Critical Survey of Short Fiction (Essays, vol. 2)

***This is volume 2 of seven only.***Critical Survey of Short Fiction is provided as an exhaustive examination of the history, characteristics, structure, and prime examples of literature's most popular form. There are three major divisions in this seven volume work, as outlined below: Essays, Authors, Current Authors. Essays are long, detailed, analytic treatments which synthesize a wide range of information, from the social and historical to the philosophic and religious to the technical and semantic. Clusters of essays examine the genres roots in such ancient forms as the ballot, the Bible narrative, the medieval epic; its development through modern chronological.; Its unique evolution in particular countries, regions, and ethnic groups. Because of the nature of short stories, the authors a set is arranged by authors rather than by works. Each author article includes at the beginning a list of printable short fiction works and brief sections discussing other literary forms in which the author wrote, influences on his work as well as the influence of his work on the writing of others, characteristics of his short fiction as a whole, and his biography. Finally the current authors section is a result of an invitation to several hundred current authors to contribute a one-page description of their work - their background, style, thematic concerns, and the like. This particular volume deals with the first 406 essays with such topics as: The Arabian Nights' Entertainments; the Hasidic Tale; the Romance Form in the Late Middle Ages; the Gothic Influence on Short Fiction; British Short Fiction in the 19th and 20th Centuries; American Short Fiction in the 19th and 20th Centuries; Black Short Fiction; Short Fiction of the 19th Century American South; Italian Short Fiction; Themes of Women's Short Fiction; Detective Short Fiction; Short Fiction on Film; and Fiction Writers on Writing Short Fiction.