Abstract Within the framework of experimentation and innovation in the short story, this study examines the most significant creative aspects of the Kurdish short story written in Kurmanji dialect in Bahdinan in Iraqi Kurdistan. A specific period was covered, starting in 1991, as this represented the genesis of a new era in Kurdish literature. Despite […]
Reader participation in the composite novel
A comparative analysis of Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried and Pam Houston’s Waltzing the Cat. From: Vermillion, M. K. (2003). Reader participation in the composite novel: Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried and Pam Houston’s Waltzing the Cat (Texas Tech University). Link: https://ttu-ir.tdl.org/handle/2346/17119 The Things They Carried entry at LinkedShortStories.com Note: This thesis contains […]
Short story cycles of the Americas, a transitional post-colonial form
a study of V.S. Naipaul’s Miguel Street, Ernest Gaines’s Bloodline, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Los Funerales de Mama Grande This dissertation is a study of three short story cycles which are representative of the genre in the Americas: Miguel Street (1959) by V.S. Naipaul, Los Funerales de Mama Grande (1962) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and […]
(Re-)inventing our selves/ourselves : identity and community in contemporary South African short fiction cycles
In this study I focus on a number of collections of short fiction by the South African writers Joël Matlou, Sindiwe Magona, Zoë Wicomb and Ivan Vladislavić, all of which evince certain of the characteristics of short story cycles or sequences. In other words, they display what Forrest L. Ingram describes as “a double tendency […]
Open destinies : modern American women and the short story cycle
This thesis examines the juncture between the short story cycle form and gender politics. It explores how twentieth-century women from the United States have been using the form to represent and question gender identity. The introduction outlines commentaries on the story cycle and considers definitions of the form. It includes case studies of earlier twentieth-century […]
One Story, Many Voices: Problems of Unity in the Short-Story Cycle
Tracing the genre from its nineteenth-century antecedents to its present-day incarnations, my dissertation argues that the rise of the short-story cycle constitutes one of the most influential and generative developments in US literary history. Although usually divided among disparate genres and periods, short-story cycles by Caroline Matilda Kirkland, Sarah Orne Jewett, and other so-called regionalists, […]
Still Life with Guns
This creative work follows a long tradition of cross-genre writing in contemporary American literature. It is not an autobiography, the story of a life. Instead, it is a memoir, a story from a life. Specifically, it is the story of a new father’s struggle to understand his vexing relationship with his own father so that […]
Wayward Girls
Wayward Girls represents a culmination of my creative and critical work at the University of North Dakota. The dissertation includes a critical introduction, a collection of short stories, and a pedagogical article. In my critical introduction, I explain ways in which I manipulate narrative and time, the decisions I make about levels of discourse, my […]
On Smith Street and short stories in the Digi-social world
The notion that digital publishing has altered the way we read is one that is being increasingly studied. Less attention has been paid to whether digital publishing has changed the way writers write. As a short story writer I am most interested in this form and whether it is being impacted by the digitisation of […]
THE SHORT STORY COMPOSITE AND THE ROOTS OF MODERNIST NARRATIVE
While the story cycle form has been popular for centuries, as seen in works like The Decameron and One Thousand and One Arabian Nights, it is especially important to modern Anglo-American literature. Twentieth century short story composites by James Joyce, Sherwood Anderson, and Ernest Hemingway represent high points not simply for the genre, but also […]
The Confederate Stories of America: The Short-Story Cycle and the Representation of the American South
My dissertation examines the ways in which the short-story cycle has provided a unique generic framework for representing and investigating the complex interplay of contending forces that constitute what we think of as the American South. Often confused with a collection of disparate short stories or a novel, the short-story cycle is a collection of […]
Cult: A Composite Novel
The first component of the thesis is a composite novel called Cult which falls into two parts with seven narratives in each. Part 1 tracks the protagonist, Ellen, from her first involvement with the cult through to her eventually leaving it. Although fiction,the first half of the book answers the kinds of questions the author […]