Masterpieces of Short Fiction

What is a short story? How do we judge the strengths and weakness of short fiction? Using Edgar Allen Poe's masterpiece of suspense and psychological horror, you enter the world of the short story and examine the techniques used by writers in this powerful genre.

Colonial puritanism serves as the backdrop for Nathaniel Hawthorne's tale of a young man who glimpses the evil in the human heart. You explore how Hawthorne weaves together the strands of Calvinism, paganism, and Indian lore in this surreal allegory.

The next stop is tsarist Russia, where you encounter one of the most influential pieces of 19th-century short fiction. In this darkly satiric yet sympathetic story, Gogol' creates the ultimate "low man," Akaky, the predecessor of a generation of literary underdogs.

This lecture continues to focus on "little people" with Maupassant's classic tale of bourgeois longing and ironic reversals. In considering the story's famous surprise ending, you examine what the author had to say about morality, materialism, and the unpredictability of fate.

According to novelist Vladimir Nabokov, "All the traditional rules of storytelling have been broken in this wonderful story." In this lecture, Professor Krasny delineates how Chekhov's unorthodox but deft treatment of character, plot, and setting result in a masterpiece of short fiction.

The work of Henry James is the epitome of 19th-century Realism. Using as his source an anecdote about an aristocratic couple and an artist, James creates a unique piece of short fiction that questions the distinction between appearance and reality and raises profound questions about the social order of his day.

This lecture enters the 20th century, moving to Dublin and the work of one of the greatest Modernists, James Joyce. In this story from his famous collection of short fiction, Dubliners, Joyce offers a view of a boy's epiphany about life's disappointments expressed through the story of a failed quest.

This lecture takes you back to Russia and to a remarkable initiation tale set against the backdrop of the Bolshevik Revolution. Through Babel's shocking and unsettling tale, you are introduced to a singularly important theme that will recur throughout 20th-century fiction: violence.

A similar initiation into the world of violence appears in Hemingway's dark story of a young man's encounter with two hit men. The story provides an opportunity to examine the author's mastery of language and to contemplate his enormous influence on later writers.

In this satirically humorous allegory of the proverbial "starving artist," Kafka presents a grim but funny vision of the faddishness of public tastes and explores Modernists' ideas about Existentialism and the relationship of art and commerce.

A young boy's uncanny abilities have dire consequences for him and his family in this dark fairy tale about materialism and familial relations. This lecture explores the story's many meanings, including its resonance with Lawrence's own complicated relationships with his mother and his wife.

Class conflict and psychological complexity take center stage in this great Chekhov-influenced story, which traces the initiation of a young girl from pampered naiveté into the understanding of the relationship between life and death.

The mid-century focus begins with "The Lottery," a tale that shocked the post–World War II generation. You consider how the story's revelation of a deadly and inhuman ritual reflects a new awareness of the horrors of war and human aggression.

This lecture turns to the great Southern American writer Flannery O'Connor, whose harrowing story of a family murdered by a serial killer presents a paradoxical vision of grace.

With Grace Paley, you encounter one of the first authors to reflect a feminist perspective. Paley creates the memorable character Virginia, an abandoned wife and mother who, despite her suffering, maintains a kind of faith in life and other human beings.

Myth and satire blend in this powerful allegory about a winged man who falls from the sky and upsets life in a small South American village. You consider the literary movement of Magical Realism and explore why this story has such a powerful impact on readers.

Malamud's story about a fantastical Jewish black bird named Schwartz offers another version of Magical Realism, one that reflects growing anxieties about the assimilation of Eastern European Jews in the United States during the 20th century.

This lecture considers the great Baldwin story "Sonny's Blues," with its themes of music, drug addiction, suffering, family relationships, and the blues, and examines how the story explores the conflicts implicit in the experience of black Americans.

Considered one of John Updike's best short stories, "A & P" is a realistic, bittersweet tale of awakening and the pain of adolescence. You consider how the story reflects both its time (the Sixties) and its place (New England) and appreciate the authentic voice of Updike's narrator, the teenager Sammy.

In this story of family secrets, Kingston uses autobiographical details to create an exploration of the meaning of identity. The result is a groundbreaking work that combines strands from ethnic, cross-cultural, and feminist writing.

Atwood takes the conventions of fiction as her subject in this Postmodernist and satiric explication of what makes a "happy ending." You consider how readers contribute to the meaning of fiction and test how Atwood's story reflects Hemingway's idea that all stories end in death.

This lecture begins with a discussion of the role of apartheid in South Africa and examines how Gordimer, a long-time antiapartheid activist, creates a story that sheds a compassionate light on both the victims of this oppressive political order and its supporters.

Art, transcendence, intimacy, and consciousness-expanding substances all play a role in this subtle and beautifully rendered account of a working stiff, his wife, her blind friend, and the evening they share.

Is short fiction really needed? What does this format offer that cannot be achieved in other literary forms? In this summary, you meditate on the value of the short story and take a long view of its development.