Descriptive Economy in the New Weird Short Story: China Miéville’s “The Condition of New Death”

2020 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-157
Author(s):  
Guido Isekenmeier
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Short Fiction ◽  
Weird Fiction

Abstract This article investigates the forms and functions of description in New Weird fiction, using texts by China Miéville as examples. It contrasts the expansive descriptive routines of his novel Perdido Street Station (2000) with the compact forms of descriptivity found in the short story “The Condition of New Death,” focussing on the role of metaphoric condensation and the blending of description with narrative and explanatory modes. Occasionally drawing on other stories contained in Miéville’s 2015 collection Three Moments of an Explosion, it formulates a model of the descriptive economy of short fiction.

‘Satyre upon a Saxaphone’: Fitzgerald and Music

2019 ◽  
pp. 85-113
Author(s):  
Jade Broughton Adams
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Short Fiction ◽  
Musical Culture ◽  
Tin Pan Alley ◽  
Popular Songs ◽  
Popular Magazine

This chapter demonstrates how Fitzgerald invokes music in his short fiction, which heavily features jazz. Fitzgerald shows how white artists such as the Castles and Irving Berlin often profited from the appropriation of African American musical culture such as jazz and blues. Fitzgerald’s explorations of Tin Pan Alley’s output demonstrate that a more malleable treatment of established formulae can yield valuable results. This book draws parallels between Irving Berlin’s subversion of tired Tin Pan Alley formulae, and Fitzgerald’s own manipulations of the popular magazine short story genre. In his later use of music, Fitzgerald explores the limitations of language, the role of the artist in society, and questions the value of popular culture itself. He satirises the conventions of popular songs, and subtly parodies short story conventions (particularly romantic short story conventions). Fitzgerald identifies with the songwriter, whose role is to provoke emotion and forge an intimacy with the consumer, much like the commercial short storyist. By positioning Fitzgerald’s thematic and character repetitions and concessions to the magazine format as deliberate rather than desperate, this chapter suggests that his self-parody is a conscious aesthetic decision in the process of exploring the identity of the authentic literary craftsman, dancer, or musician.

Regionalist short fiction as humble fiction

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alda Correia
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Short Fiction ◽  
Spatial Context ◽  
Regional Literature ◽  
Aesthetic Value ◽  
The World ◽  
Cultural Connections

The representation of the world cannot be separated from its spatial context. Making the effort to understand how space and landscape influence short stories and their structure, and are represented in them, can help us to make sense of the role of this formerly underestimated subgenre, its social and cultural connections and dissonances, its relation to storytelling and popular narratives, and its alleged low importance. How does the short story genre relate to regional and landscape literature? Can we see it as humble fiction and, in this case, how does the humbleness of this subgenre play a part in the growth of the modernist short story? The oral, mythic and fantastic sources of the short story, together with the travel memoir tradition that brought the love for landscape description and the interest in the narration of brief and easily publishable episodes of local life, helped to consolidate a connection between the short story form and regional literature. ‘Humbleness’ is used here in association with the absence of complexity, plainness, simplicity of approach to a complex reality, straightforwardness. From this perspective, aesthetic value was usually absent from regionalist fiction as its only aim was to render the local truth faithfully. However, this ‘aesthetic humbleness’, which should not be used as a generalization, has been increasingly questioned in regard to modernism, postmodernism and postcolonialism and also when we consider specific works.

