Focussing on Elizabeth Strout’s short story cycle, Olive Kitteridge (2008), this article proposes that contemporary collections of interconnected stories open new ways of understanding women’s relational autonomy, and the importance of continuing relationships of interdependence and care. Here, relational autonomy is seen as a framework for shared beliefs that subjects’ situated identities are formed within the context of social relationships and shaped by a complex intersection of social determinants, such as race, class, gender and ethnicity. This discussion proposes that the short story cycle is a particularly productive form for writers interested in exploring how women come to a greater sense of who they are through these relationships – some enduring, others not – as they are experienced through apparently mundane moments in women’s lives. This is partly due to less emphasis on the individual trajectory of an autonomous person, and a greater focus on the shared experiences that shape identities and foster personal growth and collective fulfilment. The article seeks to explore this understanding of the cycle by reflecting on distinctive features of the form – modular narrative structure and narrative openness – seen in Olive Kitteridge, to demonstrate how this mode of storytelling helps make salient women’s relational lives.
{"title":"Women’s relational autonomy and the short story cycle: Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout","authors":"Helena Kadmos","doi":"10.1386/FICT.9.1.39_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/FICT.9.1.39_1","url":null,"abstract":"Focussing on Elizabeth Strout’s short story cycle, Olive Kitteridge (2008), this article proposes that contemporary collections of interconnected stories open new ways of understanding women’s relational autonomy, and the importance of continuing relationships of interdependence and care. Here, relational autonomy is seen as a framework for shared beliefs that subjects’ situated identities are formed within the context of social relationships and shaped by a complex intersection of social determinants, such as race, class, gender and ethnicity. This discussion proposes that the short story cycle is a particularly productive form for writers interested in exploring how women come to a greater sense of who they are through these relationships – some enduring, others not – as they are experienced through apparently mundane moments in women’s lives. This is partly due to less emphasis on the individual trajectory of an autonomous person, and a greater focus on the shared experiences that shape identities and foster personal growth and collective fulfilment. The article seeks to explore this understanding of the cycle by reflecting on distinctive features of the form – modular narrative structure and narrative openness – seen in Olive Kitteridge, to demonstrate how this mode of storytelling helps make salient women’s relational lives.","PeriodicalId":36146,"journal":{"name":"Short Fiction in Theory and Practice","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41641218","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In one of Alice Munro’s longer works of short fiction, ‘The Bear Came over the Mountain’, readers are thrust into a narrative in which the protagonist, Grant, is forced to place his ageing and forgetful wife Fiona into a residential care facility. So amnesic is Fiona that, no longer remembering she has hitherto existed happily alongside Grant, she soon forms an intimate friendship with another resident, Aubrey. But Grant is no sympathetic protagonist and Munro reveals how, over the decades, he has habitually conducted a series of secretive extramarital affairs, often with the students he teaches at the local university. Reading a range of texts making taxonomical survey of love (including Plato’s Symposium, Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse and Comte-Sponville’s A Short Treatise on the Great Virtues), this article surmises Grant to be dangerously non-empathetic, unwittingly self-parodying and unthinkingly transgressive; within phallogocentric orders, time and again the women surrounding this husband–teacher–lecher are shown to be merely instrumental to his gratifications. When Aubrey’s wife Marian arrives on the scene, Grant falls immediately into the role of fetishizing, perplexingly ordinary-seeming predator; in his flirtations, his actions can be read as methodically self-impoverishing. Beyond a stylized performance devoid of meaningful content, this is a narcissist with nothing to declare beyond a duplicitous and blind, dizzying, self-justifying internal chaos.
{"title":"‘Anything was possible’: (In)fidelities, (dis)connections and narcissistic (self-)love in Alice Munro’s ‘The Bear Came over the Mountain’","authors":"Dan Disney","doi":"10.1386/FICT.9.1.27_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/FICT.9.1.27_1","url":null,"abstract":"In one of Alice Munro’s longer works of short fiction, ‘The Bear Came over the Mountain’, readers are thrust into a narrative in which the protagonist, Grant, is forced to place his ageing and forgetful wife Fiona into a residential care facility. So amnesic is Fiona that, no longer remembering she has hitherto existed happily alongside Grant, she soon forms an intimate friendship with another resident, Aubrey. But Grant is no sympathetic protagonist and Munro reveals how, over the decades, he has habitually conducted a series of secretive extramarital affairs, often with the students he teaches at the local university. Reading a range of texts making taxonomical survey of love (including Plato’s Symposium, Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse and Comte-Sponville’s A Short Treatise on the Great Virtues), this article surmises Grant to be dangerously non-empathetic, unwittingly self-parodying and unthinkingly transgressive; within phallogocentric orders, time and again the women surrounding this husband–teacher–lecher are shown to be merely instrumental to his gratifications. When Aubrey’s wife Marian arrives on the scene, Grant falls immediately into the role of fetishizing, perplexingly ordinary-seeming predator; in his flirtations, his actions can be read as methodically self-impoverishing. Beyond a stylized performance devoid of meaningful content, this is a narcissist with nothing to declare beyond a duplicitous and blind, dizzying, self-justifying internal chaos.","PeriodicalId":36146,"journal":{"name":"Short Fiction in Theory and Practice","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45432969","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Three Alice Munro stories – ‘Material’, ‘Family Furnishings’ and ‘Fiction’ – feature readers who react to fiction based on material from their own lives. ‘Fiction’ is alone in this group as the story in which the reader is pleased, rather than otherwise, with the story she reads. This different reaction is traced to important aspects of the reader’s characterization. Only in ‘Fiction’ is the reader unrelated to the internal story’s author and not also a writer herself. These traits make her a reader who consistently revises her ideas about the story she reads, as well as one who can be said to resolve a persistent conflict in this small set of stories.
