泛读考点总结.doc

The genesis of the short story:
A. Oral story-telling tradition: The short story has always existed as an informal oral tradition
B. Developed and became popular in the nineteenth century: a staple of the prevailing magazine and periodical market. During this period, fiction was channeled in the direction of realism or a detailed representation of everyday life, typically the lived and experiences familiar to middle-class individuals. Besides its realistic impulse, the modern short story differs from the ancient forms of short fiction in still another way: in the ratio between summary and scene.
C. The 20th century: the golden age
D. Britain: first started the form: Walter Scott, then lagged behind
E. Prevailed in France, Russia, America, representative writers
F. List 3 famous writers:

Two Great Traditions in the Short Story:
A. Guy De Maupassant (1850-1893): event-plot story: beginning-middle-and-end plot is considered one of the fathers of the modern short story. He delighted in clever plotting. Taking his cue from Balzac, Maupassant wrote comfortably in both the high-realistic and fantastic modes. (W. Somerset Maugham, O’Henry).
B. Anton Chekhov (1860-1904): Chekhovian story: Impressionistic technique, plotless/formless, mood, constructs a story without episodic interest ( Katherine Mansfield: plagiaristically Chekhovian, Raymond Carver Ernest Hemingway)

Seven Basic Varieties of the Short Story:
The event-plot story, the Chekhovian story, the modernist story, the cryptic/ludic story: suppressed narrative, the mini-novel story, the poetic/mythic story, the biographical story.

The event-plot story:
The events of the story are often meant to illustrate something about human nature, or to deliver a message which is related to day-to-day experience, the meaning of life or human value. Theme is an important element in the stories that offers insight into human natures. Sometimes the theme is expressed directly in a story. Most of the time, however, the theme must be inferred from other elements in the story.Not every story can be said to have a theme. For example, mysteries and adventures stories are told mainly for entertainment, and there is generally little or no significance in them.

Chekhovian story:
Impressionistic technique, plotless/formless, mood, constructs a story without episodic interest.

The structure element of short story:
Plot，Characterization，Theme，Point of view，Tone.

Characterization:
The way a writer presents a character in a story is known as characterization. A writer may tell you directly what a character is like. He may make direct comments revealing what he thinks about his character. It is more common, however, for a writer to develop a character indirectly. The writer allows you to draw your own conclusions about a character by describing the character’s physical appearance; showing the character’s actions & words; revealing the character’s thoughts; showing how the character is treated by others. A writer may, of course, use both direct & indirect methods of characterization in presenting a character. Some characters in short stories do not change in any meaningful way. At the end of their stories, they have essentially the same personalities that they have at the beginning. Such characters are referred to as “static” Characters who undergo some important changes are referred to as “dynamic”. Some characters appear in literature so often that they are recognized immediately as types. Instead of existing as individual or original creations, they conform to a set pattern (Stock/stereotyped characters). In order for the characters in a story to have credibility, they must behave like real people. We need to feel that they are true to life. To be believable, characters must behave with consistency. If a character undergoes a change, there must be sufficient reason to explain it. There must be motivation, or reason, to account for a character’s actions. People can be motivated by outside forces or by their inner needs.

The point of view
A. The first-person point of view: the narrator is sometimes the protagonist, and sometimes simply an observer or reporter of the central action. Thus we refer to “first-person participant” and “first-person observer” point of view. In no case should we assume automatically that the narrator and the writer are one. As a dramatized character, the narrator may be very different from the writer. Quite often, the writer deliberately wishes us to understand that the narrator’s perceptions and judgments are not completely accurate; therefore, we must be alert for the possibility of an unreliable narrator. The narrator speaking as “I” has the advantages of adding immediacy to a story. But such point of view also has limitation. The reader sees the events from the vantage point of only one character. The character can reveal his own thoughts but can’t get into the minds of other characters.
B. The third-person point of view: A story can be told from the third-person point of view, by an observer who does not play a role in the events. The third-person narrator may be an omniscient, or all-knowing, observer, who knows what all the characters can see, hear, think, and feel, and who comments on the action and interprets the events. (e.g. Vanity Fair) However, The narrator may enter the mind of only one character.

The tone
A. Irony: Irony involves a difference or contrast between appearance and reality----- that is a discrepancy between what appears to be true and what really is true. Irony reminds us that life is unpredictable and that what we expect to happen or wish to have happened does not always have the intended result. Irony can make us smile or wince. It can be genial or bitter.
1) Irony of situation (in which there is a contrast between what is expected to happen and
2) what actually happens, e.g. shooting the goat instead of the tiger in Saki’s story.)
3) Dramatic irony (in which the reader knows something that a character in the story does not know.)
4) Verbal irony (in which a character says one thing and means something. entirely different. ( “Its perfect fairness is obvious” ”The institution is a very popular one”.)
B. Satire: Sometimes a humorous story mocks or ridicules certain weakness, follies, or vices in human nature and society through irony, derision, or wit. A literary work that pokes fun at some failing of human behavior is called satire. Satire is generally of two kinds: it can be gentle, amusing, and lighthearted, or it can be biting, bitter, even savage.

Minimalism
Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is stripped down to its most fundamental features. Literary minimalism is characterized by an economy with words and a focus on surface description. Minimalist authors eschew adverbs and prefer allowing context to dictate meaning. Readers are expected to take an active role in the creation of a story, to "choose sides" based on oblique hints and innuendo, rather than reacting to directions from the author. The characters in minimalist stories and novels tend to be unexceptional; they may be pool supply salespeople or second tier athletic coaches rather than famous detectives or the fabulously wealthy. Generally, the short stories are "slice of life" stories. Minimalist fiction present significant details arranged in a way that causes the brain to supply missing information—to extend the lines, so to speak. As a result we perceive information that makes the point, develops character, reveals the theme, and justifies the voice. Understated, elliptical, truncated, opaque, and dense.

