‘J’ai mon silence’: The interrelations of sound, voice and silence in three short stories by Sylvia Townsend Warner

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 57-72
Author(s):  
David Malcolm
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Short Fiction ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Breaking Wave ◽  
Sylvia Townsend Warner ◽  
Voice And Silence

The interrelations of sound, voice and silence in three realist short stories by Sylvia Townsend Warner from the 1940s are discussed. The stories are ‘The Proper Circumstances’, ‘The Mother Tongue’ and ‘A Breaking Wave’, all published in the posthumous collection One Thing Leading to Another (1984). Warner is shown to be deeply attuned to sound and its absence in her short fiction; these motifs are integrated with other aspects of setting and with character and narration. Both sound in the text and sound of the text are of semantic importance in her work. Warner’s presentation of silence as a source of power is remarkable, silence being usually configured as lack of agency. Warner’s deployment of silence is related to her status as a lesbian writer.

Short fiction writing in English by Chinese university students: An integrated F-A-I-T-H approach

English Today ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Gang Sui
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
University Students ◽  
Short Fiction ◽  
Ernest Hemingway ◽  
Chinese Students ◽  
Writing Workshops ◽  
Fiction Writing ◽  
Chinese University ◽  
Stylistic Elements ◽  
Chinese University Students

When delivering a speech at a meeting of the Writers’ Congress, Ernest Hemingway said as a fiction writer: A writer's problem does not change. He himself changes, but his problem remains the same. It is always how to write truly and having found what is true, to project it in such a way that it becomes part of the experience of the person who reads it. (1937) Does this statement still ring true today? If it does, what approach should and can be taken for Chinese university students to write ‘truly’ during their fiction writing workshops in English when they know what they try to accomplish is indeed something fictional or self-evidently ‘untrue’? What characterises the main thematic and stylistic elements of Chinese students’ short stories written in English as creative outcomes?

scholarly journals Animosity towards Women in Eudora Welty's Literary Canon

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Short Fiction ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Social Consciousness ◽  
Literary Canon ◽  
Women's Identity ◽  
Male Perpetrators ◽  
The Social ◽  
Delta Wedding ◽  
Personal Consciousness

The paper investigates Eudora Welty’s concept of animosity towards women in her fiction. Her novels and short stories portray rape, sexual exhibitionism, sexual threats and brutality as inhuman experiences that sarcastically result in a vicious conversion of indignity and humiliation to the female sufferer instead of the male perpetrators. Welty suggests that this context creates a sense of intolerance which acts as a destroyer of women’s identity and sense of self. In this paper, the researchers attempt to reveal the mechanisms that subvert women’s sense of identity in a world usually controlled by men. Welty’s vision, in this sense, is that the social consciousness of the woman does not only evolve from the personal consciousness, but also intricately interacts with it. Welty’s works that are central to this study include Delta Wedding, The Robber Bridegroom, and the short fiction, including The Whole World Knows and Sir Rabbit.

‘Forlorn on the Fringe of Life’: Exploring Working-Class Childhood in Katherine Mansfield’s Short Stories

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Argha Kumar Banerjee
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Short Fiction ◽  
Verbal Abuse ◽  
The Other ◽  
Parental Rejection ◽  
Narrative Strategies ◽  
Childhood Experiences ◽  
The One

Abstract In Katherine Mansfield’s short story ‘Life of Ma Parker’, the old, widowed charwoman is plagued by ‘unbearable’ thoughts of her deceased grandson Lennie: ‘Why did he have to suffer so?’ Lennie’s unfortunate death in the story is not a solitary instance of tragic portrayal of working-class childhood in Mansfield’s short fiction. In several of her tales she empathetically explores the marginalized existence of such children, occasionally juxtaposing their deplorable existence with their elite counterparts’. From social exclusion, child labour, parental rejection, infant and child mortality on the one hand to physical and verbal abuse, bullying in the school and appalling living conditions on the other; Mansfield's exploration of the working-class childhood in her short fiction is not only psychologically complex but sociologically significant. Focusing on the relevant short stories in her oeuvre, this brief analysis intends to closely examine such depictions of marginalized childhood experiences, particularly in light of the oppressive societal conditions that validate their repressive alienation and sufferings. Tracing various biographical circumstances that may have fostered Mansfield’s deep empathy with the children’s’ predicament, this analysis also draws attention to her subtle oblique narrative strategies that effectively represent the plight of working-class children in a convincing and an ingeniously nuanced manner.