POLIVARIABILITY OF THE BASTARD MOTIF IN THE SHORT STORIES BY GUY DE MAUPASSANT: CHARACTER IN SEARCH OF SELF-IDENTIFICATION

2018 ◽  
pp. 20-27
Author(s):  
Oksana Galchuk
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Guy De Maupassant ◽  
Traditional Values ◽  
The Social ◽  
Role Of It ◽  
Structural Methods

The theme of illegitimacy Guy de Maupassant evolved in his works this article perceives as one of the factors of the author’s concept of a person and the plane of intersection of the most typical motifs of his short stories. The study of the author’s concept of a person through the prism of polivariability of the motif of a bastard is relevant in today’s revision of traditional values, transformation of the usual social institutions and search for identities, etc. The purpose of the study is to give a definition to the existence specifics of the bastard motif in the Maupassant’s short stories by using historical and literary, comparative, structural methods of analysis as dominant. To do this, I analyze the content, variability and the role of this motive in the formation of the Maupassant’s concept of a person, the author’s innovations in its interpretation from the point of view of literary diachrony. Maupassant interprets the bastard motif in the social, psychological and metaphorical-symbolic sense. For the short stories with the presentation of this motif, I suggest the typology based on the role of it in the structure of the work and the ideological and thematic content: the short stories with a motif-fragment, the ones with the bastard’s leitmotif and the group where the bastard motif becomes a central theme. The Maupassant’s interpretation of the bastard motif combines the general tendencies of its existence in the world’s literary tradition and individual reading. The latter is the result of the author’s understanding of the relevant for the era issues: the transformation of the family model, the interest in the theory of heredity, the strengthening of atheistic sentiments, the growth of frustration in the system of traditional social and moral values etc. This study sets the ground for a prospective analysis of the evolution the bastard motif in the short-story collections of different years or a comparative study of the motif in short stories and novels by Maupassant.

scholarly journals The Absolute as the Meeting Point Between Speculation and Fiction

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 349-357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daina Habdankaitė
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Meeting Point ◽  
Weird Fiction ◽  
Weak Points ◽  
The Absolute

AbstractThe article investigates Meillassoux’s notion of the absolute in relationship with the Kantian and Hegelian philosophical systems. The absolute, as independent of subjective consciousness, is showcased as the meeting point of speculation and fiction. By looking into Meillassoux’s notions of speculation and some works of weird fiction, it is argued that the significant role of imagination as well as a deferred temporality is what facilitates the discussion of both speculation and fiction as faculties able to transcend the limitations that are projected by the correlationist mind. Through a reading of Lovecraftian fiction, both the strong and weak points of Meillassoux’s argumentation in After Finitude and Science Fiction and Extro-Science Fiction are identified, proving the latter to be a less successful way of grasping the chaotic real.

KUMYK SATIRICAL AND HUMOROUS PROSE OF THE POST-SOVIET PERIOD

2021 ◽  
pp. 33-38
Author(s):  
Malik Alievich Guseynov
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
Social Component ◽  
The Social ◽  
Post Soviet Period

The article considers the Kumyk satirical-humorous prose of the last thirty years on the example of the work of its prominent representatives A. Mamaev and G. Konakbiev, highlights its individual trends, content, artistic features. It is noted that in it, with the leading role of small genres, we can see the activation of a short story of an anecdotal form, the weakening of the social component against the background of increased writers’ attention to private phenomena, an appeal to traditional moral values, active operation by such comic means as playing words, transitions from the author's position to the position of characters, dynamic plots, spectacular finals, etc.

Exodus

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (11) ◽  
pp. 37-51
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Hart ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
Deep Space ◽  
Traditional Foods ◽  
Religious Ceremony ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Archeological Evidence ◽  
Historical Basis ◽  
The Right

What makes a "religious" holiday? Does the combination of ritual, culture, and family custom all merge together to create "religion?" Does it even matter if the historical basis for religious stories are false? In this work of philosophical short story fiction, the spaceship computer AI wakes up a family in deep space hibernation to give them time to prepare for, and celebrate, Passover. There are many situations unique to being in space that must be overcome; determining the right time period when taking into consideration time dilation, not to mention missing ingredients for traditional foods. Also, they are short two people of the requisite ten and ask the computer AI to "convert" and serve the role of two additional Jewish people. Awkwardly, the computer reminds them that some of their traditional stories are not supported by archeological evidence. This all begs important questions about the complicated weaving of history, faith, culture, and family custom in religious ceremony.

