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Teichert, Evelyne. "Zhang Ailing's experimental stories and the reader's participation in her short stories and novellas." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 1987. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/28303.
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This thesis is an in-depth analysis of three later short stories "Lust and Restrictions" (Characters Omitted),"Flowers and Pistils Floating on the
Waves" (Characters Omitted), and "Happy Reunion" (Characters Omitted), written by the 1921 Shanghai born Chinese author Zhang Ailing. The analysis takes a look at the structure of these short stories and discovers that they differ from her earlier short stories, that is those she wrote ten years earlier in the 1940s, in their structural and narrative approach and thereby place a greater demand upon the reader's participation.
These three stories are the only short stories by Zhang Ailing that do not develop in a linear fashion. The author introduces them in the preface of the anthology Sense of Loss by calling the second story "Flowers and Pistils Floating on the Waves" an "experiment." Because of their similar structural and narrative approach, I called all three of them "experimental" which really means the same as "modernists", to distinguish them from her earlier linear stories.
The three major characteristics of the experimental stories, that is—the narrative happening in the character's minds, the chronological distortion of the narrative and the almost invisibility of a narrator large subordinated to the character's presence—all have the effect of bringing the reader close to the characters' subjective thoughts and reflect the characters' state of mind in the stories' present time, depending on the frequency of the switches between the times, that is between the past happening in the characters' minds and the stories present time. The reader's participation in these three stories is largely due to the narrative structure while in some of Zhang Ailing's lienar stories, as examined in this paper, it is based on the stories' content.
The political changes in China, and the author's move away from the mainland could account for her increasingly pessimistic outlook on life reflected in the disjointed structures of the "experimental" stories.Arts, Faculty of
Asian Studies, Department of
Graduate
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Madamombe, Esrina. "Hope and disillusionment: a post-colonial critique of selected South African and Zimbabwean short stories." Thesis, University of Fort Hare, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10353/170.
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This study investigates short stories published in South Africa and in Zimbabwe before the turn of the twenty-first century. The short story as a genre provides a more accessible and shorter means of viewing literary trends after the official end of the hostilities of apartheid and colonialism. Because of their brevity and specific focus, these short stories from many voices allow a glimpse of different arenas affecting contemporary reality. Post-independence stories reveal that in the process of navigating or directing hope after independence, people are sometimes left bereft as disenchantment with politics sets in, leaving people to search for hope in areas of their everyday lives such as marriage, birth and friendship. But because their lives are also fraught with conflict, hate and betrayal, hope may remain uncertain and prospects frightening. Chapter One embarks on a brief historical and political background of South Africa and Zimbabwe. This chapter also conceptualizes the issues of hope and disillusionment in the South African and Zimbabwean socio-historical contexts. Chapters Two and Three analyze selected stories from South Africa and Zimbabwe, respectively, focusing on issues with which the writers are preoccupied, especially how they explore hope and disillusionment. The analyses of the stories in these two chapters are structured chronologically depicting events in the stories. Thus the study creates its own narrative of South African and Zimbabwean life towards the new millennium. These two chapters discuss how meanings, significances and ramifications of the post-colonial community are negotiated and re-negotiated in selected stories, highlighting the challenges and engagements with hope and disillusionment dramatized in short prose fiction. Chapter Four will undertake to conclude with comparisons of the selected stories, discussing the implications of the study for South African and Zimbabwean contemporary societies at the turn of the twenty-first century. Granted, it is always difficult to generalize about a society from such highly individual, personal stories. But my study suggests that at the turn of the twenty-first century in South Africa, disillusionment is beginning to displace the heady expectation many felt at the 1994 election. And perhaps even more unlikely, given the current crisis, Zimbabwean stories from recent years show people hopefully waiting for the new millennium, a dawning of new, unpredictable possibilities.
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Crew, Teresa Ammons. "A creative interpretation of the short stories of Kate Chopin through dramatic play-manuscripts." Thesis, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, 2014. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.683263.
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Lemieux, Martha. "The evolution of irony in the short stories of Chekhov /." Thesis, McGill University, 1991. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=60576.
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In the corpus of Chekhov's prose there is a perceptible evolution in his use of irony. This study involves an examination of the use of irony in the initial, middle and final phases of his artistic career. It will demonstrate that in the initial phase, Chekhov's use of irony was direct and overt; in the middle phase, it was more deliberate and covert; and in the final phase, it was subdued, more transparent and transcendent. Selected stories taken from all three periods will illustrate this evolution.
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Brown, Mary M. "Edith Wharton's irony : from the short stories to the infinitudes." Virtual Press, 1990. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/720141.
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Although Edith Wharton is finally recognized as a major American novelist, her remarkable canon of short stories has been largely ignored. Such neglect is regrettable, for the diversity of the stories suggests that some common perceptions of Wharton may well be misconceptions: that her works are masterpieces of technique, but not content; that her inconsistency reflects an instability; that her works are pervaded with a repressing pessimism. The short stories evoke a reconsideration of these prevailing attitudes about Wharton and her art.The stories reinforce the critics' evaluation of Edith Wharton as a master of rhetorical strategy. She employs verbal irony and situational irony. She also focuses closely on the ironies in American society, particularly those associated with the upper class, with marriage, and with art. But Wharton's conscious and pervasive use of irony in the stories points to the fact that she is a philosopher of irony as well.The philosophy of irony -- a philosophy of constant revisionism, questioning, and subjunctivity, of the rejection of absolutes, and of the celebration of paradox and ambivalence -- is one which reconciles many of the conflicts both in Wharton's short stories and in her life. It accounts for Wharton's insistence in her letters and her autobiography of the possibilities of life and for the optimism and hope that are clearly demonstrated in the stories. Despite the conclusions that have traditionally been drawn by critics who have focused on Wharton the novelist, the stories reinforce what the life has also suggested: that Edith Wharton actually achieved transcendence, hope, and joy.Chapter Five of this study reevaluates Ethan Frome, often considered Wharton's most pessimistic novel, in light of her philosophic irony. It challenges the commonly held notion that Ethan Frome is only a technical success, assuming the position that technique and vision cannot be separated. It finds in the ambivalence of the book an acknowledgment of possibility -- tones of optimism, triumph, and celebration. Furthermore, this dissertation suggests that a second look, with an eye toward Wharton's philosophy of irony as well as her techniques of irony, is warranted for each of the novels.Department of English
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Hardy, Donald E. (Donald Edward). "Politeness as a Conversational Strategy in Three Hemingway Short Stories." Thesis, North Texas State University, 1985. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc503982/.
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Hemingway's dialogue and the texts of politeness and literature -- Brown and Levinson's politeness strategies -- The face of honesty in "The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife -- The face of bravery in "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" -- The face of love in "Hills Like White Elephants" -- Interpretive implications of politeness theory.
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Cooke, James M. (James Michael). "The Grotesque Tradition in the Short Stories of Charles Bukowski." Thesis, North Texas State University, 1988. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc501093/.
