The Classic Short Story, 1870-1925

The Classic Short Story, 1870-1925
Author: Florence Goyet
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
Total Pages: 199
Release: 2014-01-13
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1909254754

The ability to construct a nuanced narrative or complex character in the constrained form of the short story has sometimes been seen as the ultimate test of an author's creativity. Yet during the time when the short story was at its most popular - the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries - even the greatest writers followed strict generic conventions that were far from subtle. This expanded and updated translation of Florence Goyet's influential La Nouvelle, 1870-1925: Description d'un genre à son apogée (Paris, 1993) is the only study to focus exclusively on this classic period across different continents. Ranging through French, English, Italian, Russian and Japanese writing - particularly the stories of Guy de Maupassant, Henry James, Giovanni Verga, Anton Chekhov and Akutagawa Ry?nosuke - Goyet shows that these authors were able to create brilliant and successful short stories using the very simple 'tools of brevity' of that period. In this challenging and far-reaching study, Goyet looks at classic short stories in the context in which they were read at the time: cheap newspapers and higher-end periodicals. She demonstrates that, despite the apparent intention of these stories to question bourgeois ideals, they mostly affirmed the prejudices of their readers. In doing so, her book forces us to re-think our preconceptions about this 'forgotten' genre.

The Polyphonic World of Cervantes and Dostoevsky

The Polyphonic World of Cervantes and Dostoevsky
Author: Slav N. Gratchev
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 163
Release: 2017-12-06
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1498565549

This book is the first scholarly attempt to examine Don Quixote from the angle of dialogism and polyphony. To begin with, although Mikhail Bakhtin considered Dostoevsky the “creator of a polyphonic novel,” we believe that the first elements of polyphony can be observed in Cervantes’ Don Quixote. A preliminary objective will therefore be to articulate, without reducing the role of Dostoevsky in the creation of the polyphonic novel and relying on Bakhtin’s interpretation of polyphony, heteroglossia, and multivoicedness, that the polyphonic structure appeared and evolved to a state of relative maturity centuries before Dostoevsky. The book will subsequently explore how and why the polyphonic structure was born within the classic monophonic structure of Don Quixote, the ways in which this new structure positioned itself in relation to the classic monophonic one, and what relations it may be said to have established with it resulting in a unique amalgam—the hybrid semi-polyphonic novel. An overarching concern throughout the project will be to trace Cervantes’ search for new and more sophisticated expressive possibilities that the old, monophonic narration could not offer, while also shedding light on how Cervantes systematically and deliberately employed polyphonic structure in Don Quixote.

Polyphony in Fiction

Polyphony in Fiction
Author: Masayuki Teranishi
Publisher: Peter Lang
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2008
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 9783039113637

The overall aim of this book is the application of stylistic theories and frameworks to literary texts for a deeper level of interpretation. For this purpose the author conducted an analysis based upon the concepts of 'polyphony' and 'focalization' of three novels from different literary periods commonly labeled 'Pre-modernism', 'Modernism', and 'Postmodernism', namely, George Eliot's Middlemarch (1871-2), Joseph Conrad's Nostromo (1904), and Saul Bellow's Herzog (1964). Inspired by the work of Russian linguist-philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin the author attempts to clarify stylistically how polyphony is textualized in each novel and how each mode of polyphony reflects less parochial literary and cultural trends.

Borrowed Forms

Borrowed Forms
Author: Kathryn Lachman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 215
Release: 2014
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1781380309

A pioneering, interdisciplinary study of how transnational novelists and critics use music as a critical device to structure narrative and to model ethical relations.

