ENGL 495 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Anger Management, Guerrilla Warfare, Confiteor
4 Jun 2018
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5 February, 2018
Sean O’Faolain short stories
- What do short stories do that novels don’t?
- Conclude in a particular way (epiphany, punch line)
- Don’t have subplots
- Temporality and duration are difference
- Encompass unities according to Aristotle’s Poetics (action, time, place)
- More natural container for the supernatural (ex: Poe)
- Omission of context, allows readers to infer
- Can be read in an hour or less
- Short stories in the Irish literary tradition
- Wilde and Yeats, focussed on fairy tales and the supernatural
- Joyce’s Dubliners -- unified collection of short stories, changed how short stories
were written
- After Joyce: O’Connor, O’Faolain, Bowen, Trevor, Beckett → how do they fit into
the Irish tradition
- Bowen calls her short stories disjected parts of experience, shards,
snapshots
- Are short stories more rural or urban?
- More oriented towards community, either rural or urban
- Urban = fast-paced
- Rural = limiting the number of characters
- Split between rural and urban, especially in the Irish tradition; tension between
the two settings, often manifests in the need to go to the city or the need to get
away from the city
- The structuring phenomenon of the short story is the encounter
- Midsummer Night Madness (MNM) is structures as a series of encounters; the
more encounters the longer the story
- In Dubliners, one short story is called “The Encounter,” refers to a negative
encounter without any conversation
- The Patriot = series of encounters between the same three people, centred
around the same place
- The Sinners = encounters, drawing on Irish tradition of confession as a place of
encounter; that encounter is ritualised, creates expectations
- The encounter always has a surprise element to it
- The encounter can be with the dead, with the supernatural
- The encounter must have meaningful bulk
- MNM
- Encounter between Henn and Mother colours narrator’s impression of
Henn, confrontation of legend and reality
- Encounters typically have a verbal aspect → what are the encounters like
between Henn and Stevey? Between John and Henn?
Document Summary
Conclude in a particular way (epiphany, punch line) Encompass unities according to aristotle"s poetics (action, time, place) More natural container for the supernatural (ex: poe) Omission of context, allows readers to infer. Can be read in an hour or less. Short stories in the irish literary tradition. Wilde and yeats, focussed on fairy tales and the supernatural. Joyce"s dubliners -- unified collection of short stories, changed how short stories were written. After joyce: o"connor, o"faolain, bowen, trevor, beckett how do they fit into the irish tradition. Bowen calls her short stories disjected parts of experience, shards, snapshots. More oriented towards community, either rural or urban. Rural = limiting the number of characters. Split between rural and urban, especially in the irish tradition; tension between the two settings, often manifests in the need to go to the city or the need to get away from the city. The structuring phenomenon of the short story is the encounter.