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The style and themes central to Bukowski's prose have roots in the literary tradition of the grotesque. Bukowski uses grotesque imagery in his writings as a creative device, explaining the negative characteristics of modern life. His permanent mood of angry disgust at the world around him is similar to that of the eighteenth-century satirists, particularly Jonathan Swift. Bukowski confronts the reader with the uglier side of America--its grime, its corruption, the constricted lives of its lower class--all with a simplicity and directness of style impeccably and clearly distilled. Bukowski's style is ebullient, with grotesquely evocative descriptions, scatological detail, and dark humor.
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Ntaganira, Vincent. "Alex La Guma’s short stories in relation to A Walk in the Night: A socio-political and literary analysis." Thesis, University of the Western Cape, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/11394/1640.
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Magister Artium - MAThe minithesis provides a detailed socio-political and literary analysis of A Walk in the Night: Seven stories from the streets of Cape Town. It investigates and systematically compares each short story to the novella or compares the short stories with each other and shows their thematic and formal similarities and differences. The results of the study will provide a valuable contribution to the study of African literature. It will complete what other critics have left out. No one among La Guma’s scholars has analysed the anthology as a single entity; most critics have analysed the novella and have not analysed the accompanying short stories. As a result, the relationships between the novella and the short stories are unknown to many readers. I argue that this needs to be corrected. In order to situate the thesis, the study also presents a selected list of critics who have studied the novella and the short stories, and indicates their achievements and their shortcomings. The study will be carried out from a Marxist perspective, and will explore the use of realist and naturalist literary styles. Marxism will provide the socio-political and theoretical framework. Naturalism and realism are the two main literary genres that occur in the anthology.
South Africa
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Kuxdorf, Stephanie. "Love in a machine age : gender relationships in the novels and short stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald." Thesis, McGill University, 1990. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=59896.
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The primary purpose of this study is to examine the effects of the social and cultural revolution in post-World War One American society on gender relationships in F. Scott Fitzgerald's novels and a selection of his short stories. In his fictional works, Fitzgerald becomes a kind of social and cultural historian, reflecting the fundamental changes that began to occur in the 1920s. There were many factors that contributed to this Jazz-Age revolution in "manners and morals": the emancipation of women, giving rise to the American New Woman; the influence of Freud and his psychoanalytic theories on the already blossoming sexual revolution; and the mechanization and commercialization of all aspects of life in the machine age, drastically altering the way men and women had traditionally thought, behaved, and, communicated with one another.
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Kaplan, Stacey Meredith 1973. "The modern(ist) short form: Containing class in early 20th century literature and film." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/10574.
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ix, 182 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number.My dissertation analyzes the overlooked short works of authors and auteurs who do not fit comfortably into the conventional category of modernism due to their subtly experimental aesthetics: the versatile British author Vita Sackville-West, the Anglo-Irish novelist and short-story writer Elizabeth Bowen, and the British emigrant filmmaker Charlie Chaplin. I focus on the years 1920-1923 to gain an alternative understanding of modernism's annus mirabulus and the years immediately preceding and following it. My first chapter studies the most critically disregarded author of the project: Sackville-West. Her 1922 volume of short stories The Heir: A Love Story deserves attention for its examination of social hierarchies. Although her stories ridicule characters regardless of their class background, those who attempt to change their class status, especially when not sanctioned by heredity, are treated with the greatest contempt. The volume, with the reinforcement of the contracted short form, advocates staying within given class boundaries. The second chapter analyzes social structures in Bowen's first book of short stories, Encounters (1922). Like Sackville-West, Bowen's use of the short form complements her interest in how class hierarchies can confine characters. Bowen's portraits of classed encounters and of characters' encounters with class reveal a sense of anxiety over being confined by social status and a sense of displacement over breaking out of class groups, exposing how class divisions accentuate feelings of alienation and instability. The last chapter examines Chaplin's final short films: "The Idle Class" (1921), "Pay Day (1922), and "The Pilgrim" (1923). While placing Chaplin among the modernists complicates the canon in a positive way, it also reduces the complexity of this man and his art. Chaplin is neither a pyrotechnic modernist nor a traditional sentimentalist. Additionally, Chaplin's shorts are neither socially liberal nor conservative. Rather, Chaplin's short films flirt with experimental techniques and progressive class politics, presenting multiple perspectives on the thematic of social hierarchies. But, in the end, his films reinforce rather than overthrow traditional artistic forms and hierarchical ideas. Studying these artists elucidates how the contracted space of the short form produces the perfect room to present a nuanced portrayal of class.
Committee in charge: Paul Peppis, Chairperson, English; Michael Aronson, Member, English; Mark Quigley, Member, English; Jenifer Presto, Outside Member, Comparative Literature
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Konstantinova, Natalia P. "The short stories of Ivan Turgenev - the link between French and Russian naturalism : a comparative approach." Honors in the Major Thesis, University of Central Florida, 1999. http://digital.library.ucf.edu/cdm/ref/collection/ETH/id/70.
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This item is only available in print in the UCF Libraries. If this is your Honors Thesis, you can help us make it available online for use by researchers around the world by following the instructions on the distribution consent form at http://library.ucf.edu/Systems/DigitalInitiatives/DigitalCollections/InternetDistributionConsentAgreementForm.pdf You may also contact the project coordinator, Kerri Bottorff, at kerri.bottorff@ucf.edu for more information.Bachelors
Arts and Sciences
Foreign Languages
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Quawas, Rula B. (Rula Butros Audeh). ""Weaving a new wreath of immortal leaves": Bildung, Awakening, and Self-Redefinition in the Fiction of Elizabeth Stoddard." Thesis, University of North Texas, 1995. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc278324/.
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Elizabeth Stoddard (1823-1902) has been overlooked by most modern literary critics and scholars. She needs to be incorporated into the canon of the American novel in order to establish a deserved critical visibility and to retain it for many years to come. Her groundbreaking fiction, unconventional by any nineteenth-century standard, especially as evidenced by The Morsesons and by some of her short stories, is characterized by penetrating psychology, individuality, and enduring literary qualities.
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張明明. "論靳以短篇小說的浪漫主義風格 = The romantic style on the short stories of Jin Yi." Thesis, University of Macau, 2009. http://umaclib3.umac.mo/record=b2101712.
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Moraes, ádamo Guedes Santos de. "O cosmopolitismo e a insensatez (1860-1882): a loucura como conformidade cultural no Rio de Janeiro de Machado de Assis." Universidade Federal da Paraíba, 2008. http://tede.biblioteca.ufpb.br:8080/handle/tede/6026.
