Genre* Studies: Fiction
Abstracts of Articles, Journals, COCC Library Reference Works, Bibliography

URL of this webpage: http://www.cocc.edu/cagatucci/resources/genre.htm

MORE RESOURCES for Literary & Fiction Studies

*"GENRE:  A type of literary work, such as SHORT STORY, NOVEL, essay, play, or poem. The term may also be used to classify literature within a type, such as science-fiction stories or detective novels. In film, the term refers to a recognizable type of movie, such as a western or a thriller, that follow familiar NARRATIVE or visual CONVENTIONS" 
(Charters, "Glossary of Literary Terms," 983).

The Short Story Classics: The Best From The Masters Of The Genre
(Cyber Explorer, 2000) E-texts Online
http://www.geocities.com/short_stories_page/index.html

Abstracts of Articles

Allen, Glen Scott.  Rev. of Maupassant and the American Short Story: The Influence of Form at the Turn of the Century.  By Richard Fusco (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994).  Studies in Short Fiction 33.2 (Spring 1996): 307 (3pp).  Rpt. EbscoHost Academic Search Elite, Article No. 758332.  [Full Text available.]
From the review:  "In this well-researched and at moments insightful book, Richard Fusco argues that Maupassant's bad rap as first and foremost the inventor and disseminator of the "trick ending" is undeserved. What Fusco feels Maupassant does deserve is recognition as perhaps the single most important influence on American short story writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, particularly Ambrose Bierce, Kate Chopin, Henry James, and of course O. Henry."  Fusco differentiates among types of trick endings and "develops his own seven categories of stories--from the simplest (linear) to most complex (sinusoidal)--based on their varying 'placement and number of discovery points for the reader.' The first two chapters, in which Fusco limits himself to a thorough and interesting analysis of narrative structure in Maupassant, are the best of the book."

Clark, Miriam Marty. "After Epiphany: American Stories in the Postmodern Age." Style 27.3 (Fall 1993): 387(8pp.). Infotrac Expanded Academic ASAP Article A15473873.
Clark posits that "contemporary short stories do not inevitably advance toward and can no longer be read in terms of epiphany"--"that point of contact with meaning and wholeness which has stood so long at the center of our understanding of the genre" of the short story. "Coming to terms with the contemporary American short story and articulating new reading strategies adequate to it" require "a redefinition of the short story in its postmodern context." Such short stories challenge "conventional expectations about causality and closure." Such "fragments and wanderings"--no longer "oriented to...epiphany" or the "moment of truth"--have "become something else altogether." Many "little narratives of neorealism" working their way into the mainstream, even if not marked as "experimental" metafictions like the work of Barthelme and Coover, explore "the problematics of selfhood and meaning" determined by and isolated in language itself. [Clark marks Carver's "Cathedral" as one of the exceptions, moving "by way of talk toward revelation."] These "neorealist" stories revive "storytelling knowledge" and "small narrative units," and speak "the language of the labyrinth," "the small, the heterogenous, the plural"--not "the language of epiphany," "universal truths and eternal verities."

Conrad, Barnaby. "Endings." The Writer 108.3 (March 1995): 5(4pp).
Infotrac Expanded Academic ASAP Article A15473855.
"Brief Summary: The ending of a fiction story should maintain a consistency with the story, should fulfill the expectations of the reader [raised by the short story], and should be the 'right' ending for that particular story. Various elements of story endings, along with several examples [drawn from O. Henry, Jack London, Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Ambrose Bierce, Shirley Jackson, William Faulkner, Frank Stockton, Flannery O'Connor, F. Scott Fitzgerald], are discussed." Cora's additional abstract: Barnaby maintains, "Most good stories end the way they must end." "Satisfying" endings--whether happy or unhappy, completely surprising or fairly predictable, clearly stated by the author or ambiguous and left for the reader "to make up"--should "justify what has gone on before, and usually they stem from the character and actions of the protagonists" or sometimes the antagonists.

Hardy, Sarah. "A Poetics of Immediacy: Oral Narrative and the Short Story."
Style 27.3 (Fall 1993): 352(16pp). Infotrac Expanded Academic ASAP Article A15473855.
"The field of orality-literacy studies has helped broaden understanding in many disciplines, but it has not been introduced into discussions of the short story with any rigor." This oversight Hardy will address, while rejecting the common approach to the short story as "a kind of truncated novel." Instead, Hardy examines "an alternative model": the oral epic. Despite their many differences, short story and oral epic share "density of meaning" and create similar complex dynamics with their audiences.

