Literary form, hierarchies and the meeting of two plots in Patrick Gale’s ‘A Slight Chill’

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Ue
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Literary Form ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Film Adaptation ◽  
Scholarly Attention

This article incorporates Gerald Prince’s and Caroline Levine’s work on form to reveal some of the innovations in Patrick Gale’s ‘A Slight Chill’ ([1996] 2018). This short story juxtaposes two antagonistic plots: the vampire Lotta Wexel’s gastronomic activities and her teacher Angel Voysey’s romance. By attending to, and drawing connections between, smaller forms (e.g. allusions and metaphors) and larger ones (plots and genre), I argue that we may better understand Gale’s project. Lotta’s plot effectively exposes and frustrates Angel’s. In foregrounding such interactions, he encourages the reader to reassess both the affordances and the inadequacies of the models and expectations that Angel inherits. This article goes on to analyse Gale’s screenplay for his upcoming film adaptation to show how he gives a new application to his earlier project. If the short story is particularly invested in the decisions before Angel, then the screenplay explores, even more so than its source material, how and why we categorize characters into hierarchical forms. This article contributes to knowledge, then, by examining Gale’s writing programme, which has received inadequate scholarly attention; by illuminating some of its complexities; and by demonstrating the value of thinking about the short story in terms of form.

scholarly journals Shane and the Language of Men

2018 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-88
Author(s):  
Jesse Gerlach Ulmer
Keyword(s):  
Middle School ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Film Adaptation ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Literary Source ◽  
Language And Gender ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Cultural Hierarchies ◽  
Scholarly Attention

AbstractJane Tompkins has argued that a deeply conflicted relationship exists between men and language in the Western. Deploying too much language emasculates Western heroes, men who privilege action over talk. For support, Tompkins turns to a number of moments in Shane, the 1953 film adaptation of the 1949 novel of the same title by Jack Schaefer. Tompkins argues that the film constructs a model of masculinity that wholly rejects language, a move that is destructive and exploitative to self and others. However, a close reexamination of the novel reveals a model of masculinity that is more positive and flexible towards language and gender than Tompkins’s views on the Western suggest. A close rereading of the novel shows that men in Westerns do not always use talk and silence to subjugate women and others, and that the valuing of language over action does not always end in violence or exploitation. Furthermore, the film adaptation of the novel will be examined, a work that occupies a more cherished place in American culture than the novel, a situation that is the reverse of traditional cultural hierarchies in which the literary source material is privileged over the film adaptation. Ultimately, the novel and film are engaging in different ways, yet Schaefer’s novel, rather than being relegated to middle school literature classrooms, rewards serious critical and scholarly attention, particularly in the context of the film adaptation and critical discourse on the representation of masculinity in the Western.

The Wrong Side of History

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (10) ◽  
pp. 50-75
Author(s):  
N. M. Cedeño ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
Wrong Side

Is it appropriate to hold politicians accountable for their past votes, their past actions, and their past opinions, even if they are not reflective of them today? In this work of philosophical short story fiction, Senator McCoy is 130 years old and is considered a "national treasure" for his nearly century of public service. Shortly before his retirement he is confronted by a member of an extremist organization (that supports eugenics) who have found evidence of a paper he published in college where he supports abortion. Given the modern political climate where every person is needed to build society, this information would forever stain his legacy. Senator McCoy hires a "fixer" to find and destroy the source material and preserve his legacy. However, things go wrong and the would-be blackmailer crashes the Senators party in an attempt to expose him. The Senator is nearly killed, but is finally able to enjoy an untarnished retirement legacy free from the truth of his past.

Historical Bratislava in literary fiction and film adaptation

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 149-157
Author(s):  
Dominika Hlavinová Tekeliová
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Film Adaptation ◽  
Literary Fiction ◽  
Structural Element ◽  
City Space ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Us ◽  
The City ◽  
First World

Abstract The aim of the paper is to characterize the city of Bratislava after the First World War as a literary space in the short story The Worst Crime in Wilson City (Najhorší zločin vo Wilsonove) and its film adaptation Wilson City (Wilsonov). For millions of Czechs and Slovaks, the US President W. Wilson was a legendary figure. The multi-ethnic city wanted to gratify him and suggested to name itself after him. This short episode of our history was found interesting for a Slovak writer Michal Hvorecký, who set a mysterious (horror) short story in Wilson City (Bratislava). The topos of the city became the basic organizational, or, structural element on which the story is built. In the film adaptation of the Czech director Tomáš Mašín there was a generic shift and the film became a detective comedy, or parody of historical events that happened (or could have happened). The paper focuses on the motif of the city and compares this urban space in the literary and film form. It tries to answer the question whether the city – space is only a backdrop of the story or it becomes its (role)player.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Elke D’hoker ◽  
Chris Mourant
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Short Fiction ◽  
Literary Form ◽  
Periodical Studies ◽  
The Status ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Material Turn ◽  
And Function ◽  
The Impact