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This dissertation discusses why and how Machado de Assis, in The Alienist , registers a certain cultural proximity among Carioca Imperial Court, French Court and the English one, between 1881 and 1882. For that, it was considered in our study that some narrative resources showed in this short story are developed into socio-cultural circumstances experienced by the author, between the 1860 s and 1880´s. Actually, it s in the process of his accommodation related to the job opportunities which are offered to him, in a condition of a chronicler and French and English translator, that the irony, the dialogal tone, the imaginary theater and the skepticism, are developed and elaborated by Machado de Assis in The Alienist . From this short story on, Machado de Assis addresses, as madness, the consumption without limit of hand-made products imported from France and England as well as the project of national identity, under influence of the relation between Rousseau s Romanticism and Positivism, of the Historical and Geographical Brazilian Institute (IHGB), and some political propositions made by intellectuals linked to Recife Faculty of Law, supported not only by Evolutionism and Social Darwinism, and from São Paulo Faculty of Law, but also by Positivism and Liberalism, as solution to promote the cultural progress of Brazil. Therefore, it s in the context of the second reign, characterized by a marked triumph of the cosmopolitism in the court, that Machado de Assis organizes characters to do ironies with this feature from a hidden methodology; learnt with Poe (1981), with an engaged posture under Hugo s influence (1982) and with a proposition of reflexion guided by Pirro s skeptical philosophy (2007). To sum up, to dramatize the life of the court from The Alienist , Machado de Assis seems to suggest that the supposed cause of Brazil s cultural backwardness, when compared to France and England, is not racial, but moral and political.
Essa dissertação discute porque e como Machado de Assis, em O Alienista, registra uma certa proximidade cultural da corte carioca com a França e com a Inglaterra, entre 1881 e 1882. Para isso, consideramos, em nosso estudo, que alguns recursos narrativos, trabalhados nesse conto, são desenvolvidos nas circunstâncias socioculturais vivenciadas pelo autor, entre as décadas 1860 e 1880. De fato, é no processo de sua acomodação ás oportunidades de trabalho que lhes são oferecidas, na condição de cronista e de tradutor da literatura francesa e inglesa, que a ironia, o tom dialogal, o teatro imaginário e o ceticismo são desenvolvidos e trabalhados por Machado de Assis, em O Alienista. A partir desse conto, Machado de Assis trata, como loucura, o consumo sem limites de manufaturas importadas da França e da Inglaterra, bem como o projeto de identidade nacional, sob a influência da relação entre o Romantismo rousseauniano e o Positivismo, do Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro (IHGB), e algumas propostas políticas de intelectuais ligados a Faculdade de Direito do Recife, apoiado no Evolucionismo e no Darwinismo Social, e da Faculdade de Direito de São Paulo, amparado por idéias oriundas do Positivismo e do Liberalismo, como solução para promover o progresso cultural do Brasil. Desse modo, é no contexto do Segundo Reinado, caracterizado por um triunfo marcante do cosmopolitismo na corte, que Machado de Assis organiza personagens para ironizar com essa característica a partir de uma metodologia velada, aprendida com Poe (1981), com uma postura engajada sob a influência de Hugo (1982), e com uma proposta de reflexão orientada pela filosofia cética de Pirro (2007). Enfim, ao dramatizar a vida da corte a partir de O Alienista, Machado de Assis parece sugerir que a suposta causa do atraso cultural do Brasil, quando comparado com a França e a Inglaterra, não é racial, mas moral e político.
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陳淸貴 and Ching-kooi Chan. "Narrative techniques of Taiwan short stories." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2003. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/b30252866.
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劉燕萍 and Yin-ping Grace Lau. "Tragic elements in Tang short stories." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 1989. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B3120871X.
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Poletto, Ana Júlia. "A leitura dos espaços inóspitos em Alice Munro : corpos (des)habitados e lugares (des)construídos." reponame:Repositório Institucional da UCS, 2017. https://repositorio.ucs.br/handle/11338/3106.
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Alice Munro, ganhadora do prêmio Nobel em 2013, é escritora exclusivamente de contos, e suas narrativas percorrem um imaginário de espaços desnaturalizados que questionam a ordem estabelecida sob um aparente equilíbrio. Esta tese analisa alguns contos das obras: Ódio, amizade, namoro, amor, casamento; Fugitiva; Felicidade demais; O amor de uma boa mulher e Vida querida, para estabelecer um diálogo entre as questões de leitura e o efeito estético produzido, seguindo a corrente de Wolfgang Iser. A busca de uma leitura da écriture féminine se faz necessária na construção de uma alteridade radical, o que permite repensar as questões de gênero e espaço. O texto, como fronteira e paisagem literária, nos permite pensar de que forma a leitura se transforma em espaço necessário para a compreensão do Outro. O percurso no imaginário de Alice Munro tem como ponto de partida o espaço, passando pelo lugar, delineando um corpo até chegar ao rosto, espaço último de alteridade. Desenvolvemos uma categoria denominada em nossa pesquisa como lítero-corpóreo, espaço fronteiriço entre uma materialidade corpórea, e a leitura que transforma as realidades vividas. As correntes literárias de espaço que utilizamos são diálogos entre literatura, geografia e filosofia: Luis Alberto Brandão, Doreen Massey e Gaston Bachelard são alguns dos teóricos que embasam a pesquisa.Submitted by Ana Guimarães Pereira (agpereir@ucs.br) on 2017-09-01T12:19:41Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Tese Ana Júlia Poletto.pdf: 1865019 bytes, checksum: bbf5aab52f5237cca265b704fd64c677 (MD5)
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Alice Munro, lauréat du prix Nobel en 2013, est écrivain exclusivement de contes, et ses récits présentent un imaginaire d’espaces dénaturés qui remettent en question l'ordre établi dans un équilibre apparent. Cette thèse se propose d'analyser quelques contes des œuvres : Un peu, beaucoup, pas du tout ; Fugitives; Trop de bonheur; L'Amour d'une honnête femme ; et Rien que la viepour établir un dialogue entre les questions de lecture et l'effet esthétique produit, selon la théorie isérienne. La recherche d'une lecture de l'écriture féminine est nécessaire pour construire une altérité radicale, ce qui permet de repenser le genre et l'espace. Le texte, tel que la frontière et le paysage littéraire, nous permet de réfléchir sur la façon dont la lecture devient l'espace nécessaire à la compréhension de l’Autre. Le parcours dans l’imaginaire de Alice Munro a comme point de départ l’espace, a suivre le lieu, les corps jusqu’à arriver au visage, l’espace dernier de l’altérité. Nous avons développé une categorie que nous appelons ‘litero-corporel’, l’espace de frontière dans une matérialité corporel et la lecture pour transformer la réalité. Nous avons faire un dialogue entre la littérature, la géographie et la philosophie: Luis Alberto Brandão, Doreen Massey et Gaston Bachelard sont certains des penseurs que nous utilisons dans notre thèse.
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Hobbs, Jessica. ""Among Waitresses": Stories and Essays." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2010. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc28429/.
