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Guidance notes for literary studies, with examples

guidance notes for literary studies, with examples

The Short Story – essential works

September 21, 2009 by Roy Johnson

tutorial and guide to important texts

The short story is as old as the earliest tale-telling. Many longer narratives such as epics and myths (such as the Bible) contain short episodes which can be extracted as stories. But as a distinct literary genre, the short story came into its own during the early nineteenth century. Many writers have created successful short stories – but those which follow are the prose artists who have had most influence on its development in terms of form. We will be adding more guidance notes and examples as time goes on.


Tales of Mystery & Imagination Edgar Allen Poe is famous for his Tales of Mystery and Imagination. These are tight, beautifully crafted exercises in plot, suspense, psychological drama, and sheer horror. He also invented the detective story. This is the birth of the modern short story. Poe was writing for magazines and journals. He has a spectacularly florid style, and his settings of dungeons and crumbling houses come straight out of the Gothic tradition. He’s most famous for stories such as ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’, ‘The Black Cat’, and ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ which vividly dramatise extreme states of psychological terror, anxiety, and what we would now call existential threat. He also theorised about the story, claiming that every part should be contributing to the whole, and the story should be short enough to read at one sitting. This edition is good because it includes the best of the stories, plus some essays and reviews. An ideal starting point.
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How short is short?

There is no fixed length for a short story. Readers generally expect a character, an event of some kind, and a sense of resolution. But Virginia Woolf got most of this in to one page in her experimental short story Monday or Tuesday. There are also ‘abrupt fictions’ of a paragraph or two – but these tend to be not much more than anecdotes.

There’s an often recounted anecdote regarding a competition for the shortest possible short story. It was won by Ernest Hemingway with an entry of one sentence in six words: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

There are also quite long stories – such as those written by Henry James. If the narrative sticks to one character and one issue or episode, they remain stories. If they stray into greater degrees of complexity and develop expanded themes and dense structure – then they often become novellas. Examples of these include Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice.


Hawthorne stories Nathaniel Hawthorne produced stories that are beautifully crafted studies in symbolism, moral ambiguity, and metaphors of the American psyche. His tales are full of characters oppressed by consciousness of sin, guilt, and retribution. They explore the traditions and the consequences of the Puritanism Europe exported to America. Young Goodman Brown and Other Stories in the Oxford University Press edition presents twenty of Hawthorne’s best tales. It’s the first in paperback to offer his most important short works with full annotation in one volume.
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A Day in the Country Guy de Maupassant brought the subject matter of the story down to an everyday level which shocked readers at the time – and can still do so now. He also began to downgrade the element of plot and suspense in favour of character revelation. He was a relative of Flaubert, a novelist manqué, and bon viveur who died at forty-three of syphilis in a madhouse. Nevertheless he left behind him an oeuvre of more than 300 stories. His tone is objective, detached, and often deeply ironic; and he is celebrated for the exactness and accuracy of his observations, and the balance and precision of his style. Although most of his stories appear at first to be nothing more than brief and rather transparent anecdotes, the best succeed in giving impressionistic but truthful insights into the hidden lives of people caught amidst the trials of everyday existence.
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Short Story Charles E. May, The Short Story: the reality of artifice, London: Routledge, 2002, pp.160, ISBN 041593883X. This is a study of the development of the short story as a literary genre – from its origins to the present day. It takes in most of the major figures – Poe, Hawthorn, James, Conrad, Hemingway, Borges, and Cheever. There’s also a very useful chronology, giving dates of significant publications, full notes and references. and annotated suggestions for further reading. Despite the obvious US weighting here, for anyone who needs an overview of the short story and an insight into how stories are analysed as part of undergraduate studies, this is an excellent place to start.
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Katherine Mansfield short storiesKatherine Mansfield is one of the few major writers who worked entirely within the short story form. Her finest work is available in just one volume. She followed Chekhov in paring down the dramatic element of the short story to a minimum, whilst raising its level of subtlety and psychological insight to new heights. Every smallest detail within her stories is carefully chosen to complete a pattern which the whole tale symbolises. She was also an early feminist in presenting many of her stories from a convincingly radical point of view. In this she was rather like her friend and contemporary, Virginia Woolf with whom she discussed the new literary techniques they were both developing at the same time. Unfortunately, Katherine Mansfield died at only thirty-five when she was at the height of her powers.
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James Joyce - Dubliners - book jacket James Joyce published Dubliners in 1916 and established himself immediately as a great writer. This has been an enormously influential collection which helped to establish the form of the modern short story. These are studies of Dublin life and characters written in a stark, pared-down style. Most of the characters and scenes are mean and petty – sometimes even tragic. Joyce had difficulty finding a publisher for this his first book, and it did not appear until many years after it had been written. It was severely attacked because the names of actual persons and places in Dublin are mentioned in it. Several of the characters introduced in Dubliners eventually reappear in his great novel Ulysses. In terms of literary technique, Joyce is best known for his use of the ‘epiphany’ – the revealing moment or experience used as a focal point for the purpose of the story.
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The Whiplash Ending

It used to be thought that the ‘point’ of a short story was best held back until the last paragraph. The idea was that the reader was being entertained – and then suddenly surprised by a revelation or an unexpected reversal or twist. O. Henry popularised this device in the US. However, most serious modern writers after Chekhov came to think that this was rather a cheap strategy. They proposed instead the relatively eventless story which presents a situation that unfolds itself to the reader for contemplation.