{"title":"‘The great unhappiness of another’: Writers and readers in three stories by Alice Munro","authors":"S. Bernstein","doi":"10.1386/FICT.9.1.17_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/FICT.9.1.17_1","url":null,"abstract":"Three Alice Munro stories – ‘Material’, ‘Family Furnishings’ and ‘Fiction’ – feature readers who react to fiction based on material from their own lives. ‘Fiction’ is alone in this group as the story in which the reader is pleased, rather than otherwise, with the story she reads. This different reaction is traced to important aspects of the reader’s characterization. Only in ‘Fiction’ is the reader unrelated to the internal story’s author and not also a writer herself. These traits make her a reader who consistently revises her ideas about the story she reads, as well as one who can be said to resolve a persistent conflict in this small set of stories.","PeriodicalId":36146,"journal":{"name":"Short Fiction in Theory and Practice","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44995351","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘We are cyborgs’: Technology in Hari Kunzru’s short fiction","authors":"B. Jansen","doi":"10.1386/FICT.8.1-2.53_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/FICT.8.1-2.53_1","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36146,"journal":{"name":"Short Fiction in Theory and Practice","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1386/FICT.8.1-2.53_1","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43497495","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-09-01DOI: 10.1386/fict.8.1-2.123_5
Ella V. Baines, Emily Devane
{"title":"Book Reviews","authors":"Ella V. Baines, Emily Devane","doi":"10.1386/fict.8.1-2.123_5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/fict.8.1-2.123_5","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36146,"journal":{"name":"Short Fiction in Theory and Practice","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42430533","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘The Child of the Century’: ‘Reading and writing short fiction across media’","authors":"A. Cox","doi":"10.1386/FICT.8.1-2.3_2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/FICT.8.1-2.3_2","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36146,"journal":{"name":"Short Fiction in Theory and Practice","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48341849","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"On writing ‘Woods for the Trees’ and the spaciousness of collaborative short fiction","authors":"Micaela Maftei, Laura Tansley","doi":"10.1386/FICT.8.1-2.37_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/FICT.8.1-2.37_1","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36146,"journal":{"name":"Short Fiction in Theory and Practice","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42592240","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Among the short stories du Maurier wrote, ‘The Birds’ and ‘Don’t Look Now’ stand out. The first has famously been singled out by Alfred Hitchcock and the second by Nicolas Roeg for their respective film adaptations. The fate of these two short stories confirms Elizabeth Bowen’s statement according to which the short story, apart from being close to other literary genres, such as poetry and drama, developed alongside cinema. Although du Maurier has often been acclaimed as a peerless storyteller, critics have generally focused on these two short stories, especially ‘The Birds’, and almost entirely neglected the others. This article takes a close look at ‘The Little Photographer’ (1952) and explores its affinities with other art forms than cinema, namely, photography. Beyond the motif of photography and the visual qualities of the narrative, the mediating function of photography within the narrative will first be analysed. The manipulative skills of the photographer and the narrator will then be confronted and the dialogue between the art of photography and writing explored. Finally, du Maurier’s ability to work across media will be shown to reverberate on her perception and (re)definition of modernism.
{"title":"Beyond cinema: Daphne du Maurier’s intermedial experiments in ‘The Little Photographer’ (1952)","authors":"C. Reynier","doi":"10.1386/fict.8.1-2.89_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/fict.8.1-2.89_1","url":null,"abstract":"Among the short stories du Maurier wrote, ‘The Birds’ and ‘Don’t Look Now’ stand out. The first has famously been singled out by Alfred Hitchcock and the second by Nicolas Roeg for their respective film adaptations. The fate of these two short stories confirms Elizabeth Bowen’s statement according to which the short story, apart from being close to other literary genres, such as poetry and drama, developed alongside cinema. Although du Maurier has often been acclaimed as a peerless storyteller, critics have generally focused on these two short stories, especially ‘The Birds’, and almost entirely neglected the others. This article takes a close look at ‘The Little Photographer’ (1952) and explores its affinities with other art forms than cinema, namely, photography. Beyond the motif of photography and the visual qualities of the narrative, the mediating function of photography within the narrative will first be analysed. The manipulative skills of the photographer and the narrator will then be confronted and the dialogue between the art of photography and writing explored. Finally, du Maurier’s ability to work across media will be shown to reverberate on her perception and (re)definition of modernism.","PeriodicalId":36146,"journal":{"name":"Short Fiction in Theory and Practice","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42229320","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-09-01DOI: 10.1386/FICT.8.1-2.139_7
Lyn Marven, Andrew Plowman
{"title":"‘The constant failure to articulate the world in words’: An interview with Roman Ehrlich","authors":"Lyn Marven, Andrew Plowman","doi":"10.1386/FICT.8.1-2.139_7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/FICT.8.1-2.139_7","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36146,"journal":{"name":"Short Fiction in Theory and Practice","volume":"23 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66706629","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Curating conclusions in ‘Among Us’: Collaborative Twitter fiction and the implied author","authors":"E. Segar","doi":"10.1386/FICT.8.1-2.21_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/FICT.8.1-2.21_1","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36146,"journal":{"name":"Short Fiction in Theory and Practice","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42315364","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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