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The following collection represents the critical and creative work produced during my doctoral program in English. The dissertation consists of Part I, a critical preface, and Part II, a collection of seven short stories and two nonfiction essays. Part I, which contains the critical preface entitled "What to Say and How to Say It," examines the role of voice in discussions of contemporary literature. The critical preface presents a definition of voice and identifies examples of voice-driven writing in contemporary literature, particularly from the work of Mary Robison, Dorothy Allison, and Kathy Acker. In addition, the critical preface also discusses how the use of flavor, tone, and content contribute to voice, both in work of famous authors and in my own writing. In Part II of my dissertation, I present the creative portion of my work. Part II contains seven works of short fiction, titled "Among Waitresses," "The Lion Tamer," "Restoration Services," "Hospitality," "Blood Relation," "Managerial Timber," and "Velma A Cappella." Each work develops a voice-driven narrative through the use of flavor, tone, and content. Also, two nonfiction essays, titled "Fentanyl and Happy Meals" and "Tracks," close out the collection. "Fentanyl and Happy Meals" describes the impact of methamphetamine addiction on family relationships, while "Tracks" focuses on the degradation of the natural world by human waste and other forms of pollution. In total, this collection demonstrates my approach to both scholarly and creative writing, and I am grateful for the University of North Texas for the opportunity to develop academically and achieve my goals.
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符傳豐 and Suan-fong Foo. "A study of Lao She's (1899-1966) short stories." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 1997. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31215233.
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Burgoyne, Mary M. "'At work on short stories' : the making, marketing, and reception of Joseph Conrad's early short fiction." Thesis, St Mary's University, Twickenham, 2016. http://research.stmarys.ac.uk/1167/.
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Somerville, J. Christine. "Stories and storytelling in Alice Munro’s fiction." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 1985. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/25523.
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References to stories and storytelling appear throughout Alice Munro's five short story cycles: DANCE OF THE HAPPY SHADES, LIVES OF GIRLS AND WOMEN, SOMETHING I'VE BEEN MEANING TO TELL YOU, WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? and THE. MOONS OF JUPITER. This thesis contends that stories--mentioned briefly or recounted at length--provide counterpoint to experience for Munro's characters. Oral and written stories influence them throughout life, but especially in youth, when they eagerly identify with, and imitate, fictional figures. In LIVES and WHO, storytelling becomes central because their protagonists are a writer and an actress. Occasionally, the narrators in all five works reflect on the difficulty of expressing truth in fiction, but SOMETHING raises this issue repeatedly. By embedding stories within her narratives, Munro imitates the workings of memory; moreover, she draws attention to her narratives as texts rather than glimpses of reality. A feminine perspective on narrative gradually emerges, in which the woman narrator sees her task not as imposing order, but as discovering order that already exists.Arts, Faculty of
English, Department of
Graduate
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Karidis, Electra. "Towards an interpretation of reading : Elena Garro's short stories as theories of themselves." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2001. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.369084.
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Marais, Susan Jacqueline. "(Re-)inventing our selves/ourselves : identity and community in contemporary South African short fiction cycles." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1016357.
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In this study I focus on a number of collections of short fiction by the South African writers Joël Matlou, Sindiwe Magona, Zoë Wicomb and Ivan Vladislavić, all of which evince certain of the characteristics of short story cycles or sequences. In other words, they display what Forrest L. Ingram describes as “a double tendency of asserting the individuality of [their] components on the one hand and of highlighting, on the other, the bonds of unity which make the many into a single whole”. The cycle form, thus defined, is characterised by a paradoxical yet productive and frequently unresolved tension between “the individuality of each of the stories and the necessities of the larger unit”, between “the one and the many”, and between cohesion and fragmentation. It is this “dynamic structure of connection and disconnection” which singularly equips the genre to represent the interrelationship of singular and collective identities, or the “coherent multiplicity of community”. Ingram, for example, asserts that “Numerous and varied connective strands draw the co-protagonists of any story cycle into a single community. … However this community may be achieved, it usually can be said to constitute the central character of a cycle”. Not unsurprisingly, then, in its dominant manifestations over much of the twentieth century the short story cycle demonstrated a marked inclination towards regionalism and the depiction of localised enclaves, and this tendency towards “place-based short story cycles” in which topographical unity is a conspicuous feature was as pronounced in South Africa as elsewhere. However, the specific collections which are my concern here increasingly employ innovative and self-reflexive narrative strategies that unsettle generic expectations and interrogate the notions of regionalism and community conventionally associated with the short story cycle. My investigation seeks to explain this shift in emphasis, and its particular significance within the South African context.
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Martens, Debra Kay 1957. "Continuity and discontinuity in the short fiction of Mavis Gallant." Thesis, McGill University, 1986. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=65486.
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Copoloff, Susan Moira. "Pilgrim's progress : structural cohesion in Hugh Hood's short story collections." Thesis, McGill University, 1985. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=63344.
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Nakasa, Dennis Sipho. "The dialectic between African and Black aesthetics in some South African short stories." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 1993. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/22394.
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Most current studies on 'African' and/or 'Black' literature in South Africa appear to ignore the contradictions underlying the valuative concepts 'African' and 'Black'. This (Jamesonian) unconsciousness has led, primarily, to a situation where writers and critics assume generally that the concepts 'African' and 'Black' are synonymous and interchangeable. This study argues that such an attitude either unconsciously represses an awareness of the distinctive aspects of the worldview connotations of these concepts or deliberately suppresses them. The theoretical and pragmatic approach which this study adopts to explore the distinctive aspects of the worldview connotations of these concepts takes the form, initially, of a critique of such assumptions and their connotations. It is argued that any misconceptions about the relations between the concepts 'African' and 'Black' can only be elucidated through a rigorous and distinct definition of each of these concepts and the respective world views embodied in them. Each of the variables of these definitions is also examined thoroughly through an application of, inter alia, Frederick Jameson's 'dialectical' theory of textual criticism, Pierre Macherey's 'theory of literary production' and also through the post-colonial notions of 'hybridity' and 'syncreticity' propounded by Bill Ashcroft et.al (eds). In this way the study examines the dialectical interplay between, for instance, such oppositional notions as 'African' and 'Western' (place-conscious), 'Black' and 'White' (race-conscious), and other forms of ideological 'dominance' and 'marginality' reflected in the 'African' and/or 'Black' writers' motivations for the acquisition, appropriation and uses of the language of the 'other' (i.e. English) and its literary discourse in South Africa, Africa and elsewhere in the world. A close textual reading of the stories in Mothobi Mutloatse's (ed) Forced Landing, Mbulelo Mzamane's (ed) Hungry Flames underlies an examination of the processes of anthologisation and their implications of aesthetic collectivism, reconstruction and world view monolithicism which repress the distinctive world outlooks of the stories in these anthologies. The notions of aesthetic monolithicism implicit in each of these anthologies are interrogated via the editors' truistic assumptions about the organic nature of the relations between the concepts 'African' and 'Black'. The notion of a monolithic 'African' and 'Black' aesthetic is further decentred through a close textual reading of the uses of the 'African' and 'Black' valuative concepts in the short story collections The Living and the Dead and In Corner B by Es'kia (formerly Ezekiel) Mphahlele. The humanistic pronouncements in Mphahlele' s critical and short story texts suggest various ways of resolving the racial demarcations in both the 'Black' and 'White' South African literary formations. According to Mphahlele, a predominant racial consciousness inherent in the racial capitalist mode of economic production has deprived South African literature and culture an opportunity of creating a national humanistic and 'Afrocentric' form of aesthetic consciousness. The logical consequence of such a deprivation has been that the racial impediments toward the formation of a single national literature will have to be dismantled before the vision of a humanistic and 'Afrocentric' aesthetic can be realised in South Africa. The dismantling of both the 'Black' and 'White' monolithic forms of consciousness may pave the way toward the attainment of a synthetic and place-centred humanistic aesthetic. Such a dismantling of racial monolithicism will, hopefully, stimulate a debate on the question of an equally humanistic economic mode of production.
