Short Fiction - from Victorian Short Stories to Tiny Tales on the Internet - Detailseite

This course is designed to explore the British short story from the Victorian period to contemporary short fiction – a subject that has traditionally played a key role in the teaching of English/English literature at school level, too. Starting with canonical stories by Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy, we will proceed via the classics of the modernist short story (James Joyce; Virginia Woolf etc.) to conclude with postcolonial short fiction and recent ‘nano’ or ‘tiny tales’ in the digital media. Apart from tracing a historical line, we shall also look at (bilingual) anthologies catering to teaching. Finally, we shall also reflect on issues of genre theory and pertinent methodologies of critical reading (‘close reading’).

While some of the material will be made available on Moodle, you are required to obtain your own copy of the following anthologies:

Christopher Dolley (ed.): The Penguin Book of English Short Stories (Penguin 2011 [1967|)

Nicholas Royle (ed.): Best British Short Stories 2021 (Salt Publishing 2021)