind of composition, and an indefatigable perseverance in revision of details. By emphasis