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Tateishi, Bruno. "Vozes de Macau: identidade e memória no romance de Henrique de Senna Fernandes." Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo, 2018. https://tede2.pucsp.br/handle/handle/21524.
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The main goal of this paper is to analyze how Henrique de Senna Fernandes’s novel orchestrates the social diversity of languages artistically represented, recovering memories to forge a Macanese identity. Wherefore this research will seek to answer the following questions: 1) How does Senna Fernandes artistically articulate, in his inward Romanesque universe, the social diversity of discourses recovering memories of Macao? 2) From the orchestration of voices, what dialogical relations are established in Senna Fernandes’s novel to comprehend the Macanese identity represented by work? Starting from the premise that the novel, according to Bakhtin’s conception, is characterized by the internal stratification of language and taking focus the concept of multilingualism, we will seek confirmation or refutation of the following hypothesis: if the novel discourse is multilingual, that is, it is built up through diversity of voices and discourses, Senna Fernandes’s novel is representative of Macao cultural memory and identity, as far as it recovers different voices which appear in novels, which describe characters and spot them in different social spheres. The selected corpus is the conjunction of two novels of Senna Fernandes having the opuses been disposed chronologically by the following way: Amor e dedinhos de pé (1985) and the A trança feiticeira (1994). This research inserted in the theoretical framework of Dialogical Analysis of Discourse (DAD) will be divided into: 1) Elaboration of a social historical cultural context overview of Macao, which will start from the beginning of Portuguese occupation / administration in Macao until the end of the transition period, which would assure the return of Macao sovereignty to the government of China. Along this historical context overview of Macao, we will try to understand the historical political development of Macanese identity, more specifically throughout the twentieth century (time registered in novel and time of the author). 2) At the second part, we will explore the literary universe of Macao based on the idea of “Writing Macao”. 3) Development of theoretical basis which will be focused on Bakhtin’s approach about the discourse in novel; 4) Analysis of the selected corpus. In order to carry out the chosen literary works, this will be achieved as follows: (a) Delimitation of the context represented by work, clarifying how it contributed to the development of narrative and its characters; (b) Reading of works and selecting of statements, containing narrator’s voices and / or their characters’ as well as the manner of these voices, which refer to the issues of identity and memory of Macao; (c) Analysis of the discourses expressed by voices, showing how we can reflect, through them, on the issues of identity realized in work, analyzing, “dialogical lens”, how these voices legitimize their different values and perspectives and how they dialog among themselves
O objetivo deste trabalho é analisar como o romance de Henrique de Senna Fernandes orquestra a diversidade social de linguagens representadas artisticamente, recuperando memórias para forjar uma identidade macaense. Esta pesquisa buscará, por conseguinte, responder as seguintes perguntas: 1) Como Senna Fernandes articula artisticamente, no interior de seu universo romanesco, a diversidade social de discursos, recuperando memórias de Macau? 2) A partir da orquestração de vozes, que relações dialógicas são estabelecidas no romance de Senna Fernandes para compreender a identidade macaense representada na obra? Partindo da premissa de que o romance, na concepção bakhtiniana, se caracteriza pela estratificação interna da linguagem e tomando como foco o conceito de plurilinguismo, sustentamos a seguinte hipótese: se o discurso do romance é plurilíngue, ou seja, constrói-se na diversidade de vozes e de discursos, o romance de Senna Fernandes é representativo da memória e da identidade cultural de Macau, à medida que recupera diferentes vozes que aparecem nos romances, que caracterizam as personagens e as localizam em diferentes esferas sociais. O corpus selecionado é o conjunto de dois romances de Senna Fernandes, estando as obras dispostas cronologicamente da seguinte forma: Amor e dedinhos de pé (1985) e a A trança feiticeira (1994). Esta pesquisa, inserida no quadro teórico da Análise Dialógica do Discurso (ADD), estará assim dividida: 1) Elaboração de um panorama do contexto sócio-histórico-cultural de Macau, que partirá do início da ocupação/administração portuguesa em Macau até o fim do período de transição, que garantiria o retorno da soberania de Macau ao governo da China. Ao lado desse panorama do contexto histórico de Macau, tentaremos entender a construção histórico-política da identidade macaense, mais especificamente ao longo do século XX (tempo inscrito no romance e tempo do autor). 2) Na segunda parte, iremos explorar o universo literário de Macau com base na ideia de “Escrever Macau”. 3) Desenvolvimento da fundamentação teórica, que estará centrada na abordagem bakhtiniana sobre o discurso no romance; 4) Análise do corpus selecionado. Para que se leve adiante a análise das obras literárias escolhidas, proceder-se-á da seguinte forma: (a) Delimitação do contexto representado na obra, explicitando de que forma ele contribui para o desenvolvimento da narrativa e de seus personagens; (b) Leitura das obras e seleção dos enunciados, contendo as vozes do narrador e/ou dos personagens, que remetam a questões de identidade e memória de Macau; (c) Análise dos discursos expressos pelas vozes, mostrando de que forma podemos refletir, por meio deles, sobre questões de identidade percebidas na obra, analisando, por meio de “lentes dialógicas”, de que forma essas vozes legitimam seus diferentes valores e pontos de vista e como elas dialogam entre si
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Bell, Lucy Amelia Jane. "Configurations of the fragment : the Latin American short story at its limits." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2013. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.607767.
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Baker, John C. "An ethnographic study of cultural influences on the responses of college freshmen to contemporary Appalachian short stories /." This resource online, 1990. http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-09162005-115018/.
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Dai, Ping Emma, and 戴平. "The concept of love in the Ming short stories of Sanyan and Erpan." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2000. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31222559.
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Shishkin, Timur. "Marginalized Characters in Contemporary American Short Fiction." PDXScholar, 2011. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/297.