Virginia Woolf stories Virginia Woolf took the short story as it had come to be developed post-Chekhov, and with it she blended the prose poem, poetic meditations, and the plotless event. Her finest achievements in this form – Kew Gardens, Sunday or Monday, and The Lady in the Looking-glass‘ – create new linguistic worlds without the prop of a story line. These offer a poetic evocation of life and meditations on time, memory, and death. This edition contains all the classic short stories such as The Mark on the Wall, A Haunted House, and The String Quartet – but also the shorter fragments and experimental pieces such as Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street. These ‘sketches’ (as she called them) were used to practice the techniques she used in her longer fictions. Nearly fifty pieces written over the course of Woolf’s writing career are arranged chronologically to offer insights into her development as a writer. This is well presented and edited in a scholarly manner by Susan Dick.
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Metamorphosis Franz Kafka created stories and ‘fragments’ (as he called them) which are a strange, often nightmarish mixture of tale and philosophic meditation. Start with Metamorphosis – the account of a young salesman who wakes up to find he has been transformed into a giant insect. This particular collection also includes Kafka’s first publication – a slim volume of what he called ‘Meditations’ – as well as the forty-page ‘Letter to his Father’. It also contains the story in which he predicted the horrors of the concentration camps – ‘In the Penal Colony’. Kafka is famous for having anticipated in his work many of the modern states of psychological angst, alienation, and existential terror which became commonplace later in the century.
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Epiphanies and Moments

James Joyce’s contribution to the short story was a device he called the ‘epiphany’. Following Guy de Maupassant and Chekhov, he wrote the series of stories Dubliners which were pared down in terms of literary style and focussed their effect on a revelation. A sudden remark, a symbol, or moment epitomises and clarifies the meaning of a complex experience. This usually comes at the end of the story – either for the character in the story or for the reader. Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf followed a similar route of playing down action and events in favour of dramatising insights into character and states of mind. Woolf called these ‘moments of being’.


Jorge Luis Borges - The Total Library Jorge Luis Borges like Katherine Mansfield, only wrote short stories. He was an Argentinian, much influenced by English Literature. His tales manage to combine literary playfulness and a rich style with strange explorations of mind-bending ideas. He is credited as one of the fathers of magical realism, which is one feature of Latin-American literature which has spread worldwide since the 1960s. His stories often start in a concrete, realistic world then gradually slide into strange dreamlike states and end up leaving you to wonder where on earth you are, and how you got there. Funes, the Memorious explores the idea of a man who cannot forget anything; The Garden of Forking Paths is a marvellous double-take on the detective story; and Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius is a pseudo-essay concerning encyclopedia entries of an imaginary world – which begin to invade and multiply within our own. He also wrote some rather amusing literary spoofs, which are collected in this edition.
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Ernest Hemingway trained as a newspaper reporter and began writing short stories in the post-Chekhov period, consciously influenced by his admiration for the Russian novelist Turgenev. He is celebrated for his terseness and understatement – a sort of literary tough-guy style which was much imitated at one time His persistent themes are physical and moral courage, stoicism, and what he called ‘grace under pressure’. Because his stories are so pared to the bone, free of all superfluous decoration, and so reliant on the closely observed detail, they fit well within the modernist style. He once won a bet that he could write a short story in six words. The result was – ‘For sale: baby shoes. Never worn.’ His reputation as a novelist has plummeted recently, but his stories are still worth reading.
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John Cheever is a story writer in the smooth and sophisticated New Yorker school. His writing is urbane, thoughtful, and his social details well observed. What he writes about are the small moments of enlightenment which lie waiting in everyday life, as well as the smouldering vices which lurk beneath the polite surface of suburban America. This is no doubt a reflection of Cheever’s own experience. For many years as a successful writer and family man he was also an alcoholic and led a secret double life as a homosexual. His main themes include the duality of human nature: sometimes dramatized as the disparity between a character’s decorous social persona and inner corruption. His is a literary approach which has given rise to many imitators, perhaps the best known of whom is Anne Tyler. He’s sometimes called ‘the Checkhov of the suburbs’.

Nadine GordimerNadine Gordimer is one of the few modern writers who have developed the short story as a literary genre beyond what Virginia Woolf pushed it to in the early modernist phase. She starts off in modern post-Chekhovian mode presenting situations which have little drama but which invite the reader to contemplate states of being or moods which illustrate the ideologies of South Africa. Technically, she experiments heavily with point of view, narrative perspective, unexplained incidents, switches between internal monologue and third person narrative and a heavy use of ‘as if’ prose where narrator-author boundaries become very blurred. Some of her stories became more lyrical, more compacted and symbolic, abandoning any semblance of conventional story or plot in favour of a poetic meditation on a theme. All of this can make enormous demands upon the reader. Sometimes, on first reading, it’s even hard to know what is going on. But gradually a densely concentrated image or an idea will emerge – the equivalent of a Joycean ‘epiphany’ – and everything falls into place. Her own collection of Selected Stories are UK National Curriculum recommended reading.
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© Roy Johnson 2004


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Filed Under: 19C Literature, 20C Literature, Literary studies, Short Stories, The Short Story Tagged With: Edgar Allen Poe, English literature, Ernest Hemingway, Franz Kafka, Guy de Maupassant, James Joyce, John Cheever, Jorge Luis Borges, Katherine Mansfield, Literary studies, Nadine Gordimer, Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Short Story, Virginia Woolf

Twentieth Century – literary timeline – part 1

July 26, 2009 by Roy Johnson

a chronicle of events, literatures, politics, and the arts

1895. X-rays discovered; invention of the cinematograph; trial and imprisonment of Oscar Wilde; Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest and An Ideal Husband; H.G. Wells, The Time Machine.

1896. Wireless telegraphy invented; Abyssinians defeat occupying Italian forces – first defeat of colonising power by natives; Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure; Anton Chekhov, The Seagull; Daily Mail first published.

1897. Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee; Henry James, The Spoils of Poynton , What Masie Knew; Bram Stoker, Dracula.

1898. Second Anglo-Boer War begins. Henry James, The Turn of the Screw ; Thomas Hardy, Wessex Poems; George Bernard Shaw, Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant; H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds.

1899. British disasters in South Africa. Schoenberg Verklarte Nacht; Henry James, The Awkward Age; Kate Chopin, The Awakening; Anton Chekhov, Uncle Vanya.

1900. Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams, Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim; Deaths of Nietzsche, Wilde, and Ruskin; Max Planck announces quantum theory. Daily Express started.

