Description
Book SynopsisThis new general introduction emphasises the importance of the short story to an understanding of modern fiction.In twenty succinct chapters, the study paints a complete portrait of the short story - its history, culture, aesthetics and economics. European innovators such as Chekhov, Flaubert and Kafka are compared to Irish, New Zealand and British practitioners such as Joyce, Mansfield and Carter as well as writers in the American tradition, from Hawthorne and Poe to Barthelme and Carver.Fresh attention is paid to experimental, postcolonial and popular fiction alongside developments in Anglo-American, Hispanic and European literature. Critical approaches to the short story are debated and reassessed, while discussion of the short story is related to contemporary critical theory. In what promises to be essential reading for students and academics, the study sets out to prove that the short story remains vital to the emerging culture of the twenty-first century.
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements; List of Illustrations; Preface; 1: Origins: From Folk-Tale to Art-Tale; 2: Riddles, Hoaxes and Conundrums; 3: Memory, Modernity and Orality; 4: Poe, O. Henry and the Well-Made Story; 5: Economies of Scale: The Short Story in England; 6: Brought to Book: The Anthology and Its Uses; 7: Between the Lines: Dissidence and the Short Story; 8: Enclosed Readings: The Short Story and the Academy; 9: Modernism and the Short Story; 10: The Short Story Cycle; 11: Character Parts: Identity in the Short Story; 12: Localities: Centres and Margins; 13: Tales of the City; 14: Romance and the Fragment; 15: Ghost Stories and Other Hauntings; 16: Popular Short Fictions; 17: The Experimental Text; 18: Postmodernism and the Short Story; 19: Minimalism/Dirty Realism/Hyperrealism; 20: Voyages Out: The Postcolonial Short Story; Bibliography; Index.