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The focus of the present research work is the contemporary American short stories that bring up issues of compulsory norm and the conflict between marginalized characters and their environment. This research was based on those short stories that seemed to represent the idea of being "different" in the most complex and multilayered way, and its goal was to unfold new aspects of the conflict between "normal" and "abnormal"/"different". Variations of norm as well as diversity within the marginalized raise a number of questions about the reasons for their inability to coexist peacefully. The close reading and the analysis of the selected stories show that all the conflicts in them, in one way or another, repeat similar patterns and lead to the same root of the problem of misunderstanding, which is fear. To be more precise, all the cases of hate towards "different" characters can be explained by the hater's explicit or implicit fear of death in its various forms: inability to procreate one's own kind, cultural or personal self-identity loss, actual life threat in the form of a reminder of possible physical harm and death. Most often it would be the case where shame and fear of death overlap in a very complex way. In general, the cases of characters' otherness fall into three major groups. The nature of the alienation for each of these groups is described and analyzed in three separate chapters. Prejudice and stereotypes are playing a great role in formation of fears and insecurities which need to be dismantled in order to make peaceful coexistence possible. This work concludes with pointing out the crucial role of taking an approach of representation of various perspectives and diversification of voices in creative writing, academia and media in the context of multicultural society.
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MacKenzie, Craig. "The oral-style South African short story in English A.W. Drayson to H.C. Bosman." Thesis, Rhodes University, 1997. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002271.
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This study is concerned with a particular kind of short story in South African English literature - a kind of story variously called the fireside tale, tall tale, yarn, skaz narrative, frame narrative, or (the term used in this study), the 'oral-sty Ie story.' This kind of story is characterised by the use of an internal narrator (a fictional narrator or storyteller figure), the cadences of his or her speaking voice, and a 'reporting' frame narrator. Stories by A. W. Drayson, Frederick Boyle, J. Forsyth Ingram, W. C. Scully, Percy FitzPatrick, Ernest Glanville, Perceval Gibbon, Francis Carey Slater, Pauline Smith, Aegidius Jean Blignaut and Herman Charles Bosman form the principal body of primary sources examined in this study. The Bakhtinian notion of "simple" and "parodistic" skaz narratives is deployed to analyse the increasing complexity to be discerned in the works by these writers, which roughly span the 100 years from the middle of the nineteenth century to the middle of the present century. A "simple" use of the skaz narrative is evident in the early or 'ur-South African' oral-style story, represented here by Drayson, Boyle and Ingram. With Scully and FitzPatrick the form is still used 'artlessly,' although the beginnings of a greater self-consciousness can be discerned. The' Abe Pike' tales by Glanville introduce a more complex use of the fictional narrator, a process taken a step further by Gibbon in his 'Vrouw Grobelaar' tales. With the latter, in particular, the complex or "parodistic" skaz narrative makes its advent in South African literature. The oral-style stories of Slater and Smith are largely a regression to the ear lier form, although there are aspects of their stories which anticipate Bosman. With Blignaut and Bosman, however, the South African oral-style story comes into its own. In their Hottentot Ruiter and Oom Schalk Lourens characters is invested all the complexity and 'double-voicedness' that was latent, and largely dormant, in the earlier oral-style narratives. Through Blignaut, and Bosman in particular, the South African oral-style story achieves its most economical, sophisticated and successful form of expression. The study concludes by looking briefly at the use of an oral style in short stories by black South African writers and argues that their stories are not, formally speaking, to be categorised alongside those by the other~ writers examined. The oral-style story, the study concludes, achieved its apogee in Bosman's Oom Schalk Lourens sequence and went into sharp decline after Bosman's death in 1951.
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D'Errico, Jon. "Enormous changes : narrative strategies in Grace Paley's short fiction." Virtual Press, 1988. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/539790.
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Grace Paley's fiction has suffered from being labeled as (alternately) post-modernist and feminist. There is a critical assumption that post-modernist and feminist works are plotless because they are nontraditional. Plot has been defined in Aristotelian terms, and those terms have colored the thinking of critics who attempt to discuss non-Aristotelian plots. Ironically, even feminist critics who are keenly aware that language is empowerment use the traditional language of literary criticism to describe nontraditional plots.As a result, post-modernist and feminist narrative modes are seen as fragmentary. This judgment often as not is simply a reaction to the Aristotelian emphasis on the unity of plot. Literary "unity" is not, however, an antonym for "fragmentation." To assume that nontraditional works such as Paley's are fragmented is to ignore the stories. The opposite of literary unity is not fragmentation, but amalgamation.Similar critical assumptions are that Paley's work is plotless and carries no implicit meaning. Careful readings of the stories in question lay both of these assumptions to rest. The point here is to make reading and understanding the stories the first priority. To use the stories as merely a chance to apply theory is to do both theory and the stories a disservice.Department of English
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Ditmann, Laurent. "Cheever's signs : a semiotic approach to thirteen stories by John Cheever." PDXScholar, 1988. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/3741.
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Literary criticism dealing with John Cheever focuses on the social implications of Cheever's description of suburban America. The purpose of this thesis is to propose a new approach to Cheever's short stories, and to apply the concepts developed by French literary critics Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes to thirteen short stories by Cheever.
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Marion, Carol A. v. "Distorted Traditions: the Use of the Grotesque in the Short Fiction of Eudora Welty, Carson Mccullers, Flannery O'connor, and Bobbie Ann Mason." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2004. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc4591/.
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This dissertation argues that the four writers named above use the grotesque to illustrate the increasingly peculiar consequences of the assault of modernity on traditional Southern culture. The basic conflict between the views of Bakhtin and Kayser provides the foundation for defining the grotesque herein, and Geoffrey Harpham's concept of "margins" helps to define interior and exterior areas for the discussion. Chapter 1 lays a foundation for why the South is different from other regions of America, emphasizing the influences of Anglo-Saxon culture and traditions brought to these shores by the English gentlemen who settled the earliest tidewater colonies as well as the later influx of Scots-Irish immigrants (the Celtic-Southern thesis) who settled the Piedmont and mountain regions. This chapter also notes that part of the South's peculiarity derives from the cultural conflicts inherent between these two groups. Chapters 2 through 5 analyze selected short fiction from each of these respective authors and offer readings that explain how the grotesque relates to the drastic social changes taking place over the half-century represented by these authors. Chapter 6 offers an evaluation of how and why such traditions might be preserved. The overall argument suggests that traditional Southern culture grows out of four foundations, i. e., devotion to one's community, devotion to one's family, devotion to God, and love of place. As increasing modernization and homogenization impact the South, these cultural foundations have been systematically replaced by unsatisfactory or confusing substitutes, thereby generating something arguably grotesque. Through this exchange, the grotesque has moved from the observably physical, as shown in the earlier works discussed, to something internalized that is ultimately depicted through a kind of intellectual if not physical stasis, as shown through the later works.
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Natsina, Anastasia. "Greek short stories in the last quarter of the twentieth century : contribution to an exploration of the postmodern." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2004. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:a5e8d523-e2de-449f-8b5e-fe16d86f4edb.
