The Cambridge Introduction to the Short Story in English

Abstract

The short story has become an increasingly important genre since the mid-nineteenth century. Complementing The Cambridge Introduction to the American Short Story, this book examines the development of the short story in Britain and other English-language literatures. It considers issues of form and style alongside - and often as part of - a broader discussion of publishing history and the cultural contexts in which the short story has flourished and continues to flourish. In its structure the book provides a chronological survey of the form, usefully grouping writers to show the development of the genre over time. Starting with Dickens and Kipling, the chapters cover key authors from the past two centuries and up to the present day. The focus on form, literary history, and cultural context, together with the highlighting of the greatest short stories and their authors, make this a stimulating and informative overview for all students of English literature.

As Crônicas Em Sketches by Boz, De Charles Dickens: Um Gênero Híbrido Que Retrata O Cotidiano Através Do Humor.

“…De acordo com George Gissing (2012, p. 07), Charles Dickens assinava os textos como "Boz" ou "Boses", que eram as formas como ele pronunciava o nome "Moses" (Moisés) quando criança. Outros autores da Era Vitoriana, além de Dickens, de acordo como Adrian Hunter (2007), como William Thackeray e Elizabeth Gaskell, dedicaram-se ao gênero crônica. Esses textos serviam como entretenimento e refletiam as características da sociedade nesse período, induzindo ao diálogo e reflexão de assuntos relevantes como hipocrisia religiosa e moral por meio de assuntos cotidianos.…”

Unexpected turns in lifelong sentimental journeys: redefining love, memory and old age through Alice Munro's ‘The Bear Came Over the Mountain’ and its film adaptation,Away from Her

“…The tendency of Alice Munro to defy patriarchal structures by challenging, as Adrian Hunter contends, ‘male narrational models’ and creating ‘types of female alterity … not by open opposition on male terms, but in ways that patriarchy itself does not conceive of’ (Hunter 2007: 176), is mirrored in Fiona's elusive yet delicately perceptible portrayal as a potentially recalcitrant ageing woman who, despite and through her incipient dementia, is granted narrative and fictionalised spaces of rebellion and resistance, not only as a deceived wife, but also as a lover and, by extension, as an individual. If the mastery of Munro's technique subtly imbues the intermittence of Fiona's memory with feminist overtones – which become more significant in the story every time that Fiona treats her husband with ‘a distracted, social sort of kindness’ as if he were a stranger to her (Munro 2001: 293) – Polley conveys the complexity of Fiona's portrayal throughout the film by means of Julie Christie's self-contained performance, which encompasses the paradoxes of Fiona's ‘direct and vague … sweet and ironic’ personality (Munro 2001: 277) through her control of the gaze and enigmatic smile.…”

The Poetics of House and Home in the Short Stories of Elizabeth Bowen

“…In this, they remind us of Woolf’s ‘sensitive people’ (Lodge 1977, 180), who transcend the objects around them through expansive flights of consciousness. This perspectival evocation of space is usually considered a hallmark of modernist fiction, since material reality functions as ‘a trigger to introspective voyaging and the dilation of subjectivity’ (Hunter 2007, 113).…”