Community in the short story sequence: The continuing development of a contemporary genre (James Joyce, Sherwood Anderson, Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev, Kelly Cherry, Bernardo Atxaga, Spain, Russia, Ireland)

In literature, the novel and not the short story has historically been better equipped to explore a community and the diverse lives of its inhabitants, perhaps because the broad canvas of the novel presumes a certain “completeness of inventory” that the short story does not. Clearly, genre affects an author's (re-)presentation of community. But how can the hybrid genre of the short story sequence narrate city and communal space? Critics now understand that James Joyce's Dubliners (Irish, 1914) and Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio (American, 1919), two of the first modern examples of the short story sequence, are not “just” casual collections of stories. Overlooked is how narrative form lends itself to the exploration of community in unique ways. By jettisoning and adapting traditional narrative strategies—such as plot or temporal continuity—that maintain their integrity only within the confines of a single story, Joyce and Anderson and many authors since have presented community in ways different from either the novel or the short story. Whether or not the characters understand these connections, the connection is their community. Joyce and Anderson and others were able to create such communities because they mined the space between the stories.; Chapter one explores the historical situation from which the modern short story sequence has emerged. Chapter two establishes the theoretical approach from which I will examine the short story sequence, in addition to a brief examination of Ivan Turgenev's The Sportsman's Sketches (Russian, 1852). I rely on both narrative and geographical theory relating to community and the delicate balance between a sense of belonging and isolation.; Chapters three and four further the theories developed and expanded in the initial two chapters by focusing on the modern texts of Joyce and Anderson, respectively. Though from different continents and different nationalistic traditions, there are remarkable similarities between the two works, which help us to establish a paradigm for the study of subsequent short story sequences. There are, of course, key differences as well, which highlight the flexibility and ever-changing demands of genre.; Chapter five concludes by examining two recent short story sequences, Kelly Cherry's The Society of Friends (American, 1999) and Bernardo Atxaga's Obabakoak (Basque/Spanish, 1989) in order better understand how both Joyce and Anderson continue to influence the ever-expanding genre of the short story sequence.