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.
Short Story Theories has been awarded the Javier Coy Biennial Research Awards 2013 for best edited volume. The goal of these awards is to promote high-quality scholarship in the field of American Studies, and to celebrate the originality and excellence of research carried out within SAAS. - www.saasweb.org
âViorica Patea, the editor of Short Story Theories - a Twenty-First Century Perspective, is to be congratulated. Any book that brings together renowned academic specialists in the genre, such as Charles May, author of seminal works like The Short Story: The Reality of Artifice, and editor of Short Story Theories and New Short Story Theories, or post-modern specialist, Farhat Iftekharuddin, with a range of talented scholars mostly working in Spain, is bound to be of interest to scholars specialising in narrative. [â¦]It is a recommendable addition to any short-story specialistsâ library.â
â John Style (Universidad Rovira I Virgili), in miscelánea: a journal of english and american studies 48, 2013, pp. 149-153
Acknowledgements
The Beginnings of the Short Story and the Legacy of Poe
Viorica Patea: The Short Story: An Overview of the History and Evolution of the Genre
Antonio López Santos: The Paratactic Structure in the Canterbury Tales: Two Antecedents of the Modern Short Story
Peter Gibian: Anticipating Aestheticism: The Dynamics of Reading and Reception in Poe
Erik Van Achter: Revising Theory: Poeâs Legacy in Short Story Criticism
The Linguistic Turn: Discourse Analysis, Cognitive Theories and Pragmatism
Per Winther: Frames Speaking: Malamud, Silko, and the Reader
Pilar Alonso: A Cognitive Approach to Short Story Writing
Consuelo Montes-Granado: Code-Switching as a Strategy of Brevity in Sandra Cisnerosâ Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories Borders, Postcolonialism, Orality, and Gender
Carolina Núñez-Puente: The Yellow Hybrids: Gender and Genre in Gilmanâs Wallpaper
Rebeca Hernández: Short Narrations in a Letter Frame: Cases of Genre Hybridity in Postcolonial Literature in Portuguese
MarÃa Jesús Hernáez Lerena: Short-Storyness and Eyewitnessing
Teresa Gibert: Margaret Atwoodâs Art of Brevity: Metaphorical Conceptualization and Short Story Writing
Farhat Iftekharuddin: Body Politics: Female Dynamics in Isabel Allendeâs The Stories of Eva Luna Postmodernism and the Twenty-first Century: Intertextuality, Minifiction, Serial Narration
Luisa MarÃa González RodrÃguez: Intertextuality and Collage in Barthelmeâs Short Fiction
Santiago RodrÃguez Guerrero-Strachan: Realism and Narrators in Tobias Wolffâs Short Stories
Lauro Zavala: The Boundaries of Serial Narrative
Charles May: The American Short Story in the Twenty-first Century
Notes on Contributors
Index