1901. Queen Victoria dies – Edwardian period begins; First wireless communication between UK and USA; H.G.Welles, The First Men in the Moon; Rudyard Kipling, Kim; First Nobel prize for literature – R.P.A.Sully Prudhomme (F).

1902. End of Boer War; Henry James, The Wings of the Dove;
Arnold Bennett Anna of the Five Towns; Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness; Nobel prize – T. Mommsen (G).


Click for details at AmazonOxford Companion to Twentieth Century Literature in English is a new reference guide to English-language writers and writing throughout the present century, in all major genres and from all around the world – from Joseph Conrad to Will Self, Virginia Woolf to David Mamet, Ezra Pound to Peter Carey, James Joyce to Amy Tan. Includes entries on literary movements, periodicals, and over 400 individual works, as well as articles on some 2,400 authors, plus a good introduction by John Sutherland.


1903. First flight in heavier-than-air machine by Wright brothers in USA; first silent movie, The Great Train Robbery; Henry James, The Ambassadors; Daily Mirror started; Nobel prize – B. Bjornson (N).

1904. New York subway opens; Russo-Japanese war begins; Henry James, The Golden Bowl; Joseph Conrad, Nostromo; Anton Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard; Death of Chekhov; Nobel prize – F. Mistral (F) and J. Echegary (Sp).

1905. ‘Bloody Sunday’ massacre of protesters in St Petersburg; Einstein, Special Theory of Relativity; Freud, Theory of Sexuality; E.M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread; Nobel prize – H. Sienkiewicz (P).

1906. First Liberal government in UK; death of Ibsen; General strike in Russia – followed by first (limited) democratic parliament; Women’s Suffrage movement active; San Francisco destroyed by earthquake and fire; Labour Party formed. Nobel prize – G. Carducci (I)

1907. Belgium seizes Congo; Austria seizes Bosnia and Herzegovina; Picasso introduces cubism; first electric washing machine; Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent; E.M.Forster, The Longest Journey; Nobel prize – Rudyard Kipling (UK)

1908. Ford introduces Model-T; Elgar’s First Symphony; E.M.Forster, A Room with a View; first Old Age Pensions; Nobel prize – R. Eucken (G)

1909. Ford produces first cheap cars – Model T; Death of George Meredith; Bleriot flies across English Channel; Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto; Vaughn Williams Fantasy on a Theme of Thomas Tallis; Nobel – S. Lagerlöf (S)


The Twentieth CenturyTwentieth-century Britain is an account of political, industrial, commercial, and cultural development in England, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland. It’s particularly strong on the changing face of government, and it also relates issues of the day to the great writers and artists of the period. This ‘very short introduction’ series offers a potted account of the subject in handy pocket-book format, with plenty of suggestions for further reading.


1910. Death of Tolstoy, Edward VII, and Florence Nightingale; E.M.Forster, Howards End; Arnold Bennett, Clayhanger; H.G.Wells, The History of Mr Polly; Nobel prize – P. Heyse (G).

1911. Rutherford discovers structure of atom in Manchester; Chinese revolution; Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes; D.H. Lawrence, The White Peacock; Nobel prize – M. Maeterlink (Be).

1912. China becomes a republic following revolution; Sinking of the Titanic; railway, mining, and coal strikes in UK. Daily Herald started; Schoenberg Pierrot Lunaire; Nobel prize – G. Hauptmann (G)

1913. New Statesman started; first crossword puzzle; Thomas Mann, Death in Venice; D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers; Stravinsky The Rite of Spring; Nobel prize – R. Tagore (In)

1914. Outbreak of first world war; first traffic lights; Panama Canal opened; James Joyce, Dubliners; Marcel Proust begins to publish A la recherche du temps perdu (Remembrance of Things Past); Nobel prize – not awarded.

1915. First air attacks on London; Germans use poison gas in war; Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis; Einstein, General Theory of Relativity; D.H. Lawrence, The Rainbow; Ford Maddox Ford, The Good Soldier; D.W.Griffith, The Birth of a Nation; Nobel prize – R. Roland (F).

1916. First Battle of the Somme; Battle of Verdun; Australians slaughtered in Gallipoli campaign; Easter Rising in Dublin; James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; Prokofiev Classical Symphony; Nobel prize – V. von Heidenstam (S).

1917. USA enters the war; October Revolution in Russia; battle of Passchendaele; T.S. Eliot Prufrock and Other Observations; Nobel prize – K. Gjellerup (D) and H. Pontoppidan (Da).

1918. Second Battle of the Somme; German offensive collapses; end of war [Nov 11]; Votes for women over 30; influenza pandemic kills millions; Lytton Strachey, Eminent Victorians; Nobel prize – not awarded.

1919. Peace Treaty ratified at Versailles; Einstein’s Relativity Theory confirmed during solar eclipse; Breakup of former Habsburg Empire; Alcock and Brown make first flight across Atlantic; prohibition in US; Ronald Firbank, Valmouth; Franz Kafka, In the Penal Colony; Nobel prize – K. Spitteler (Sw).

next

© Roy Johnson 2005


Twentieth century literature
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Filed Under: 20C Literature, Literary studies Tagged With: Cultural history, timelines, Twentieth century

Twentieth Century – literary timeline – part 2

September 28, 2009 by Roy Johnson

a chronicle of events, literature, and politics

1920. League of Nations established; Oxford University admits women;
D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love; Nobel prize – K. Hamsun (N).

1921. Irish Free State proclaimed; extreme inflation in Germany; Fatty Arbuckle scandal in US; Nobel prize – Anatole France (F).

1922. Fascists march on Rome under Mussolini; Kemel Ataturk founds modern Turkey; T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land; James Joyce, Ulysses; Katherine Mansfield, The Garden Party; Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus; John Galsworthy, The Forsyth Saga; Nobel prize – J. Benavente (Sp).

1923. Charleston craze; BBC begins radio broadcasting in the UK; William Walton Facade; Nobel prize – W.B. Yeats (Ir).

1924. First UK Labour government formed under Ramsey MacDonald (lasts nine months); Deaths of Lenin, Franz Kafka, and Joseph Conrad; Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain; E.M. Forster, A Passage to India; Nobel prize – W. Raymont (P).

