STORY-TELLING
With high esteem and full of respect I greet a genuine story-teller; with intense gratitude I grasp him by the hand.—Froebel
With high esteem and full of respect I greet a genuine story-teller; with intense gratitude I grasp him by the hand.
—Froebel
The school is joining hands with the children for fuller recognition of the story and story-telling.
Note, by the way, that it is with the children. In an elder day grown-ups, too, yielded themselves to the witchery of the story. But printing and the book banished the wandering story-teller; with a little progress in science came recoil from the superstitions and absurdities of the folk tale; the increasing complexity of life bred in the superficial thinker contempt for the unperplexed nursery fable; the intellectual pedant found it distressingly naïve; pressure of affairs robbed the busy man of any leisure for it. So, among peoples advancing in civilization, the grown-ups gradually left the story more and more to the children. And the children, wise youngsters that they are, have never allowed themselves to outgrow it.
Is it not delightful to note that learning is bringing the adult back to the story? The trend of thought to-day, urging him to look to the natural beginnings of things, is taking him back to thestory. The historian searches it for early glimpses of fact; the philosopher sees lasting wisdom in it; the literary seer marvels at the truth and beauty of fairy-tale symbols of life; the busy man of affairs accompanies his children to juvenile drama and nonsense opera. The art of story-telling itself is again finding an audience among men and women, as well as children. Best of all, the school, directing its effort toward the natural development of the young child, is pressing the educational properties of the story.
Reiteration of these properties now is timely. Psychology is throwing clearer light on the education of the feelings and the taste; the story should be helpful here. The thoughtful in the community are urging more attention to the spiritualizing and humanizing subjects in the courses of study; the story belongs in this class. Other favorable present conditions will appear as the merits of the story are briefly set forth.
The story and story-telling will
(1)Give pleasure.(2)Stir and direct the imagination.(3)Arouse and direct the feelings.(4)Cultivate the taste.(5)Help to shape thought and language mode.(6)Stimulate and direct potential literary creativity.(7)Serve as foreword for book-study of literature.(8)Give knowledge of life.
(1)Give pleasure.
(2)Stir and direct the imagination.
(3)Arouse and direct the feelings.
(4)Cultivate the taste.
(5)Help to shape thought and language mode.
(6)Stimulate and direct potential literary creativity.
(7)Serve as foreword for book-study of literature.
(8)Give knowledge of life.
(1)The story will give pleasure.Educational thought is growing more and more cordial toward this value. Undisturbed by any charge of “soft pedagogy,” it finds wholesome pleasure, not merely relaxing, but constructive, building toward physical health, mental brightness, and moral virtue. Here is the story’s opportunity. Every one admits it is pleasure-giving. The stern-minded among us must realize that this is its deepest educational value. It is from the good pleasure the child gets from the story that will ripen good taste, good will, good effort, and all the other goods some teachers and parents regard as more substantial merit. Besides, joy appears to be here to stay. To attempt to take it out of the plan of things is, to say the least, short-sighted. American civilization is looking hopefully to the school for better national standards of pleasure. The school is under obligation to educate the children to enjoyment of wholesome pleasure.
(2)The story will stir and direct the imagination.We do not yet grant in practice the importance of the imagination. We do not purposefullyexercise it, as we do, for example, the reason. We say glibly that imagination is at the root of the successful man’s arrival at material profit, of the explorer’s discovery and the practical scientist’s invention, of the poet’s song and the philanthropist’s vision of a state of society in which the kingdom of heaven will be nearer at hand; but we give little or no training to the imagination. Here again is the story’s opportunity. Through the story the interpretative story-teller may give the imagination consistent exercise.
(3)The story will arouse and direct the pupil’s feelings.The school to-day is emphasizing the necessity of educating the heart, the climactic third of the three great H’s,—the Head, the Hand, and the Heart. And psychologists are telling us that to educate a child to be kind, unselfish, filial, reverent, gentle, courageous, good-tempered, to educate him to admire goodness, justice, valor, to be sensible of beauty, to aspire and make effort toward excellence, is as practicable as to train him to do or to make something. It calls for more delicate but not different treatment; working not by dictation, but by magnetic suggestion. The story-teller may render a great service to the individual and to the community by helping to form right feeling-habit.
(4)The well-chosen story will cultivate the taste.Psychology is urging early direction also of the æsthetic sense. The story-teller, through her own joyous response to beauty, has it in her power to awaken and direct the children’s appreciation of beauty. It is she, too, who must help to lay the foundation for that better taste in novel or play that America eagerly desires, and that publisher and playwright say they stand ready to satisfy as soon as the public arrives at it.
(5)The story will help to form the child’s thought and language habit.As this is the value most often acknowledged in classroom practice—though not always by the best methods—it is not necessary to do more at this point than restate it. Mastery in thought and language is far-reaching usefulness, affecting individual growth and social harmony. The story, because of its easy, more or less artless composition and graphic diction, lends itself to starting right thought and language mode.