May, Charles E. "Reality in the Modern Short Story." Style 27.3 (Fall 1993): 369(11pp).
Infotrac Expanded Academic ASAP Article A15473861.
"In the history of the development of short fiction, three major stylistic shifts have had far reaching generic effects: the humanizing of the allegorical romance in the Renaissance,...the psychologizing of the supernatural legend by the romantics in the early nineteenth century, best represented by the tales of Poe; and the lyricizing of the slice-of-life story by the realists in the early twentieth century, most clearly exemplified in the stories of Chekhov." May "explore[s] some generic innovations of the twentieth-century short story instituted by Chekhov, particularly what is meant by 'realism' in that form." May focuses on Chekhov, Hemingway and Carver as "self-conscious practitioners" of "a literary technique that insists on compression, a rhetorical method that reveals meaning by leaving things out, and a language style that creates metaphor by means of metonymy. Moreover, all three authors attempt to express inner reality by describing outer reality and frequently thematize the human dilemma of trying to say the unsayable."

Pasco, Allan H. "The Short Story: The Short of It." Style 27.3 (Fall 1993): 442(10pp). Infotrac Expanded Academic ASAP Article A15473895.
"Generic definitions based on devices, techniques, subject matter...have limited life and usefulness." Examining one of the short story's "essential, core characteristics"--that it "must be short"--Pasco sets out to answer the question, "'What happens because short stories are short?'" He examines the qualities of the genre in consequence of "being short"--"perhaps the most significant factor in the choices short-story authors make about how their creations are constructed." "One of literature's glories is in its authors' apparently unending ability to devise new ways of presenting their reality." But for practitioners of the short story, the genre's "brevity" is a "central quality," resulting in "a noticeable intensity."

Passaro, Vince. Rev. of The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien (Houghton Mifflin, 1990; Viking-Penguin, 1991). Harper's Magazine August 1999: 80(9pp).
Infotrac Expanded Academic ASAP Article A55266681.
The title is a misnomer: this article is less a review focused on O'Brien's collection than a more general critical appreciation of the "innovative and rich" short fictions emerging in the 1990s--set against a critical historical survey of the American short story, its major practitioners, periods, and ups and downs in the U.S. periodical and book market. The American short story today is judged "more various, more successfully experimental, more urbane, funnier, and more bitingly ironic than that written in the Hemingway tradition....more idiosyncratic in its voices, less commercial, and more expansive in its approach to the requirements of art." Passaro does call O'Brien's collection "complex and beautiful Vietnam soldiers' tales," playing with "the embattled terrain of a soldier's memory, with his embellishments of memories in conscious reconstructions--stories told, then corrected--to startling and intriguing effects in narrative and language."

Prince, Gerald. "The Long and the Short of It." Style 27.3 (Fall 1993): 325(5pp).
Infotrac Expanded Academic ASAP Article A15473845.
Prince presents seven generic features which comprise a "relatively standard definition" of the short story, "allow[ing] us to distinguish the short-story genre from a multiplicity of other (more-or-less related) genres": "a text must be short," it must satisfy "the requirements of narrativehood" and "storyhood," "[a]t least some" of its "situations and events must be fictional," "it must be written in prose," "[i]t must be 'literary,'" and it must be "autonomous." The bulk of the article is devoted to observations about the nature and functions of genre definitions.

Journals

These journals publish short story criticism fairly regularly:
American Short Fiction
Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction
Explicator
Fiction: A Magazine for the Art of Storytelling
Fiction International
International Fiction Review
Journal of the Short Story in English
Modern Fiction Studies
PMLA (Publications of the Modern Language Assocation)
Review of Contemporary Fiction
Studies in American Fiction
Studies in Short Fiction
University of Texas Studies in Contemporary Spanish-American Fiction

COCC Library Reference

COCC Library Online Catalog - Searchable by author, title, subject, keyword, & more:
http://libcatalog.cocc.edu/

Useful Biographical and Critical Reference Works in COCC Library's Reference collection:

Contemporary Authors Series (Detroit : Gale Research) Call Number Range: PN451.C - PN453.C

