The American Short Story

general courses

- This is a course in literature, not criticism or theory. The basic aim is engage students in the practice the art of interpretation by developing and their own tastes, teach them engage with care and sensitivity in the reading of individual texts.

- The methodology is drawn from both literary and cultural studies: equal attention is paid to the development of formal characteristics of the genre and the ideological and cultural aspects of the texts at hand.

In American literary history the short story is the most original genre, its „elusive forms“ (J. A. Cuddon) notwithstanding. The course offers an overview of its American history, starting with Washington Irving, a representative of American Romanticism, to David Leavitt, a writer in the epoch of AIDS and postmodernism.

The short story is the most characteristic literary form in US literature. This course examines some of its most celebrated examples, looking both at formal characteristics and themes. We will engage in close readings of stories from various epochs, starting with Irving and Poe, ending with stories published recently in the New Yorker. The aim is to enjoy the texts and talk about them, but also to understand the sources of the pleasure. We will examine how the stories are “made” as texts: what are the forms of narration, types of endings, dialogue, and characterization. Why do we find some of them moving, while others leave us indifferent? We will also pay attention to ideological and cultural aspects of the texts – how they respond to political developments and cultural debates of their times, how they construct gender, ethnicity, race, class.

Readings include early classics (Irving, Poe, Melville and Twain), modernist stories (Faulkner, Hemingway, Hurston) followed by great stories by writers such as James Baldwin, Eudora Welty, Isaac Beshevis Singer, Raymond Carver, John Updike, Ursula K. LeGuin, Joyce Carol Oates, Philip Roth, Grace Paley, Mary Gaitskill, Alice Walker, Jhumpa Lahiri, Amy Tan, David Foster Wallace, Lorrie Moore, David Sedaris, Nathan Englander, Charles Yu, Kristen Roupenian, George Saunders, and others. The last three sessions will be devoted to stories selected by student teams.

Note that this is a course in literature, not criticism or theory. Students are not encouraged to consult critical works but rather to develop your own tastes, ideas and interpretations.

Anthologies:

Ford, Richard, ed. The GRANTA Book of the American Short Story, vols 1 & 2. London, 2008.

Marcus, Ben. New American Stories. London, 2015.

Martin, Wendy, ed. We Are the Stories that We Tell. The Best Short Stories by American Women since 1945. New York, 1990.

Moore, Lorrie, & Heidi Pitlor, ed. 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories. Boston, 2015.

Oates, Joyce Carol, ed. The Oxford Book of American Short Stories. New York, 1992.

The Best American Short Stories (series)

Textbooks:

Gelfant, Blanche H. and Lawrence Graver, eds. The Columbia Companion to the Twentieth-Century American Short Story. Vol. 1 and 2. New York, 2004.

Scofield, Martin, ed., The Cambridge Introduction to the American Short Story, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

KNOWLEDGE:

- The student knows a large number of canonical short stories written in the USA as well as more recent excellent examples of the genre;

- understands the key formal features and appreciates the cultural significance of the genre;

- knows the specificity of various styles and literary modalities (romanticism, realism, naturalism, modernism, postmodernism, Southern Gothic), and their relationship to the historical and cultural context in which they emerged;

SKILLS

- can examine short stories with respect to style and structure;

- can recognize and name narrative techniques and stylistic devices employed in a given story;

- is able to formulate and present an in-depth analysis and interpretation of a short story in both written and oral form.

COMPETENCES:

- is able to cooperate in a group;

- is open to conflicting readings of specific texts and differing tastes as well as visions of culture and society;

- is able to formulate and defend his/her opinion coherently and with respect of other views

1. Active participation in class and on Kampus forum (20%)

2. Two group presentations (20%)

3. Final paper (5 pages) (30%)

4. Final tests and short tests during semester (30%)

GRADING:

5! = 96

5 = 92.5

4+ = 87.5

4 = 80

3+ = 75

3 = 60

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