British Women Short Story Writers
The New Woman to Now
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12920273 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Rebecca Pohl (University of Manchester, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2016 |
| Volume | 10 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 298-299 |
| Publication date | 2016-02-10 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Contemporary Women s Writing (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1754-1476 • E-ISSN: 1754-1484 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1093/cww/vpw003 |
| OpenAlex | W2292186955 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
In 2011 Clare Hemmings challenged feminist scholars to critique the stories we tell about the history of feminism. 1 She argues that a complex array of feminist theory has been narratively smoothed into identifiable waves easily distinguishable by the associated names of theorists. According to Hemmings, social and political transformation, however, are only possible if feminists revisit these stories. The stories we tell matter, she says. The history of short story theory follows a surprisingly similar pattern. It, too, is a peculiarly narrative one, secured via the repeated citation of key writers and critics. It goes something like this: born on the East Coast of the USA sometime in the middle of the nineteenth century (Poe), the short story migrates to Ireland early in the twentieth century (O’Hara) before circling back to the USA, this time the West Coast (May). This narrative is retold so much so that the story of short story criticism appears to have a stronger hold on the scholarly imagination than the stories themselves, which too often remain neglected in the academy as much as in the marketplace. The account is troubling not only for its simplified developmental narrative, but for its elisions, especially of women writers and theorists. Emma Young and James Bailey’s collection begins to resist this conventional narrative pull. Taken together, the chapters collected offer a glimpse of the possibility of telling a different story about the short story
Art · Criticism · Feminism · Literature · Narrative · Politics · Sociology · Canadian Identity and History · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies · Short Stories in Global Literature · Gender Studies · History · Law
| Citations per year | 0.5 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2018 - 2025 (8) |
| Highly cited | No |