Discrete parts, unified texts: The short story cycle in America.
Item
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Title
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Discrete parts, unified texts: The short story cycle in America.
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Identifier
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AAI3169960
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identifier
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3169960
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Creator
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Pacht, Michelle.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Norman Kelvin
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Date
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2005
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, American
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Abstract
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This dissertation examines how American authors adapted and expanded the short story cycle to create a genre uniquely suited to meet their changing needs. Neither a miscellaneous short story collection nor a traditionally unified novel, the story cycle can express both the plight of an individual and the fate of a community through its very structure. Despite the different thematic and structural choices made by these authors, the texts examined here indicate a struggle to define and understand the always-changing world in which their characters live.;I begin by exploring the development of the genre beginning with pre-cursors by Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Sarah Orne Jewett and Charles W. Chesnutt. These early examples use narrative frames, repeated characters and single locations in their examinations of the historical, political and cultural perspectives that define the times in which their authors lived. These texts convey an optimism that is soon overwhelmed by confusion and loss in an increasingly fractured twentieth-century society.;By recognizing the isolated nature of the individual in the modern world, the story cycle also suits the purposes of authors such as Willa Cather, Henry James, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor and Raymond Carver. In these texts repeated metaphors, collective protagonists and varied settings are used to extend the scope of the genre beyond just one person in one location. These authors recognize the cycle's ability to integrate disparate narrative threads into a unified whole while still highlighting the discontinuity inherent in the text.;By re-imagining the literary traditions of the past, Maxine Hong Kingston and Louise Erdrich re-capture some of the optimism displayed by the earliest American writers. An individual's or community's search for self takes center stage once again as these authors combine ancient oral traditions with nineteenth- and twentieth-century techniques. For them, the story cycle offers an opportunity to gather and unify more than just stories; their texts demonstrate how genre can help gather and unify cultures as well.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