This chapter provides an overview of the methodological and historical frames that inform the book’s analysis of the manifold interactions between the short story and British magazine culture, from 1880 to 1950. It discusses the material turn in short fiction studies which has led to a better understanding of the impact of publication contexts on the production, reception and development of the short story. This holds true in particular for the role magazines played in the emergence of the modern short story as a specific and successful literary form in the final decades of the nineteenth century. The chapter also presents an overview of recent developments in periodical studies, providing useful methodological tools for analysing the status, presentation and function of a particular genre within the heterogeneous, dialogic and time-bound format of the periodical.

Alice Dunbar-Nelson’s Charm Aesthetics and the Bugbear of Social Equality

MELUS ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 129-154
Author(s):  
Erica Stevens
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Literary Form ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Individual Choice ◽  
Social Equality ◽  
Local Color ◽  
Short Story Collection ◽  
The Public Sphere

Abstract Alice Dunbar-Nelson’s The Goodness of St. Rocque, and Other Stories (1899) plays with the diminutive description of “charming” often given to local-color writers in order to imagine alternative social relations in an era determined by modes of difference and exclusion. Charm—an aesthetic category most generally understood to be manipulative, feminine, and a distracting accessory to beauty—becomes the method supporting this collection’s challenge to the contemporary discourse of “social equality.” In the late nineteenth century, social equality was a distorted idea meant to accuse those pushing for civil rights of also seeking to eliminate individual choice from the social world and the public sphere or, at the most extreme, of advocating intermarriage of the races. In her short story collection, Dunbar-Nelson responds to the issue of social equality not directly but through her unique understanding of how literary form and character could charm readers into attachments beyond intersubjective desire or assured knowledge. Throughout The Goodness of St. Rocque, and Other Stories, her narrators mystify the reader’s search for knowledge and turn characters into resistant objects. Building on critical conversations about Dunbar-Nelson’s challenges to racial categorization, this essay explores the connections between aesthetics and politics in the early work of this writer, a writer who otherwise expressed a desire to maintain a distinction between those two goals for her fiction.

scholarly journals How to Watch the Story of Film Adaptation. Cortázar, Antonioni, Blow-Up

2011 ◽  
pp. 115-131
Author(s):  
James Cisneros
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Blow Up ◽  
Film Adaptation ◽  
Material Support ◽  
History Of ◽  
Visual Regimes

A brief heuristic survey of research on the adaptation of literature to film shows that it has consistently given priority to the narrative of the classical cinema, effacing the media's respective material support as well as its place in a history of visual regimes. Instead of following this institutional comparative paradigm, with its implications for agency and reception, this article develops an approach to adaptation that places the media's technologies at the center of the storytelling process. A case study of Cortázar's short story “Las Babas del Diablo” and Antonioni's film Blow-Up, it focuses on how each of these nearly theoretical texts outlines the kind of story that pushes its own discursive processes into the foreground.

scholarly journals Social Themes in Saudi Women Short Stories: Making the voice of Women Heard

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdulrahman Mokbel Mahyoub Hezam
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Short Stories ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Literary Form ◽  
Transitional Period ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Saudi Women ◽  
Arabic Speakers ◽  
The Social

Few studies in English have been carried out to explore the realm of Saudi short stories in general and women writers' works in particular. The aim of this paper is to examine how Saudi women short story writers used a western literary form to depict the realities of their country. It also delineates the magnificent representation of social themes through storytelling and provides non-Arabic speakers with an insight into the writings of Saudi female writers. It tries to present a vivid picture of how these stories reflect the social reality in Saudi Arabia in the last few decades of the 20th century and the challenges facing women in this transitional period. Moreover, the study tries to examine how women writers participated in the contentious debates regarding women that dominated the Saudi society especially on questions like marriage, divorce and women education. The present study is basically a text-based research that involves an analysis of major primary sources chosen. Selected short stories written by Saudi women writers are examined from a thematic perspective to reveal the ways in which women writers incited social change by defining notions of gender and social space and how they give voice to the Saudi women.

scholarly journals MEMBACA DUNIA SUREALIS IBW. WIDIASA KENITEN DALAM KUMPULAN CERPEN BUDUH NGELAWANG

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 83
Author(s):  
I Wayan Juliana
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Short Story ◽  
New World ◽  
Literary Form ◽  
Structure Theory ◽  
Connotative Meaning ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Short Story Collection ◽  
Story Collection ◽  
Semantic Aspect

