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Як працює класичне оповідання
Флоренс Ґоє — відома дослідниця оповідань, котра поєднує науковий стиль та цікавий популярний виклад. Книжка “Як працює класичне оповідання” — це надзвичайно ґрунтовна екскурсія в жанр, із яким усі ми добре знайомі, але про який знаємо насправді дуже небагато. Чому Джойса відмовлялись друкувати в Ірландії? Чому Лєнін вважав оповідання Чехова ідеальним інструментом пропаганди? Все, що потрібно знати, від інструментів, якими автори досягають потрібного ефекту, аж до інших жанрів, від яких оповідання напряму залежить. Ця книжка підійде як людям, котрі хочуть самі навчитись писати, так і всім, хто хоче освіжити в пам’яті улюблену класику.
- GenresNonfiction
304 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1993
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April 11, 2023
Серед моєї бібліотеки є книги які, особливо на тлі інших, виглядають неохайно та пошарпано. І то не через погану поліграфію, а тому що я повертаюсь до них знову і знову, роблю помітки в три шари, щось дописую на полях і тд. Буває люди кличуть ці книги «настільними». От власне ця книга із таких.
Звісно треба бути готовим щоб братися за її читання, ну хоча б ознайомитись з корпусом класичних оповідань Чехова, Мопассана, Варги, Акутагави, Генрі Джеймса. Але на відміну від типових хащів літкритики, де автори часто занурені у себе і власні теорії тексту, Флорес Гоє подає послідовну і цікаву теорію «класичного» оповідання і того, як воно трансформувалось у «модерне». Розділ за розділом авторка роздягає жанр, аналізує його жорстку структуру, прийоми і його вплив на тогочасне суспільство, його місце в літ процесі і становленні авторів.
Чудова робота, чудовий переклад, чудове видання
Звісно треба бути готовим щоб братися за її читання, ну хоча б ознайомитись з корпусом класичних оповідань Чехова, Мопассана, Варги, Акутагави, Генрі Джеймса. Але на відміну від типових хащів літкритики, де автори часто занурені у себе і власні теорії тексту, Флорес Гоє подає послідовну і цікаву теорію «класичного» оповідання і того, як воно трансформувалось у «модерне». Розділ за розділом авторка роздягає жанр, аналізує його жорстку структуру, прийоми і його вплив на тогочасне суспільство, його місце в літ процесі і становленні авторів.
Чудова робота, чудовий переклад, чудове видання
January 10, 2022
У найкращі книжки року!
October 9, 2023
Доволі об'ємна за змістом суто академічна праця. Це вам не легкий нонфіку від Віхоли, тут мізки іноді закипають. І ще до цієї книги треба бути готовими - важко оцінювати оповідання, не прочитавши їх.
Наврядчи ця книга допоможе написати оповідання, скоріше дасть розуміння, що об'єднує коротку прозу й її основні мотиви 1870-1920х років.
Мінус для багатьох, який може стригерити - російська культура. На щастя, не її возвеличення, як мені здалося, просто багато прикладів з літератури чехова, толстого, достоєвського і рос філософів.
Наврядчи ця книга допоможе написати оповідання, скоріше дасть розуміння, що об'єднує коротку прозу й її основні мотиви 1870-1920х років.
Мінус для багатьох, який може стригерити - російська культура. На щастя, не її возвеличення, як мені здалося, просто багато прикладів з літератури чехова, толстого, достоєвського і рос філософів.
January 22, 2022
It has been argued that the honour the first exactly contemporary short story goes to Walter Scott’s story “The Two Drovers,” published in Chronicles of the Canon gate in 1827.
It’s an expedient foundation, if only since the short story’s succeeding speedy development was international and Scott’s authority, huge in its day, was international also—not only inspiring George Eliot and Thomas Hardy at home, but also Balzac in France, Pushkin and Turgenev in Russia and Fennimore Cooper and Hawthorne in America.
If one thinks of the influence these writers had in turn on Flaubert and Maupassant, Chekhov, Poe and Melville we can credibly begin to trace the birth lines of the modern short story back to its original source.
