The Art of the Short Story: Form and Method

The great writer Henry James said in his Preface to Portrait of a Lady that “the House of Fiction has, in short, not one window, but a million.” In this class we will look into some of those many windows to read and discuss several notable short stories from a variety of writers, with an eye toward not only content but fictional methods such as point-of-view, style, tone, and other aspects of the age-old form with which many, if not most, accomplished novelists began their careers.

The stories that will be discussed are:

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birthmark”

Eudora Welty’s “Livvy”

Leo Tolstoy’s “How Much Land Does a Man Need?"

Dr. J. Larry Allums is Senior Consultant and Board Member of the MacMillan Institute and Executive Director Emeritus of the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. He earned his M.A. in Literature and his Ph.D. in Literature and Political Philosophy from the University of Dallas’ Institute of Philosophic Studies. He has edited a volume of essays on epic poetry, The Epic Cosmos, and published articles and book chapters on Dante, ancient Greek and Roman literature, and writers of the American Southern Renascence, including William Faulkner, Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren, Caroline Gordon, and others.

This class will include:

· Lecture

· Discussion

· Handouts

· Homework (reading of the short story before class)