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The thesis examines Greek short stories written and published since the fall of the dictatorship in Greece in 1974, a year marking the beginning of the country's increasing opening to western lifestyles, mentalities and preoccupations. The present research explores two questions: How do Greek short stories of this period respond to the challenges of the postmodern condition, and what is the picture of the postmodern that one could draw from these texts. To this goal more than a hundred short stories are examined, by Sotiris Dimitriou, Michel Fais, Rhea Galanaki, E. Ch. Gonatas, Yiorgos loannou, Christophoros Milionis, Dimitris Nollas, I. Ch. Papadimitrakopoulos, Ersi Sotiropoulou, Christos Vakalopoulos, and Zyranna Zateli. The thesis is structured on a thematic basis, studying the major themes of reality and the subject, in order to evaluate the kind and degree of subversion that this fundamental bipolar axis of modern thought is undergoing in the postmodern condition. The readings are informed by contemporary theory, ranging from microhistory and Bakhtinian dialogism to poststructuralism and deconstruction, Levinas's ethical theory and Wittgensteinian language games. The textual analysis reveals that the traditional notion of reality as a unified totality is coming under severe strain; the critique mounted by the texts ranges from negative recognition of cosmological plurality through epistemological failure to an increasingly positive recognition of multiple incommensurate universes, be that by means of metafiction or, more radically still, a magic realism that transcends the world of the text to imbue performatively the world of the reader. The reality of the past in the form of historical truth is another target of scrutiny, as the unearthing of multiple insignificant, private and a-systemic events undermines the formerly dominant monolithic representations of the past and uncover its discursive construction, thereby facilitating the emergence of marginal historical subjects by means of fictional terms. Accordingly, the subject is no longer represented as a dominant and autonomous agent but as discursively constructed within a web of power relations. Yet this predicament creates the potential for a narrative identity and an alternative ethics founded on the acknowledgment of difference and interpersonal relations. Lastly, games, and especially language games, as a particular trope of merging reality and the subject, signal the cultural determination of irredeemable difference and plurality that is a constant in postmodern critique. Apart from suggesting the significance of the texts studied and proposing novel approaches to them, the thesis also promotes the re-evaluation of the short story as a genre in the study of the contemporary, while at the same time offering a detailed account of particular instances of postmodern critique on the fundaments of modern thought.
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Brown, Peter Robert 1963. "Narrative, knowledge and personhood : stories of the self and Samuel Beckett's first-person prose." Thesis, McGill University, 1998. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=35856.
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This dissertation offers both a theoretical investigation into the relationships between narrative, knowledge and personhood and a literary critical analysis of a group of Samuel Beckett's works in which narrative, knowledge and personhood are the central themes.I present an account of the notion of narrative and explore the nature of justified narrative assertions. I then turn to skeptical and anti-realist arguments about the ability of narratives to represent truthfully the world. Such arguments are widespread in postmodernist and poststructuralist circles, and in order to evaluate them, I consider particular arguments of Jean-Francois Lyotard, Christopher Norris and Hayden White, all of whom question the ability of narratives to be true. The positions of these theorists rely upon deep conceptual confusion, and, after sorting out their claims, I conclude that they offer no compelling reasons to doubt that narratives can accurately and truthfully represent the world.
Next, I offer an analysis of the relationship between the notion of personhood and narrative. I argue against postmodernist and poststructuralist critiques of subjectivity, and, drawing on the work of various contemporary philosophers, I defend notions of subjectivity and selfhood while acknowledging and examining the essentially narrative nature of such phenomena. The concept of a "personal history" receives detailed analysis, as does the notion of a "situated self." While agreeing with particular criticisms of what is often called the "modern self," I argue that there are specific normative projects of modernity, namely autonomy and self-realization, that are worth preserving.
Finally, I explore the themes of narrative, knowledge and personhood in the nouvelles of Samuel Beckett. These works represent crises of narrative and personhood, and they depict the epistemic and ethical difficulties encountered by persons under conditions of modernity, conditions in which individual lives often lack narrative unity and meaning. I read Beckett as a critic of culture whose work, while deeply critical of certain trends in modern culture, points to the need for individual subjects to find true and meaningful narratives in which they can participate as co-authors.
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Baker, John C. Jr. "An ethnographic study of cultural influences on the responses of college freshmen to contemporary Appalachian short stories." Diss., Virginia Tech, 1990. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/39361.
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Previous research on the role that culture plays in reader response to literature generally has not been based on clear operational definitions of the term "culture." More often than not, researchers appear to be using the term synonymously with the reader's race, nationality, or social class, rather than including specific anthropological explanations. Moreover, there has been no research reported that isolates and then studies individual readers' cultural backgrounds as influences on their responses to American regional literature; and, while there have been some studies reported that use ethnographic methodology to examine how cultural context or setting affects response, there has been
no reported ethnographic research that focuses on the
influences of readers' cultural backgrounds and the cultures
depicted in texts.Ed. D.
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HARMON, COY LEON. "CH'U YU'S "CHIEN-TENG HSIN-HUA": THE LITERARY TALE IN TRANSITION (CH'UAN-CH'I)." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1985. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/187951.
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The literary tale or ch'uan-ch'i, "transmission of the strange," evolved from the short fictional writings of the Six Dynasties and early T'ang periods and found full form as a short story in the classical language during the latter T'ang dynasty. Ch'uan-ch'i flourished through the Sung dynasty but fell into a period of relative inactivity during the Yuan dynasty. With the founding of the Ming in 1368 came renewed interest in the literary tale with the appearance of Ch'u Yu's collection of ch'uan-ch'i known as Chien-teng hsin-hua. Ch'u's tales became so popular that they soon inspired poet-official Li Ch'ang-ch'i to write the collection Chien-teng yu-hua in imitation of Ch'u's style. The two collections remained popular and influential through much of the Ming dynasty. The influence of both Ch'u Yu and Li Ch'ang-ch'i spread to Korea and Japan where many of their tales were rewritten and adapted to local settings. It was from Japanese editions of the Chien-teng hsin-hua that Ch'u Yu's contributions to the ch'uan-ch'i genre were rediscovered in this century. On comparison with earlier T'ang models, Ch'u Yu's tales show considerable similarity in style; however, the best of his tales show advancement in characterization, a broader range of subject matter, settings as varied as the tales themselves, and a level of society generally far removed from the scholar-official class commonly depicted in T'ang tales. It is in Ch'u Yu's thematic tales or tales of retribution that can be found the combination of elements that clearly illustrates his contributions to the ch'uan-ch'i genre. A reading of representative tales from both T'ang dynasty collec- tions and the large collection of literary tales by P'u Sung-ling in the Ch'ing dynasty illustrates the degree and nature of change in the literary tale over the centuries. The appearance of Ch'u Yu's Chien-teng hsin-hua in the early Ming dynasty not only revived interest in the genre but also contributed to the development of one of the most enduring forms of fiction in the history of China.
