"Twayne's critical history of the short story. Bibliography: p. 146-162. A critical history tracing the evolution of American short fiction from its beginning as stereotypical allegories to 1850.
"Twayne's critical history of the short story. Bibliography: p. 146-162. A critical history tracing the evolution of American short fiction from its beginning as stereotypical allegories to 1850.
This is a concise yet comprehensive treatment of the American short story that includes an historical overview of the topic as well as discussion of notable American authors and individual stories, from Benjamin Franklin’s “The Speech of Miss Polly Baker” in 1747 to “The Joy Luck Club”. Includes a selection of writers chosen not only for their contributions of individual stories but for bodies of work that advanced the boundaries of short fiction, including Washington Irving, Sarah Orne Jewett, Stephen Crane, Jamaica Kincaid, and Tim O’Brien Addresses the ways in which American oral storytelling and other narrative traditions were integral to the formation and flourishing of the short story genre Written in accessible and engaging prose for students at all levels by a renowned literary scholar to illuminate an important genre that has received short shrift in scholarly literature of the last century Includes a glossary defining the most common terms used in literary history and in critical discussions of fiction, and a bibliography of works for further study
Accounts of the rise of American literature often start in the 1850s with a cluster of "great American novels"—Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Melville’s Moby-Dick and Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. But these great works did not spring fully formed from the heads of their creators. All three relied on conventions of short fiction built up during the "culture of beginnings," the three decades following the War of 1812 when public figures glorified the American past and called for a patriotic national literature. Decentering the novel as the favored form of early nineteenth-century national literature, Lydia Fash repositions the sketch and the tale at the center of accounts of American literary history, revealing how cultural forces shaped short fiction that was subsequently mined for these celebrated midcentury novels and for the first novel published by an African American. In the shorter works of writers such as Washington Irving, Catharine Sedgwick, Edgar Allan Poe, and Lydia Maria Child, among others, the aesthetic of brevity enabled the beginning idea of a story to take the outsized importance fitted to the culture of beginnings. Fash argues that these short forms, with their ethnic exclusions and narrative innovations, coached readers on how to think about the United States’ past and the nature of narrative time itself. Combining history, print history, and literary criticism, this book treats short fiction as a vital site for debate over what it meant to be American, thereby offering a new account of the birth of a self-consciously national literary tradition.
Literary History in America has been built around individual names, titles, and dates, such as the years in which significant works of fiction were published. Yet most of the fiction published from 1850 to 1900 first appeared in a number of installment formats. That books were first made available to the public in parts has been dismissed as an interesting but critically irrelevant fact of literary history, but now scholars recognize that modes of production shape literary meanings, not just for individual works, but in the larger culture as well. Lund explains how most American novels were published and read between 1850 and 1900, then provides the titles of several hundred serial works, their parts' divisions, and the dates of publication. Lund considers 69 authors and 285 titles, making America's Continuing Story the most complete study of its kind to date.
The Culture and Commerce of the Short Story is a cultural and historical account of the birth and development of the American short story from the time of Poe. It describes how America - through political movements, changes in education, magazine editorial policy and the work of certain individuals - built the short story as an image of itself and continues to use the genre as a locale within the realm of art where American political ideals can be rehearsed, debated and turned into literary forms. While the focus of this book is cultural, individual authors such as Edgar Allan Poe and Edith Wharton are examined as representative of the phenomenon. As part of its project, this book also contains a history of creative writing and the workshop dating back a century. Andrew Levy makes a strong case for the centrality of the short story as a form of art in American life and provides an explanation for the genre's resurgence and ongoing success.
Although the short story has existed in various forms for centuries, it has particularly flourished during the last hundred years. Reader's Companion to the Short Story in English includes alphabetically-arranged entries for 50 English-language short story writers from around the world. Most of these writers have been active since 1960, and they reflect a wide range of experiences and perspectives in their works. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and includes biography, a review of existing criticism, a lengthier analysis of specific works, and a selected bibliography of primary and secondary sources. The volume begins with a detailed introduction to the short story genre and concludes with an annotated bibliography of major works on short story theory.
Esteemed critic Blanche Gelfant's brilliant companion gathers together lucid essays on major writers and themes by some of the best literary critics in the United States. Part 1 is comprised of articles on stories that share a particular theme, such as "Working Class Stories" or "Gay and Lesbian Stories." The heart of the book, however, lies in Part 2, which contains more than one hundred pieces on individual writers and their work, including Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Richard Ford, Raymond Carver, Eudora Welty, Andre Debus, Zora Neal Hurston, Anne Beattie, Bharati Mukherjee, J. D. Salinger, and Jamaica Kincaid, as well as engaging pieces on the promising new writers to come on the scene.