• An Organon of Life Knowledge
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An Organon of Life Knowledge

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Can fiction teach us how to live? Drawing on short stories from the late nineteenth century to the present, Michael Basseler examines how knowledge about life and how to live it is generically cons...
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  • 17 September 2019
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Can fiction teach us how to live? This study offers a fresh take on the North American short story, exploring how the genre has engaged in the construction and circulation of 'life knowledge'. Echoing the resurgence of short story scholarship in recent years, it thus contributes a genre-focused perspective to the growing field of 'literature and knowledge' studies. Drawing on stories from the late 19th century to the present by authors such as Henry James, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Eudora Welty, Junot Díaz, and Alice Munro, Michael Basseler examines how knowledge about life and how to live it is generically constituted and, vice versa, how literary genres such as the short story are embedded in broader cultural frameworks of knowledge production.
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Price: $40.00
Pages: 276
Publisher: transcript publishing
Imprint: transcript publishing
Series: American Culture Studies
Publication Date: 17 September 2019
Trim Size: 8.86 X 5.83 in
ISBN: 9783837646429
Format: Paperback
BISACs:

LITERARY CRITICISM / American / General, LITERARY CRITICISM / Semiotics & Theory, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Popular Culture
»Overall, this volume offers a prominent, holistic reframing of many familiar critical tropes to the scholar interested in short story criticism and literary history, and is certainly one of the fullest works to date focused on the cognitive work of the genre.«
Michael Basseler (Dr. habil.), born in 1976, works as Academic Manager at the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture at the University of Gießen. His research focuses on US-American literature and culture as well as literary and cultural theory, especially the study of narrative, African American literature, and the short story. His current project deals with the concept of resilience from a literary and cultural perspective.

Frontmatter 1
Contents 7
Preface and Acknowledgements 9
Introduction 13
1. Literature, Life Knowledge, and 'Science for Living' 41
2. The Knowledge of Literature: Positions, Debates, and Approaches 51
4. The Short Story as an Organon of Life Knowledge: An Epistemological Approach to the Genre 83
5. Life Knowledge as Projection: The Cognitive Work of Short Stories 93
6. Life-Changing Experiences and Turning Points: The Crisis-Ridden Life Knowledge of the Short Story 101
7. The American Short Story and the Temporalization of Life in Modernity: Washington Irving's "Rip Van Winkle" and F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" 111
8. Epistemological Uncertainty and Knowledge of Maturation in Stories of Initiation: Sherwood Anderson's "I Want to Know Why", Eudora Welty's "A Visit of Charity" and "A Memory", and Junot Díaz's "Ysrael" 141
9. Midlife Crisis as Turning Point for the 'Mature Moderns': John Cheever's "The Country Husband" 163
10. Stories of 'Unlived' and Secret Lives: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Sherwood Anderson, Henry James, and James Thurber 177
11. Gerontophobia, Ageism, and the Wisdom of Later Life in Stories of Aging: Willa Cather's "Old Mrs. Harris" and Eudora Welty's "Old Mr. Marblehall" 195
12. Understanding Life Retrospectively in Stories of Remembered Life: Willa Cather, William Saroyan, Russell Banks, Anthony Doerr 217
Coda: The Short Story as Epistemological Fiction Alice Munro's "What Do You Want to Know For?" 231
Works Cited 249