1925. John Logie Baird televises an image of a human face; Webern Wozzeck; Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf; Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway; Nobel prize – George Bernard Shaw (UK).

1926. UK General Strike; first demonstration of television in UK; Fritz Lang, Metropolis; Nobel prize – G. Deledda (I).

1927. Lindbergh flies solo across Atlantic; first talkie film – Al Jolson in ‘The Jazz Singer’; Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse; Nobel prize – Henri Bergson (Fr).


Oxford Companion to Twentieth Century Literature - Click for details at AmazonOxford Companion to Twentieth Century Literature in English is a new reference guide to English-language writers and writing throughout the present century, in all major genres and from all around the world – from Joseph Conrad to Will Self, Virginia Woolf to David Mamet, Ezra Pound to Peter Carey, James Joyce to Amy Tan. Includes entries on literary movements, periodicals, and over 400 individual works, as well as articles on some 2,400 authors, plus a good introduction by John Sutherland.


1928. Women in UK get same voting rights as men; Death of Thomas Hardy; first Oxford English Dictionary published; penicillin discovered;
D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover; Evelyn Waugh, Decline and Fall; Nobel prize – S. Undset (N).

1929. Slump in US, followed by collapse of New York Stock Exchange; Start of world economic depression; Second UK Labour government under MacDonald;
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own; first experimental television broadcast; Kurt Weil The Threepenny Opera; Nobel prize – Thomas Mann (G).

1930. Mass unemployment in UK; Death of D.H. Lawrence.
William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying; Nobel prize – Sinclair Lewis (US).

1931. Resignation of UK Labour government, followed by formation of national coalition government; Empire State building completed in New York; Virginia Woolf, The Waves; Nobel prize – R.A. Karfeldt (S).

1932. Hunger marches start in UK; scientists split the atom; air conditioning invented; Aldous Huxley, Brave New World; Nobel prize – John Galsworthy (UK).

1933. Adolf Hitler appointed Chancellor of Germany; first Nazi concentration camps; prohibition ends in US; Radio Luxembourg begins commercial broadcasts to UK; George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London;Jean Vigo, L’Atalante; Nobel prize – Ivan Bunin (USSR).

1934. Hitler becomes Dictator; Evelyn Waugh, A Handful of Dust; Samuel Beckett, More Pricks than Kicks; Nobel prize – Luigi Pirandello (I).

1935. Germany re-arms; Italians invade Abyssinia (Ethiopia); Prokofiev Romeo and Juliet; Nobel prize – not awarded.

1936. Death of George V in UK, followed by Edward VIII, who is forced to abdicate; Stalinist show trials in USSR; Civil War in Spain begins; Germany re-occupies the Rheinland; BBC begins television transmissions; Aaron Copland El Salon Mexico; Nobel prize – Eugene O’Neil (USA).

1937. Neville Chamberlain UK prime minister; Destruction of Guernica;
George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier; Nobel prize – Roger Martin du Gard (Fr).


Twentieth Century Britain - Click for details at AmazonTwentieth-century Britain is an account of political, industrial, commercial, and cultural development in England, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland. It’s particularly strong on the changing face of government, and it also relates issues of the day to the great writers and artists of the period. This ‘very short introduction’ series offers a potted account of the subject in handy pocket-book format, with plenty of suggestions for further reading.


1938. Germans occupy Austria; Chamberlain meets Hitler to make infamous Munich ‘agreement’ to prevent war; Samuel Beckett, Murphy; John Dos Passos, USA; Nobel prize – Pearl S. Buck (USA).

1939. Fascists win Civil War in Spain; Stalin makes pact with Hitler; Germany invades Poland; Britain and France declare war on Germany; helicopter invented;
James Joyce, Finnegans Wake; Nobel prize – F.E. Silanpaa (Fi).

1940. Germany invades north-west Europe; Fall of France; British troops evacuated from Dunkirk; Battle of Britain; Start of ‘Blitz’ bombing raids over London; Churchill heads national coalition government; assassination of Trotsky; Nobel prize – not awarded.

1941. Germany invades USSR; Japanese destroy US fleet at Pearl Harbour; USA enters the war; siege of Leningrad; Deaths of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf; Orson Wells, Citizen Kane; Nobel prize – not awarded.

1942. Battle of Stalingrad; Battle of Midway; Beveridge report establishes basis of modern Welfare State; T-shirt invented; Nobel prize – not awarded.

1943. Anglo-American armies invade Italy; Warsaw uprising; Nobel prize – not awarded.

1944. D-Day invasion of France; ball-point pens go on sale; German V1 and V2 rockets fired; R.A. Butler’s Education Act; Aaron Copland Appalachian Spring; Nobel prize – J.V. Jensen (Da).

1945. End of war in Europe; Atomic bombs dropped on Japan; first computer built; microwave oven invented; United Nations founded; huge Labour victory in UK general election; Atlee becomes prime minister, George Orwell, Animal Farm; Nobel prize – G. Mistral (Ch).

1946. Churchill’s ‘Iron Curtain’ speech; Nuremberg war trials; bikinis introduced; United Nations opens in New York; Nobel prize – Herman Hesse (Sw)

1947. Marshall Plan of aid to Europe; Jewish refugees turned away by UK; Polaroid camera invented; coal and other industries nationalised in UK; transfer of power to independent India, Pakistan, and Burma. Thomas Mann, Doktor Faustus; Nobel prize – A. Gide (Fr)

1948. Berlin airlift; state of Israel founded; Railways and electricity nationalised in UK; Bevan launches National Health Service in UK. Nobel prize – T.S. Eliot (UK)

1949. East Germany created; Mao Tse Tung declares Republic of China; NATO founded; Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex; George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty Four; Nobel prize – W. Faulkner (USA)

The Twentieth Centurynext

© Roy Johnson 2009


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Filed Under: 20C Literature, Literary studies Tagged With: Cultural history, History, Literary studies, Reference, Twentieth century

