| Forrest Ingram wrote the first book-length study of the short story cycle in which he defined the form as "a book of short stories so linked to each other by their author that the reader's successive experience on various levels of the pattern of the whole significantly modifies his experience of each of its component parts." Since then, other critics and theorists have added to and argued against the specifics of Ingram's work. My study will sketch the theory of this form and then employ ideas from various theorists to examine Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine and Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club. Through multiple first- and third-person point of view, and the interaction of characters through storytelling, Erdrich and Tan build the themes of community and continuity. Just as the many characters become a community the many stories form a fictive community in the short story cycle. |
