136

IX THE EPIC, THE DRAMA, AND THE NOVEL 153

X THE NOVEL, THE NOVELETTE, AND THE SHORT-STORY 168

XI THE STRUCTURE OF THE SHORT-STORY 184

XII THE FACTOR OF STYLE 201

INDEX 221

INTRODUCTION

I

In our time, in these early years of the twentieth century, the novel
is the prosperous parvenu of literature, and only a few of those who
acknowledge its vogue and who laud its success take the trouble to
recall its humble beginnings and the miseries of its youth. But like
other parvenus it is still a little uncertain of its position in the
society in which it moves. It is a newcomer in the literary world;
and it has the self-assertiveness and the touchiness natural to the
situation. It brags of its descent, although its origins are obscure.
It has won its way to the front and it has forced its admission into
circles where it was formerly denied access. It likes to forget that
it was once but little better than an outcast, unworthy of recognition
from those in authority. Perhaps it is still uneasily conscious that
not a few of those who were born to good society may look at it with
cold suspicion as though it was still on sufferance.

Story-telling has always been popular, of course; and the desire is
deep-rooted in all of us to hear and to tell some new thing and to
tell again something deserving remembrance. But the novel itself, and
the short-story also, must confess that they have only of late been
able to claim equality with the epic and the lyric, and with comedy
and tragedy, literary forms consecrated by antiquity. There were nine
muses in Greece of old, and no one of these daughters of Apollo was
expected to inspire the writer of prose-fiction. Whoever had then a
story to tell, which he wished to treat artistically, never dreamed
of expressing it except in the nobler medium of verse, in the epic,
in the idyl, in the drama. Prose seemed to the Greeks, and even to
the Latins who followed in their footsteps, as fit only for pedestrian
purposes. Even oratory and history were almost rhythmic; and mere
prose was too humble an instrument for those whom the Muses cherished.
The Alexandrian vignettes of the gentle Theocritus may be regarded as
anticipations of the modern short-story of urban local color; but this
delicate idyllist used verse for the talk of