Types of Prose Narratives
9781465655035
108 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
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 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 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.
