The Short Story Cycle in Contemporary British Literature (Based on the Short Stories by J. McGregor)

The article is devoted to the poetics of the short story cycle - a genre of short narrative fiction, where classical traditions and experimental narrative techniques are used to explicate topical issues of contemporary British literature. Beside the fact that the stories are relatively short, they are characterized by semantic compression, gaps in meaning, “internal” psychological plot, intensity, expressive imagery, lyricism, implications. The consistency of the short story cycle is created by thematic complementarity, coherence of style and composition. The short story cycle by J. McGregor ‘That Isn’t the Sort of Thing that Happens to Someone like You’ is devoted to everyday life of English Fenland inhabitants and can be attributed to the ‘narrative of community’ genre, traditional for British literature. McGregor’s short story cycle embodies almost all modern tendencies of the genre: a wide palette of themes within the framework of topical issues; vivid psychological portraits and images; variety of narrative types and forms; suggestiveness, implications, specific usage of pronouns, stylistic devices of contrast and repetition

Aesthetics · Art · Linguistics · Literature · Lyricism · Narrative · Poetics · Poetry · Canadian Identity and History · Contemporary Literature and Criticism · History · Philosophy · Short Stories in Global Literature