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Short Story Part II
Modernism
&
Post-Modernism
Early to Mid
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th
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Modernism-time of cultural upheaval, various movements—
hopeful, trying to solve or answer the world
1930s, New Criticism focuses on the form and structure of
literature and discourages using sources outside the text as
considerations for interpretations.
more attention to formal elements of a text such as plot, setting,
character, dialogue, tone, style, and theme
Publishing: The Best American Short Stories, The New Yorker and
Story magazines
O Henry, Sherwood Anderson, Flannery O’Connor, Eudora
Welty, Katherine Ann Porter, William Faulkner, F.Scott
Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway
Modernism
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Trends in literature in the early 20th century: Symbolism (French poets: Charles
Baudelaire), Futurism (Italian Filippo Marinetti), Expressionism (Kafka, or German
playwrights Georg Buchner & Bertolt Brecht), Imagism (US & Brit., Ezra Pound),
Vorticism (London also Pound & Wyndham Lewis), Ultraismo (Spanish poets
Guillermo de Torre), Dada (Paris Andre Breton), Surrealism (Fr/Sp Andre Breton,
automatic writing & free association
( A rejection of 19th c. traditions such as: a rejection of realism, or rejection of
traditional metre for free verse
Used different, complex forms and styles including: breaking from chronological
storytelling, stream of conscious writing style, fragmentation of images, more
abstraction,
A rejection of historical continuity—places value and consciousness in the individual
Objective reasoning was the way to understand the world.
Urban (dissociation) but separate from conventional, middle class, or capitalist values
Multiple points of view, awareness of psychological theories.
Mid to Late
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Post-Modernism: what comes after moderism-no point in
answering the world, further cynicism, random
Women: Susan Glaspell, Charlotte Gilman Perkins
African American:James Baldwin, Toni Cade Bambara, James
McPherson, Ralph Ellison
Native American: Zitkala-Sa, Mourning Dove
John Cheever, Joyce Carol Oates, John Updike
Jewish American: Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Bernard Malamud
Metafiction: representations of fiction, storytelling, or art in
general.
Magical Fiction—use of metaphysical devices: John Barth,
Donald Barthelme, and Robert Coover
Postmodern 1960s+
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A reaction to and continuation of modernism
a Rejection of any rational order
Abandons traditional literary forms, often combining
different genres & styles; an explosion of movements
Nihilism: no reason for values or morality, or rejection
of values: believes in nothing, cynical, randomness of
existence
Playfulness, parody, & irony
Literary Criticism
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Reader-Response Criticism—every individual person brings his/her own experiences, history,
education, philosophy and beliefs to his/her reading of any text/story. Every reading is valid.
That the text/story is independent of its author/and time period.
Gender Criticism: Feminist, GLBT: first-wave feminism comes in the U.S. after WWII, 2nd
wave feminism 1960s—acknowledges the historic imbalance in power between men and
women. Feminist criticism looks back at women writers in the past and the role of women
characters in texts/stories.
 LGBT criticism addresses the role of sexual orientation of past writers and texts/stories.
Archetypal, Mythic Criticism—(psychoanalysis)-late 19th century Freud & Jung—examines the
character/character development within texts/stories.
 Freudian—id, ego, super ego//Jung—collective unconscious,
Historical Criticism—always looks to the political, social, economic and historic events of the
time in which the story was written.
Marxist—examines the economic and social structures of the plot, setting, characters and
author of the story. Economic power.
Flannery O’Connor
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Born March 25, 1925.
Father died of Lupus when she was 15.
Georgia College for Women (now Georgia College), became editor of
Corinthian, the college's literary magazine
University of Iowa's graduate writing program- Postgraduate teaching
assistant at Iowa
Sold her first story “The Geranium,” in 1946. She was 21.
1948 the Yaddo Foundation, writers' colony NY.
Moved to Connecticut with the Fitzgerald family (literary family)
1950 moved back home with symptoms of Lupus
Believed lupus a blessing; it forced her to return to her home region and gave
her the opportunity to explore the history and character of her region in
writing
1964 died
Flannery O’Connor
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Combines humor and horror. This strange combination of terror
and comedy is known variously as “Southern Gothic” or “the
grotesque.”
Influenced by Edgar Allan Poe's Humorous Tales.
A very southern writer
Conveys a mythic quality upon its landscape and its inhabitants
Ever tainted by the sin of Slavery
Yet for O'Connor blacks and whites share a belief in the
Christian Bible and shared history of the land
Charlotte Perkins Gilman 1860-1935
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Short story writer, novelist
Father was nephew of Harriet Beecher Stowe, but left his family after she was born
1884 married Charles Stetson
institutionalized due to post-partum depression
Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, whose Philadelphia clinic treated, among other ailments, what was
commonly referred to in the nineteenth century as “female hysteria.”
Gilman recalled in her autobiography, The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1991), that she was
“fed, bathed, rubbed,” and returned to Walter with the following prescription from Weir:
Live as domestic a life as possible. Have your child with you all the time…. Lie down an
hour after each meal. Have but two hours' intellectual life a day. And
never touch pen,
brush or pencil as long as you live.
The Yellow Wallpaper 1892
1887 divorced Stetson, moved to California
1890s lectured & wrote on women’s rights
Married George Houghton Gilman 1900
Margaret Atwood 1939
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Ottawa, Ontario father entomologist (forest insects)
B.A. Victoria College 1961
A.M. Radcliffe Collge 1962
Harvard 1962,
Taught U. British Columbia, U. Alberta, York U.
