Short Story Criticism

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, Ambrose Bierce | Copyright Page

ISSN 0895-9439

Volume 72

Criticism of the Works of Short Fiction Writers

Joseph Palmisano Project Editor

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Joseph Palmisano

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Short Story Criticism, Vol. 72

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER 88-641014

ISBN 0-7876-8869-X
ISSN 0895-9439

Printed in the United States of America 10987654321

Preface

S hort Story Criticism (SSC) presents signiﬁcant criticism of the world’s greatest short story writers and provides supplementary biographical and bibliographical materials to guide the interested reader to a greater understanding of the authors of short ﬁction. This series was developed in response to suggestions from librarians serving high school, college, and public library patrons, who had noted a considerable number of requests for critical material on short story writers. Although major short story writers are covered in such Thomson Gale series as Contemporary Literary Criticism (CLC), Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism (TCLC), Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism (NCLC), and Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800 (LC), librarians perceived the need for a series devoted solely to writers of the short story genre.

Scope of the Series

SSC is designed to serve as an introduction to major short story writers of all eras and nationalities. Since these authors have inspired a great deal of relevant critical material, SSC is necessarily selective, and the editors have chosen the most important published criticism to aid readers and students in their research.

Approximately eight to ten authors are included in each volume, and each entry presents a historical survey of the critical response to that author’s work. The length of an entry is intended to reﬂect the amount of critical attention the author has received from critics writing in English and from foreign critics in translation. Every attempt has been made to identify and include the most signiﬁcant essays on each author’s work. In order to provide these important critical pieces, the editors sometimes reprint essays that have appeared elsewhere in Thomson Gale’s Literary Criticism Series. Such duplication, however, never exceeds twenty percent of an SSC volume.

Organization of the Book

An SSC entry consists of the following elements:

© The Author Heading cites the name under which the author most commonly wrote, followed by birth and death dates. Also located here are any name variations under which an author wrote, including transliterated forms for authors whose native languages use nonroman alphabets. If the author wrote consistently under a pseudonym, the pseudonym will be listed in the author heading and the author’s actual name given in parentheses on the ﬁrst line of the biographical and critical introduction. Uncertain birth or death dates are indicated by question marks. Singlework entries are preceded by the title of the work and its date of publication.

© The list of Principal Works is ordered chronologically by date of ﬁrst publication and lists the most important works by the author. The ﬁrst section comprises short story collections, novellas, and novella collections. The second section gives information on other major works by the author. For foreign authors, the editors have provided original foreign-language publication information and have selected what are considered the best and most complete English-language editions of their works.

© Reprinted Criticism is arranged chronologically in each entry to provide a useful perspective on changes in critical evaluation over time. All short story, novella, and collection titles by the author featured in the entry are printed in boldface type. The critic’s name and the date of composition or publication of the critical work are given at the

vii

& Francis Books, Inc., and the author.—Gilbert, Susan, and Susan Gubar. From The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. Yale University Press, 1979. Reproduced by permission.— Griffin, Susan E. From “Resistance and Reinvention in Sandra Cisneros’ Woman Hollering Creek,” in Ethnicity and the American Short Story. Edited by Julie Brown. Copyright © 1997 by Julie Brown. Garland Publishing, 1997. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of Routledge/Taylor & Francis Books, Inc., and the author.—Guerra, Veronica A. From “The Silence of the Obejas: Evolution of Voice in Alma Villanueva’s ‘Mother, May I’ and Sandra Cisneros’s ‘Woman Hollering Creek,’” in Living Chicana Theory. Edited by Carla Trujillo. Third Woman Press, 1998. Copyright © 1998 by Third Woman Press. Reproduced by permission.—Hertz, Neil. From Meridan: Crossing Aesthetics. Stanford University Press, 2003. Copyright © 2003 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. Reproduced with permission of Stanford University Press, www.sup.org.—Knoepﬂmacher, U. C. From George Eliot’s Early Novels: The Limits of Realism. University of California Press, 1968. Copyright © 1968 The Regents of the University of California. Reproduced by permission.—Paravisini-Gebert, Lizabeth. From Jamaica Kincaid: A Critical Companion. Greenwood Press, 1999. Copyright © 1999 by Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc., Westport, CT.—Payant, Katherine. From “Borderland Themes in Sandra Cisneros’s Woman Hollering Creek,” in The Immigrant Experience in North American Literature: Carving out a Niche. Edited by Katherine B. Payant and Toby Rose. Greenwood Press, 1999. Copyright © 1999 by Katherine B. Payant and Toby Rose. Reproduced by permission of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc., Westport, CT.—Redinger, Ruby V. From George Eliot: The Emergent Self. Alfred

A. Knopf, 1975. Copyright © 1975 by Rudy V. Redinger. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.—Simmons, Diane. From Jamaica Kincaid. Twayne Publishers, 1994. Copyright © 1994 by Diane Simmons. Reproduced by permission of the Gale Group.—Spencer, Laura Gutierrez. From “Fairy Tales and Opera: The Fate of the Heroine in the Work of Sandra Cisneros,” in Speaking the Other Self: American Women Writers. Edited by Jeanne Campbell Reesman. The University of Georgia Press, 1997. Copyright © 1997 by The University of Georgia Press. Reproduced by permission of The University of Georgia Press.—Uglow, Jennifer. From George Eliot. Virago, 1987. Reproduced by permission of Time Warner Book Group UK.

PHOTOGRAPHS APPEARING IN SSC, VOLUME 72, WERE RECEIVED FROM THE FOLLOWING SOURCES:

Cisneros, Sandra, 1991, photograph by Dana Tynan. AP/Wide World Photos. Reproduced by permission.—Eliot, George, drawing. The Library of Congress.

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The members of the Thomson Gale Literature Product Advisory Board—reference librarians from public and academic library systems—represent a cross-section of our customer base and offer a variety of informed perspectives on both the presentation and content of our literature products. Advisory board members assess and deﬁne such quality issues as the relevance, currency, and usefulness of the author coverage, critical content, and literary topics included in our series; evaluate the layout, presentation, and general quality of our printed volumes; provide feedback on the criteria used for selecting authors and topics covered in our series; provide suggestions for potential enhancements to our series; identify any gaps in our coverage of authors or literary topics, recommending authors or topics for inclusion; analyze the appropriateness of our content and presentation for various user audiences, such as high school students, undergraduates, graduate students, librarians, and educators; and offer feedback on any proposed changes/enhancements to our series. We wish to thank the following advisors for their advice throughout the year.

Barbara M. Bibel

Librarian Oakland Public Library Oakland, California

Dr. Toby Burrows

Principal Librarian The Scholars’ Centre University of Western Australia Library Nedlands, Western Australia

Celia C. Daniel

Associate Librarian, Reference Howard University Washington, D.C.

David M. Durant

Reference Librarian Joyner Library East Carolina University Greenville, North Carolina

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English Literature Librarian University of Tennessee Knoxville, Tennessee

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Donald Welsh

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