The End of Vandalism

The End of Vandalism
Author: Tom Drury
Publisher:
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2015-02-24
Genre: Humorous stories
ISBN: 9781910400050

A contemporary classic of American fiction

Bakhtin and his Others

Bakhtin and his Others
Author: Liisa Steinby
Publisher: Anthem Press
Total Pages: 172
Release: 2013-03-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0857283103

‘Bakhtin and his Others’ aims to develop an understanding of Mikhail Bakhtin’s ideas through a contextual approach, particularly with a focus on Bakhtin studies from the 1990s onward. The volume offers fresh theoretical insights into Bakhtin’s ideas on (inter)subjectivity and temporality – including his concepts of chronotope and literary polyphony – by reconsidering his ideas in relation to the sources he employs, and taking into account later research on similar topics. The case studies show how Bakhtin's ideas, when seen in light of this approach, can be constructively employed in contemporary literary research.

Two Girls, Fat and Thin

Two Girls, Fat and Thin
Author: Mary Gaitskill
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2021-04-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0141993960

The intense, caustically funny first novel from the bestselling author of Bad Behaviour 'Dark, menacing and original' Joanna Briscoe, Guardian Dorothy Never - fat - lives alone in New York, eats and works the night shift as a proofreader. Justine Shade - thin - is a freelance journalist who sleeps with unsuitable men. Both are isolated. Both are damaged by their pasts. When Justine interviews Dorothy about her involvement with an infamous and charismatic philosophical guru, the two women are drawn together with an intense magnetism that throws their lives off balance. Mary Gaitskill's first novel is an intense, darkly funny and caustic portrayal of loneliness and the search for intimacy. 'What makes her scary, and what makes her exciting, is her ability to evoke the hidden life, the life unseen, the life we don't even know we are living' Parul Sehgal, The New York Times

The Art of the Novel

The Art of the Novel
Author: Milan Kundera
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 180
Release: 2023-06-27
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 006329074X

“Incites us to reflect on fiction and philosophy, knowledge and truth, and brilliantly illustrates the art of the essay.” — The New Republic "Every novelist's work contains an implicit vision of the history of the novel, an idea of what the novel is. I have tried to express the idea of the novel that is inherent in my own novels." — Milan Kundera Kundera brilliantly examines the evolution, construction, and essence of the novel as an art form through the lens of his own work and through the work of such important and diverse figures as Rabelais, Cervantes, Sterne, Diderot, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Musil, Kafka, and perhaps the least known of all the great novelists of our time, Hermann Broch. Kundera's discussion of his own work includes his views on the role of historical events in fiction, the meaning of action, and the creation of character in the post-psychological novel.

Linguistic Polyphony

Linguistic Polyphony
Author: Henning Nølke
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2017-04-18
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9004341536

Linguistic polyphony is an utterance act theory (la linguistique de l’énonciation) and is a French specialty. It deals with the numerous points of view that are likely to be communicated through an utterance. The book introduces utterance act theory and polyphony as such, but most especially focuses on the Scandinavian variant of polyphony, ScaPoLine. ScaPoLine is a formal linguistic theory whose main purpose is to specify the instructions conveyed through linguistic form for the creation of polyphonic meaning. The theoretical introduction is followed by polyphonic analyses of linguistic phenomena such as negation, mood, modality and connectors, and of textual phenomena such as represented discourse and irony. The book suggests how ScaPoLine could offer new insights within cross-linguistic and interdisciplinary studies.

Don Quixote

Don Quixote
Author: Slav N. Gratchev
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
Total Pages: 309
Release: 2017-11-06
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 1611488583

This book is a unique scholarly attempt to examine Don Quixote from multiple angles to see how the re-accentuation of the world’s greatest literary hero takes place in film, theatre, and literature. To accomplish this task, eighteen scholars from the USA, Canada, Spain, and Great Britain have come together, and each of them has brought his/her unique perspective to the subject. For the first time, Don Quixote is discussed from the point of re-accentuation, i.e. having in mind one of the key Bakhtinian concepts that will serve as a theoretical framework. A primary objective was therefore to articulate, relying on the concept of re-accentuation, that the history of the novel has benefited enormously from the re-accentuation of Don Quixote helping us to shape countless iconic novels from the eighteenth century, and to see how Cervantes’s title character has been reinterpreted to suit the needs of a variety of cultures across time and space.