INTRODUCTION TO MODERN
SHORT FICTION
Pettie, Nashe and Steele
LECTURE PLAN
Overview of this term’s stories and literary
movements.
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General themes for linking the stories.
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Discussion of Pettie, Steele and Nashe.
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2014
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THEMES
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TERM OVERVIEW AND KEY
OVERVIEW OF THE TERM
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Week 2 – Romanticism and the Gothic
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Week 3 – C19th and C20th Gothic
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Week 4 – Naturalism
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Week 5 – Realism and the real
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Weeks 7 + 8 – Modernism
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Weeks 9 + 10 - Postmodernism
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2014
Week 1 – bridging the gap between Renaissance
and nineteenth century.
AIMS OF THE TERM
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To give an understanding of the different literary
movements of this time span.
To link the different stories together thematically.
To relate the second term’s stories to the first
term’s work.
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2014
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To provide an understanding of how the short story
genre changed over the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries.
GENERAL THEMES FOR THE TERM
The individual in society
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How does the individual fit into society?
How does the individual identify him/herself?
How important is the individual’s point of view?
Issues of gender
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How are relationships and marriage depicted?
What expectations does society have for male and
female characters.
What happens to those who transgress society’s
rules?
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2014
•
GENERAL THEMES FOR THE TERM
Methods of narration
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Who is narrating whom?
What is the relationship between the author, the
narrator and the reader?
Who is in control of the narrative?
Reality and fiction
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How do these concepts relate to each other?
Is it possible to convey reality through literature?
What constitutes ‘realism’?
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2014
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GENERAL THEMES FOR THE TERM
The nature of short fiction
These general themes will underpin the
lectures, structure the seminars and form
the
basis for the essay and exam questions.
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2014
How does the genre work?
 How have ideas about the function of short fiction
changed over time?

Or, 300 Years of Prose in 50 minutes
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FROM THE RENAISSANCE TO THE
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
MEDIEVAL LITERATURE AND
PROSE
 What
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Fiction in prose was very unusual - prose had
a marginal literary status compared to poetry.
Prose was usually written in Latin not the
vernacular.
Medieval prose texts were usually utilitarian,
ie. practical manuals, religious tracts or
journals – all about educating the reader.
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2014
was the medieval view of prose in
literature?
RENAISSANCE LITERATURE AND PROSE
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Lots of early prose fiction ‘disguised’:
Biography
• A translation of another work
• A found manuscript
• Sequences of letters (epistolary novels)
•
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2014
•
Prose more involved in storytelling but
the author often distances themselves
from the narrative with a frame device or
disclaimers.
GEORGE PETTIE (C.1548-1589)
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2014
“If it were meet for mortal creatures to complain of
their immortal Creator, then truly may we justly
prepare complaint against our maker, for that of all his
creatures he hath made man most miserable. Herbs,
trees, and plants, he hath framed without sense,
whereby they neither feel the force of winter’s blasts,
neither the fire of summer’s blaze [...] but man he hath
made subject to infirmities of the body, to miseries of
the mind, to all storms of strife and pangs of pain.”
Catherine Parr
Unknown artist
c.1545
King Henry VIII
After Hans Holbein the
Younger
c.1536
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2014
Charles Brandon
Unknown artist
c.1540-1545
PETTIE, LYLY AND EUPHUISM
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Use of alliteration
Extended similes or allusions
Very artificial and affectedly elegant language.
This style was later parodied by Shakespeare for
his more ridiculous or artificial characters.
Why use euphuism at all?
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2014
Euphuism was a popular style of the late C16th
and early C17th, epitomised by Pettie and
continued by John Lyly, noted for:
Queen Elizabeth I ('The
Ditchley portrait')
by Marcus Gheeraerts
the Younger
c.1592
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2014
THOMAS NASH (1567-1601)
Nashe, Nashes Lenten
Stuffe (1599)
On Hellespont, guilty of true-love's
blood,
In view and opposite two cities stood,
Sea-borderers, disjoined by Neptune's
might;
The one Abydos, the other Sestos
hight.
At Sestos Hero dwelt; Hero the fair,
Whom young Apollo courted for her
hair,
And offered as a dower his burning
throne,
Where she should sit for men to gaze
upon.
The one dwelt at Abidos in Asia, which
was Leander; the other, which was
Hero, his Mistris or Delia, at Sestos in
Europe, and she was a pretty pinckany
and Venus priest; but an arme of the
sea diuided them: it diuided them and
it diuided them not, for ouer that arme
of the sea could be made a long arme.
In their parents the most diuision
rested, and their townes that like
Yarmouth and Leystoffe were stil at
wrig wrag, & suckt fro their mothers
teates
serpentine hatred one against each
other.
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2014
Marlowe, Hero and
Leander (1598)
NASHES LENTEN STUFFE (1599)
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Reflects Renaissance impulse to challenge myth
and social heritage – all about innovation and
adventurous writing.
Mocks how utilitarian earlier prose texts were –
Nashe is suggesting that in order to survive,
prose literature needs to evolve rather than just
aping previous traditions.
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2014
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Nashe’s language is full of neologism – is
challenging stability of language.
THE INFLUENCE OF PETTIE AND NASHE
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Inventive use of language atypical though – have
more in common with Joyce’s Ulysses than
literature of C18th or C19th.
Pettie and Nashe not interested in
characterisation – again at odds with overall
development of short fiction (and the novel).
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2014
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Both writers show the importance of imaginative
expression in early prose fiction – not about truth
or orderliness.
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2014
King Charles I
Anthony Van Dyke
c.1637
Oliver Cromwell
Robert Walker
c.1649
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2014
King Charles II
John Michael White
c.1660-1665
Barbara Palmer (née Villiers),
Duchess of Cleveland with her
son, Charles Fitzroy, as Madonna
and Child
by Sir Peter Lely
c.1664
Sir Richard Steele
By Sir Godfrey Kneller
1711
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2014
RICHARD STEELE (1672-1729)
‘A PAPER’ FROM THE SPECTATOR (1711)
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2014
I was this morning walking in the Gallery, when Sir
ROGER enter’d at the end opposite to me, and
advancing towards me, said, he was glad to meet me
among his Relations the DE COVERLEYS, and hoped I
liked the conversation of so much good Company, who
were as silent as my self. I knew he alluded to the
Pictures, and as he is a Gentleman who does not a little
value himself upon his ancient Descent, I expected he
would give me some Account of them.
CONCLUSIONS
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Renaissance prose can be quite experimental in
form and use of language.
Seventeenth-century prose more functional and
less flamboyant – Puritan effect.
Early-mid eighteenth-century prose still quite
‘flat’ and prosaic, less experimental.
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2014
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Renaissance prose often disguises storytelling as
something else (mythology, biography, history,
etc)