The only difficulty is that after Scott’s start, the short story in Britain barely existed in the mid-19th century; such was the supremacy of the novel. Writers in France, Russia and America seemed to take more immediately to the form and it’s not until Robert Louis Stevenson in the 1880s that we can see the modern short story beginning to appear and thrive in Britain once more, with the line extending on from Stevenson through Wells, Bennett, James and Kipling.
Therefore, in many ways the accurate beginnings of the modern short story are to be found in America.
One might posit the publication of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ‘Twice-Told Tales’ in 1837 as a starting point.
When Edgar Allan Poe read Hawthorne, he made the first genuine analysis of the dissimilarity between the short story and the novel, defining a short story quite simply as a narrative that “can be read at one sitting.”
This is not as simplistic as it may seem at first.
What Poe was trying to put his finger on was the short story’s curious singularity of effect, something that he felt very powerfully came from its ‘all-in-one-go’ consumption.
Poe continues: “In the whole composition there should be no word written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one reestablished design. And by such means, with such care and skill, a picture is at length painted which leaves in the mind of him who contemplates it with a kindred art, a sense of the fullest satisfaction.”
Poe is perhaps too graphic and narrow—wanting only one “reestablished design” as the dominating template of a short story—but he is very acute on the nature of the effect a short story can achieve: “a sense of the fullest satisfaction.”
The short story can seem larger, more resonant and memorable than the shortness of the form would appear capable of delivering.
One thinks of Poe’s stories—the first detective stories among them—such as “The Fall of the House of Usher” and one realises he was attempting to practise what he preached.
However, the critics take Poe’s definition a step further and recast it thus: the true, completely functioning short story should achieve a totality of effect that makes it almost impossible to encapsulate or summarise. For it is in this area that the short story and the novel divide, where the effect of reading a good short story is quite different from the effect of reading a good novel.
This book approaches the classic short story from three different and complementary perspectives:
1) Its structure;
2) Its site of first publication; and
3) The association it creates between author, reader and characters.
Part I of the book is exclusively devoted to structure.
*In Chapter One, the author shows that characterisation in the short story is always paroxystic. There are hardly any narrative elements in the classic short story but every mannerism is there in its severe form; even ordinary men are average par excellence.
*Chapter Two portrays that the classic short story is based on a fundamental antithesis, which creates a powerful tension. This may be achieved through a narrative reversal, or the disparity between two characters (for example, Jekyll and Hyde) or between two world visions (for example, European and American).
The “twist-in-the-tail” is the focal point of Chapter Three. The raison d'être that the finale of the short story is so influential is because it brings into contact the two poles of the antithesis, the two opposites that should never come into contact.
*Chapter Four views the means through which the short story hastens our entry into the narrative. With the intention of assisting the reader instantly understand the scene; these stories often employ “preconstructed” material, including stereotypes (not essentially literary types, but understood social types).
*Chapter Five provides a pertinent close to the previous chapter.
The second part of the book analyses the short story within the structure of the media in which it first appeared: newspapers and intellectual journals.
*Chapter Six presents a comprehensive appraisal of the typically luxurious, stylish periodicals that were the primary publishing outlet for the short stories of our corpus.
*The stories that focus on peasants, poor office workers, prostitutes and provincials were for the most part read by wealthy urbanites. These periodicals also published travelogues — this is the subject-matter of Chapter Seven.
Part III looks at the correlation between the reader, the author and the characters of the classic short story.
*Chapters Eight and Nine focus on rhetorical devices that are used to generate distance from the characters — even though many of these devices (such as the use of direct speech and dialect) are often thought of as creating familiarity.
*Chapter Ten looks at the go-between role the narrator and/or the “reflector” play in creating the sense of distance between reader and author, as the reader joins with the (reliable) narrator to “look down” upon the other characters in the tale.
*Chapter Eleven seeks to characterize the special kind of emotion aroused in the short story.
The conclusion to Part III shows that even the short stories of Dostoevsky — the harbinger of polyphony — is still monological. Monologism is not a feature of our authors but of the genre itself.
The epilogue to the book hints at the way in which the short story would change itself out of its effective but preventive framework into the 20th century.
The great modern short stories possess a quality of inscrutability and beguiling resonance about them—an intricacy of afterthought—that cannot be pinned down or analysed. Bizarrely, in this situation, the whole is undeniably greater than the sum of its component parts. Poe, perhaps inadvertently, achieved this on occasion, but the writer who followed Poe and in whom we see this quality really functioning is Herman Melville.
