In spite of his desire to be acknowledged as a writer of “serious” literature, Arthur Conan Doyle (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) is destined to be remembered as the creator of a fictional character who has taken on… Read More ›
Short Story
Analysis of Fyodor Dostoevski’s Stories
Fyodor Dostoevski’s (11 November 1821 – 9 February 1881) works fall into two periods that coincide with the time before his imprisonment and following it. The seven-year hiatus in his creative output between 1849 and 1857 corresponds to the four years… Read More ›
Analysis of Isak Dinesen’s Stories
Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen) (born 17 April 1885 – 7 September 1962) reacted against the psychological and social realism of contemporary Danish literature and looked back to the Romantic storytellers for inspiration. Like them, she preferred the longer, drawn-out tale to… Read More ›
Analysis of Walter de la Mare’s Stories
Walter de la Mare’s (25 April 1873 – 22 June 1956) stories take the form both of wish fulfillment and nightmare projections. Believing that the everyday world of mundane experience is a veil hiding a “real” world, de la Mare… Read More ›
Analysis of Stephen Crane’s Stories
Perhaps because his writing career was so short, critics have devoted much space to Stephen Crane’s (November 1, 1871 – June 5, 1900) slight, decidedly apprentice series of sketches collectively entitled The Sullivan County Tales. One trait that the sketches… Read More ›
Analysis of Julio Cortázar’s Stories
Influenced by the European movements of nineteenth century Symbolism and twentieth century Surrealism, Julio Cortázar (26 August 1914 – 12 February 1984) combines symbols, dreams, and the fantastic with what seems to be an ordinary, realistic situation in order to… Read More ›
Analysis of A. E. Coppard’s Stories
The unique quality of A. E. Coppard’s short fiction derives from his powers as a lyrical writer, his sympathetic understanding of the rural, lower-class folk who organically inhabit the English countryside so memorably evoked in his tales, and his “uncanny… Read More ›
Analysis of Robert Coover’s Stories
Robert Coover’s (born February 4, 1932) central concern is the human being’s need for fiction. Because of the complexity of human existence, people are constantly inventing patterns that give them an illusion of order in a chaotic world. For Coover,… Read More ›
Analysis of Joseph Conrad’s Stories
Throughout his career, Joseph Conrad (3 December 1857 – 3 August 1924) returned to a constellation of central themes that were expressed through the actions of his characters and, more important, through those characters’ reactions to events around them. These… Read More ›
Analysis of Sandra Cisneros’s Stories
Sandra Cisneros (born December 20, 1954) said that she writes about the memories that will not let her sleep at night—about the stories that are waiting to be told. Drawing on the memories of her childhood and her cultural identity—the… Read More ›
Analysis of G. K. Chesterton’s Stories
Before he began writing his Father Brown stories, G. K. Chesterton (29 May 1874 – 14 June 1936) had already published one book of detective fiction. In The Man Who Was Thursday, Chesterton created a detective named Gabriel Syme, who… Read More ›
Analysis of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Tales
Geoffrey Chaucer’s best-known works are Troilus and Criseyde and the unfinished The Canterbury Tales, with the Book of the Duchess, the Hous of Fame, the Parlement of Foules, and The Legend of Good Women positioned in the second rank. In… Read More ›
Analysis of Raymond Carver’s Short Stories
Nearly everything written about Raymond Carver (May 25, 1938 – August 2, 1988) begins with two observations: He is a minimalist, and he writes about working-class people. Even when the critic is sympathetic, this dual categorization tends to stigmatize Carver… Read More ›
Analysis of Truman Capote’s Short Stories
Truman Capote’s (1924–84) stories are best known for their mysterious, dreamlike occurrences. As his protagonists try to go about their ordinary business, they meet with unexpected obstacles—usually in the form of haunting, enigmatic strangers. Corresponding to some childhood memory or… Read More ›
Analysis of Saul Bellow’s Short Stories
Saul Bellow’s (1915 – 2005) stature in large measure owes something to the depths to which he plumbed the modern condition. He addressed the disorder of the modern age, with all its horror and darkness as well as its great… Read More ›
Analysis of Franz Kafka’s Stories
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 ›
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 ›
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