In surveying some six centuries of the Chinese novel, from the first major accomplishment, Sanguo yanyi (fourteenth century; The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, 1925), to the novels of the twenty-first century, some important distinctions must be observed. First, a… Read More ›
An understanding of Raja Rao’s (8 November 1908 – 8 July 2006) art is enhanced by a contextualization of his novels. Although Rao admitted to several Western influences, his work is best understood as a part of the Indian tradition…. Read More ›
The leaders of the Irish Literary Revival were born of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy. Very few were Catholics, and none was from the urban middle class, except James Joyce. The emphasis of the Revival in its early stages on legendary or… Read More ›
Irish literature falls into two distinct categories. Written in the Irish language, the first category includes bardic poems and Celtic sagas. The second category, Irish literature written in English, includes what is often called Anglo-Irish literature because it was created… Read More ›
How early was the earliest novel? Critics attempt to establish a beginning for the form in order to make the analytical task manageable. Because the novel, as generally defined, holds many elements in common with drama, epic, folktale, fable, satire,… Read More ›
America became a subject for literature after the Revolutionary War, when writers began the exploration of themes and motifs distinctly American. Continuing the Puritan belief in America as the New Eden, writers stressed the millennial nature of settlement and progress…. Read More ›
John Bunyan (November 30, 1628 – August 31, 1688) viewed his life as a commitment to Christian stewardship, to be carried on by gospel preaching and instructive writing. Although practically everything he wrote reflects that commitment, he possessed the ability… Read More ›
Critics of Rita Mae Brown (born November 28, 1944) often assert that she is too radical and too argumentative in her works. Others point out that she is dealing with a problem of acceptance that has been the plight of… Read More ›
John Fowles’s (31 March 1926 – 5 November 2005) fiction has one theme: the quest of his protagonists for self-knowledge. Such a quest is not easy in the modern world because, as many other modern authors have shown, the contemporary… Read More ›
Aestheticism European literary movement, with its roots in France, that was predominant in the 1890’s. It denied that art needed to have any utilitarian purpose and focused on the slogan “art for art’s sake.” The doctrines of aestheticism were introduced… Read More ›
“Fire and Cloud” in Uncle Tom’s Children is perhaps the best representative of Richard Wright’s early short fiction. It won first prize in the 1938 Story magazine contest which had more than four hundred entries, marking Wright’s first triumph with… Read More ›
Perhaps related to her mental condition is Virginia Woolf’s (25 January 1882 – 28 March 1941) interest in perception and perspective, as well as their relationship to imagination, in many stories. In two short avant-garde pieces—“Monday or Tuesday” (six paragraphs)… Read More ›
Tobias Wolff (born June 19, 1945) is an outstanding contemporary craftsman of the American short story. Working slowly, sometimes taking months and countless drafts, he polishes each story into an entertaining, gemlike work that reads with deceptive ease. He has… Read More ›
William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) is one of the major figures of literary modernism whose peers included Ezra Pound and Wallace Stevens. Highly influenced by the visual arts and the imagist movement, Williams’s work was… Read More ›
Although during his lifetime Tennessee Williams (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983) was commonly held to be without peer among America’s—many would say the world’s—playwrights, he began his career writing short fiction, with a story entitled “The Vengeance of… Read More ›
Joy Williams is a short-story writer with a dark vision encased in a clean prose style. Although a few of her stories have an experimental, almost surrealistic form, and often a wry, ironic tone, the bulk fall into what can… Read More ›
Because many of Edith Wharton’s (January 24, 1862 – August 11, 1937) characters and themes resemble those of Henry James, her work has sometimes been regarded as derivative of his. Each of these authors wrote a number of stories regarding… Read More ›
Although some dominant themes and characteristics appear regularly in Eudora Welty’s (April 13, 1909 – July 23, 2001) fiction, her work resists categorization. The majority of her stories are set in her beloved Mississippi Delta country, of which she paints… Read More ›
Many of Robert Penn Warren’s (April 24, 1905 – September 15, 1989) stories feature an adult protagonist’s introspective, guilty recollections of imperishable childhood events, of things done or left undone or simply witnessed with childish innocence. Blackberry Winter “Blackberry Winter”… Read More ›
The heroism of black women in the face of turmoil of all kinds rings from both volumes of Alice Walker’s (born February 9, 1944) short stories like the refrain of a protest song. In Love and Trouble reveals the extremes… Read More ›
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