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School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics · ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences
Contemporary literary stories and those written in genre draw on historical antecedents and/or current literary and theoretical movements. Fables and fairy tales, experiments with realism or magical realism are all present in various forms of the contemporary short story, and stem from writers being influenced by past narratives and/or by reacting to their peers. This course will encourage students to read a variety of classical and contemporary short stories and to experiment with different styles and genres which have developed over the past two centuries, and which are still being questioned or utilised by contemporary authors. Students will be expected to write two short stories and/or a few chapters of a novel in this course. Draft stories will be revised. The final versions of students’ stories will be arrived at through discussion in seminars and workshops, and through the reading of published fiction. The course will include some consideration of the practical processes involved in publishing stories and longer works.
Fiction Portfolio: two stories of approximately 4000 words in total, with drafts
Learning outcomes 1, 2, 5
Written and oral comments on peers' work of 500 words
Learning outcomes 4
Essay, 1000 words
Learning outcomes 3, 5
130 hours of total student learning time made up from: a) 36 hours of contact: 12 hours of lectures and 24 hours of tutorials. b) 94 hours of independent student research, reading and writing.
Ebrick of readings, (indicative bibliography appears below): Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author.” (1968). Image-Music-Text. New York: Hill and Wang, 1977 Block, Francesca Lia. “Wolf.” The Rose and the Beast. New York: Harper Collins, 2000. 101-129 Bloom, Harold. The Anxiety of Influence. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973 Borges, Jorge Luis. “The Lottery in Babylon.” Trans. John M. Fein 1959. Labyrinths. London: Penguin, 1964. 55-61 Carey, Peter. “The Chance.” (1977). Collected Stories. 2nd ed. St. Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press, 2001. 271-305 Carter, Angela. “The Company of Wolves.” The Bloody Chamber. London: Penguin, 1979. 110-118 Chekhov, Anton. “Grief.” (1885). Lady with Lapdog and Other Stories. Trans. David Magarshack. London: Penguin, 1976. 15-20 Cho, Tom. “Today on Dr. Phil.” Best Australian Stories 2006. Ed. Robert Drewe. Melbourne: Black Inc., 2006. 232-235. Eliot, T.S. “Tradition and Individual Talent.” Authorship: From Plato to the Postmodern. Ed. Sean Burke. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1995. 73 - 80 Jennings, Paul. “Snookle.” Stories for Seven Year Olds. Ill. Tom Jellett. Ed. Linsay Knight. Sydney: Random House, 2012 King, Stephen. “1408.” (2002). Everything’s Eventual. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2007. 424-471 “Little Red Riding Hood.” (Charles Perrault). Trans. Ashliman. http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0333.html Mansfield, Katherine. “Bliss.” (1920). Bliss and Other Stories. London: Penguin, 1988. 95-110 Maupassant, Guy de. “Clochette.” (1884). The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction. Ed. Ann Charters. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2003. 972-975 Mengestu, Dinaw. “An Honest Exit.” The New Yorker. July 12, 2010 Mitchell, David. Cloud Atlas. New York: Random House, 2004. Extract: 185-236 Rawson, Jane. A Wrong Turn in the Office of Unmade Lists. Melbourne: Transit Lounge, 2013 Saunders, George. “Sea Oak.” (1998). The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories. Ed. Ben Marcus. New York