An Organon of Life Knowledge
Genres and Functions of the Short Story in North America
Can fiction teach us how to live? This study offers a fresh take on the North American short story, exploring how the genre has engaged in the construction and circulation of 'life knowledge'. Echoing the resurgence of short story scholarship in recent years, it thus contributes a genre-focused perspective to the growing field of 'literature and knowledge' studies. Drawing on stories from the late 19th century to the present by authors such as Henry James, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Eudora Welty, Junot Díaz, and Alice Munro, Michael Basseler examines how knowledge about life and how to live it is generically constituted and, vice versa, how literary genres such as the short story are embedded in broader cultural frameworks of knowledge production.
Kapitel-Übersicht
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Frontmatter
Seiten 1 - 6 -
Contents
Seiten 7 - 8 -
Preface and Acknowledgements
Seiten 9 - 12 -
Introduction
Seiten 13 - 38 -
Part One: Life, Literature, and Knowledge: Theoretical Premises
1. Literature, Life Knowledge, and 'Science for Living'
Seiten 41 - 50 -
2. The Knowledge of Literature: Positions, Debates, and Approaches
Seiten 51 - 80 -
Part Two: The Genericity of Literary Life Knowledge in the Short Story
4. The Short Story as an Organon of Life Knowledge: An Epistemological Approach to the Genre
Seiten 83 - 92 -
5. Life Knowledge as Projection: The Cognitive Work of Short Stories
Seiten 93 - 100 -
6. Life-Changing Experiences and Turning Points: The Crisis-Ridden Life Knowledge of the Short Story
Seiten 101 - 110 -
7. The American Short Story and the Temporalization of Life in Modernity: Washington Irving's "Rip Van Winkle" and F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"
Seiten 111 - 134 -
Part III: Stages of Life - Staging Life in the Short Story
8. Epistemological Uncertainty and Knowledge of Maturation in Stories of Initiation: Sherwood Anderson's "I Want to Know Why", Eudora Welty's "A Visit of Charity" and "A Memory", and Junot Díaz's "Ysrael"
Seiten 141 - 162 -
9. Midlife Crisis as Turning Point for the 'Mature Moderns': John Cheever's "The Country Husband"
Seiten 163 - 176 -
10. Stories of 'Unlived' and Secret Lives: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Sherwood Anderson, Henry James, and James Thurber
Seiten 177 - 194 -
11. Gerontophobia, Ageism, and the Wisdom of Later Life in Stories of Aging: Willa Cather's "Old Mrs. Harris" and Eudora Welty's "Old Mr. Marblehall"
Seiten 195 - 216 -
12. Understanding Life Retrospectively in Stories of Remembered Life: Willa Cather, William Saroyan, Russell Banks, Anthony Doerr
Seiten 217 - 230 -
Coda: The Short Story as Epistemological Fiction Alice Munro's "What Do You Want to Know For?"
Seiten 231 - 248 -
Works Cited
Seiten 249 - 274
6. Februar 2019, 276 Seiten
ISBN: 978-3-8376-4642-9
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