English 320:  The Short Story
Spring 2002; Lyman Baker, Instructor
 
Course Schedule:
Readings, Writing Assignments, and Exams
 
Part 1:  Assignments from Day 1 through Day 6 (the first 2 weeks of the course)

Our textbook is Dana Gioia and R. S. Gwynn's The Longman Anthology of Short Fiction:  Stories and Authors in Context (paperback, 2001).  Find out how to get a copy by clicking here.  All page references in the Course Schedule are to this book.  Other readings (required or recommended) are indicated by links, which appear in blue underlined font.

Before printing off a copy of this schedule, be sure to read the pointers about Using the Course Schedule.

Schedule of Assignments for first two weeks

17 Jan  (F):  As soon as possible after our first class session, you should do the following:

(1) Review the following items on our course web site, to get a basic idea of what we will be up to, and why.

You may well have some questions about what you find here.  Bring them to our next class.

(2) Explore the various features of the course website at K-State Online online.ksu.edu.  

(3) Acquire a copy of the text for the course.  It would be well to familiarize yourself with its layout, and to begin early with the reading assignment for Wednesday, January 22, our next session of class.  The best way to get some idea of this is to skim the opening pages (pp. xvii-xxi) of the authors' "Preface."  But if you can't get hold of the text itself just now, you can still examine its layout by taking a look at its features and table of contents.  While you're at it, you might have a look at the Companion Website to the text.  (This compilation for students is under construction, but there's already a lot there for satisfying hungry curiosities.)

20 Jan (M):  No class.  University holiday.

22 Jan (W):  Before you come to class today, make sure that you have made at least one contribution to the message board discussion of either "The Story of a Good Brahmin" or "The Necklace".  To do this, you'll need to do the following:

(1) First:  have Part One (pp. 3-6) of Gioia & Gwynn  read before class.  Remember to bring the book with you to class!

The main business of of this opening chapter is to point out what distinguishes "short stories" as a particular modern genre of fiction from various other genres of fictional stories that happen to be short -- mythological narratives, fables, parables, folktales, legends, and novele (Italian, singular novela) or nouvelles (French, singular nouvelle).  The readings for next Friday and Monday acquaint you with some examples of these earlier genres.  Meanwhile, you will notice that our editors are at pains to point out some features of these narratives that contrast with "short stories proper" as well as to point out others that these share with various other kinds of stories that also happen to be short.  

(*) Be on the lookout for the elements that will serve to characterize short stories by contrast.  

(2) Then, also in preparation for class:  read Voltaire's little "philosophical tale" "The Story of a Good Brahmin".

There is a study guide to this story.  You may find it useful for suggesting issues to explore on the message board.

(3) Also have read Guy de Maupassant's "The Necklace" (pp. 1184-1189 in our text).  Be sure to read the editors' introduction to Maupassant on p. 1183 as well.

If you haven't yet acquired our text, you can get the story from many sources on the web:  for example, here, here, here, or here (printing the story will leave behind the irritating background on this last site).  If you don't have access to our text, you can for now consult the introduction to de Maupassant at E-Literature.  But be sure to read the one cited above as soon as you get our textbook.

24 Jan (F):  Have read for discussion in class the first half or so of Part II in Gioia & Gwynn -- "Origins of the Short Story" (pp. 11-21):  Myth, Fable, Parable.

It may be that you have some initial difficulties in locating a copy of our course textbook (Gioia & Gwynn, above).  If this is so, you can still work through the examples of short fiction that aren't "short stories" that our editors discuss in the reading above, if you are working from the course website at K-State Online.  (If you are not working from that site, you will still be able to access non-copyright-protected items, but only those.)  In addition, for some of these you will find a Study Guide that you may find interesting to work through.  In any case, if you're working from the links below, rather than our text, be sure eventually to return to the reading from it given above, so that you can read the valuable discussion of the genres our editors provide -- on myth, fable, parable, folktale, legend, and novella/nouvelle.  Meanwhile, the links below can help you avoid falling even further behind.

(a) Ovid (retelling), Pygmalion and Galatea.  

The link above is to the version in Bullfinch's Mythology.  (The version given on pp. 13-14 of our text, though, is by Edith Hamilton, and is not available on the web.  When you get acquire our text, you'll want to be sure to read the Hamilton version, since it is a bit more rich and subtle in its rendition than the one given here.)

The subject has naturally inspired artists through the ages.  An interesting etching of Pygmalion and Galatea by Francisco Goya, with an interesting (!) commentary, is available at the site of the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. And the 1882 painting by Jean-Leon Gerome is on view at the Annenberg Project.  Several more, together with the Bullfinch text, are at the Pygmalion and Galatea Homework Page, a page in MythMan's Homework Help Center, a labor-of-love by Nick Pontikis, proprietor of a Greek restaurant we'll all want to visit next time we're in the Detroit/Windsor neighborhood.

(b) "How the Snake Got Poison" (African-American collected by Zora Neale Hurston).

Students may be interested in bookmarking another emerging resource, the Zora Neale Hurston and Mules and Men E-project at the University of Virginia.  The little story we're looking at is to be found as No. 4  in Chapter Six. 