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Rose, Caroline. "Closure and the short story: with readings oftexts by Elizabeth Gaskell and Angela Carter." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 1996. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31213571.
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Lehan, James Philip. "A rhetorical aspect of Edgar Allan Poe's short fiction: A reader response approach." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 1995. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/1217.
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Arima, Hiroko 1959. "The Theme of Isolation in Selected Short Fiction of Kate Chopin, Katherine Anne Porter, and Eudora Welty." Thesis, University of North Texas, 1998. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc278060/.
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"The Theme of Isolation in Selected Short Fiction of Kate Chopin, Katherine Anne Porter, and Eudora Welty" examines certain prototypical natures of isolation as recurrent and underlying themes in selected short fiction of Chopin, Porter, and Welty. Despite the differing backgrounds of the three Southern women writers, and despite the variety of issues they treat, the theme of isolation permeates most of their short fiction. I categorize and analyze their short stories by the nature and the treatment of the varieties of isolation. The analysis and comparison of their short stories from this particular perspective enables readers to link the three writers and to acknowledge their artistic talent and grasp of human psychology and situations.
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盧仲衡 and Allan Chung-hang Lo. "Myth in the Zhiguai tales of the Six Dynasties." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 1991. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31209920.
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Barker, Debra Kay Stoner. "Ironic designs in the exotic short fiction of W. Somerset Maugham." Virtual Press, 1989. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/558342.
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This study analyzes the expression of Maugham's ironic vision in his short stories set in the South Seas and Southeast Asia. Through point of view, setting, character, and plot, Maugham explores the dialectic of expectation outcome, hope-disappointment, and illusion-reality. In the exotic short stories, not only do Maugham's characters confront this dialectic, but readers do as well. Using irony as a heuristic, Maugham prods his readers into rethinking unexamined assumptions about human nature and about the often disillusioning repercussions of clinging to ideals or having unrealistic expectations of life.The narrative voice in Maugham's stories, whether that of the omniscient or the dramatized first-person narrator, draws attention to the discrepancy between the ideal and the actual, using irony to highlight characterization as people are shown to be something other than they might be or what they are. Further, the narrators also establish a context for irony by inviting readers to share their insights on characters and conflicts, thereby emphasizing their distance from the characters who speak and act in ignorance of the actual state of affairs.Relying upon the conventions of realism, which assumes that man may find his destiny shaped by his responses to an environment, and using that environment to achieve artistic ends, Maugham demonstrates that setting generates irony as it precipitates tension, conflict, and sudden revelations of character. In other instances, the irony grows from Maugham's explorations of his characters' expectations of the exotic settings, suggesting that the tropical paradises are places of nightmares, as well as dreams.The volatile combination of setting and character often erupts in shocking plot reversals that have become the hallmark of Maugham's narrative techniques. The ironies of plot surface as characters and the first-person narrators confront realities that have been hidden or that have been denied. In many cases, the characters and the narrators have allowed their ideals or expectations to mislead them or cloud their judgment. Other plot ironies occur with the frame stories, as the narrators connect the fictive world of the story to the factual world of the reader, thus juxtaposing the ironic dialectic of reality and fiction.Throughout the exotic short stories, the designs of Maugham's narrative technique suggest that irony effectively expresses his philosophic stance on the ambiguity of human motives and the futility of idealism.Department of English
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Pappas, Eric C. "Gender and reading: the gender-related responses of four college students to characters and relationships in six short stories." Diss., Virginia Tech, 1990. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/38776.
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This reader-response study focuses on the influences that four readers relationships with families and friends have on their responses to several literary characters and the relationships among these characters as presented in six short stories. Four college students, two men and two women, read and responded to the stories in writing and in interviews with the researcher. The stories depict men and women confronting gender related family or individual crises concerning such topics as independence, autonomy, and the nature of the marriage commitment and male/female relationships.Ed. D.
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Tegtmeyer, Ute. "Heat : a short-story as inspiration for a design methodology." Virtual Press, 1998. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/1210537.
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Architecture is the thoughtful making of spaces. Within the last decades of architectural history the role of the architect in society and therefore of architecture itself changed. Issues such as space and architectural language gain significance.Narrative architects such as Bernard Tschumi, Daniel Libeskind, and others are inspiration for a design-methodology which focuses on the development of an architectural language.The actual project will be the interpretation of the short-story Heat by Joyce Carol Oates. Its analysis serves as basis for the design of an architectural statement.Emphasis is put on the actual design-process rather than on the final design result.Department of Architecture
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Polson, Richard. "Shocked by Flannery O'Connor the possibility of new endings /." Online full text .pdf document, available to Fuller patrons only, 2002. http://www.tren.com.
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Lancaster, Daniel. "A Futile Quest for a Sustainable Relationship in Welty's Short Fiction." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2007. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc3652/.
Full textAbstract:
Eudora Welty is an author concerned with relationships between human beings. Throughout A Curtain of Green and Other Stories, The Wide Net and Other Stories, and The Golden Apples, Welty's characters search for ways in which to establish and sustain viable bonds. Particularly problematic are the relationships between opposite sexes. I argue that Welty uses communication as a tool for sustaining a relationship in her early work. I further argue that when her stories provide mostly negative outcomes, Welty moves on to a illuminate the possibility and subsequent failure of relationships via innocence in the natural world. Finally, Welty explores, through her characters, the attempt at marginalization and the quest for relationships outside the culture of the South.
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Horikawa, Nobuko. "Not Just Child's Play| Neo-Romantic Humanism in Ogawa Mimei's Stories." Thesis, Portland State University, 2017. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10285140.
Full textAbstract:
During the early twentieth century, Japan was modernizing in all areas of science and art, including children’s literature. Ogawa Mimei (1882-1961) was a prolific writer who advanced various literary forms such as short stories, poems, essays, children’s stories, and children’s songs. As a writer, he was most active during the late Meiji (1868-1912) to Taishō (1912-1926) periods when he was a socialist. During that time, he penned many socialist short stories and children’s stories that were filtered through his humanistic, anarchistic, and romanticist ideals. In this thesis, I analyze Mimei’s socialist short stories and children’s stories written in the 1910s and 1920s. I identify both the characteristics of his writing style and the themes so we can probe Mimei’s ideological and aesthetic ideas, which have been discounted by contemporary critics. His socialist short stories challenged the dogmatic literary approach of Japanese proletarian literature during its golden age of the late 1920s and early 1930s. His socialist children’s stories also deviated from the standard of Japanese children’s literature in the 1950s and 1960s. In this thesis, I break away from the narrow views that confined Mimei to certain literary standards. This thesis is a reevaluation of Mimei’s literature on his own terms from a holistic perspective.
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Caskey, Sarah A. "Open secrets, ambiguity and irresolution in the Australian, New Zealand, and Canadian short story." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 2000. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp02/NQ58399.pdf.
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