A Critical Study of Short-Story Writing in English with Special Reference to Indian Short-Story Writers Particularly R.K. Narayan | Original Article

ABSTRACT:

So far as a brief history of short story is concerned, it developed slowly in all the major languages of the world, in the respective countries from stories like the legends of ancient Greece, Rome and Scandinavia, Aesop’s Fables, and the tales told by Chaucer, Boccaccio and others. There were also the stories contained in the Bible and those of the Arabian Nights Entertainments. Similarly we have had in India stories which lie imbedded in the hymns of the Rigveda or scattered in the Upanishads and two epics, the stories which constitute the Panchatantra, the Hitopadesha, the Suka Saptati, the Dashakumara Charita, the Katha Saritsagara and the Vetalapanchavimshati in Sanskrit, the Buddhist Jataka, stories in Pali and a host of similar stories in our modern Indian languages. Most of these ancient and medieval tales were didactic in purpose and moral in tone. These series of events loosely strung together with no attention paid to the artistic principles of plot or characterization. They gave rise to short story first in the regional languages of the country and with the coming of English Education System, short story as a literary genre in English. Short stories of the modern type are a product of the 19th century. Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne were its masters in America. French and Russian masters of this art like Maupassant, Chekhov and others propelled the short story further on its way of progress by introducing into it naturalism and realism. Sir Walter Scott, Charles Dickens Mrs. Gaskell Thackery, Antony Trollope and R. L. Stevenson made the short story firmly established form of art in England capable of communicating varied impressions of life and evoking all kinds of emotions. Even writers like O’ Henry and Katherine Mansfield made their mark in literature only with their short stories. Hoffmann and Grimn made short stories popular in Germany. Thomas Hardy, Kipling, Galsworthy, H.G. Wells, Hemingway, Faulkner were its principal practitioners in the 20th century. All these writers, so different from one another in their outlook of life their temperament and their methods, have yet found in the short story one of the finest vehicles for communication of their experiences of life. Actually Rasipuram Krishnaswami Narayan is the most artistic writer that India ever produced. The bulk of his writings is very large including fifteen novels and eleven short stories collections, Next Sunday (1960) - a collection of essays and sketches, My Dateless Diary (1960) which is useful regarding his experiences with the people like Aldous Huxley and Greta Garbo, publishers, professors and students whom Narayan met during his first visit to U.S.A. In addition to this he edited a journal “The Indian Thought”. The short storis of of R.K. Narayan include Dodu and Other Stories (1943), Cyclone and Other Stories (1945), An Astrologer’s Day and Other Stories (1947), Lawley Road (1956), A Horse and Two Goats (1970), Malgudi Days (1982), Under the Banyan Tree and Other Stories (1985), The Grandmother’s Tale and Selected Stories (1993), The Watch Man, and Fruition Forty. Narayan hated present system of education and felt that it hampered the free thinking and natural play of fancy. In fact, his short stories reflect the real Indian sensibility with perfect harmony of style and subject. The authenticity and realistic narration actually come from his objective and detached spirit with which he writes.