Читать книгу Types of Prose Narratives - Harriott Ely Fansler - Страница 7

Table of Contents

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 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, 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 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 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 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 on knowledge and work one would not preclude inspiration. Indeed, one would thereby court it; for, as we all know, it comes usually only to the expert and patient toiler. Even Robert Burns labored long over his reputedly spontaneous songs. The thought came to him often at the plough, it is true; but he confesses that afterwards he spent many hours polishing his lines.