(6)Story-telling may help to stimulate and direct potential literary creativity.In spite of its breadth of view the school appears insensible to the rights of children born creative. The array of geniuses recently marshaled by a Chicago professor, that teachers pronounced hopeless dunces and in some cases drove from their classes, shouldset the school thinking. It is reaching out helpful hands to the little unfortunate ones, the blind and the deaf and the sick; but it continues to dismiss the divinely commissioned little sister or brother, with the platitude that his genius will survive if it be sufficiently sturdy. This is a specious half-truth unworthy of repetition. It is, besides, discrimination against the individual. The school is not meeting its obligation toallthe children of the community. It will not do to lay the blame to the community’s “commercialized” standards. In spite of apparent emphasis on the useful arts, the community would not lose from the varied web of its civilization the bright thread of painting and music and story. Maturing thought is convincing it that the fine arts are finely utilitarian. Here, again, is the story’s opportunity. The simple materials and childlike fancy in it may stimulate gradually and naturally play of the creative imagination.
(7)Story-telling should be at least foreword for book-study of literature.The thoughtful teacher of literature to-day finds in the classic story all the elements of her material, and sees in the child listening to it the most promising student of literature. At the freely sympathetic period the child becomes familiar with the inner life of language as used to represent fundamental motive, character, and action.This is precisely the kind of knowledge that he should bring as basis for study of more advanced literature. The printed page will be informed with lively meaning, to which his imagination, feeling, and æsthetic sense can respond. It is largely the school’s neglect of oral foundation in literature, which, by the way, should not be confined to the lowest grades, that is at the root of feeble appreciation in book-study of literature.
(8) The story holds in it a greater value, as much greater as life is than literature;it will give knowledge of life. The writer might have said experience of life, because of the child’s strong tendency to be and to do what attracts him. Students of literature, to-day, are urging that it is not a mere “polishing” study, but the substantially useful subject from which we may get clear and inspiring knowledge of life. They would have literature recognized as the reflection of life, idealized, it may be, but therefore stronger reflection. As life is the occupation that all of us, no matter what our special vocation may be, must engage in together, a study that throws light on it is indispensable. Here is a great opportunity for the story. Every genuine story, sense or nonsense, is a glimpse of life, which will early give guiding knowledge and experience.
The story-teller cannot, by the way, afford to ignore the evil in life. You may have read the story of Kipling’s “kid”; how the parents in fond but foolish love for their only son shut away from him all knowledge that evil has come into the world, and how the son, grown to manhood, enters army life, where he meets his first temptation and falls. The moral of the tale is obvious. Though it is wise to keep in the wake of their experience with evil, the story should help to provide the children with knowledge and modes of conduct for the situations of real life. The cunning story-teller, presenting this or that bit of life, from which he has not made the mistake of taking out the evil already within the child’s experience or presently to be met, touches the child into recoil from evil and into admiration and imitation of the triumphant way of virtue.
The story should, however, oftener engage children’s attention with good, rather than evil, as the central, active force in life. And the story told to the growing boy or girl, and to the youth, should prompt him to fine and finer endeavor. It is a fatal error to assume that teachers and parents cannot help to raise the community’s standards, that the best the rising generation may carry out from home and school is negative prudence, readinessto accept questionable social practices and ideals, that they themselves may achieve worldly success. If each generation does not leave the world a little better for its part in it, it has lived in vain, and its “guides, philosophers, and friends,” the parents and teachers of it, have denied their office. The story helping toward this kind of constructivity should lead. It is to the habit formed in its children that society must look for higher standards of living.
The story will widen the child’s outlook on life. On the wings of the word the listener may fly away to the uttermost bounds of the earth. In the story world he, if poor, may be rich; if sad, merry; if inarticulate, he may find expression.
Though it is not exhaustive, this is an imposing array of reasons for admitting the story to unquestioned educational dignity. If the school feel the need of broad, scholarly precedent, it may find it in the work or in the recorded opinions of such seers as the Lambs, Longfellow, Carroll, Hawthorne, Scott, Stevenson, Browning, Ruskin, Froebel, Emerson. As yet story-telling is largely left optional with the teacher. Should it not be made a delightful school requirement? It addresses itself, it is true, mainly to the æsthetic taste and the feelings, it does not guarantee consequent action.But give it place early enough, and, if it must bring it, the other good effect will be added unto it.
The best reason for admitting the story to scholastic dignity still remains the best, its lasting charm for the children.
We appear to be coming to the agreement that we should tell the children many of the old, old stories and some of the new, many stories from the world of the imagination, some from the real world; stories that will aid them in interpreting their world, themselves, other children, some grown-ups, nature; stories that will direct aright the imagination, the sympathies, and the taste; playful stories and more serious, sensible and nonsensical; short stories and longer; stories to be told over and over again, stories to be told in passing. To meet the child’s and later the girl’s and boy’s changing tastes and interests, and the needs of their developing imagination and sympathies, our choice should embrace, besides a great many others that as yet have eluded classification, fairy tales, fables, myths, legends, romances, tales of adventure, stories of animal life, child life, growingboy and girl life, stories of great men and women.
Some teachers find it hard to see any educational value in play-stories like “The Three Bears,” nonsense stories like “Chicken-Licken,” and drolls, or farce “funny” stories like “Lazy Jack.” They do not get the child’s point of view. They are disturbed by the apparently idle pleasure or extravagance of them. “Chicken-Licken” appears to be nothing but driveling nonsense. The writer has no desire to attempt to turn it into sense nor to press unduly the claim of this particular type of story. But why not let it in as a nonsense tale, an opportunity for giving the mind a frolic? This is advanced by some students of the tale as its possible origin. It may be thought of as a reflection in literature of the naïveté of childhood; it catches capitally its guilelessness in motive, social intercourse, and deed. Its form also is childlike. The child ekes out invention in the manner of the tale, by the open artifice of cumulation and repetition. Or the story may be dignified into literary introduction to that type of classic which records the very common human situation, “much ado about nothing.”
The same teachers are disturbed also by the ethical code of many of the folk tales; they find itcrude and fleshly. It deals in large and sense-delighting rewards. But may it not be possible that the child must be allowed time to grow to a more discriminating standard of conduct and a finer kind of satisfaction?
It is to be hoped, however, that even then the child will retain his capacity for laughing at merry play and hearty comedy. Laughter is good for the world. It is a tonic to the emotions, and regeneration to the spirit, spurring it to fresh and better effort; it is a sign, too, of broadening imagination and sympathy. The man that has no laughter in him is like Shakespeare’s man that has no music in him, “fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils. Let no such man be trusted.” Most stories will give the children a more reserved pleasure, happy mental and æsthetic satisfaction; some a fine gladness and exaltation. But let us not be too narrow to admit the wholesomely “funny” story.
The over-strained, anæmic, goody-good story is likely to breed up a generation of canting hypocrites. The little child is much occupied, it is true, with the task of being good, and he is a great admirer of the good people in the stories. There is room in children’s literature for the rather obviously moral tale, if it be not too often presented and if it be really charming. From this point of view, ConstanceD’Arcy Mackay’s book of plays called “The House of the Heart and Other Tales” is a suggestive contribution to children’s drama.
For the younger children the story with plenty of action, often with animals as characters, and with happy ending has proved best. The story with less joyous “inevitable ending” is, however, not to be excluded; life is not to be distorted. Besides, not all sad-ending stories are negative in effect, leaving the child knowing only “what not to do” rather than “what to do.” A story like Hans Andersen’s “Daisy,” for example, induces constructive inference and effect.
Story-telling is one of the most spontaneous of the social arts. Yet it is an art, governed by at least partially discerned principles. Analysis of them will be helpful to the story-teller, but only in so far as he grasps the fundamental principle that story telling among the speech arts, like wood-carving among the manual arts, indeed, even to a greater degree, must be kept what it is by nature, apparently without art, naïve and unelaborate.
The story-teller must wholly take into himself the life of which he speaks, must let it live and operate in himself freely.—Froebel.
The story-teller must wholly take into himself the life of which he speaks, must let it live and operate in himself freely.
—Froebel.
The story-teller must himself possess the story before attempting to give it to another. This sounds obvious, but it is not granted in practice. Much poor schoolroom story-telling is evidently “unprepared.” People born with a natural turn for story-telling, and those who in their childhood heard real story-telling, need to make less preparation than others; but all story-tellers need to make preparation. Much of the story-telling masquerading as such is quackery, showing neither genius nor study. Even in the very early days when formal instruction in story-telling was unknown, the wandering story-teller watched constantly to make his performance tell, modifying his method in the light of its effect upon his hearers. Later on, in the Middle Ages, the court story-teller was professionally trained (and also handsomely remunerated and given the place of honor at the banquet). Intellectual study of the story will not, by the way, destroy spontaneity. It may dash it temporarily. Coleridge tells us that his professor in poetics did not hesitate to subject to the scrutiny of the microscope the most delicate flowers and fruits of fancy.(English in the schools has suffered from the results, in its teachers, of the “literary affectation,” which condemns attempt at definite English scholarship.) Let us give all outlet possible to natural ability, and to the inspiration of time and audience; but let us not neglect the forethought of preparation. Shakespeare did not, Sir Henry Irving did not, Duse does not. Some teachers fall back on reading the story; this has its own place, but it cannot take the place of telling. The belief that story-telling should be studied is gaining ground in a most convincing quarter, the home. The office of motherhood is deeply associated with things done instinctively right; but the mother herself at mothers’ clubs and elsewhere is seeking instruction in this chief mother art.
To get the story, relax your imagination and sympathy and let them go out to it. Sit down with it and read and re-read it, or listen to it, and brood upon it until you absorb its life, until you think and feel and move in its being. Conjure up its scene and people and happening.
Some may find imagining difficult. Perhaps it was neglected in their training. Let them not be discouraged; each succeeding attempt to realize scene and person and action will make the task easier.
You may, by the way, study the story in either of two places: a lovely natural spot, where under the lure of century-wisdomed tree, or amid sweet smells, or flash of birds, or beckonings of shadows, you may catch the glamour of the old-world setting in the stories; or in a city street swarming with children, old-faced before their time. The environment in the second studio, far from destroying your effort to grasp the wonder-world of the story, will make special appeal to you. Here you will feel divine compulsion to make child life more abundant: to bring from story land bright hosts of gay fairies and gentle children and brave knights and real as well as fiction heroes as saving company for the little worldlings, to make them chuckle with a child’s hearty glee at trick of goblin or sprite, or quake with delicious tremor at the tread of the terrible giant. You will find that the “toughest,” most crabbed city urchin will succumb to the witchery of the fairy folk, to the charm of beauty and the fair play of kindness and honesty.
The child’s world reflected in the story is the right of the child in the city tenement district, and society’s hope for him. It is, by the way, no less the right of the rich child and no less society’s hope for him.
After you have let the story take possession ofyou, take possession of it. To take possession of the story,
(1)Seek its spirit and intention.(2)Grasp its elements; its setting, its action, its characters.(3)Master its workmanship, or its composition and style.
(1)Seek its spirit and intention.
(2)Grasp its elements; its setting, its action, its characters.
(3)Master its workmanship, or its composition and style.
Its spirit and intention.Students of folklore hesitate to impose on the folk tales ethical or æsthetical motive; but they would not object to our seeing in them, in addition to certain primitive ideas, this or that playful fancy or more serious reflection of life; in “The Elves and the Shoemaker,” for example, hearty testimony to the worth of honest effort, the record raised to some degree of æsthetic merit by the charm of elfin appreciation; in “Star Dollars,” crude sketch of childlike goodness and faith, the picture touched into beauty by the benediction of heaven; lovely symbol of gentle living, like “Diamonds and Toads”; sweet blossom of immortal beauty and goodness blighted by the withering poison of envy, yet triumphantly blooming, like “Snow White;” simple appreciation of kindness of heart, like the “Hut in the Wood;” idyl of the beauty and integrity of goodness, like “Beauty and the Beast;” in “The Straw, the Coal, and the Bean,” naïve history of amerry-tragic situation; in “The Wolf and the Seven Kids,” the happy triumph of mother wit sharpened by love. For the children they, as well as the more modern tales, must be kept direct, simple stories. But the student need not miss a broader significance. He can hardly fail to appreciate the analogies to human conduct so often implied in Hans Andersen’s tales, done, as in Dante’s great tale, with conscious intent. He must not, however, ask the children to probe for hidden meanings, and he must not strain at suggesting them in his interpretation. The story is not to be turned into an abstraction; its concreteness is the secret of its power to please and to move.
After you have thus characterized the story to yourself, grasp its elements: its setting, or time and place; its action; its persons, or characters. And cultivate sensibility to their appropriateness.
The setting.The lovely fairy romances, old and new, like “The Frog Prince,” “Cinderella,” Andersen’s “Princess on the Pea,” occurred in the all-possible “once upon a time,” or in that delectable bygone when “wishing was having,” or in such right good kingly times as Arthur’s or Charlemagne’s. Sometimes the place was an enchanted castle shut away behind a hedge of thorns and trees, in the very heart of a forest, a hedge thatsprang up in a quarter of an hour, with thorns long enough to impale unworthy suitors; sometimes it was the highroad out to the world, upon which many a stout hero set foot to seek fortune. The merry gallant history of “Tom Thumb,” fairy fledgeling, wizard-fostered, king’s jester and doughty knightling, is referred to the magical days of Merlin and the chivalrous court of Arthur. We find him, too, versatile little imp, in his mother’s practical pudding bowl, in the red cow’s mouth, in a giant’s stomach, inside a fish; and each place is capital setting for him. Who says that giants are figments of the imagination? The people of Cornwall record that it was in their land that Jack killed the giant, and they point out a castle built on a rock standing in the sea as the stronghold of the monster. (Let the folklorists find in this primitive belief, if they will; let us find, also, artistic fitness.) What a delightful plausibility the tale takes on from this minutely recorded geographical setting, as delightful in its way as the vague long ago and dim place of other tales! Here, in the apparently artless tale, is the artistic device by which Defoe hoodwinked the England of his day into believing that Robinson Crusoe was fact and not truer fiction.
Note the appropriateness in change of scene; Andersen’s “Ugly Duckling,” among the moderntales, affords a good study. The artistic principle is applied more naïvely in the old story of “The Hut in the Wood” at the transformation of the hut into a castle to be fit setting for the sovereign power and beauty of kindness; also in “Mother Holle,” at the emergence of the child from the dark well and darker despair into the lovely meadow where the sun was shining, and thousands of flowers were blooming, and wonderful little ovens and red apple-trees called out to her, and golden shower fell on her and glorified her. In “Dummling,” at the stage when enchantment is brought in, the scene changes completely to a stone castle in whose courtyard are stalls containing stone horses.
Note the narrative use made of setting. The appearance of the sea, in “The Fisherman and his Wife,” as the fisherman carries each succeeding wish of his wife to the flounder, does as much to tell the story as the action itself.
Setting, then, is part of the whole. It is not to be overdone, nor is any part in the simple story, but its appropriateness is worth appreciation.
The action.The action is of course the chief part of the story. The motive of the action is easy to find. But again note that it is faithful to life and that it paves the way for appreciation of the motives of greater literature. In the simple tales,as in the novel and the drama, the action arises from love, hate, envy, spirit of adventure, friendship, malice, spirit of fun and play. Grasp the details of the action. In some versions of “The Frog Prince” the falling of the princess’s golden ball into the well is made the occasion for the appearance of the magical frog, which, for the aid he offers, imposes the condition of companionship and love. The princess pretends agreement. Her repugnance to the frog becomes the complicating force. And (in some tales) her father’s insistence that she keep her promise to the frog makes all come out happily; the frog stands revealed a prince in disguise, and marries the princess. In “Dummling” the despised stupid third and youngest brother sets out to seek his elders; then come the three acts of unkindness he prevents; then the failure of the elders at the task set forth in the enchanted castle, and Dummling’s success, due to the aid of the creatures to whom he had shown kindness, followed by his triumphant marriage to the youngest and dearest of the princesses. In “The Cat and the Mouse in Partnership,” the story opens with the doubtful compact entered into by the mouse on the cat’s representation of friendship, and her agreement to his proposal that they lay by a pot of fat for the winter. The cat has the hardihood to proposethe church as the safest hiding place for the pot of fat, hypocritically saying that no one would dare steal anything from a church. Then comes the cat’s first “gulling” of the frank little mouse with his story of having been asked to be godfather to his cousin’s remarkable child. “Beauty and the Beast” is another good character study, and from an important point of view for the little child’s story a better one, as this time virtue is unmistakably triumphant.
The student will gradually develop sensibility to the typical materials of folk story: human difficulty overcome by supernatural aid; the task of guessing a name, or the forfeit of a child, as a condition for aid, as in “Rumpelstiltskin;” trial and triumph of the despised ugly third sister or stupid third brother; doughty deeds that overcome bulk of body with nimbleness of wit, as in “Jack the Giant Killer;” greed of wishing whose indulgence precipitates loss of all, as in “The Fisherman and his Wife;” reward of kindness to animals, as in “The Hut in the Wood.”
The characters.Characterize the people in the story. In their varied company is the story-teller’s opportunity to acquaint the child with the chief kinds of persons to be found in literature and life; the child himself, cherishing mother, doting grandmother,virile father sending his sons out to find their place in the world, loving brother and sister, gentle people, hateful people, ill-tempered people, cruel people, jealous people, kind people, wily people, frank people, brave people, cowards, old people, children, sad people, merry people. Besides these, animals, pigs and bears, cows and hens and goats, inhabit the child’s world side by side with man, helping the story to make its way to the child’s affections. Then there is the host of witching fairy folk: fairies, giants, elves, pixies, witches, goblins. Music as well as language has attempted to suggest them, and with surprising agreement in artistic convention. Language makes fairies light, airy, tripping; goblins, grotesque; so does music. Language makes the giant huge, clumsy, big-handed and big-footed, but stupid; Wagner gives ponderous musical motif to the dragon, the “laidly worm,” the giant of his music dramas, and also makes him conquerable.
The workmanship, composition, and style.Much story-telling is spoiled by disregard of thecompositionof the narrative. By composition here is meant what is meant in painting or sculpture, the arranging, or grouping, of the materials, to build out the whole.
The method of grouping in the folk story is apparent. At the beginning of the story are the timeand place, some of the principal characters, and the motive of the action. Next follows the action, easily separable into rise, course, resolution. In many of the stories, for example, in “The Frog Prince,” there is after the action an explanation of enchantment; and an assurance that all went well ever after or quaint formula like that parodied in “They stepped on a tin, and the tin bended, so my story’s ended,” whose purpose, similar to that of Shakespeare’s rhyming couplet in his earlier dramas, is to give conclusive ending to the tale. Like “Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch,” who stayed on at the theater after the curtain had gone down on the last scene, the children, though sensitive to artistic reserve, are not always satisfied with highly reserved ending.
The story-teller should cultivate sensibility to story-building; it is the creative principle of story-telling. It is really surprising how lacking the beginner is in consciousness of structure. He should study structure until he can feel the tale making: the scene putting in, the people coming in, the motive revealing itself, the action starting, and going forward until it arrives at climax and solution, the whole winding up with happy prophecy of the far future.
Grasp especially the composition of theaction.It is usually built on one of the following plans:
(a) The single line of sequence, as in Hans Andersen’s “Princess on the Pea,” or “The Sleeping Beauty,” or “The Frog Prince;”
(b) The three-parallel line—what the first did, what the second did, what the third did,—as in “The Golden Pears” and in “Dummling;”
(c) The balanced antithetical plan, two contrasting courses of action placed side by side,
as in “Mother Holle” or in “Diamonds and Toads.”
(d) The cumulative plan, as in “Henny-Penny,” “The Cat and the Mouse in the Malt House,” “The House that Jack Built,” “The Old Woman and her Pig.” Do not miss the increase in interest and suspense.
Note in the three-parallel structure the climactic “thirdness” and its distinguishing characteristic; it is the youngest and the stupid third member of the family who turns out to be the cleverest and most favored of fortune; it is Dummling who marries the sweetest princess; it is the woodcutter’s third daughter who proves considerate of the dumbanimals, frees the castle of enchantment, and marries the prince.
Note, too, that the old-world story-tellers were sensitive to the dramatic effect of the contrasts in life. The miller’s daughter, innocent victim of her father’s ambition, sits down in despair to weep over an impossible task, and “at this moment the door opens and in comes a comical little dwarf” who with three magical whirrs of the spinning-wheel turn a roomful of straw into gold. It is the very day of her fifteenth birthday that the princess must take to explore the castle and come upon unsuspected spinning-wheel with which to prick her finger that the witch’s prophecy may be fulfilled, but, as is the merry good luck of romance, it is on the last day of the hundred years that the prince goes hunting to spy, not deer, but the towers of the identical castle in which the Sleeping Beauty lies, inquires about it of everyone until he meets the very man who can tell him what “my father told me,” and rides off to awaken the princess. It is always so in literature sound at heart, whether it be in a Shakespearean comedy, in which cottages appear in the forest in the nick of time as night is falling and lovely ladies and gallant knights are footsore and weary; or whether it be in simple fairy tale abounding in porridge pots, appearing when folks are on thebrink of starvation and cooking like mad, “as if they would feed the whole world” at the magic words, “Little pot, cook,” or in frogs popping out of near by wells in time to say, “Your wish shall be fulfilled, within a year you shall have a little child,” or in small ovens and red apple-trees placed “conveniently low.” The scholarly student of narrative or dramatic technique recognizes this as what he callscomic reliefto offset the pathos of the situation; the student lacking this knowledge accepts with satisfaction the plausibleness of timely happening.
After this careful work read the story again for enriched appreciation of it. Now put the book away and go about your business.
By and by see whether you know the story. Let no mistrust born of book dependence and neglect of the constructive imagination daunt you. Boldly sketch in time and place, introduce the first characters, suggest the motive of the action, start the action, carry it forward to climax and solution, wind up the whole. Now criticise your product. Is it the thing you meant it to be? Thackeray tells us his characters and plots got out of his hands and finished themselves. Is it the tale as “’twas told to you,” is it an improved version, is it a new story? One and all may be in place.
Some will feel that they have spoiled the story. They have bungled the structure through unskillful placing, or omission of necessary details. They have dulled life, dimmed beauty, obscured truth for lack of words. Well, there is no harm done as yet. These students, studying again the parts in which they failed, will appreciate now more thoroughly play and interplay of character, detail and course of action, vivid word. The cat in “The Bremen Town Musicians,” they will note, is capitally described (in some accepted texts) as having a face that looked like “three days of rainy weather;” Snow-White and Rose-Red were “like the rose-bushes in their mother’s garden;” they will not miss in “The Cat and the Mouse” the cat’s sly description of the pot of fat and the apt names he gives his bogus godchildren. In this way the appropriate word or phrase will come to them easily.
The question often asked, “Am I to hold myself to the text?” is interesting. It applies of course only to artistic texts, not to formless source material. Some people contend that this destroys the spirit of story-telling, making the art mechanical instead of creative.
Story-telling is creative effort, never mere repetition of the letter. It is creative effort, whether you make live again something produced by another, ormake live more abundantly by perfecting matter and form produced by another, or make new life. The question cannot be answered offhand. If it were true that the text form, the composition and diction, in which you found the story, were the perfect reflection of its life and that the story suffered no change in your comprehension of it, and that it were your intention to pass it on without modification or loss to the child, and that he could receive it without change in form, then the answer appears to follow: you are to be faithful to the text. In some cases the form in which the folk tale is found has suffered through translation, in others it may be intrinsically faulty; in many texts of “The Frog Prince,” for example, the Iron John incident is too detached and very much out of perspective. The story-teller who can make it better should do so, or who feels prompted to give the children another product from old materials will use them, though the folklorists will forbid him to palm off his product as old-world lore. Any training in story-telling that does not give outlet and direction to such ability and to originality neglects an important obligation to the student. It is notable, by the way, that it is the student with the literary artist’s instinct who is surest to “get” the style of any good original he may be reproducing. Proper simplificationof standard texts and the question of adaptation to younger and older audiences will be considered later.
Are we not inconsistent in our attitude toward form in language? We profess to recognize reverently an intimate relation between the matter and the manner in the sculptor’s, the painter’s, the musician’s art. But we constantly deny any integrity to language as a medium of expression. We do not, to be sure, attempt to tamper with the form the great poets gave their message. Indeed we “get” the verse running through the simple prose tale, although it is scarcely less artless than is the prose. But everyone because he can speak in words appears to feel competent to tell the prose body of the stories in “his own words.” Now, every word in the folktale may not be so necessary to its thought as very minute details in Shakespeare’s or even in Kipling’s or Andersen’s or Stockton’s form are considered to his thought. But there is such a thing as folk-story style, easy, loose sentence liberally sprinkled withands andsos, picture-making word, distinctive epithet, recurrent jingle, rhythmic swing. It is surprising how insensible students are to it. Yet it is due largely, no doubt, to the best of all causes, the belief that the story is to be given living form by the teller. Dull rote memorizing will notof course do this. The method of study set forth suggests how the story-teller may easily develop sensibility to folk-story style and easily train himself to “do,” or “catch,” it.
Let us not be afraid of a due regard for form. Right attention to form is not testimony to the worth of the superficial. The poet says, “The soul is form and doth the body make.” Let us see to it that we make the language body of our story by clear reflection of its spirit.
The question of oral interpretation, or oral form, the more important aspect of form, while properly a matter to be settled by the student during the stage of preparation, is here more conveniently considered under the next head.
This is truly the stage of creation. No matter how familiar you made yourself with the story in the privacy of your studio, you will now find happening something surprising. The story will come to your own ears and stand revealed to your imagination with the joy of discovery. The truth is, it was made to be shared with another, and you hadn’t it at all until you gave it away. What spontaneity rewards you! How you find yourself risingto the occasion—your own latent capabilities, the expanding possibilities in the story, the response of your audience!
Let us take up the topic,telling the story, under the practical heads:
(1)Choosing or meeting story-telling time;(2)The story-teller’s part;(3)Controlling canons of the story-teller’s part.
(1)Choosing or meeting story-telling time;
(2)The story-teller’s part;
(3)Controlling canons of the story-teller’s part.
(1)Choosing or meeting story-telling time.“To everything,” says Ecclesiastes, “there is a season and a time for every purpose under the heaven ... a time to weep and a time to laugh ... a time to keep silence and a time to speak.”
Is there an ideal time for telling a story? Assuredly; at this time the story comes to the listener with more pleasure, or stronger appeal to the feelings. But the “pedagogical” story-teller, parent or teacher, must take care not to mistake suitable occasion. The error is not that the story-teller may have, like the Ancient Mariner, a tale of sin and virtue to tell to the soul that must hear it. To say that the story must not be narrowed to didactic purpose is not to exclude altogether the story that may work spiritual reformation. The trouble is that the story-teller sometimes precipitates irritation rather than reformation by untimeliness. Themoment when the child is defiant or angry and the teacher or parent cross is not the psychological moment for such a story. It is at the turn in the tide of feeling that the story-teller may send into the wavering stream the saving grace of the tale.
There are times when the pupils are “on” for a mental frolic; these are the times for the play or “funny” stories. Sometimes, in order to quicken desirable response, the teacher or parent will judge it better to run counter to the mood of the children. She will sharpen the wits of dull children with a humorous story, or broaden the horizon of the narrowly matter-of-fact with a tale of adventure or of supernatural occurrence. Celebrations or memorials call out appropriate stories. The early Hebrew father took advantage of his sons’ questions about the festivals celebrated in their midst to tell the great Bible story. The Christian Church sometimes narrates the lives of the saints to her children on feast days to inspire the heroism of holy living. Things observed in nature, and home and school circumstances, will suggest many stories. And when all has been said about special times, it remains true that almost any time in the wonder years of childhood is story time.
But the teacher may say, “Story-telling time means precisely eleven-fifteen on Tuesday morning;the individual teacher has nothing to say about it.” The thing to do, then, is to induce the story-telling mood at eleven-fifteen Tuesday morning. What we should urge here between ourselves is the obligation to give place heartily at this time to the story. No matter how ill things may have gone and how cross we ourselves may have become, we must now let pleasurable anticipation take possession of the classroom.
(2)The story-teller’s part.The rôle of story-teller is simple yet subtle, more easily shown than explained. The story-teller is recounter of a happening, real or fictitious, merry or pathetic, that because of its appeal to the imagination and sympathies has been given currency in language. To share with another the glimpse of life it gives the imagination, the feeling it arouses, the æsthetic satisfaction it yields, was man’s reason for telling it. The story-teller’s part, then, is so to employ and interpret the medium of currency as to free this force.
Beginning the story.The story-teller should begin the story with the air of having something interesting and enjoyable to tell. If the contents of the story had not been interesting, they would never have made a story; the story-teller may depend on this intrinsic interest. He should have also the airof leisure; story-telling is one of the social arts of leisure and pleasure; besides, stories record significant occurrences, which should be given the emphasis of time. His initial manner should give hint of the spirit of the particular story he is to tell. The first phrase, “There were five-and-twenty tin soldiers,” sounds the playful martial spirit of Hans Andersen’s “Brave Tin Soldier;” the story-teller echoes it in martial bearing and in martial swing and ring in his speech, in, of course, the playful manner of a story about a little toy soldier. Mother-love broods through the story of “The Wolf and the Seven Kids;” the story-teller suggests, in voice and eyes and fostering posture, its loving pride and anxiety. Should the story-teller begin in rather obvious make-believe-matter-of-fact style, his eyes hinting fun, the children will chuckle in delighted anticipation of a nonsense or a humorous story. The wholly impassive manner adopted by some story-tellers in telling “funny” stories to adult audiences will not do with children. The adult’s enjoyment consists largely in his ability to remake as fun what the teller is representing as sober fact. Children, because of their lack of knowledge and experience, need more leading. Stories like “The Three Bears” correspond in spirit to nursery rhymes like “This little pig went to market;” theyshould be kept as childlike, mimetic, rhythmic, and playful. Southey gives the key to the spirit of “The Three Bears” in the setting. Every detail shows how well he caught the child-note: interest in wild animals, the bear a favorite; tendency to dramatic mimicry; response to rhythm; pleasure in possessions, this very complete “house of their own,” kept by bears, delights the children. A hero story like “Jack the Giant Killer” calls for a bold spirit. “Snow-White and Rose-Red” sounds the domestic note: cheerful fireside group; mother reading from a “large book,” children spinning, animals lying near. The setting here, though long, may easily be made attractive by the story-teller’s own pleasure in every detail.
The characters also should be introduced with hint of their personality. “Snow-White and Rose-Red were as happy, as busy and cheerful,” says the story-teller, showing cheerful pleasure in them, “as any two children in the world.” “Snow-White,” softening voice and eyes, “was more quiet and gentle; Rose-Red,” adopting a livelier manner, “liked better to run about the fields and pick flowers and chase butterflies.” “There was once a widow who had two daughters; one of them,” says the story-teller, smiling in the pleasure goodness and beauty, whether physical or spiritual, always excitein us, “was pretty and industrious; the other,” voice and face expressing disapproval of her, “was ugly and idle.” “A certain man had a donkey,” says the story-teller, with such suggestion of possibilities in the donkey evident in forward posture, in face and voice, that the listener at once suspects that, as Hans Andersen would put it, that donkey “became worth talking about.”
The story-teller begins then, as both prophet and sibyl, telling yet, especially at this stage, not “giving it away.” He must let the story reveal and the child discover; this is the joy of it.
Building out the story.Having laid the foundation upon which he is to build the happening, the story-teller should, as a rule, in building fashion pause. He then enters upon the action, carrying it forward, slowly or rapidly, according as its course demands, arousing suspense and increasing the interest in the outcome. How he does this will be suggested farther on. As the story proceeds he must of course treat character consistently. Sensibility to the nature of the particular character he is interpreting will enable him to voice and conduct it appropriately. Nothing more than suggestion is in place. The story-teller’s fairy voice may be light and tinkling like silver bells, his witch made graphic through pointed, hag-like chin and fingers andstooped body, his fox smooth and sly, his wolf snarling, his giant, as said before, big-voiced and ponderous. He can hardly fail to catch the steely high voice and proud manner Hans Andersen intended for the vain but delightful Darning Needle.
After, as a rule, pausing to give effect to the climax of the action, the story-teller passes in many stories to a brief but clear explanation of enchantment, and winds up the whole happily, leaving the child supremely pleased.
(3)Controlling canons of the story-teller’s part.Some of the chief canons governing the story-teller aredirectness,spontaneity,graphicness,reserve,skill in the use of the voice,simplicity.
Directnessis the principle of immediateness, by virtue of whichstoryandlistenerare brought into contact. It has its roots in the social and magnetic nature of the art. In its fullest sense it is comprehensive of all the other canons.
Directness concerns both the outer and the inner self of the story-teller.
The part played by the outer self is simple. Before beginning his story the story-teller should “go to” and “gather” his listeners. He does this by assuming the physical position and mental attitude of communicator. A person who has anything to tell another that he thinks will move or pleasehim does not stand aloof. The story-teller should not stand aloof. He may place himself in front of his listeners, at such a point as will enable him to command all. Before beginning he will get the listening attention by invitation of posture and direct face to face look, or by the magnetic force of the story now animating his whole person. Some story-tellers then begin to address themselves to someone near by whom they feel to be the most responsive listener, or whom they wish to interest, then address a wider and wider circle until they are reaching everyone. Others project the story into the ears of someone in the middle of the group, making this the radiating point from which to grasp all.
The story-teller through his outer self must observe the principle of directness in another way. In looks and actions his external self must help to convey the spirit of the story: posture, facial expression, gesture, voice must not contradict but declare what the lips are saying. It is in recognition of the relation between the external self of the story-teller and his story that some story-tellers “make up,” or put on appropriate costume. This has its power and charm. But for the “everydayness” of story-telling in home and school it is undesirable, unnecessary, and impracticable. What isnecessary is something less troublesome but more important: such domination, or absorption, of the external self by the spirit of the story as will subdue it to the story-teller’s use. This will help to induce the right feeling response. Feeling, as everyone knows, is “catching.” Fun will call out fun; pathos, pathos; gladness at beauty, goodness, or truth, like joy. The whole being of the Ancient Mariner told his story. Simple stories do not demand emotional intensity, but the principle remains. The student will find it helpful to sit opposite Tadema’s “Reading Homer,” to get an idea of the recounter’s abandon.
The principle of directness as it applies through the inner self of the story-teller is as easy to understand. The story-teller must not allow any intruding mental state or circumstance, any intruding “self,” to come between the story and the listener. Such a self may be