Twentieth Century – literary timeline – part 3

September 28, 2009 by Roy Johnson

a chronicle of events, literature, and politics

1950. India declares itself a republic; UK and USA attack Korea; first credit cards; first organ transplant; Billy Wilder, Sunset Boulevard; Nobel prize – Bertrand Russell (UK)

1951. Festival of Britain; first colour TV; Conservatives defeat Labour in UK general election; Churchill becomes prime minister; UK troops seize Suez Canal zone; Benjamin Britten Billy Budd; Samuel Beckett, Malloy; Nobel prize – P. Lagerkvist (S)

1952. Death of George V. Accession of Queen Elizabeth II at 25;
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man; Nobel prize – F. Mauriac (Fr)

1953. DNA discovered; conquest of Everest; Death of Stalin – and Prokofiev on same day; Nobel prize – Winston Churchill (UK)

1954. British troops withdrawn from Egypt; Four-minute mile broken; Nobel prize – E. Hemingway (USA)

1955. European Union created; Warsaw Pact founded; V. Nabokov, Lolita; Patrick White, The Tree of Man; Nobel prize – H. Laxness (Ic)

1956. Khruschchev denounces Stalin at Communist Party Conference; Anglo-French invasion of Suez, followed by withdrawal; Hungarian uprising crushed by Soviets; Samuel Beckett, Malone Dies; Nobel prize – J. Ramon Jiminez (Sp)


Oxford Companion to Twentieth Century Literature - Click for details at AmazonOxford Companion to Twentieth Century Literature in English is a new reference guide to English-language writers and writing throughout the present century, in all major genres and from all around the world – from Joseph Conrad to Will Self, Virginia Woolf to David Mamet, Ezra Pound to Peter Carey, James Joyce to Amy Tan. Includes entries on literary movements, periodicals, and over 400 individual works, as well as articles on some 2,400 authors, plus a good introduction by John Sutherland.

 


1957. European Economic Community established; Homosexuality decriminalised in UK; Patrick White, Voss; Nobel prize – A. Camus (Fr)

1958. Orson Wells, Touch of Evil; Nobel prize – B. Pasternak (USSR) [forced to refuse it]

1959. Castro overthrows Batista regime in Cuba; first motorway opened in UK; Nobel prize – S. Quasimodo (I)

1960. Sharpville massacres in S Africa; new republics declared in Africa; Lady Chatterley’s Lover cleared of charges of obscenity in UK; J.F. Kennedy elected US president; Alfred Hitchcock, Psycho; Nobel prize – A. St. Leger (Fr)

1961. Adolf Eichman on trial for role in Holocaust; USSR makes first manned space flight; USA-backed Bay of Pigs attack in Cuba fails; Berlin Wall erected; Patrick White, Riders in the Chariot; Samuel Beckett, Happy Days; Nobel prize – L. Andric (Y)

1962. US sends troops to Vietnam; Cuban missile crisis; Nelson Mandela jailed; Please Please Me first Beatles hit; Nobel prize – J. Steinbeck (USA)

1963. French veto Britain’s application to join European Common Market; Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech; Profumo scandal in UK; Kennedy assassination in USA; Nobel prize – G. Seferis (Gr)

1964. Khruschchev deposed by Breshnev in USSR; Vietnam attacks US destroyer in Gulf of Tonkin; Labour party gains power in UK under Harold Wilson; Saul Bellow, Herzog. Nobel prize – J-P. Sartre (Fr) [prize not accepted]

1965. Malcolm X assassinated; India invades Pakistan; US air raids in Vietnam; anti-war protests in US and Europe; Harold Pinter, The Homecoming; Nobel prize – M. Sholokov (USSR) [authorship subsequently disputed]

1966. Black Panthers established in US; Cultural revolution under Mao in China; Britain wins Wold Cup in football; Nobel prize – Samuel Agnon, Nelly Sachs (Il)

1967. Israel seizes land in 6 day war; first heart transplant; first colour TV transmissions in UK; Stalin’s daughter defects to west; ‘Summer of Love’ hippy demonstrations in San Francisco; decriminalisation of homosexuality in UK; Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude; Nobel prize – Miguel Angel Asturias (Gu)

1968. Martin Luther King assassinated; student protests in Paris; USSR invades Czechoslovakia; theatre censorship abolished in UK after 23 years; Tet offensive in Vietnam; Nobel prize – Yasunari Kawabata (Jp)

1969. UK troops sent into N Ireland; US puts first men on the moon; death penalty abolished in UK; precursor of the Internet, ARPANET created; Woodstock music festival; Monty Python’s Flying Circus first broadcast; Nobel prize – Samuel Beckett (Ire)

1970. My Lai massacre; Rubber bullets used in N Ireland; Allende elected socialist president in Chile; anti-government demonstrations in Poland; age of majority lowered to 18 in UK; invention of computer floppy disks; Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch; Patrick White, The Vivesector; Nobel prize – Alexander Solzhenitsyn (USSR)

1971. Open University begins in UK; internment without trial in N Ireland; China joins UN; Nixon resumes bombing of Vietnam; video recorders introduced; Britain negotiates entry into EU; Nobel prize – Pablo Neruda (Ch)

1972. Miners strike in UK; Bloody Sunday in N Ireland; Watergate scandal begins in US; Nobel prize – Heinrich Böll (Gr)

1973. Allende government overthrown by Pinochet in Chile; industrial strikes in UK; Arab-Israeli war; abortion legalised in US; US pulls out of Vietnam; Britain enters the European Common Market; Nobel prize – Patrick White (Aus)

1974. Miners strike in UK; Impeachment and resignation of president Nixon in US; Nadine Gordimer, The Conservationist; Nobel prize – Eyvind Johnson, Harry Martinson (Sw)

1975. Margaret Thatcher elected leader of Tories in UK; Vietnam war ends with hasty retreat of US troops; first elections in Portugal for 50 years; Microsoft founded; Nobel prize – Eugenio Montale (It)

