Franz Kafka’s (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) stories are not about love or success. They do not leave the reader feeling comfortable. Writing was, for him, a necessity. On August 6, 1914, Kafka wrote in his diary: “My… Read More ›
Literature
Analysis of Guy de Maupassant’s Stories
Although his active literary career began in 1880 and lasted only ten years, Guy de Maupassant was nevertheless an extraordinarily productive writer whose short stories dealt with such diverse themes as war, prostitution, marital infidelity, religion, madness, cultural misunderstanding between… Read More ›
Analysis of Kate Chopin’s Stories
Until the 1970’s, Kate Chopin (1850–1904) was known best literarily, if at all, as a “local colorist,” primarily for her tales of life in New Orleans and rural Louisiana. Chopin manages in these stories (about twothirds of her total output)… Read More ›
Analysis of Ernest Hemingway’s Stories
Any study of Ernest Hemingway’s (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) short stories must begin with a discussion of style. Reacting against the overblown, rhetorical, and often bombastic narrative techniques of his predecessors, Hemingway spent considerable time as a… Read More ›
Analysis of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Stories
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s reading in American colonial history confirmed his basically ambivalent attitude toward the American past, particularly the form that Puritanism took in the New England colonies. Especially interested in the intensity of the Puritan-Cavalier rivalry, the Puritan inclination to… Read More ›
Analysis of Nikolai Gogol’s Stories
Nikolai Gogol (31 March 1809 – 4 March 1852) combines the consummate stylist with the innocent spectator, flourishes and flounces with pure human emotion, naturalism with delicate sensitivity. He bridges the period between Romanticism and realism in Russian literature. He… Read More ›
Analysis of Leo Tolstoy’s Stories
Leo Tolstoy’s (9 September 1828 – 20 November 1910) ego embraces the world, so that he is always at the center of his fictive creation, filling his books with his struggles, personae, problems, questions, and quests for answers, and above… Read More ›
Analysis of Dylan Thomas’s Stories
Dylan Thomas’s ten stories in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog are charming reminiscences of his relatives, school friends, and neighbors in the town where he grew up. Their wit and accessibility made them immediately popular, in contrast… Read More ›
Analysis of R. K. Narayan’s Stories
R. K. Narayan (10 October 1906 – 13 May 2001) said that he found English the most rewarding medium to employ for his writing because it came to him very easily: “English is a very adaptable language. And it’s so… Read More ›
Analysis of Muriel Spark’s Stories
Muriel Spark (1 February 1918 – 13 April 2006) was an adept storyteller with a narrative voice that was often distant or aloof. Her tales are psychologically interesting because Spark was reluctant to reveal all that her characters think and… Read More ›
Analysis of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Stories
Isaac Bashevis Singer (November 11, 1903 – July 24, 1991) relished the short story; he believed that it offered, much more than the novel, the possibility of perfection. His stories, however, seldom reveal signs of a painstaking artisan conscious of… Read More ›
Analysis of Saki’s (H. H. Munro) Stories
The brilliant satirist of the mind and manners of an upper-crust Great Britain that World War I would obliterate, Saki (18 December 1870 – 14 November 1916) operates within a rich national tradition that stretches from the towering figure of… Read More ›
Analysis of Margaret Atwood’s Stories
One of Margaret Atwood’s (born November 18, 1939) central themes is storytelling itself, and most of her fiction relates to that theme in some way. The short-story collections each focus on key issues. Dancing Girls is primarily concerned with otherness,… Read More ›
Analysis of Jorge Luis Borges’s Stories
Jorge Luis Borges (1899 – 1986) may be, quite simply, the single most important writer of short fiction in the history of Latino literature. The stories he published in his collections Ficciones, 1935-1944 and El Aleph, particularly the former, not… Read More ›
Analysis of Alice Munro’s Stories
Alice Munro (born 10 July 1931) is first and foremost a writer of short fiction. However, the line between long and short fiction is sometimes blurred in her writings. She has published one book that is generally classified as a… Read More ›
Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s Stories
During his life, Edgar Allan Poe (1809 – 1849) was a figure of controversy and so became reasonably well known in literary circles. Two of his works were recognized with prizes: Manuscript Found in a Bottle and The Gold-Bug. The Raven, his most… Read More ›
Analysis of Anton Chekhov’s Stories
In his lifetime, Anton Chekhov (29 January 1860 – 15 July 1904) gained considerable critical acclaim. In 1888, he won the Pushkin Prize for his fiction, and in 1900, he was selected to honorary membership in the Russian Academy of Sciences for both… Read More ›
Analysis of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Novels
Arthur Conan Doyle’s (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) epitaph “STEEL TRUE/BLADE STRAIGHT” can also serve as an introduction to the themes of his novels, both those that feature actual medieval settings and those that center on Sherlock Holmes…. Read More ›
Analysis of Agatha Christie’s Novels
Agatha Christie’s (15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976) trademarks in detective fiction brought to maturity the classical tradition of the genre, which was in its adolescence when she began to write. The tradition had some stable characteristics, but she… Read More ›
Analysis of J. G. Ballard’s Novels
Ballard (15 November 1930 – 19 April 2009) is one of a handful of writers who, after establishing early reputations as science-fiction writers, subsequently achieved a kind of “transcendence” of their genre origins to be accepted by a wider public…. Read More ›
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