The American Short Story
F05, F06
Doug Bauer
This course will trace the path and growth of the story through the 20th century. Early masterly practitioners, some now obscure, include Susan Glaspell, Jean Toomer, and Benjamin Rosenblatt, as well as Sherwood Anderson. An evolving complexity in form and voice can be discerned, decade upon decade, in the stories of Hemingway, Cather, Katherine Anne Porter, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Nabokov, Jean Stafford, Cheever, O'Connor, Roth, Malamud, and on through Bellow, Ozick, Alice Munro and others. Importantly, the conditions and concerns of the culture and the times are reflected in the works and these external influences will be noted and examined.