1976. Jeremy Thorpe resigns as UK liberal leader following sex scandal; Britain found guilty of torture in N Ireland; Jimmy Carter elected president in US; Patrick White, A Fringe of Leaves; Nobel prize – Saul Bellow (USA)

1977. First democratic elections in Spain since 1936; student activist Steve Biko tortured to death in S Africa; Punk rock fashionable; Nobel prize – Vicente Aleixandre (Sp)

1978. World’s first test tube baby; Nobel prize – Isaac Bashevis Singer (USA)

1979. Shah leaves Iran; Ayatollah Khomeni returns from exile in Paris; Islamic republic declared; Margaret Thatcher elected first woman PM in UK; first heart transplant; Pol Pot convicted of murdering 3 million in Cambodia; Francis Ford Coppola, Apocalypse Now; Nobel prize – Odysseus Elytis (Gk)


Twentieth Century Britain - Click for details at AmazonTwentieth-century Britain is an account of political, industrial, commercial, and cultural development in England, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland. It’s particularly strong on the changing face of government, and it also relates issues of the day to the great writers and artists of the period. This ‘very short introduction’ series offers a potted account of the subject in handy pocket-book format, with plenty of suggestions for further reading.


1980. USSR Nobel peace prizewinner Sakharov sent into internal exile; Mugabe’s establishes one-party ZANU(PF) state in Zimbabwe; outbreak of Iran-Iraq war; Solidarity trade union recognised by Polish government; Ronald Regan elected US president; John Lennon shot in New York; Nobel prize – Czeslaw Milosz (Po)

1981. Greece joins EEC; Social Democrats launched in UK – merges with Liberals; Peter Sutcliffe convicted of Yorkshire Ripper murders; Prince Charles marries Lady Diana Spencer; first reports of AIDS; Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children; Nobel prize – Elias Canetti (UK!)

1982. Argentina invades Malvinas (Falklands); UK re-takes islands; General Galtieri resigns; Polish government abolishes Solidarity; death of Breshnev; Nobel prize – Gabriel García Márquez (Co)

1983. Demonstrations in 20 Polish cities; IRA prisoners escape from Maze prison; US-backed invasion of Grenada; Cruise missiles installed in UK; Nobel prize – William Golding (UK)

1984. UK miners strike against pit closures; USSR boycotts Olympics in LA; Mrs Gandhi assassinated; Nobel prize – Jaroslav Seifert (Cz)

1985. USSR reforms of Glasnost and Perestroika called for by Gorbachev; Greenpeace ship sunk by French agents in NZ; Nobel prize – Claude Simon (Fr)

1986. Westland scandal in UK government; press disputes lead to move from Fleet Street to Wapping in UK; legal independence for Australia; US bomb Benghazi and Tripoli; Chernobyl nuclear disaster; 180-day detention without trial in S Africa; US and Commonwealth impose sanctions on South Africa; Nobel prize – Wole Soyinka (Ni)

1987. Gorbachev begins critique of Breshnev in USSR; white-only elections in S Africa; Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie guilty of crimes against humanity; Iran attacks US tanker in Persian Gulf; DNA first used to convict criminals; Nobel prize – Joseph Brodsky (USA)

1988. IRA members shot by UK in Gibraltar; first Gulf war begins; Gorbachev proposes democratic reforms in USSR; George Bush Snr president in US; Nobel prize – Naguib Mahfouz (Eg)

1989. Khomeini issues fatwa on Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses; Tiananamen Square massacre; elections, protests, and shakeups in Communist block; E Germany closes borders after demonstrations for reform; Iron Curtain begins to be removed; Romanian leader Ceausescu executed; playwright Vaclav Havel becomes Czech president; Tim Berners-Lee invents the World Wide Web; Nobel prize – Camilo José Cela (Sp)

1990. Lech Walesa becomes first president of Poland; Nelson Mandela freed after 27 years in jail; John Major replaces Margaret Thatcher as UK prime minister; Derek Walcott, Omeros; Nobel prize – Octavio Paz (Mx)

1991. Collapse of the Soviet Union; Apartheid laws repealed in S Africa; Iraq invades Kuwait; first Gulf war begins with Operation desert Storm; Satellite-based communications become established for TV and Internet; Nobel prize – Nadine Gordimer (SA)

1992. Official end of Cold War; Nobel prize – Derek Walcott (SL)

1993. Bosnian civil war; Use of the Internet grows exponentially; Nobel prize – Toni Morrison (USA)

1994. Channel tunnel opens in UK; Mandela elected president of S Africa; Rawandan genocide; Nobel prize – Kenzaburo Oe (Jp)

1995. Nobel prize – Seamus Heaney (Ire)

1996. Prince Charles divorces Princess Diana in UK; Mad cow disease hits UK; Nobel prize – Wislawa Szymborska (Po)

1997. Hong Kong returns to China; Princess Diana dies in car crash in Paris; Tony Blair wins landslide victory in UK with New Labour Party; Nobel prize – Dario Fo (It)

1998. India and Pakistan test nuclear weapons; US President Clinton in sex scandal; use of mobile phones and Internet becomes commonplace; digital technology widely introduced into broadcast media; Nobel prize – José Saramago (Pt)

1999. New Euro currency introduced; NATO forces in Serbia; hereditary peers abolished in UK House of Lords; Nobel prize – Gunter Grass (Gr)

2000. First elected Mayor of London in UK; Legal age for consensual gay sex reduced to 16;Nobel prize – Gao Xingjian (Fr)

2001. Labour Party re-elected with huge majority; Twin Towers attacked and destroyed in New York; Britain joins US in Afghanistan war; Nobel prize – V.S. Naipaul (UK)

