A History of Story-telling: Studies in the development of narrative

A History of Story-telling: Studies in the development of narrative

This is a spring day, and I am writing in a flood of sunlight in front of a brown French inn. Above my head there is the dusty branch of a tree stuck out of a window, the ancient sign that gave point to the proverb, 'Good wine needs no bush.' Good books, I suppose, need no prefaces. But honest authors realise that their books are never as good as they had planned them. A preface, put on last and worn in front, to show what they would have liked their books to be, is the pleasantest of their privileges. And I am not inclined to do without it. A book that calls itself a history of a subject with as many byeways and blind alleys as exist in the history of story-telling, is precisely the kind of book that one would wish one's enemy to have written. Everybody who reads it grumbles because something or other is left out that, if they had had the writing of it, would have been put in. And yet in the case of this particular book (how many authors have thought the same!) criticism[viii] of omissions is like quarrelling with a guinea-pig because it has not got a tail. It is not the guinea-pig's business to have a tail, and it is not the business of this book to be a chronicle, full of facts, and admirable for reference. That place is already filled by Dunlop's History of Fiction, and, in a very delightful manner, by Professor Raleigh's English Novel. The word history can be used in a different sense. The French say that such an one makes a history of a thing when he makes a great deal of talk about it. That is what I set out to do. My business was not to be noting down dates and factsthis book was published in such a year and this in the year preceding. I was to write with a livelier imp astride my pen. The schoolmaster was to be sent to steal apples in the orchard. I was to write of story-telling as a man might write of painting or jewellery or any other art he loved. I was to take here a book and there a book, and notice the development of technique, the conquests of new material, the gradual perfecting of form. I would talk of old masters and modern ones, and string my chapters like beads, a space between each, along the history of the art. Well, I have fait une histoire, suggested mainly by the masterpieces that I love, and without too much regard for those that happen to be loved by[ix] other people. And now that it is done, I think of it sadly enough. It should have been so beautiful. When I see an old church, like the priory church at Cartmel, standing grey and solemn in the mist above the houses, or hear an old song, like 'Summer is icumen in,' or see a browned old picture, like Poussin's 'Bergers d'Arcadie,' I feel that these things have meant more to man than battles. These are his dreams and his ideals, resting from age to age, long after the din of fighting has died and been forgotten, recorded each in its own way, in stone, in melody, in colour, and in the tales also that, changing continually, have 'held children from play and old men from the chimney-corner,' the dreams lie hid. What a tapestry they should have made. For the story of this art, or indeed of any art, is the story of man. Looking back through the years, as I sit here and close my eyes against the sunlight, I see the hard men and fierce women of the Sagas living out their lives in the cold and vigorous northPippin, the grandfather of Charlemagne, sticking his sword indifferently through the devil, Beaumains and his scornful lady riding through the green wood. In the dungeon of the tower sits Aucassin sorrowing for Nicolete his so sweet friend. Among the orange-trees on the Italian[x] slope the gold-haired Fiammetta watches for her lover. With battered armour and ascetic face Don Quixote, upright in his saddle, rides on the bare roads of Spain, dreaming of Dulcinea del Toboso. Gil Blas swindles his way through life and comes out top as an honest rascal will. Clarissa sits in her chamber blotting with tears her interminable correspondence. Tom Jones draws blood from many meaner noses. My Uncle Toby looks, not in the white, for the mote in the Widow Wadman's eye. Mrs. Bennet begs her husband, to 'come and make Lizzy marry Mr. Collins.' Old Goriot pawns his plate and moves to cheaper and yet cheaper rooms to keep his daughters in their luxury. Raphael, nearing death, watches the relentless shrinking of the morsel of shagreen. There falls the House of Usher. There floats the white face of Marie Roget down the waters of the Seine. Quasimodo leers through the rosace; Mateo Falcone feels the earth with the butt of his gun and finds it not too hard for the digging of a child's grave; Clarimonde throws her passionate regard across the cathedral to the young novice about to take his vows; and, with a clatter of hoofs, the musketeers ride off for the reputation of the Queen of France. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 62129
Author: Ransome, Arthur
Release Date: May 14, 2020
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Illustrator: Gavin, J