Contemporary Authors Bibliographical Series (Detroit, Mich. : Gale Research):
Call Numbers: PN81 .C65

Contemporary Literary Criticism (Detroit, Mich. : Gale Research):
Call Numbers: PN771 .C59

Contemporary Literary Criticism: Modernism through Poststructuralism (Detroit, Mich. : Gale Research). Call Numbers: PN94 .C67 1986

Critical Survey of Short Fiction Series, ed. Frank N. Magill (Englewood Cliffs, N.J. : Salem Press) Call Numbers: PN3321 .C7

Dictionary of Literary Biography Series (Detroit : Gale Research):
Call Number Ranges: PS129 - PS153 - PS228 - PS323 -PS374 - PS490

Dictionary of Literary Biography: Screenwriters Call Number Range: PN1998

Reference Guide to Short Fiction ed. Noelle Watson (Detroit : St. James Press, 1994). Call Number: PN3373 .R36 1994

Twentieth Century Authors: A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Literature, eds. Stanley J. Kunitz and Howard Haycraft (New York: H. W. Wilson Company, 1942). Call Number: PN771.K86

Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism Series (Detroit, Mich. : Gale Research):
Call Numbers: PN771 .G27

World Authors, 1950-1970; A Companion Volume to Twentieth Century Authors, ed. John Wakeman (New York, Wilson, 1975). Call Number: PN451 .W3

Bibliography

Aldridge, John. "The New American Assembly-Line Fiction." American Scholar 59 (1990): 17-38.

Argulo, Maria-Elena. Magic Realism: Social Context and Discourse. New York: Garland, 1995.

Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Ed. Michael Holquist. Austin: U of Texas P, 1981.

Bates, H. E. The Modern Short Story: A Critical Survey. Boston: Writer, 1972.

Beachcroft, Thomas Owen. The Modest Art: A Survey of the Short Story in English. London: Oxford UP, 1968.

Benjamin, Walter. "The Storyteller." Illuminations. Trans. Harry Zohn. Ed. Hannah Arendt. New York: Schocken, 1969. 83-109.

Bone, Robert. Down Home: A History of Afro-American Short Fiction from Its Beginnings to the End of the Harlem Renaissance. New York: Capricorn, 1975.

Bonheim, Helmut. The Narrative Modes: Techniques of the Short Story. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1982.

Borges, Jose Luis. Preface. Dr. Brodie's Report. By Jose Luis Borges. Trans. Norman Thomas di Giovanni. New York: Dutton, 1978.

Bruck, Peter. The Black American Short Story in the Twentieth Century: A Collection of Critical Essays. Amsterdam: Gruner, 1977.

Canby, H.S. The Short Story in English. New York: Holt, 1909.

Cassirer, Ernst. Language and Myth. Trans. Susanne K. Langer. New York: Dover, 1953.

Chekhov, Anton. Letters on the Short Story, the Drama, and Other Literary Topics. Ed. Louis S. Friedland. 1924. Rpt. New York: Dover, 1961.

Current-Garcia, Eugene. The American Short Story Before 1850. Boston, Twayne, 1985.

Frank, Joseph. "Spatial Form in Modern Fiction." The Widening Gyre: Crisis and Mastery in Modern Literature. 1963. Rpt. Bloomington: Midland-Indiana UP, 1968. 3-62.

Friedman, Norman. "What Makes a Short Story Short?" Modern Fiction Studies 4 (1958): 103-107.

Fusco, Richard. Maupassant and the American Short Story. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1994.

Gass, William. Fiction and Figures of Life. Boston: Nonpareil, 1958.

Gerlach, John. Toward the End: Closure and Structure in the American Short Story. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 1985.

Gold, Herbert. "The Novel and the Short Story: The Long and Short of It." Fiction of the Fifties. Ed. Herbert Gold. Garden City: Doubleday, 1959. 12-15.

Hanson, Clare. Short Stories and Short Fictions: 1880-1980. London: Macmillan, 1985.

Hanson, Clare, ed. Re-reading the Short Story. New York: St. Martin's, 1989.

Head, Dominic. The Modernist Short Story: A Study in Theory and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992.

Heller, Erich. "The Realistic Fallacy." Documents of Modern Literary Realism. Ed. George J. Becker. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1963. 591-98.