2002. Nobel prize – Imre Kertész (Hu)

2003. Nobel prize – J.M.Coetzee (SA)

2004. Nobel prize – Elfriede Jelinek (Au)

2005. Nobel prize – Harold Pinter (UK)

2006. Nobel prize – Orhan Pamuk (Tk)

2007. Nobel prize – Doris Lessing (UK)

2008. Nobel prize – J.M.G Le Clezio (Fr)

2009. Nobel prize – Herta Mueller (Gr)

2010. Nobel Prize – Mario Vargas Llosa (Pe)

2011. Nobel Prize – Thomas Transtroemer (Sw)

2012. Nobel Prize – Mo Yan (Cn)

2013. Nobel Prize – Alice Munro (Ca)

2014. Nobel Prize – Patrick Modiano (Fr)

2015. Nobel Prize – Svetlana Alexievich (By)

2016. Nobel Prize – Bob Dylan (USA)

2017. Nobel Prize – Kasuo Ishiguro (UK)

2018. Nobel Prize – not awarded

The Twentieth Century

© Roy Johnson 2009


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Filed Under: 20C Literature, Literary studies Tagged With: Cultural history, History, Literary studies, Reference, Twentieth century

What is close reading?

September 14, 2009 by Roy Johnson

a brief guide to advanced reading skills

Close reading – explained

1. Close reading is the most important skill you need for any form of literary studies. It means paying especially close attention to what is printed on the page. It is a much more subtle and complex process than the term might suggest.

2. Close reading means not only reading and understanding the meanings of the individual printed words; it also involves making yourself sensitive to all the nuances and connotations of a language as it is used by skilled writers.

3. This can mean anything from a work’s particular vocabulary, sentence construction, and imagery, to the themes that are being dealt with, the way in which the story is being told, and the view of the world that it offers. It involves almost everything from the smallest linguistic items to the largest issues of literary understanding and judgement.

4. Close reading can be seen as four separate levels of attention which we can bring to the text. Most normal people read without being aware of them, and employ all four simultaneously. The four levels or types of reading become progressively more complex.

  • Linguistic
    You pay especially close attention to the surface linguistic elements of the text – that is, to aspects of vocabulary, grammar, and syntax. You might also note such things as figures of speech or any other features which contribute to the writer’s individual style.
  • Semantic
    You take account at a deeper level of what the words mean – that is, what information they yield up, what meanings they denote and connote.
  • Structural
    You note the possible relationships between words within the text – and this might include items from either the linguistic or semantic types of reading.
  • Cultural
    You note the relationship of any elements of the text to things outside it. These might be other pieces of writing by the same author, or other writings of the same type by different writers. They might be items of social or cultural history, or even other academic disciplines which might seem relevant, such as philosophy or psychology.

5. Close reading is not a skill which can be developed to a sophisticated extent overnight. It requires a lot of practice in the various linguistic and literary disciplines involved – and it requires that you do a lot of reading. The good news is that most people already possess the skills required. They have acquired them automatically through being able to read – even though they haven’t been conscious of doing so.

This is rather like many other things which we learn unconsciously. After all, you don’t need to know the names of your leg muscles in order to walk down the street.


Studying FictionStudying Fiction is an introduction to the basic concepts and technical terms you need when making a study of stories and novels. It shows you how to understand literary analysis by explaining its elements one at a time, then showing them at work in short stories which are reproduced as part of the book. Topics covered include – setting, characters, story, point of view, symbolism, narrators, theme, construction, metaphors, irony, prose style, tone, close reading, and interpretation. The book also contains self-assessment exercises, so you can check your understanding of each topic. It was written by the same author as the guidance notes on this page that you are reading right now.

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Buy the book at Amazon US


6. The four types of reading also represent increasingly complex and sophisticated phases in our scrutiny of the text.

  • Linguistic reading is largely descriptive. We are noting what is in the text and naming its parts for possible use in the next stage of reading.
  • Semantic reading is cognitive. That is, we need to understand what the words are telling us – both at a surface and maybe at an implicit level.
  • Structural reading is analytic. We must assess, examine, sift, and judge a large number of items from within the text in their relationships to each other.
  • Cultural reading is interpretive. We offer judgements on the work in its general relationship to a large body of cultural material outside it.

7. The first and second of these stages are the sorts of activity designated as ‘Beginners’ level; the third takes us to ‘Intermediate’; and the fourth to ‘Advanced’ and beyond.

8. One of the first things you need to acquire for serious literary study is a knowledge of the vocabulary, the technical language, indeed the jargon in which literature is discussed. You need to acquaint yourself with the technical vocabulary of the discipline and then go on to study how its parts work.

9. What follows is a short list of features you might keep in mind whilst reading. They should give you ideas of what to look for. It is just a prompt to help you get under way.


Close reading – Checklist
  • Grammar
    The relationships of the words in sentences
  • Vocabulary
    The author’s choice of individual words
  • Figures of speech
    The rhetorical devices used to give decoration and imaginative expression to literature, such as simile or metaphor
  • Literary devices
    The devices commonly used in literature to give added depth to the work, such as imagery or symbolism
  • Tone
    The author’s attitude to the subject as revealed in the manner of the writing
  • Style
    The author’s particular choice and combination of all these features of writing which creates a recognisable and distinctive manner of writing

Close reading – Example

10. Now here’s an example of close reading in action. The short passage which follows comes from the famous opening to Charles Dickens‘ Bleak House.

11. If you would like to treat this as an interactive exercise, read the passage through a number of times. Make notes, and write down all you can say about what goes to make up its literary ‘quality’. That is, you should scrutinise the passage as closely as possible, name its parts, and say what devices the author is using. Don’t be afraid to list even the most obvious points.

12. If you are not really sure what all this means however, allow yourself a brief glance ahead at the first couple of discussion notes which follow, and then come back to carry on making notes of your own.

13. Don’t worry if you are not sure what name to give to any feature you notice. You will see the technical vocabulary being used in the discussion notes which follow, and this should help you pick up this skill as we go along.

Bleak House

London. Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets, as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full grown snowflakes – gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun.


Close reading

14. This is the sort of writing which many people, asked for their first impressions, would say was very ‘descriptive’. But if you looked at it closely enough you will have seen that it is imaginative rather than descriptive. It doesn’t ‘describe what is there’ – but it invents images and impressions. There is as much “it was as if …” material in the extract as there is anything descriptive. What follows is a close reading of the extract, with comments listed in the order that they appear in the extract.

