Category: Scientific Studies

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The South African Short Story in English, 1920–2010: When Aesthetics Meets Ethics, by Marta Fossati

The South African Short Story in English, 1920–2010: When Aesthetics Meets Ethics, by Marta Fossati

Oxford University Press, 2024, pp. 289. ISBN: 9780198910978

This book explores – through a close reading and several deep dives into the history of print culture – the development of the South African short story in English, from the late 1920s to the first decade of the new millennium. It explores a selection of short stories by Black South African writers – Rolfes and Herbert Dhlomo, Peter Abrahams, Can Themba, Alex La Guma, Mtutuzeli Matshoba, Ahmed Essop and Zoë Wicomb – with particular focus on the dialogue between ethics and aesthetics performed by these texts with regard to the evolution of South Africa’s socio-political situation.

By focusing on Black short fiction, this book problematizes and complicates the often-polarized readings of Black literature in South Africa, torn between the notions of literariness, protest and journalism. Owing to material constraints, short fiction in South Africa primarily circulated first through local print media, which this study analyses in detail, with a focus on the cross-fertilization between journalism and the short story. While rooted in the South African context, this book is also alert to the translocal dimension of the short stories considered, exploring the ethical and aesthetical practice of intertextuality. It is thus also a book that complicates the aesthetics/ethics binary, generic classifications, and the categories of the literary and the political.

 

 

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Journal of the Short Story in English (JSSE) N. 80-81

We are pleased to announce the publication of numbers 80-81 of the Journal of the Short Story in English/Cahiers de la nouvelle, which is the special 40th anniversary issue. It finds a balance honoring the past and looking forward to the future of the short story and of short fiction research. Many of the scholarly articles were written by ENSFR members. It features stories by Angela Carter, Elizabeth Cox, Jill McCorkle and Charlotte Arnautou, and an interview with Lisa Alther, Elizabeth Cox, and Jill McCorkle about their ideas on the American short story today and on the genre itself.  It is available online.

 

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Short Fiction in Theory and Practice 14.1

Short Fiction in Theory and Practice 14.1: Special Section on ‘The Short Story and Ecology’

 Guest edited by A. J. Ashworth and Aleix Tura Vecino

 

Vol. 14.1 of Short Fiction in Theory and Practice includes a special section on ‘The Short Story and Ecology’ with original fiction by Claire Dean and Ashley Bullen-Cutting, plus articles discussing short fiction and hybrid texts by Nirmal Ghosh, Sam Cohen, D. H. Lawrence, Juliana Spahr and Sarah Moss. A.J. Ashworth interviews the American writer Diane Cook, author of Man V. Nature.

In the general section, you will find articles by Karla Cotteau, Ariela Freedman and Ines Gstrein, discussing fiction by Anthony Burgess, Souvankham Thannavongsa, Anthony Veasna So and Janice Galloway. Paul March-Russell reviews Glimpse: An Anthology of Black British Speculative Fiction.  Din Havolli reviews Kurdistan + 100: Stories from a Future State

Available now at https://intellectdiscover.com/content/journals/fict/browse.

 

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Short Fiction in Theory and Practice 12.2

Vol. 12.2 , the second of two special issues on ‘the health of the short story’ guest-edited by Lucy Dawes Durneen is now available.  Lucy’s editorial
‘Breaking ourselves open: Recovery and survival in the short form’  reflects on the process of editing and arranging articles that speak to and across the individual issues, and the way in which this itself mirrors the short story’s trifold ability to diagnose, observe and potentially suture together resolutions for the challenges of the human condition, both within the boundaries of the text, and as a discrete tool for personal recovery.

Other articles discuss pandemic literature; medical short stories in the 1890s; the early 20th century US writer Fanny Hurst; monstrous motherhood in Renaissance short fiction; and running writing workshops for health workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. There are creative contributions from Moy McCrory, Virginia Hartley and the Chilean author Carolina Brown, who is also in conversation with Lucy Dawes Durneen. Plus book reviews on the modern short story and magazine culture and the German short story by  Aleix Tura Vecino and Livi Michael.

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Short Fiction in Theory and Practice Special Issue: The Health of the Short Story

Out now, Vol. 12.1 of Short Fiction in Theory and Practice .  This first of two special issues, guest-edited by Lucy Dawes Durneen, is dedicated to ‘The Health of the Short Story’.  It includes articles, short fiction and reflective texts responding to that broad theme from many directions, including discussions of authors ranging from E. Nesbit to Diane Williams  and Kristen Roupenian; and of themes including writing trauma, the maternal body, loneliness and grief. There’s also an in-conversation with the British writer Irenosen Okojie, book reviews, and an afterword from Kirsty Gunn.