The first part of this paper offers a brief theoretical discussion of the short story collection and raises some concerns about the relevance of its historical roots. In a second part, the concepts of performance and performativity are introduced in order to investigate how these concepts can play a relevant role in the theoretical description […]
Cycles, Recueils, Macrotexts. The Short Story Collection in a Comparative Perspective
This issue aims to map and critically assess different theoretical approaches to the interlinking of short stories in a collection. Within the Anglo-American critical tradition, the dominant critical frame is that of the short story cycle, while in the Francophone tradition, the short story cycle has been linked to a broader variety of genres and […]
To Relate, to Read, to Separate A Poetics of the Collection and A Poetics of Diffraction
Within the context of contemporary French and Quebec literature, this paper reflects on the defining traits of a poetics of the collection. This poetics is based on internal structures as well as on the reading of texts. An investigation of the specific characteristics of recent texts allows me to reflect anew on collection-like narrative practices […]