The Short Story Form and the Status of the End

It is almost a truism that happiness is boring, unworthy of anyone’s attention.  Theorist and literary historian, D.A. Miler, dignifies this notion by his theory of “the narratable,” in which conflict propels plot and “peace” extinguishes it.  Once happiness has been achieved, there’s nothing left to tell, which is why traditional novels resolve tensions to achieve narrative closure, at least apparently.  If this is true of the rambling novel form, how does Miller’s insight apply to the short story, a compressed genre that requires a tighter structure and that, in certain periods, is tied to issues of closure by its very definition? In this course, we will ask what sort of feelings, problems, and questions are capable of generating narratives and what sorts of events propel or end them. In various cultural contents and in different historical periods, what counts as the interesting?  What constitutes change, leading to an altered course?  How do the structure and craft of stories work to produce their effects? We will supplement our reading of stories with some theoretical materials on questions of closure and resolution as we trace relationships between formal and thematic questions. Readings may include stories by Kleist, E.T.A Hofman, Poe, Flaubert, Balzac, Tolstoy, Chekov, James, Woolf, Nabokov, Kafka, Joyce, Mann, Cunningham, Naipaul, Munro, Oates, Lahiri, Rushdie and others.

Satisfies General Education Requirements:

• Group-Satisfying: Arts and Letters
• Multicultural Courses: International Cultures (IC)