Choose eight examples of short fiction for the contents list and provide a title for your anthology.What might your choice of stories reveal about the nature of short fiction or the particular approach to the genre you wish to discuss in the critical introduction?

Assignment Guidance – Critical Introduction to an Anthology (4500 words)

Form: Anthology (4,500 words)
Referencing style: Harvard Referencing
Critical Introduction to an Anthology: 4500 words

 Assessment Task:

This submission will be comprised of:

a completed coversheet
a contents list for an anthology of short fiction (8 stories, inc author, title, date of pub.)
a 4,500 word critical introduction to the anthology
a complete reference list

Choose eight examples of short fiction for the contents list and provide a title for your anthology (e.g. An anthology of horror stories; Experimentation and the short story; Women’s short fiction and…).

BOOKS TO USE FOR THE ANTHOLOGY (CHOOSE EIGHT FROM THIS LIST):

‘The Oval Portrait’ by Edgar Allan Poe (1842)
‘The Story of an Hour’ by Kate Chopin (1894)
‘The Lottery’ by Shirley Jackson (1948)
‘Girl’ by Jamaica Kincaid (1978)
‘Bartleby the scrivener’ by Herman Melville (1853)
‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1892)
‘A Lady with a Dog’ by Anton Chekhov (1899)
‘The Dead’ by James Joyce (1914) [a scanned version is also available in the resources section below]
‘Metamorphosis’ by Franz Kafka (1915)
‘A Rose for Emily’ by William Faulkner (1930) – see ‘Appendix’
‘Lost in the Funhouse’ by John Barth (1967)
‘The School’ by Donald Barthelme (1976)
‘Happy endings’ by Margaret Atwood (1983) – also printed in your Rob Pope textbook
‘Running’ by Joyce Carol Oates (1996) – scanned in below
‘Postcards from two hotels’ by Joanna Walsh and Roman Muradov (2015)
‘Butterflies’ by Patricia Grace (1987)
‘A temporary matter’ by Jhumpa Lahiri (1999)
‘Hitting Budapest’ by NoViolet Bulawayo (2011)
‘The Raft’ by Stephen King (1982)
‘Pop Art’ by Joe Hill (2001)
‘Cat Person’ by Kristen Roupenian (201

In your Critical Introduction you MUST:

Justify your choice of stories
Why have you chosen these particular stories?
What unifies them?
What might your choice of stories reveal about the nature of short fiction or the particular approach to the genre you wish to discuss in the critical introduction?

Structure the discussion around a series of cogent arguments relevant to your anthology theme.
Make sure the critical introduction is purposive in its discussion.
Use close textual analyses of the texts to support and develop the discussion.
What larger questions about the nature of short fiction can your analyses of these stories answer?

Where relevant, you might consider some/all:
Matters of form and genre
The evolution of the genre
Thematic concerns
Modern critical approaches to the interpretation of the stories
Relevant historical, cultural and social contexts

4,500 words can be a lot to manage so break this up by using appropriately placed sub-titles throughout. Re-read the critical introductions to anthologies (of short fiction or other literary genres) from the module and take note of the form and content of these.

 

Secondary sources/ Books:

Bayley, J. (1989) The short story in English. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Cavangh, D. et al. (2010) (eds.) The Edinburgh introduction to studying English literature. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press (chapter 10 discusses the short story specifically).

Gebbie, V. (2009) Short circuit: a guide to the art of the short story. London: Salt.
Griffith, K. (1994) Narrative fiction: an introduction and anthology. London: Harcourt Brace (Chapter 7: ‘The short story: introduction’ (369-372)).

Hanson, C. (1989) (ed.) Re-reading the short story Basingstoke: Macmillan.

Henderson, E. and Hancock, G. (2009) Short fiction and critical contexts: a compact reader. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hunter, Adrian (2007) The Cambridge introduction to the short story in English Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kaylor, N. H. (1997) Creative and critical approaches to the short story. Lewiston; Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press.

Lodge, D. (2011) The art of fiction. London: Vintage.

Lounsbery, B., Rohrberger, M., Pett, S., Fedderson, R. C. and Lohaafer, S. (1998) (eds.) The tales we tell: perspectives on the short story. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press.

Malcolm, C. A. and Malcolm, D. (2009) (eds.) A companion to the British and Irish short story. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

March-Russell, P. (2009) The short story: an introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

March-Russell, P. (2013) The postcolonial short story: contemporary essays. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.

May, C. E. (1994) (ed.) The new short story theories. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press.

Reid, I. (1977) The short story. London: Methuen.

Shaw, V. (1983) The short story: a critical introduction. London: Longman.

Shapard, R., Thomas, J. and Baxter, C. (eds.). Sudden fiction international: 60 Short Stories. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

Style (1998) The short story: theory and practice. Illinois: Illinois University Press.

Taylor, J. (2012) Overheard: stories to read aloud. Cromer: Salt Publishing.

The following are more ‘creatively’ focused but might also be useful:

Gebbie, V. (2009) Short circuit: a guide to the art of the short story. London: Salt.

Page, Ra (ed). (2012) Morphologies: short story writers on short story writers. London: Comma Press.

Bell, J & Magrs, P. (2001) The Creative Writing Coursebook. London: Pan MacMillan.

Newland. C. (2014) Writing Short Stories: A Writers’ and Artists’ Companion, London: Bloomsbury

Yagoda, B. (2004). The Sound on the Page. New York: Harper Collins
Prose, Francine (2006). Reading Like a Writer: A guide for those who love books and those who want to write them. London, Aurum Press.

Turchi, Peter (2004) Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer. San Antonio, Trinity University Press

Gardner, John (1984) The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers. London, Vintage.

McGregor, J: 2012. This isn’t the kind of thing that happens to someone like you. London, 2012.

Rickards, S (2010): Hot Kitchen Snow. London: Salt.

Royle, N (ed). (2013) The Best British Short Stories 2013. Cromer, Salt. and also The Best British Short Stories 2014 (ditto, 2014)

Internet sources:

http://flavorwire.com/483530/50-of-the-scariest-short-stories-of-all-time/48
http://www.bartleby.com
http://www.gutenberg.org
http://recommendedreading.tumblr.com/
Subscribe for a free story each week: http://electricliterature.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=63307d521ef0e3221b32801ca&id=0822bf40e8
http://www.chester.ac.uk/flash.magazine
http://www.granta.com/Archive/Advanced-Search?view=advancedSearch&AS_keywords_searchTerms=&AS_title_searchTerms=&AS_contributor_searchTerms=&AS_issue_match=&AS_year_maximum=&AS_year_minimum=&AS_editor_searchTerms=&AS_genre_match=2
http://www.commonwealthwriters.org/category/prize-winning-stories/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0079gw3
http://www.booktrust.org.uk/books/adults/short-stories/stories/

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews
http://emmadarwin.typepad.com/
http://commapress.co.uk/resources/the-three-types-of-short-story
http://www.shortfictionjournal.co.uk/?page_id=9
https://thenewshortreview.wordpress.com/
http://www.thewordfactory.tv/site/

 

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