It is in Melville’s stories, published in The Piazza Tales (1856), such as “Benito Cereno” and “Bartleby the Scrivener” that the modern short story comes of age, with remarkable suddenness. In Melville’s stories you can see the first real exemplars of the short story’s strange power.
The author says that Anton Chekhov is routinely and correctly is described as the greatest short story writer ever. Chekhov, in his mature stories of the 1890s, revolutionised the short story by transforming narrative. Chekhov saw and understood that life is godless, random and absurd, that all history is the history of inadvertent effects.
He knew, for example, that being good will not spares you from unpleasant suffering and injustice; that the indolent can flourish smoothly and that weakness is the one great daemonic force.
By abandoning the manipulated beginning middle-and-end plot, by refusing to judge his characters, by not striving for a climax or seeking neat narrative resolution, Chekhov made his stories appear agonisingly, almost unbearably lifelike. Chekhov represents the end of the first phase of the modern short story.
From his death onward, his influence is massive and ineluctable: the short story becomes thereafter in the 20th century almost exclusively Chekhovian. Joyce is Chekhovian, Katherine Mansfield almost plagiaristic ally so, Raymond Carver simply could not exist without him. Perhaps all short stories written after Chekhov are in one way or another in his debt. Only in the last 20 years or thereabouts have writers begun to emerge from his shadow, to middling effect. With Chekhov and with the advent of the 20th century, the modern short story entered its golden age.
In the crypticludic form of story there is a meaning to be deciphered that lies beneath the apparently straightforward text. This is also known as “suppressed narrative” and is a more recent development—perhaps the first clear move away from the great Chekhovian model. Mid-20th century writers like Nabokov, Calvino and Borges are representative of this mode of writing, though Rudyard Kipling, in stories such as “Mrs Bathurst” (1904) and “Mary Postage” (1917), is an early master of suppressed narrative.
The mini-novel story is a variety of the event plot, trying to do in a few pages what the novel does in hundreds.
One could see Dickens’s “Christmas Specials” as early examples of this type, though many short story writers turn to it from time to time (including Chekhov).
The next category, the poetic/mythic story, is a rarer beast. Dylan Thomas’s and Lawrence’s stories are typical and JG Ballard’s bleak voyages into inner space also conform to this set. Here the short story comes as close to lyric poetry as it can—and in so doing most obviously attempts to defy easy summary.
Ballard’s marvelous short stories— a haunting body of work that stretches from the 1950s to the present day— will come to be seen as one of the few successful attempts to escape Chekhov.
The final category, and one that brings us up to the present day, is what is called the biographical story, a catch-all term to include stories that flirt with the factual or masquerade as non-fiction.
In the epilogue, the author states – “The title of this book has given a chronological indication: 1870-1925, the period that represents the heyday for the “classic” short story.
1870, or rather at the beginning of the nineteenth century, short stories had a very different form, for example those of Nathaniel Hawthorne. After 1920, there emerged a new type of short story that renounced all the characteristic traits we have described.
Classic short stories continued to be written — and continued to sell — but beside them the twentieth century saw the rise of something quite different, which corresponds to what Clare Hanson calls “short fiction”, and which she has showed to be linked with the advent of Modernism…”
Thought provoking and highly recommended.
It’s an expedient foundation, if only since the short story’s succeeding speedy development was international and Scott’s authority, huge in its day, was international also—not only inspiring George Eliot and Thomas Hardy at home, but also Balzac in France, Pushkin and Turgenev in Russia and Fennimore Cooper and Hawthorne in America.
If one thinks of the influence these writers had in turn on Flaubert and Maupassant, Chekhov, Poe and Melville we can credibly begin to trace the birth lines of the modern short story back to its original source.
The only difficulty is that after Scott’s start, the short story in Britain barely existed in the mid-19th century; such was the supremacy of the novel. Writers in France, Russia and America seemed to take more immediately to the form and it’s not until Robert Louis Stevenson in the 1880s that we can see the modern short story beginning to appear and thrive in Britain once more, with the line extending on from Stevenson through Wells, Bennett, James and Kipling.
