The Art of Brevity: Excursions in Short Fiction Theory and Analysis - Paperback

by Per Winther (Editor), Jakob Lothe (Editor), Hans H. Skei (Editor)

Refreshing, inclusive approaches to the theory and practice of short fiction

The Art of Brevity gathers fresh ideas about the theory and writing of short fiction from around the globe to produce an international, inclusive exploration of the steadily growing field of short story studies. While Anglo-American scholars have served as the primary developers of contemporary short story theory since the field's inception in the 1960s, this volume adds the contributions of scholars living in other parts of the world. Such Anglo-American pioneers as Mary Rohrberger, Charles E. May, Susan Lohafer, and John Gerlach join with short fiction scholars at universities in Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Canada to build academic bridges and expand the field, geographically as well as conceptually.

Contributors weave together themes of time, space, compression, mystery, reader response, and narrative closure. They discuss writers as varied as Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Sarah Orne Jewett, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Ernest Hemingway, Mavis Gallant, Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, and Robert Olen Butler. Among the less familiar topics they investigate are the Australian tall tale, the nineteenth-century queer story, and contemporary Danish "short shorts."

Front Jacket

Refreshing, inclusive approaches to the theory and practice of short fiction

Back Jacket

CONTRIBUTORS
Gerd Bjørhovde
Laura Castor
John Gerlach
Jan Nordby Gretlund
Andrew K. Kennedy
Sandra Lee Kleppe
Hans B. Löfgren
Susan Lohafer
Jakob Lothe
Charles E. May
Gitte Mose
W. H. New
Axel Nissen
Mary Rohrberger
Stuart Sillars
Hans H. Skei
Per Winther

Author Biography

Hans H. Skei is a professor of comparative literature at the University of Oslo and the author of three books on Faulkner's achievement: William Faulkner: The Short Story Career; William Faulkner: The Novelist as Short Story Writer; and Reading Faulkner's Best Short Stories.