scholarly journals PLOT ELEMENTS AND MOTIVES OF THE NOVEL “CHEVENGUR” IN PLATONOV’S SHORT STORY “POTUDAN RIVER”

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-55
Author(s):  
N. Mikhaylovna Malygina ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Love Story ◽  
Planetary Scale ◽  
The Family ◽  
Analytical Review ◽  
Eugene Onegin ◽  
Intertextual Connections ◽  
First Time

The relevance of the article is determined by the researcher of the semantic poetics of Platonov’s story “Potudan River”. We carry out an analytical review of the lifetime criticism and articles of modern researchers about the story, on the basis of which we formulate the purpose of the study, due to the need for a new approach to the interpretation of the work and the identification of the principles of its poetics. The novelty of the article is determined by the identification of the multilayered symbolism of the title of the story, which allows to establish the insufficiency of the conclusions that the content of the “Potudan River” is limited to the family theme. At the level of micropoetics we reveal symbolic details that connect the content of the story with the motive of love for the distant, medical and construction subjects and revealing the planetary scale of the author’s thinking. For the first time, it was established that Platonov’s story “Potudan River” was written based on part of the plot of the novel “Chevengur” – the love story of Alexander Dvanov and Sonya Mandrova. We show that the heroes of the story “Potudan River” Nikita Firsov, Lyuba Kuznetsova and Nikita’s father are doubles of the characters in the novel “Chevengur” by Sasha Dvanov, Sonya Mandrova, and Zakhar Pavlovich. The connection of the image of Lyuba with the archetype of the bride is considered. The paper reveals for the first time the intertextual connections of the story “Potudan River” with the poem “The Bronze Horseman” and the novel in verse “Eugene Onegin” by A. Pushkin, in the texts of which the writer found material for modeling the ordinary fate of the hero. Multi-level connections of the content of the story “Potudan River” with Platonov’s artistic world, which is a complete metatext, are found, which opens up new opportunities for determining the role of the editing technique and the principles of returning to the plots and motives of the works of the 1920s, as well as their transformation in the writer’s work of the 1930s.

scholarly journals TÃO FELIZES, NUNCA FOMOS: LITERATURA E CINEMA EM TEMPOS DE AUTORITARISMO

2009 ◽  
Vol 2 (27) ◽  
Author(s):  
João Manuel Dos Santos Cunha
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Military Dictatorship ◽  
The Arts

RESUMO: O texto examina a tradução intersemiótica operada pelo cineastamurilo Salles para o conto de João Gilberto Noll “Alguma coisa urgentemente” (1980), denominada Nunca fomos tão felizes (1984), considerando o contexto da ditadura civil-militar brasileira (1964- 1985), período em que as duas narrativas foram criadas. Reflete, ainda, sobre o fato de que as representações literária e fílmica, em conjunto ou separadamente, podem ser lidas como “lugares de memória” (lieux de mémoire, conceito proposto por Pierre Nora, 1991): textos que, ao cumpriremoofício de lembrar, revelam o possível papel das artes como sendo o de traduzir em discurso fatos que resistem à apreensão até mesmo pelo enunciado explicativo e relativizante da história. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: literatura e cinema, literatura e autoritarismo, tradução intersemiótica, transtextualidade. ABSTRACT: This article examines the intersemiotic translation of a short story by João Gilberto Noll (“Alguma coisa urgentemente”, 1980) into a film by murilo Salles (Nunca fomos tão felizes, 1984), considering the context of the civil and military dictatorship in Brazil (1964-1985), when the story was written and the film made. It also reflects on the fact that the literary and the filmic representations, seen both together and separately, may be read as lieux de mémoire (according to a concept proposed by Pierre Nora, 1991). Those are texts that, as they perform the task of remembering, may be seen as a comment on the possible role of the arts in translating into discourse facts that resist understanding, even by the explanatory and relativizing enunciation of history. KEYWORDS: literature and cinema, literature and authoritarianism, intersemiotic translation, transtextuality.

‘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.

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