Therefore, in many ways the accurate beginnings of the modern short story are to be found in America.
One might posit the publication of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ‘Twice-Told Tales’ in 1837 as a starting point.
When Edgar Allan Poe read Hawthorne, he made the first genuine analysis of the dissimilarity between the short story and the novel, defining a short story quite simply as a narrative that “can be read at one sitting.”
This is not as simplistic as it may seem at first.
What Poe was trying to put his finger on was the short story’s curious singularity of effect, something that he felt very powerfully came from its ‘all-in-one-go’ consumption.
Poe continues: “In the whole composition there should be no word written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one reestablished design. And by such means, with such care and skill, a picture is at length painted which leaves in the mind of him who contemplates it with a kindred art, a sense of the fullest satisfaction.”
Poe is perhaps too graphic and narrow—wanting only one “reestablished design” as the dominating template of a short story—but he is very acute on the nature of the effect a short story can achieve: “a sense of the fullest satisfaction.”
The short story can seem larger, more resonant and memorable than the shortness of the form would appear capable of delivering.
One thinks of Poe’s stories—the first detective stories among them—such as “The Fall of the House of Usher” and one realises he was attempting to practise what he preached.
However, the critics take Poe’s definition a step further and recast it thus: the true, completely functioning short story should achieve a totality of effect that makes it almost impossible to encapsulate or summarise. For it is in this area that the short story and the novel divide, where the effect of reading a good short story is quite different from the effect of reading a good novel.
This book approaches the classic short story from three different and complementary perspectives:
1) Its structure;
2) Its site of first publication; and
3) The association it creates between author, reader and characters.
Part I of the book is exclusively devoted to structure.
*In Chapter One, the author shows that characterisation in the short story is always paroxystic. There are hardly any narrative elements in the classic short story but every mannerism is there in its severe form; even ordinary men are average par excellence.
*Chapter Two portrays that the classic short story is based on a fundamental antithesis, which creates a powerful tension. This may be achieved through a narrative reversal, or the disparity between two characters (for example, Jekyll and Hyde) or between two world visions (for example, European and American).
The “twist-in-the-tail” is the focal point of Chapter Three. The raison d'être that the finale of the short story is so influential is because it brings into contact the two poles of the antithesis, the two opposites that should never come into contact.
*Chapter Four views the means through which the short story hastens our entry into the narrative. With the intention of assisting the reader instantly understand the scene; these stories often employ “preconstructed” material, including stereotypes (not essentially literary types, but understood social types).
*Chapter Five provides a pertinent close to the previous chapter.
The second part of the book analyses the short story within the structure of the media in which it first appeared: newspapers and intellectual journals.
*Chapter Six presents a comprehensive appraisal of the typically luxurious, stylish periodicals that were the primary publishing outlet for the short stories of our corpus.
*The stories that focus on peasants, poor office workers, prostitutes and provincials were for the most part read by wealthy urbanites. These periodicals also published travelogues — this is the subject-matter of Chapter Seven.
Part III looks at the correlation between the reader, the author and the characters of the classic short story.
*Chapters Eight and Nine focus on rhetorical devices that are used to generate distance from the characters — even though many of these devices (such as the use of direct speech and dialect) are often thought of as creating familiarity.
*Chapter Ten looks at the go-between role the narrator and/or the “reflector” play in creating the sense of distance between reader and author, as the reader joins with the (reliable) narrator to “look down” upon the other characters in the tale.
*Chapter Eleven seeks to characterize the special kind of emotion aroused in the short story.
The conclusion to Part III shows that even the short stories of Dostoevsky — the harbinger of polyphony — is still monological. Monologism is not a feature of our authors but of the genre itself.
The epilogue to the book hints at the way in which the short story would change itself out of its effective but preventive framework into the 20th century.
The great modern short stories possess a quality of inscrutability and beguiling resonance about them—an intricacy of afterthought—that cannot be pinned down or analysed. Bizarrely, in this situation, the whole is undeniably greater than the sum of its component parts. Poe, perhaps inadvertently, achieved this on occasion, but the writer who followed Poe and in whom we see this quality really functioning is Herman Melville.