Epiphany:
The term used in Christian theology for a manifestation of God’s presence in the world. It was taken over by James Joyce to denote secular revelation in the everyday world. A sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience. Joyce sees the epiphany as a crucial building-block of fiction. It is the moment at which a character understands that the illusions under which he or she has been operating are false and misleading.

The traditional plot-line：
Exposition (setting) ，Rising action (conflicts)，Climax，Falling action，Resolution (denouement).

Epiphany –Plot:
In modern fiction, the most common alternative to the conflict-plot is the epiphany-plot, that is actions are directed toward an epiphany—an intuition of truth revealed at or near the end of a story. In an epiphany-plot, the protagonist is relatively passive, acted upon rather than forcing events by his own will. Something happens to him, and as a result we are led to an insight either about him or about life in general. Epiphany-oriented stories are often about seemingly trivial incidents. The scenes or episodes become meaningful when they are tied together by the moment of knowledge, a moment which ultimately serves as the theme of a story.

Chekhovian mood
The mood created when seemingly unrelated details, monologues, characters' remarks form a unifying atmosphere, the existential basis of human life. The Chekhovian mood is that cave in which are kept all the unseen and hardly palpable treasures of Chekhov's soul, so often beyond the reach of mere consciousness. (Refer to Woolf’s “The Russian Point of View”: p5 “On the other hand, the method … among the Russians themselves.”)

3 stage of Chekhov’s writing:
He wrote stories while going into medical practice, from which he gained a wealth of knowledge that would later become evident in his fiction These early works, generally looked upon as the first major period of Chekhov's writing (1880–1887), did, however, display many Chekhovian narrative permutations in the short story genre: laconic introductions, impressionistic characterization through importance of detail, interior action, and surprise endings.
From 1888 to 1893 Chekhov was profoundly influenced by Tolstoy's ethics concerning morality, nonresistance to evil, and altruism; and this began the second epoch of Chekhov's fiction in which he experimented with lyricism and thematic contrasts: beauty, sensitivity, and life as opposed to hideousness, banality, and death. Later he rejected Tolstoyanism as an insufficient response to human suffering. Yet Chekhov continues in this letter to shrewdly criticize Tolstoy for the “too theological” Resurrection, only just published.
This spiritual upheaval brought about Chekhov's third creative era during which he produced his most complex and unique short stories and dramas. The journey produced in Chekhov a concern for social issues such as the injustice, corruption, and violence of Russian society.
Even though Chekhov has been viewed as an utter pessimist, largely due to his realistic portrayal of Russian society during an era of imminent revolution, his personally expressed view was one of uneasy optimism with regard to social progress and scientific advancement. Chekhov's literary artistry, combined with his medical knowledge and insight into human textures, resulted in short stories that have altered the narrative standards for an entire literary form.

Eugene Gladstone O'Neill’s achievement
n an American playwright, and Nobel laureate in literature (1936).
n Pulitzer Prizes for four of his plays: Beyond the Horizon (1920); Anna Christie (1922); Strange Interlude (1928); and Long Day's Journey Into Night (1957). O'Neill is credited with raising American dramatic theater from its narrow origins to an art form respected around the world. He is regarded as America's premier playwright.
n His plays are among the first to introduce into American drama the techniques of realism, associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish playwright August Strindberg. His plays were among the first to include speeches in American vernacular. His plays involve characters who inhabit the fringes of society, engaging in depraved behavior, where they struggle to maintain their hopes and aspirations but ultimately slide into disillusionment and despair. O'Neill wrote only one well-known comedy (Ah, Wilderness!). Nearly all of his other plays involve some degree of tragedy and personal pessimism.
n He was also part of the modern movement to revive the classical heroic mask from ancient Greek theatre and Japanese Noh theatre in some of his plays.

Career as a Playwright: Three Periods
His early realist plays utilize his own experiences, especially as a seaman. In the 1920s he rejected realism in an effort to capture on the stage the forces behind human life. His expressionistic plays during this period were influenced by the ideas of philosopher Freidrich Nietzsche, psychologists Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, and Swedish playwright August Strindberg. During his final period O'Neill returned to realism. These later works, which most critics consider his best, depend on his life experiences for their story lines and themes.

Play
As literary genre, drama has affinities with fiction, poetry, and the essay. Like fiction, drama possesses a narrative dimension: a play often narrates a story in the form of plot. Like fiction, drama relies on dialogue and description, which takes the form of stage direction, lines describing characters, scenes, or actions with clues to production. Unlike fiction, however, in which a narrative often mediates between us and the story, there is no such authorial presence in drama. Instead, we hear the words of the characters directly.
To gain the appreciation of the uniquely theatrical idiom of drama, we should read drama with special attention to its performance elements. We can try to hear the voices of characters, and imagine tones and inflections. We can try to see mentally how characters look, where they stand in relation to one another, how they move and gesture. We can read, in short, as armchair directors and as aspiring actors and actresses considering the physical and practical realties of performance.

Types of Drama
Tragedy and comedy have been represented traditionally by contrasting masks, one sorrowful, the other joyful.
It’s often less important to decide whether a play is predominantly comic or tragic, romantic or satiric, than to acknowledge its mixture of modes and to respond fully to the characters or situations it dramatizes. Some twentieth-century dramatists have found that tragicomedy is more suitable for representing a complex, uncertain, and often irrational world than either tragedy or comedy alone.

Elements of Drama
l Plot: Plot is the structure of a play’s action. Although it encompasses what happens in a play, plot is more than the sum of its incidents. Plot is the order of the incidents, their arrangement and form. Following Aristotle, we can distinguish between all the l