Writer in residence U. Toronto, Macquarie U. Australia, Trinity U Tx U.
Alabama, NYU,
Poet, novelist, short fiction, criticism
Numerous awards & honors: Guggenheim Fellowship, Booker Prize,
Governor General’s Award, Companion of the Order of Canada, & honorary
degrees from 10+ universities
Work: unity of theme, role of mythology, imagery, subliminal mind,
integration of rational mind, myth of romantic love, politics
______- American:
exploring Multi-Ethnic
Writers
African American Literature
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The Harlem Renaissance: 1920s a convergence of black writers and artists in NYC
W.E. DuBois’ “The Souls of Black Folks” and Booker T. Washington’s “Up from
Slavery”
“A spiritual coming of age of the black race”
Poetry, short stories, plays, research, visual arts,
1925 The New Negro a collection by Alain Locke prof at Howard U.
1926 Nation manifesto by Langston Hughes “The Negro Artist and the Racial
Mountain” the need for racial pride and artistic independence
Langston Hughes, Arna Bontemps, James Weldon Johnson, Nella Larsen, Countee
Cullen, Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, Zora Neale Hurston
Themes of African American experience, using folk literature
Crisis, Opportunity, and the Messenger literary magazines
The Great Depression 1929 lack of resources
The WPA Worker’s Progress A… and members worked for the NY Federal Writers’
Project
Ralph Ellison 1914-1994
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Sculptor, photographer, actor, essayist, short story, novelist
B. Oklahoma City father solider in Cuba & China; d. when Ralph was 3 yrs.
m. Ida Millsap GA—OK construction; great-grandparents were slaves
Decided in childhood to become a “renaissance man:” active in h.s. and
college in music, literature, theater, etc. Educated segregated OK
Attended Tuskegee Inst in Alabama
1936 NYC met Langston Hughes, Arna Bontemps & Richard Wright who
encouraged him to write
Taught
Influences: T.S.Eliot, Henry James, Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, Herman
Melville,
Use of folk tradition
Aim to write to a black audience, not explain the black experience to a white
audience
Alice Walker 1944
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Poetry, novels, essays, biography, short stories, educator, Pulitzer Prize
B. GA youngest of 8, daughter of sharecropper, blinded by bb gun in right
eye: disfigured & alone
1961 Spelman College, 1963 Sarah Lawrence, travelled to Africa: fell in love,
got pregnant, had an abortion, B.A. 1965 moved to NYC
Worked for Welfare dept.
M. Melvyn Roseman Leventhal Jewish civil rights lawyer moved to Jackon,
Miss. (illegal)
Jackson S. College, Tougaloo College
Struggles & spiritual development
Complexity of ordinary life, w/ all the change & dishonesty
Amy Tan
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B. 1952 Oakland, CA, Chinese American
Attended high school in Switzerland
San Jose State & Berkeley, B.A., M.A.
Free-lance business writer—Squaw Valley Writer’s Workshop in
CA then wrote full-time
Matrilineal narratives (1970s-1980s feminism), generational and
cultural differences, gender role issues, marriage, motherhood,
work, culture
The Joy Luck Club (1989), The Kitchen-God’s Wife (1991), The
Hundred Secret Senses (1995), The Bonesetter’s Daughter (2001), The
Opposite of Fate (2003) bio-essays
Latin American Literature
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Literature from the colonial period mirrored the styles and conventions of the
countries of Spain and Portugal (largely outside of the European mainstream).
17th century poet So Juana Ines de la Cruz, a Catholic nun who was silenced by the
Monsignor is representative of the limitations on writers of the colonial period.
19th century-wars of independence: literature reflected issues of national identity, threat
of anarcy and social dissolution.
Jose Joaquin Fernandez de Lizardi of Mexico, Andres Bello of Venezuela & Chile, Jose
Hernandez of Argentina, Joaquim Maria Macado de Assis of Brazil
Cuban Revolution 1959
A term for the many countries and cultures
Emergence in the 1970s
1980s with stronger immigration—8.9 million immigrants
Immigration and Nationality Act (equal immigration)
38.8 million (identified) Latinos
Not published b/c belief that Latinos are illiterate.
Neo-colonial issues, follows history of wars of independence in early 19th century
defini
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
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B. 1928, Aracataca, Colombia
Educated at Liceo Nacional at Zipaquira but did not finish his law degree
Journalist who worked in Europe for the Liberal Colombian newspaper El
espectador
A supporter of the Cuban Revolution
Published 1st novel in 1955
Magical realism-close detail, written realistically but about incredible events
Experimental writer
Writes long epic novels and short stories
One Hundred Years of Solitude 1970, Chronicle of a Death Foretold 1982,
Love in the Time of Cholera 1988Strange Pilgrims 1993, Of Love and Other
Demons 1995
Wiliam Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf
Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982
Jose Armas
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B. 1944
U. New Mexico, U Albuquerque
Publisher critic, community organizer: empowering the
disenfranchised and Latinos
Social, education, & political commentary on Latinos
Leader in 1969 Serna vs. Portales case establishing national
bilingual education programs
Created diversity training programs
Ghost writer for speeches by Latino political leaders
Est. 1st Chicano publishing houses in the U.S.
NEA fellowship