‘The Magazine Short Story and the Real Short Story’: Consuming Fiction in the Feminist Weekly Time and Tide

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Clay
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Short Fiction ◽  
Affect Theory ◽  
Basic Unit ◽  
Women Readers ◽  
Literary Marketplace ◽  
Periodical Studies ◽  
The Subject

This chapter examines the short fiction content of the feminist weekly Time and Tide alongside readers’ letters printed in the periodical’s correspondence columns. A basic unit of magazine production the short story is also ‘definitional to modernism’ (Armstrong 2005: 52), and during the interwar period its status as commodity or art became the subject of increasing scrutiny and debate. Drawing on examples from amateur writers and well-known figures such as E. M. Delafield, the chapter explores how Time and Tide negotiated readers’ expectations for short fiction amongst its core target audience of women readers. Building on Fionnuala Dillane’s application of affect theory to periodical studies (2016), the chapter uses her concept of ‘discursive disruption’ to consider moments of conflict between Time and Tide and its readers over the short stories it published as moments of opportunity for the periodical to expand its scope, readership and brow, and renegotiate its position in the literary marketplace.

Horizon Magazine and the Wartime Short Story, 1940–1945

2020 ◽  
pp. 229-249
Author(s):  
Ann-Marie Einhaus
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Short Fiction ◽  
Editorial Policy ◽  
Filler Material ◽  
Critical Factors ◽  
Aesthetic Judgement

Cyril Connolly’s wartime periodical venture Horizon is commonly regarded as one of the most significant British literary publications in this period alongside John Lehmann’s New Writing series. Connolly’s specialism was literary criticism and cultural commentary, but the magazine also prided itself in offering readers exciting new (and some older) works of poetry and fiction. Given the stature of the magazine, this chapter investigates whether Horizon had a noticeable impact on the wartime short story in Britain, and if so, what this impact might have been. It outlines an editorial policy that, with few exceptions, regarded short fiction as filler material and chose short stories based on a combination of practical and critical factors, determined by availability and convenience as much as by aesthetic judgement.

scholarly journals Migration Experiences in Selected Works by Stanislav Struhar

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 16-36
Author(s):  
Gabriela Šilhavá
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Physical Violence ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Migration Experiences

Stanislav Struhar, nowadays one of the most productive contemporary Austrian authors, has published 12 works so far. The main themes of his works include the integration of a migrant who loses and finds his home, the associated language change, the search for happiness in the new home or the conscious rejection of the traumatic past. This also corresponds to the fact that the main characters in almost all of his prosaic works are migrants or their descendants. Stanislav Struhar also shows that love and language are of particular importance for the integration of migrants into the foreign milieu. The article analyzes the ambivalent character of migration experiences and the positioning of migrants in foreign society using the example of the novels Das Manuskript (2002), Eine Suche nach Glück (2005) and the volume of short stories Fremde Frauen (2013). In the first work the main characters are confronted with physical violence, in other two works it is more about the migrants’ feelings of foreignness, stereotypes and prejudices, with which they are confronted. In this context, the attitude of the protagonists towards the language, both the foreign language and their mother tongue, should also be emphasized.

scholarly journals A Gynocritical Study of The Company of Wolves by Angela Carter

2015 ◽  
Vol 48 ◽  
pp. 100-106
Author(s):  
Azadeh Nouri ◽  
Fatemeh Aziz Mohammadi
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Short Fiction ◽  
Young Girl ◽  
Angela Carter ◽  
Female Protagonists

In 1979, Carter published one of her mast renowned collections of short fiction, The Bloody Chamber. The majority of Angela Carter’s work revolve around a specific type of feminism, radical libertarian feminism and her critique of the patriarchal role that have been placed on women. which she promotes feminist due to her style, referred to as "Galm-Rock" feminism In this article, the main concentrate is on heroine’s internalized consciousness which echoes in their behavior. All of the female protagonists in carter’s short stories; such as The Werewolf, The Wolf_Alice,and mainly in The Company of Wolves have similar characteristics with different conditions, in which they are represented in a very negative light with less than ideal roles. In these stories, the protagonist is a young girl who has many conflicts with love and desire. Carter attempts to encourage women to do something about this degrading representation.

scholarly journals My Shirt Is in Mexico

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sylvia Townsend Warner
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Home Front ◽  
World War ◽  
Voluntary Service ◽  
Sylvia Townsend Warner ◽  
Civil Defence ◽  
Almost All ◽  
The Village ◽  
Second World

Sylvia Townsend Warner lived for nearly half her life in Maiden Newton. Surprisingly, since she was a Communist, and Maiden Newton was a working-class village, she showed little interest in its people. During the Second World War, however, she inevitably became more involved with them. ‘Miss Warner’ was a driving force in the Women’s Voluntary Service in Dorchester, and in Maiden Newton’s Civil Defence. Almost all of her short stories about the village date from this chaotic and unpredictable period. They provide a rich source of material about the village’s Home Front, and show Warner’s attitude to it all: a mix of amusement, pity and resignation which combine to make some very fine stories.

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