22-11-2023

NEW CONDITIONS MODERN SHORT STORI ES

• Larger part of society becomes middle class and is educated, new patterns of employment, and of work +
leisure hours which allow for educated and refined pursuits of literature, music, fine arts, theatre.
• New spaces for public discussion – salons, coffee houses, clubs
• Increasing numbers of book-sellers
• Circulating libraries allowed expansion of readership to non-aristocratic middle classes,
• Leisure and access allowed middle-class women to read and also write novels which dominated the 19th
century (Emily Bronte, Anne Bronte, Jane Austen, George Eliot)
• Reviews of novels appeared in journals, increasing the collective critical engagement with literary output
• Novels concerned with representing middle-class life, values, focussed on the individual protagonist in a
social setting, themes of marriage, inheritance
• This combination of themes can be seen in the way the novels begin
• The rise of modern short stories began from the trend of producing literary fairy tales
• Literary fairy tales modified the received folktales of oral storytelling : they retain fairy tale
elements but added new elements, individual characters became more defined
• In them psychological and social explorations of how and why characters act the way they do.
• The plot becomes concerned with the individual fate of a group of characters, family, rather
than the collective fate or consequences
• Individual may not be an important person or leader of society but rather an ordinary person
of the middle class; these stories perform a role in socializing people into newly emerging social
norms of bourgeois life, and of “national identity”, as well as of new norms of reason,
industrialization, new gender roles.
• Fairy tales become an explicit theme inside the story and are discussed by the characters in the
light of new concerns such as “fantastic vs. scientific”, “imagination vs. reality”; “reason vs.
madness”

1 2

E. T. A. HOFFM A N (1 77 6 “DER SANDMANN” – THE

- 1 82 2) SANDMAN (1816)
• Published as part of a collection of stories titled Nachtstücke vol. 1 (night
pieces)
• Born in Königsberg (Prussia at that
Pre-figures many formal and thematic concerns of later novels like Mary
time, now a part of Russia and •
Shelley’s Frankenstein, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula
renamed Kaliningrad) • Explicit combination of Fairy tale elements (marvelous) with scientific
theme
• Civil servant
• These elements are also explicitly discussed by the story’s characters, i.e.,
• Music composer and conductor, they are thematized
influences by Mozart • The narrating style of is hybrid, experimental and self-conscious; the
theme of writing and literary creation is also explicitly thematised
• Theater director • The story deliberately leaves us in doubt and suspension about some parts
of the plot (what actually happened?) and identity of some characters (was
• Earned money by publishing his Coppelius also Coppola, were they both sandman?)
stories • The narrator directly addresses the reader and raise question of stylistic
choices of the author, and interpretative challenges for the reader

3 4
 22-11-2023

CHARACTERS
(THE FAMILY AND FRIEND CHARACTERS (CONT.)
CIRCLE)
– OVERLAPPING, REPEATING MOTIFS
• Nathaniel (student of science, obsessed with
the dark fairy tale elements, the Lawyer/Smith Coppelius – also sandman??
•
supernatural and occult)
• Clara (the names means “clear”, rational, • Father/Smith – like Coppelius, therefore also
caring, model of the good, virtuous young sandman??
woman, but also with new characteristic,
she is not a dumb house-wife, but • Lensmaker Giuseppe Coppola: is he Coppelius?
outspoken and argumentative) Is he sandman?
• Lothar
• Scientist Prof. Spalanzani – is he like
• Mother (an older generation) Nathaniel’s father?
• Nurse
• Seigismund
• Narrator (also friend, but unnamed)

5 6

C O N F L I C T WI T H S C I EN C E ,
C O U P L I N G W I T H S C I EN C E

SAN ITY, INSANITY, I MAGIN ATION

• Olympia – mount Olympus; the abode of
• Explicit themes of the first letter through which the story is begun gods, unreachable, remote; if she is god-
• The power of stories, folktales, fantastic creatures over our imagination is like then is it in the sense of the dark
acknowledge – how should these older elements of belief and magic be forces or in the sense of god’s superior
accommodated in our thinking, by our reason, in a new age where science rationality, Newton’s god as clockmaker);
was questioning even the belief in god’s creation of the world? This is a doll = automaton
genuine problem being explored in the story, not just Nathaniel’s obsession • The whole society in that town is fooled
with a fairy tale character called sandman
by Olympia in the party – a satirical
• The new discussions of childhood – how does man outgrow the stage of comment on the wider inability to decide
childhood (dependency on adults and their stories, fear) into a rational – it is not just Nathaniel who got fooled
adult who can make reasonable decisions and control his/her own mind?

7 8

CHARACTERS (THREE
MODELS OF WOMANHOOD)
• Mother (an older generation)
• Nurse
• Clara (the names means “clear”, rational, caring, model of the
good, virtuous young woman, but also with new characteristic, she
is not a dumb house-wife, but outspoken and argumentative)
Olympia (the name refers to mount Olympus in Greece; does
•
represent a feminity that is very different from Clara or similar to
Clara, or both?);
• The other men and women, couples of the town described after
Olympia’s struth was discovered – why are they anxious about
how they will recognize each other as genuinely human? To do so
means to recognize men as “men” and women as “women” of a
certain type – there is yet no model of “mankind” as such.
Recognition depends on socially prescribed roles
9 10
THE THEME OF “READING” –
how to approach stories? especially “uncanny” stories
• How should the writer/narrator tell a story about magic
and madness without producing the same effect on the
reader as the nurse’s stories had on Nathaniel?
• How should readers approach Nathaniel? With sympathy
(it could be me?) or with criticism? Therefore, Clara is one
model for any reader of the story (we come to the same
conclusion as Clara or Lothar); but we are also fascinated
by the story (so another model of readership is Nathaniel
and the Narrator himself who wants to re-create a vivid
story
11
22-11-2023
DOL L OR AUTO M ATO N
–
• is it less than human, or is it superior
to human (as the search for advanced
robots shows?)
• What is the difference between natural
and artificial human beings, or
humans created by humans
(Frankenstein)
• Who is the monster – Olympia, or her
human creators?
MARVELOUS, UNCAN NY, FANTASTI C
• Marvelous – supernatural elements believed to be supernatural
• Fantastic or uncanny – marvelous or supernatural elements which are
ultimately explained rationally (as illusion or insanity); they are felt as
strange and disturbing until the point when explanation removes the fear
that there is actually something supernatural
• “Fantastic” (new definition according to Todorov) – when we cannot
conclude whether the concrete events in the story are actually supernatural
or actually delusional (medical/rational explanation)
THEREFORE : Hoffmann generates an effect of suspension or hesitation
for the reader, we cannot decide of Sandman was real or not.
12