It is in Melville’s stories, published in The Piazza Tales (1856), such as “Benito Cereno” and “Bartleby the Scrivener” that the modern short story comes of age, with remarkable suddenness. In Melville’s stories you can see the first real exemplars of the short story’s strange power.
The author says that Anton Chekhov is routinely and correctly is described as the greatest short story writer ever. Chekhov, in his mature stories of the 1890s, revolutionised the short story by transforming narrative. Chekhov saw and understood that life is godless, random and absurd, that all history is the history of inadvertent effects.
He knew, for example, that being good will not spares you from unpleasant suffering and injustice; that the indolent can flourish smoothly and that weakness is the one great daemonic force.
By abandoning the manipulated beginning middle-and-end plot, by refusing to judge his characters, by not striving for a climax or seeking neat narrative resolution, Chekhov made his stories appear agonisingly, almost unbearably lifelike. Chekhov represents the end of the first phase of the modern short story.
From his death onward, his influence is massive and ineluctable: the short story becomes thereafter in the 20th century almost exclusively Chekhovian. Joyce is Chekhovian, Katherine Mansfield almost plagiaristic ally so, Raymond Carver simply could not exist without him. Perhaps all short stories written after Chekhov are in one way or another in his debt. Only in the last 20 years or thereabouts have writers begun to emerge from his shadow, to middling effect. With Chekhov and with the advent of the 20th century, the modern short story entered its golden age.
In the crypticludic form of story there is a meaning to be deciphered that lies beneath the apparently straightforward text. This is also known as “suppressed narrative” and is a more recent development—perhaps the first clear move away from the great Chekhovian model. Mid-20th century writers like Nabokov, Calvino and Borges are representative of this mode of writing, though Rudyard Kipling, in stories such as “Mrs Bathurst” (1904) and “Mary Postage” (1917), is an early master of suppressed narrative.
The mini-novel story is a variety of the event plot, trying to do in a few pages what the novel does in hundreds.
One could see Dickens’s “Christmas Specials” as early examples of this type, though many short story writers turn to it from time to time (including Chekhov).
The next category, the poetic/mythic story, is a rarer beast. Dylan Thomas’s and Lawrence’s stories are typical and JG Ballard’s bleak voyages into inner space also conform to this set. Here the short story comes as close to lyric poetry as it can—and in so doing most obviously attempts to defy easy summary.
Ballard’s marvelous short stories— a haunting body of work that stretches from the 1950s to the present day— will come to be seen as one of the few successful attempts to escape Chekhov.
The final category, and one that brings us up to the present day, is what is called the biographical story, a catch-all term to include stories that flirt with the factual or masquerade as non-fiction.
In the epilogue, the author states – “The title of this book has given a chronological indication: 1870-1925, the period that represents the heyday for the “classic” short story.
1870, or rather at the beginning of the nineteenth century, short stories had a very different form, for example those of Nathaniel Hawthorne. After 1920, there emerged a new type of short story that renounced all the characteristic traits we have described.
Classic short stories continued to be written — and continued to sell — but beside them the twentieth century saw the rise of something quite different, which corresponds to what Clare Hanson calls “short fiction”, and which she has showed to be linked with the advent of Modernism…”
Thought provoking and highly recommended.
June 11, 2024
Ця книга буде зрозуміла будь-кому, хто візьме її в руки. Вам не треба мати специфічних знань або ступеню. Вам необовʼязково попередньо читати всі згадані в дослідженні оповідання, їх стислі або часткові ��ерекази та цитати з них є виключно доказовою базою наведених в тексті тверджень. Ця «ілюстративність» і робить подану в тексті інформацію такою цікавою і доступною.
«Закони» жанру разом із прийомами лежать на поверхні, але не кожному читачу кидаються в очі - так, я дізналась багато нового, а подекуди дивувалась: як я не помічала цього раніше?
Мені дуже сподобалось, що третина дослідження присвячена історичному і соціально-культурному контекстам (чи тут треба було ставити «і»?). Без цього розуміння оповідань було б вкрай неповним і, скоріш за все, невірним.
Обʼєктом дослідження є класичне оповідання, але я помічаю за собою, що ця книга має вплив і на те, як я тепер сприймаю тексти інших жанрів і на що звертаю увагу.
