Michael Basseler, Ansgar Nünning (eds.)
A History of the American Short Story
Genres - Developments - Model Interpretations
This handbook aims to provide students,
teachers, and other readers with a concise survey of the American short story
from its early beginnings to the first decade of the 21st century. At the same
time, it critically reflects the many intricacies and problems involved in the
writing of literary history and canon formation. In contrast to the many
introductions to the American short story that focus primarily on individual
authors, the order of contributions is based roughly on the diachronic
sequence of what can be considered as the major eras of the genre, with the
emphasis on the dominant thematic and formal developments of the time. The
chapters offer a series of introductions to the major (sub-)genres as well as
model interpretations of stories that serve as paradigm examples of these (sub-)genres.
They thus present a broad overview of key periods, genres, and writers as
well as in-depth analyses of selected stories. Moreover, both the volume as a
whole and the individual chapters attempt to provide students with a large
collection of texts, topics, and analytical techniques that can be adopted and
expanded in the process of exam preparation. The authors discussed in this
volume include such ‘classic’ short story writers as Edgar Allan Poe,
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ernest Hemingway, and Eudora Welty as well as
contemporary authors such as Bharati Mukherjee, Simon Ortiz, Nicole Krauss,
and many others.
ISBN 978-3-86821-302-7, 444 S., kt., € 35,00 (2011)