Howe, Irving. "Tone in the Short Story." Sewanee Review 57 (1949): 141-152.

Hutcheon, Linda. The Poetics of Postmodernism. New York: Routledge, 1988.

Lohafer, Susan. Coming to Terms with the Short Story. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1983.

Lohafer, Susan, and Jo Ellyn Carey, eds. Short Story Theory at a Crossroads. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1989.

Lukacs, Georg. The Theory of the Novel. Trans. Anne Bostock. Cambridge: MIT UP, 1971.

Lyotard, Jean-Francois. The Postmodern Condition. Trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: U of Minneapolis P, 1984.

Mann, Susan Garland. The Short Story Cycle. New York: Greenwood, 1989.

May, Charles. "The Nature of Knowledge in Short Fiction." Studies in Short Fiction 21 (1984): 327-338.

May, Charles E. The New Short Story Theories. Athens: Ohio UP, 1994.

May, Charles, ed. Short Story Theories. Athens: Ohio UP, 1976.

Moser, Charles A., ed. The Russian Short Story: A Critical History. Boston: Twayne, 1986.

O'Connor, Flannery. "Writing Short Stories." Mystery and Manners. Eds. Sally Fitzgerald and Robert Fitzgerald. New York: Farrar, 1969. 87-106.

O'Faolain, Sean. The Short Story. New York: Devin-Adair, 1964.

Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. New York: Methuen, 1982.

Pasco, Allan H. "On Defining Short Stories." New Literary History 22 (1991): 407-422.

Peden, Margaret Sayers, ed. The Latin American Short Story: A Critical History. Boston: Twayne, 1983.

Pratt, Mary Louise. "The Short Story: The Long and the Short of It." Poetics 10 (1981): 175-194.

Price, Martin. "The Other Self: Thoughts about Character in the Novel." Imagined Worlds. Eds. Maynard Mack and Ian Gregor. London: Methuen, 1968. 279-299.

Pritchett, V. S. "Short Stories." Harper's Bazaar 87 (1953): 31, 113.

Scholes, Robert, and Robert Kellogg. The Nature of Narrative. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1966.

Stevick, Philip, ed. The American Short Story: 1900-1945. Boston: Twayne, 1984.

Shaw, Valerie. The Short Story: A Critical Introduction. London: Longman, 1983.

Tallack, Douglas. The Nineteenth-Century American Short Story. London: Routledge, 1993.

Trask, Georgianne, and Charles Burkhart, eds. A Study of the Short Story. Cleveland: World, 1963.

Wain, John. "Remarks on the Short Story." Journal of the Short Story in English 2 (1984): 49-66.

Welty, Eudora. "How I Write." Understanding Fiction. Eds. Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren. 3rd ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice, 1979. 310-317.

Wharton, Edith. The Writing of Fiction. New York: Scribner's, 1925.

Williams, William Carlos. A Beginning on the Short Story: Notes. Yonkers: Alicat, 1950.

 

 

Fiction Studies (Eng 104)

PBS Hollywood Presents "Collected Stories"

TV> PBSOL>

High School

Wednesday, January 16, 2002 (9-11:00 pm)

This teleplay, written by Pulitzer Prize-winner Donald Margulies, tells

the story of the tumultuous relationship between a writer in her

sixties and her young protege, a graduate writing student. (CC, Stereo,

1 year)

Go inside the production at the companion site. Meet the actors and

learn more about the characters, access key scene studies, read about

life in New York's Greenwich Village in the 1950s and more.

http://pbs.org/hollywoodpresents/collectedstories/ 

(Available Friday, January 11)

This Week's PBS Video Special: American Experience "Return With Honor"

Video> PBSOL>

Middle/High School

Using first-person accounts and rare film footage, this film tells the

extraordinary and harrowing stories of several American soldiers who

were prisoners of war in Vietnam. If you recorded this film for

classroom use before December, 2000, the broadcast rights have expired

on your copy. To purchase a copy of the video with unlimited broadcast

rights, see:

Video: http://shop.pbs.org/products/AMER1210

At the companion site, participate in a forum with one of the soldiers,

explore a gallery of sketches illustrating one prisoner's experiences

as a prisoner of war, consult a timeline, and access an extensive

teacher's guide.

http://pbs.org/amex/honor/ 

 

 

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