‘“Gender, genre and nationality”’: Alice Munro’s forging of her short story way

1970 ◽  
Vol 32 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 119-137
Author(s):  
Isla Duncan
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Short Fiction ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Alice Munro ◽  
Narrative Art ◽  
Contemporary Writers ◽  
The 1950S

In the first part of this article, I argue that Alice Munro, in her early career, was disadvantaged by her gender, by her Canadianness, and by her commitment to short fiction. She has overcome most of the obstacles and prejudices she faced in the 1950s and 1960s, and is regarded as one of the world’s finest contemporary writers. In the latter part of my article, I discuss the distinctive qualities of her narrative art, maintaining that they have become Munrovian hallmarks and are enhanced in her chosen form, the short story.

The Short Story in Australia

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Webby
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Short Stories ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Short Fiction ◽  
Male Voice ◽  
Fiction Writing ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Australian Tradition

This chapter examines the history of the short story in Australia. Australia's tradition of short fiction writing dates back to the mid-nineteenth century. In the days when Australian novels were mainly published in England, the short story was a source of income for many authors. By the 1950s, the type of realist story favoured by Henry Lawson — using a colloquial, usually male, voice and featuring working-class characters and bush settings — had been established as the Australian tradition. The chapter first considers short stories written in the 1950s and 1960s, which reflect versions of realism and modernism, before discussing works published in the 1970s and 1980s that deal with postmodernism and feminism. It also looks at short stories published since the 1990s, such as Gail Jones' The House of Breathing, Tony Birch's Father's Day (2009), and Cate Kennedy's Like a House on Fire (2012).

scholarly journals Autobiographisches Schreiben in Alfred Anderschs Prosa der 50er Jahre

2017 ◽  
pp. 121-133
Author(s):  
Joanna Jabłkowska
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Concentration Camp ◽  
Crucial Importance ◽  
Autobiographical Texts ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Alfred Andersch

Alfred Andersch´s autobiographical texts from the 1950s have been heavily criticized in recent literature on the topic. W.G. Sebald´s essay about Andersch was of crucial importance. The details of Andersch´s stay in the Dachau concentration camp as well as the writer´s motivation to desert at the end of the war were questioned. The article aims at a new reading of Andersch´s autobiographical texts with regard to their credibility. It compares the early short story Flucht in Eturien with the autobiography Die Kirschen der Freiheit and a few less known texts. The analysis leads to the conclusion that Andersch “re-wrote” his biography as a creation that fulfils unconscious wishes of a whole generation. His intention was to adapt the image of decent young men of antifascist beliefs whose only guilt was the loyalty to their comrades.

‘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.

An Office of Her Own? Alice Munro and the Legacy of Writing with In-Authority

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva Mendez
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Virginia Woolf ◽  
Women's Writing ◽  
Alice Munro ◽  
Rhetorical Strategy ◽  
Shared Interest ◽  
Room Of One's Own ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
Women’S Writing

In Alice Munro’s short story “The Office,” the protagonist claims an office of her own in which to write. Munro’s narrative can thus be read as engaging with the ideas on the spatial conditions for women’s writing which Virginia Woolf famously explored in A Room of One’s Own. My paper takes this thematic connection as a point of departure for suggesting that a Woolfian legacy shapes Munro’s “The Office” in ways which go beyond a shared interest in spaces for women’s writing. Both A Room of One’s Own and “The Office,” this paper argues, use the discussion of women’s writing spaces as a launching pad for exploring in how far women writers may claim for themselves traditionally masculine positions of authorship and authority, and in what ways authoritative forms of literary discourse may be transformed by women’s writing. In both A Room of One’s Own and “The Office,” the interruption as element of plot and rhetorical strategy plays a central role in answering these questions.

Favelas for Sale

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kátia da Costa Bezerra
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Cultural Productions ◽  
Modes Of Representation ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
The Way

This chapter analyzes the short-story “Maria Déia” written by Lia Vieira, which traces the story of some residents who were evicted from Morro de Santo Antonio in the 1950s. It also examines the video ImPACtos produced in 2010 by the collective multimedia group Favela em Foco. These two cultural productions enable us to trace a series of discourses/modes of representation that have been used to legitimize and justify urban interventions. This chapter examines the way both cultural productions challenge the recurring, dominant representations of favelas as a space of otherness and/or spectacles of consumption. The chapter illustrates how these cultural productions allow us to understand that these urban interventions are not simply a dispute over the control of a territory, but are part of the continuing struggle over the meanings and boundaries vis-à-vis conflicting views of citizenship and belonging.

‘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.

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.

Frame, Janet (1924–2004)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christy Pottroff
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Suicide Attempt ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Short Fiction ◽  
Magical Realism ◽  
Time Frame ◽  
Lunatic Asylum ◽  
Personal History ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
Janet Frame

Janet Frame was a celebrated New Zealand author with a prolific literary career and a dramatic personal history. Mirroring Frame’s own life, her writing frequently addresses poverty, marginalization, and the artist’s struggle in a conformist society. Both her prose and her poetry combine elements of modernism with magical realism. After a suicide attempt at university, she was misdiagnosed with schizophrenia and spent eight years in mental hospitals in New Zealand, including the notorious Seacliff Lunatic Asylum, where she received numerous electroshock treatments. In 1952, while Frame was in the asylum, New Zealand’s Caxton Press published her collection of short fiction entitled The Lagoon and Other Stories, which was awarded a prestigious national literary prize, the Hubert Church Prose Award. At the time, Frame was scheduled to have a lobotomy—until hospital officials discovered that she had won the award. In total, Frame was the author of twelve novels, four short story collections, one book of poetry, and three volumes of autobiography. She received many awards and honors, and her writing has garnered numerous literary prizes and much critical attention.

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