«Закони» жанру разом із прийомами лежать на поверхні, але не кожному читачу кидаються в очі - так, я дізналась багато нового, а подекуди дивувалась: як я не помічала цього раніше?
Мені дуже сподобалось, що третина дослідження присвячена історичному і соціально-культурному контекстам (чи тут треба було ставити «і»?). Без цього розуміння оповідань було б вкрай неповним і, скоріш за все, невірним.
Обʼєктом дослідження є класичне оповідання, але я помічаю за собою, що ця книга має вплив і на те, як я тепер сприймаю тексти інших жанрів і на що звертаю увагу.
October 10, 2024
Довго не могла підступитися, до цієї книги.
Стимулом став курс "Короткої прози: новела, оповідання, есе" від Litosvita.
Цю книгу там прямо не рекомендували, але курс нагадав мені про неї й навчання виявилося дуже суголосний ідеям Гоє.
Для мене це стала містком до продовження міркувань про новелу й оповідання, позиціювання автора відносно персонажів, екзотизацію сюжетів і зображуваного. Це точно не легке читання.
Планую повернутися до книги й конспектувати, щоб краще збагнути ідеї.
Зміст книги і переклад - пречудові.
Для мене це не тільки про класичну літературу і її найліпші зразки, а також і застереження, яким автором не бути зараз.
Які граблі зверхньості й очуднення персонажів обходити стороною.
Особливо цікавим виявився другий розділ про медіа, у якому авторка пояснює, як видання, у яких друкували оповідання, їх цільова удиторія й ціна примірників вплинули на формування й розвиток жанру. На шкільних уроках літератури письменників переважно зображають світочами, яким йдеться про мораль і прекрасне. Пишуть вони, звичайно, ж тільки для вищого блага. Ця книга допомагає тверезо оцінити вплив ринку й популярності на авторів класичних оповідань.
Про мінуси: в електронному форматі немає абзаців і змісту, не працювали гіперлінки на примітки, деякі знаки (переважно роки у примітках) не відобразилися, схоже, також пропущена ілюстрація. Це дещо ускладнило читання й псувало задоволення від нього. Зрозуміла, що слід було купувати паперовий примірник.
Стимулом став курс "Короткої прози: новела, оповідання, есе" від Litosvita.
Цю книгу там прямо не рекомендували, але курс нагадав мені про неї й навчання виявилося дуже суголосний ідеям Гоє.
Для мене це стала містком до продовження міркувань про новелу й оповідання, позиціювання автора відносно персонажів, екзотизацію сюжетів і зображуваного. Це точно не легке читання.
Планую повернутися до книги й конспектувати, щоб краще збагнути ідеї.
Зміст книги і переклад - пречудові.
Для мене це не тільки про класичну літературу і її найліпші зразки, а також і застереження, яким автором не бути зараз.
Які граблі зверхньості й очуднення персонажів обходити стороною.
Особливо цікавим виявився другий розділ про медіа, у якому авторка пояснює, як видання, у яких друкували оповідання, їх цільова удиторія й ціна примірників вплинули на формування й розвиток жанру. На шкільних уроках літератури письменників переважно зображають світочами, яким йдеться про мораль і прекрасне. Пишуть вони, звичайно, ж тільки для вищого блага. Ця книга допомагає тверезо оцінити вплив ринку й популярності на авторів класичних оповідань.
Про мінуси: в електронному форматі немає абзаців і змісту, не працювали гіперлінки на примітки, деякі знаки (переважно роки у примітках) не відобразилися, схоже, також пропущена ілюстрація. Це дещо ускладнило читання й псувало задоволення від нього. Зрозуміла, що слід було купувати паперовий примірник.
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December 24, 2025Secondo nella mia classifica "teoria letteraria e scrittura" nel 2023.
Articolo intero sul blog: https://attanasioscrive.it/articoli/c...
Articolo intero sul blog: https://attanasioscrive.it/articoli/c...
June 6, 2022
The plain title and the academic approach - if indeed some pages have notes larger than the chapter text - don't diminish the overall lightness of the author, allowing her to break down the shortest of the prose genres from across the five different cultures.
January 27, 2022
Огляд є у Влада Сторітелера https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBm6O...
July 16, 2022
También lo leí para la tesis. Este lo disfruté más, es muy ameno.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews