On The Anderson's Short Story " Manifestations "

In the introduction to Winesburg, Ohio, Malcolm Cowley stated that "he was a writer's writer, the only storyteller of his generation who left his mark on the style and vision of the generation that followed." That comment reminds us that appreciators of Anderson include not just readers and critics but writers. He takes the story cycle and makes it into a new form for the novel. He also creates the modern American style of poetic realism, a style distinguished by colloquial idioms, repeated phrases, the use of ordinary subjects, a natural lyricism, all voiced by a compassionate and observant young reporter. Unfortunately, what ensuing writers saw as essential and worthy of emulation were not what critics dubbed as primary. Recent critics are more eager to reduce Anderson's works into the methodologies successively fashionable, i.e. feminism, extentialism and structuralism. In this sense, the qualities that makes Anderson's works altogether young, lie not in the his artistic practices but in his offering the trial field for the latest literary theory to be transplanted. Thus the writer of this thesis will take the ambitious task of identifying the revolutionary nature of Anderson's works and the implement of Anderson's shaping principle in his short stories.Anderson is never a self-conscious theorist, but his statements about art are consistent and constructive. He laments the usual approaches to the American short story, by distinguishing what he called "form" from the previously established notions of plot. However, he never bothers to specify his "form", but referring to it as " a difficult and evasive thing to arrive at" or just "the depth of one's feeling". Thus we begin our discussion with the theoretical clarification of Anderson's conceptions of the new "form" for short stories. Then we try to elaborate how Anderson infuses a new life into short story from the perspective of the poetic construct of his works. To be more specific, the focus of study is on how Anderson employs the poetic devices to construct the story, generate the meanings and evoke empathy. Meanwhile the writer finds that Anderson's gravely lyrical expression also approximates the beauty, typical of natural poetry. In the last part, through our investigation of the shifts or violation of point of view, the writer justifies Anderson's manipulation and rejects the established conception that Anderson's lyrical form has its weakness, i.e.. his lack of detachment. The writer holds that Anderson not only tells us a story, but exposes the creation of a story. By doing so, Anderson's evocative story invites readers to feel into, not just to feel along, with the state of mind and emotions of the grotesques. The engagement and control of a reader's sympathy and empathy with certain characters, and the establishment of his antipathy toward others, is the essential of Anderson's "form".