London
This is an abrupt and astonishingly short ‘sentence’ with which to start a six hundred page novel. In fact technically, it is grammatically incomplete, because it does not have a verb or an object. It somehow implies the meaning ‘The scene is London.’

Sentence construction
In fact each of the first four sentences here are ‘incomplete’ in this sense. Dickens is taking liberties with conventional grammar – and obviously he is writing for a literate and fairly sophisticated readership.

Sentence length
These four sentences vary from one word to forty-three words in length. This helps to create entertaining variation and robust flexibility in his prose style.

Michaelmas Term
There are several names (proper nouns) in these sentences, all signalled by capital letters (London, Michaelmas Term, Lord Chancellor, Lincoln’s Inn Hall, November, Holborn Hill). This helps to create the very credible and realistic world Dickens presents in his fiction. We believe that this is the same London which we could visit today. The names also emphasise the very specific and concrete nature of the world he creates.

Michaelmas Term
This occurs in autumn. It comes from the language of the old universities (Oxford and Cambridge) which is shared by the legal profession and the Church.

Lord Chancellor sitting
Here ‘sitting’ is a present participle. The novel is being told in the present tense at this point, which is rather unusual. The effect is to give vividness and immediacy to the story. We are being persuaded that these events are taking place now.

Implacable
This is an unusual and very strong term to describe the weather. It means ‘that which cannot be appeased’. What it reflects is Dickens’s genius for making almost everything in his writing original, striking, and dramatic.

as if
This is the start of his extended simile comparing the muddy streets with the primeval world.

the waters
There is a slight Biblical echo here, which also fits neatly with the idea of an ancient world he is summoning up.

but newly and wonderful
These are slightly archaic expressions. We might normally expect ‘recently’ and ‘astonishing’ but Dickens is selecting his vocabulary to suit the subject – the prehistoric world. ‘Wonderful’ is being used in its original sense of – ‘something we wonder at’.

forty feet long or so
After the very specific ‘forty feet long’, the addition of ‘or so’ introduces a slightly conversational tone and a casual, almost comic effect.

waddling
This reinforces the humorous manner in which Dickens is presenting this Megalosaurus – and note the breadth of his vocabulary in naming the beast with such scientific precision.

like an elephantine lizard
This is another simile, announced by the word ‘like’. Here is Dickens’s skill with language yet again. He converts a ‘large’ noun (‘elephant’) into an adjective (‘elephantine’) and couples it to something which is usually small (‘lizard’) to describe, very appropriately it seems, his Megalosaurus.

up Holborn Hill
There is a distinct contrast, almost a shock here, in this abrupt transition from an imagined prehistoric world and its monsters to the ‘real’ world of Holborn in London.

lowering
This is another present participle, and an unusual verb. It means ‘to sink, descend, or slope downwards’. It comes from a rather ‘poetic’ verbal register, and it has a softness (there are no sharp or harsh sounds in it) which makes it very suitable for describing the movement of smoke.

soft black drizzle
He is comparing the dense smoke (from coal fires) with another form of particularly depressing atmosphere – a drizzle of rain. Notice how he goes on to elaborate the comparison.

as big as full grown snow flakes
The comparison becomes another simile: ‘as big as’. And then ‘full grown’ almost suggests that the snowflakes are human. This is a device much favoured by Dickens: it is called ‘anthropomorphism’ – attributing human qualities or characteristics to things which are themselves inanimate. Then ‘snowflakes’ is a well-observed comparison for an enlarged flake of soot, because they are of similar size and texture. Notice next how Dickens immediately goes on to play with the notion that whilst soot is black, snowflakes are white.

gone into mourning
This reinforces the anthropomorphism. The inanimate world is being brought to life. And of course ‘mourning’ reinforces the atmospheric gloom he is trying to evoke. It also introduces blackness (the colour of mourning) to explain how these snowflakes (actually flakes of soot) might have changed from white to black.

the death of the sun
This is why the flakes have changed colour. And if the sun has died the light and life it brings to earth have also been extinguished – which reinforces the atmosphere of pre-historic darkness he is creating.

15. We will stop at this point. It would in fact be possible to say even more about the extract if we were to relate it to the novel as a whole – but almost everything listed was accessible even if you were reading the passage for the first time.

16. Literary studies are not conducted in such detail all the time, but it is very important that you try to develop the skill of reading as closely as possible. It really is the foundation on which everything else is based.

17. The next point to make about such close reading is that it becomes easier if you get used to the idea of reading and re-reading. The Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov (famous for Lolita) once observed that “Curiously enough, one cannot read a book: one can only re-read it”.

18. What he meant by this apparently contradictory remark is that the first time we read a book we are busy absorbing information, and we cannot appreciate all the subtle connexions there may be between its parts – because we don’t yet have the complete picture before us. Only when we read it for a second time (or even better, a third or fourth) are we in a position to assemble and compare the nuances of meaning and the significance of its details in relation to each other.

19. This is why the activity is called ‘close reading’. You should try to get used to the notion of reading and re-reading very carefully, scrupulously, and in great detail.

20. Finally, let’s try to dispel a common misconception. Many people ask, when they first come into contact with close reading: “Doesn’t analysing a piece of work in such detail spoil your enjoyment of it?” The answer to this question is “No – on the contrary – it should enhance it.” The simple fact is that we get more out of a piece of writing if we can appreciate all the subtleties and the intricacies which exist within it. Nabokov also suggested that “In reading, one should notice and fondle the details”.

redbtn Sample close reading of Katherine Mansfield’s The Voyage

redbtn Sample close reading of Virginia Woolf’s Monday or Tuesday

© Roy Johnson 2004


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Filed Under: 19C Literature, 20C Literature, How-to guides, Literary studies, Short Stories, Study Skills Tagged With: Close reading, English literature, Literary studies, Study skills, Stylistic analysis

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