UID:
almafu_9960947650302883
Format:
1 online resource (276 p.)
Edition:
1st ed.
ISBN:
3-8394-4642-2
Series Statement:
American Culture Studies 24
Content:
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.
Note:
Frontmatter 1 Contents 7 Preface and Acknowledgements 9 Introduction 13 1. Literature, Life Knowledge, and 'Science for Living' 41 2. The Knowledge of Literature: Positions, Debates, and Approaches 51 4. The Short Story as an Organon of Life Knowledge: An Epistemological Approach to the Genre 83 5. Life Knowledge as Projection: The Cognitive Work of Short Stories 93 6. Life-Changing Experiences and Turning Points: The Crisis-Ridden Life Knowledge of the Short Story 101 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" 111 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" 141 9. Midlife Crisis as Turning Point for the 'Mature Moderns': John Cheever's "The Country Husband" 163 10. Stories of 'Unlived' and Secret Lives: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Sherwood Anderson, Henry James, and James Thurber 177 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" 195 12. Understanding Life Retrospectively in Stories of Remembered Life: Willa Cather, William Saroyan, Russell Banks, Anthony Doerr 217 Coda: The Short Story as Epistemological Fiction Alice Munro's "What Do You Want to Know For?" 231 Works Cited 249
,
Issued also in print.
,
In English.
Additional Edition:
ISBN 3-8376-4642-4
Language:
English
Subjects:
American Studies
Keywords:
Hochschulschrift
;
Hochschulschrift
DOI:
10.14361/9783839446423
URL:
Volltext
(URL des Erstveröffentlichers)
