Short Story Theory at a Crossroads PDF Download

Author: Susan Lohafer
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780807115862
Category : Nouvelle
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Author: Farhat Iftekharuddin
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 9781617034800
Category : Authors, American
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Here twenty-one interviews (eighteen with contemporary writers and three with scholars of the short story) reveal the demanding and exhilarating requirements the short story imposes upon its practitioners. Although amateurs delight in writing stories, form proves to demand a master touch, like that of the interviewees.

Author: R. Neil Scott
Publisher: Timberlane Books
ISBN: 9780971542808
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 1098

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Publisher: Brill
ISBN: 9401208395
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Short Story Theories: A Twenty-First-Century Perspective problematizes different aspects of the renewal and development of the short story. The aim of this collection is to explore the most recent theoretical issues raised by the short story as a genre and to offer theoretical and practical perspectives on the form. Centering as it does on specific authors and on the wider implications of short story poetics, this collection presents a new series of essays that both reinterpret canonical writers of the genre and advance new critical insights on the most recent trends and contemporary authors. Theorizations about genre reflect on different aspects of the short story from a multiplicity of perspectives and take the form of historical and aesthetic considerations, gender-centered accounts, and examinations that attend to reader-response theory, cognitive patterns, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, postcolonial studies, postmodern techniques, and contemporary uses of minimalist forms. Looking ahead, this collection traces the evolution of the short story from Chaucer through the Romantic writings of Poe to the postmodern developments and into the twenty-first century. This volume will prove of interest to scholars and graduate students working in the fields of the short story and of literature in general. In addition, the readability and analytical transparence of these essays make them accessible to a more general readership interested in fiction.

Author: Susan Lohafer
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421429195
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description
The short story has been a staple of American literature since the nineteenth century, taught in virtually every high school and consistently popular among adult readers. But what makes a short story unique? In Reading for Storyness, Susan Lohafer, former president of the Society for the Study of the Short Story, argues that there is much more than length separating short stories from novels and other works of fiction. With its close readings of stories by Kate Chopin, Julio Cortázar, Katherine Mansfield, and others, this book challenges assumptions about the short story and effectively redefines the genre in a fresh and original way. In her analysis, Lohafer combines traditional literary theory with a more unconventional mode of research, monitoring the reactions of readers as they progress through a story—to establish a new poetics of the genre. Singling out the phenomenon of "imminent closure" as the genre's defining trait, she then proceeds to identify "preclosure points," or places where a given story could end, in order to access hidden layers of the reading experience. She expertly harnesses this theory of preclosure to explore interactions between pedagogy and theory, formalism and cultural studies, fiction and nonfiction. Returning to the roots of storyness, Lohafer illuminates the intricacies of classic short stories and experimental forms of surreal, postmodern, and minimalist fiction. She also discusses the impact of social constructions, such as gender, on the identification of preclosure points by individual readers. Reading for Storyness combines cognitive science with literary theory to present a compelling argument for the uniqueness of the short story.

Author: Kristjana Gunnars
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 9789042016835
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Mavis Gallant has been a leading literary figure in Canada since her first short story, published in 1951, and has grown to be considered internationally as a modern master of the genre. Her writing is nuanced, sensitive, gifted, deep and concise. She leaves everything open for the hidden potential that can always be discovered. Times change; society, history, politics may develop out of recognition. Cultures metamorphose. Literary landscapes and theories are renewed. But the classics of our time stay where they are, pillars of that which is solidly about us. Mavis Gallant's work is of that calibre: her writing will remain interesting and relevant no matter what else happens. This book is an exploration of what Gallant's readers are thinking now: where they place her in the panorama of literature and what meaning she has for them now. Scholars continue to probe into the stories, their characters, the capsules of history they present, and continue to find them challenging. As with Shakespeare, no amount of scrutiny will yield the final answer. That is how complex Gallant's writing is. Especially now, when the positioning of her characters is a more prominent condition in general, we need to review Gallant's artistic insights. As Francine Prose says in Harper's Magazine: Gallant's cast of characters are a "motley assortment of refugees, fugitives, and travelers" and "displaced persons scrambling on the margins of a society they will never belong to." This is the modern condition. As with other great writers, Gallant shows herself to be prophetic in cutting down to the roots of the sensibility of our era. We are reading her work, and we are thinking about it and talking about it. This book is part of that large conversation. Contributors are: Neil Besner, Di Brandt, Nicole Côté, John Lent, Gerald Lynch, Maria Noëlle Ng, Peter Stevens, Simone Vauthier, Per Winther.

Author: Michael J. Collins
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009292854
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 411

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Book Description
This Companion offers students and scholars a comprehensive introduction to the development and the diversity of the American short story as a literary form from its origins in the eighteenth century to the present day. Rather than define what the short story is as a genre, or defend its importance in comparison with the novel, this Companion seeks to understand what the short story does – how it moves through national space, how it is always related to other genres and media, and how its inherent mobility responds to the literary marketplace and resonates with key critical themes in contemporary literary studies. The chapters offer authoritative introductions and reinterpretations of a literary form that has re-emerged as a major force in the twenty-first-century public sphere dominated by the Internet.

Author: M. Bostrom
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230607489
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
This book reveals a female sexual economy in the marketplace of contemporary short fiction which locates a struggle for sexual power between mothers and daughters within a larger struggle to pursue that object of the American dream: whiteness.

Author: Ann-Marie Einhaus
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107084172
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
This Companion provides an accessible overview of the contexts, periods, and subgenres of English-language short fiction outside of North America.

Author: Charles May
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136747885
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 149

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Book Description
The short story is one of the most difficult types of prose to write and one of the most pleasurable to read. From Boccaccio's Decameron to The Collected Stories of Reynolds Price, Charles May gives us an understanding of the history and structure of this demanding form of fiction. Beginning with a general history of the genre, he moves on to focus on the nineteenth-century when the modern short story began to come into focus. From there he moves on to later nineteenth-century realism and early twentieth-century formalism and finally to the modern renaissance of the form that shows no signs of abating. A chronology of significant events, works and figures from the genre's history, notes and references and an extensive bibliographic essay with recommended reading round out the volume.