Buduh Ngelawang's short story collection is one of the literary works that was born from the hands of a teacher named IBW. Widiasa Keniten. Apart from being a teacher, he is also active in writing literary works in both Balinese and Indonesian. His works should be appreciated and given comments in order to add to the repertoire of literary criticism in the field of modern Balinese literature itself. In Buduh Ngelawang's short story collection, the author builds a new world in modern Balinese literature that has never been done before. The author offers a new model in structuring the modern Balinese literary form, namely the surreal form. On this occasion, Buduh Ngelawang's short story collection will be analyzed based on Tzevetan Todorov's narratological structure theory. In the narratological analysis, the semantics (in absensia) aspect will be discussed. The semantic aspect relates to the involvement of denotative meaning and connotative meaning as a way to express meaning.

Irvine Welsh

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig Lamont
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Film Adaptation ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Work Experiences ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Narrative Skills ◽  
Useful Life ◽  
One Year ◽  
Marabou Stork ◽  
Very High

Irvine Welsh is one of the most revered writers of his generation and is globally renowned for his debut novel Trainspotting (1993) and the film adaptation that followed. Though his biography is sketchy—perhaps deliberately so—we can say with some certainty that he was raised in Leith and Muirhouse, Scotland, and that he gained useful life and work experiences in London during the late 1970s and 1980s. His year of birth in Edinburgh is mainly given as 1958, though some reports offer an earlier date. Upon returning to Scotland in the late 1980s, he completed an MBA at Heriot-Watt University (his thesis was based on creating equal opportunities for women), and soon became acquainted with writers such as Alan Warner, Duncan McLean, and Kevin Williamson. Trainspotting was once a series of diary entries that were published in parts from 1991 onward in small independent magazines like DOG and Rebel Inc. Draft sections were also printed in A Parcel of Rogues and Past Tense: Four Stories from a Novel. It was through this network that Welsh became known to the director of Secker & Warburg, who published Trainspotting in its entirety. Set in the late 1980s, the novel was a critique of capitalism, individualism, nationalism, and war. This sweat-lashed, dialect-driven journey into the self and the nation was met with very high critical regard and a good measure of disgust. The novel is said to have missed out on the Booker Prize shortlist for causing offense to female judges. One year later James Kelman’s How Late It Was, How Late won the same award, much to the bemusement of one or two judges, and so the pair have been entwined as controversial antiestablishment types ever since. For Welsh, his reputation as a writer of mind-bending literature was enhanced with The Acid House (1994) and Marabou Stork Nightmares (1995), both showcasing an impressive range of narrative skills. Danny Boyle’s film version of Trainspotting (1996) propelled Welsh into a stratosphere that few Scottish writers have enjoyed, and while three more books were published before the sequel to Trainspotting, Porno (2002), he is chiefly remembered for creating one of the great novels of the late 20th century with his debut. Welsh’s extensive novels, short story collections, and stage and screen plays have kept him at the forefront of the Scottish literary scene, though he has revived the Trainspotting case time and again, most recently with Skagboys (2012), The Blade Artist (2016), and Dead Men’s Trousers (2018).

Bowen, The Bell, and the Late-Modernist Short Story

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-84
Author(s):  
Elke D'hoker
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Short Fiction ◽  
Literary Form ◽  
Woman Writer ◽  
Irish Woman ◽  
Fiction Writer

This essay looks at Elizabeth Bowen's presence in The Bell during the war years. She contributed an essay, a short story, two pieces of memoir, two obituaries, and a few other, smaller pieces to the magazine, but also featured in an interview, several reviews, and O'Faoláin's editorials and critical essays. Yet, as a Protestant, Anglo-Irish woman writer living in England, Bowen was in many ways an odd presence in The Bell, which squarely focused on Irish life and Irish writing. While O'Faoláin's mission to present an inclusive view of Ireland may explain his publication of Bowen's autobiographical essays, her prominence as a fiction writer can better be accounted for through her achievements in the modern short story, the genre O'Faoláin sought to promote as a central Irish literary form in The Bell. Indeed, although Bowen's short stories have been classified as ‘modernist’ and O'Faoláin's as ‘realist’, their aesthetics of the short story are remarkably similar. Still, The Bell’s championing of Bowen's short fiction as a model to follow was undermined by its framing of Bowen as an ‘aristocratic’ writer whose literary snapshots of Irish life had a peculiarly dated and blinkered quality.

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