The modernist short story : a study in theory and practice

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The modernist short story : a study in theory and practice

Dominic Head

Cambridge University Press, 1992

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Includes bibliographical references and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

The modernist period saw a revolution in fictional practice, most famously in the work of novelists such as Joyce and Woolf. Dominic Head shows that the short story, with its particular stress on literary artifice, was a central site for modernist innovation. Working against a conventional approach and towards a more rigourous and sophisticated theory of the genre, using a framework drawn from Althusser and Bakhtin, he examines the short story's range of formal effects, such as the disunifying function of ellipsis and ambiguity. Separate chapters on Joyce, Woolf and Katherine Mansfield highlight their strategies of formal dissonance, involving a conflict of voices within the narrative. Finally, Dominic Head's challenging conclusion takes the implications of his study into the age of postmodernism.

Table of Contents

  • Preface
  • Acknowledgements
  • 1. The short story: theories and definitions
  • 2. James Joyce: the non-epiphany principle
  • 3. Virginia Woolf: experiments in genre
  • 4. Katherine Mansfield: the impersonal short story
  • 5. Wyndham Lewis: the Vorticist short story
  • 6. Malcolm Lowry: expanding circles
  • 7. Conclusion: contemporary issues
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
  • Index.

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