(c) Aesop, "The North Wind and the Sun".  (If this link doesn't work, go to www.aesop.com and follow the directions for locating this fable.)  (The translation by V.S. Vernon Jones -- not the same as what these links point to -- appears on p. 16 of our text.)

(d) Bidpai, "The Camel and His Friends" (pp. 17-18 of our text).  The link here is available only on the course site at K-State Online.  

There is a study guide for this reading (but don't consult it until after you've read the piece at least once!)

(e) Chuang Tzu, "Independence"  This little tale appears on p. 8 of our text (Gioia & Gwynn).  The link here is available only on the course site at K-State Online.  

There is a study guide for this reading.  (Remember:  as before, don't consult it until after you've read the piece at least once!)

(f) Luke, The Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32, King James Version).  (Or you can go here.  Both links are to the entire Chapter 15, which begins with two related parables, and provides an important context for understanding the parable of the prodigal son as it was originally put forward.  Gioia and Gwynn (on pp. 20-21) provide verses just 11-32, a quite defensible procedure given their purposes.  The first site linked to here also provides a link that enables you to compare the Revised Standard Version.

There is a Study Guide to this reading.

27 Jan (M):  By Wednesday of this week, you should make at least one contribution to the message board on the issues raised by our editors in Part II of their anthology or by any of the stories featured in this chapter.  To do this, you'll need to have completed the reading assignment for last Friday and the assignment for today, which is:  to have read the rest of Part II in Gioia & Gwynn -- "Origins of the Short Story" (pp. 21-36):  Folktale, Legend, Novela/Nouvelle.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Here are the stories our editors focus on, in case you still haven't gotten your copy of the our textbook.  If you're using these links instead of the text, the same cautions apply here as were given in the instructions for last Friday's reading assignments, above.  Be sure to consult them!  (Of course, if you have the textbook, you still may find it interesting to compare translations, where these are different.)

(a) the Brothers Grimm, "The Three Feathers" (transcribed in mid-19th Century in Hesse, Germany, translated by D.L. Ashliman).  

The story appears in our course textbook (Gioia & Gwynn) on pp. 22-25 in Dana Gioia's translation.  A site of special interest is D.L. Ashliman's translation of the folklorist Aarne-Thompson's renowned compilation of world folktales by "type," where you can find several variants of the type to which Aarne-Thompson assigned the tale the Grimm brothers included in their famous collection.   (Definitely worth book-marking is Ashliman's comprehensive site, The Grimm Brothers' Home Page, with links to lots of stuff that will be fun to explore later.)

(b) Anonymous, "The Donkey", from The Thousand and One Nights.  The story appears on pp. 25-26 of our text (Gioia & Gwynn).  The link here is available only on the course site at K-State Online.  Following the text on our site you will find a link to a study guide.

There is a study guide to this reading.

Yahoo has a page of links to several sites with tales from the Thousand and One Nights, and related material.

(c) Brother Ugolino, "St. Francis and the Wolf of Gubbio" 

For an interesting suggestion of what might be the basis of this legend -- which has been assimilated into a body of legends concerning St. Francis's mystical rapport with animals -- see St. Francis Brings Peace to Gubbio (at the National Shrine of St. Francis of Assisi).  Consider, too, that this interpretation may represent an allegoricalization of a story that may originally have in fact been about St. Francis's ability to communicate with (literal) animals.

(d) Martin Buber, "The Careless Rabbi".  The story appears on pp. 30-31 of our text (Gioia & Gwynn).  The link here is available only on the course site at K-State Online.  Following the text on our site you will find a link to a study guide.

(c) Giovanni Boccaccio, "The Pot of Basil" from the Decameron (Day IV, Story v).

The translation in the link above is by J.M. Rigg (first published in 1903, in London).  For the famous translation attributed to John Florio (1620), click here, and then click on the link for "The Fourth Day, The Fift Novell" (the text will pop up in a separate window).  The translation in our textbook (pp. 32-35) is by Dana Gioia, and is better for us, since it's in colloquial modern English, and thus makes an impression corresponding to that of Boccaccio's in his own day, an important point for the case to be made that the novela is a key precedent for the modern short story.  The Decameron Web at Brown University (from which the texts I've linked to come) is a rich site focusing on materials related to Boccaccio's cycle of tales.  Also of interest might be a look at a couple of paintings inspired by the famous story we're reading.  (Next time you eat a salad with fresh basil, you'll have some interesting thoughts in your head.)

(e) Marguerite de Navarre, "The One-Eyed Servant and his Wife" (Nouvelle 6 of The Heptameron).

The above link is to the translation by Walter K. Kelly at The Heptameron by Marguerite, Queen of Navarre at the University of Pennsylvania's Digital Library.  There is an interesting exhibit on Margueritte de Navarre at the Special Collections of the University of Virginia.  There is also a useful suite of pages on Margueritte de Navarre at the estimable site Other Women's Voices:  Translations of women's writing before 1700.

29 Jan (W):  

(1) Read what our editors have to say in their appendix on the history of the short story under their sections titled "The Emergence of the Short Story," "Significant Features of the Early Short Story," "Poe's Theory of the Short Story," "Late Nineteenth-Century France," and "The Essential Qualities of the Short Story" (pp. 1844-1848).  Don't worry at this time about getting on top of all the detail here.  Just try to focus on what the editors say is special about the work of the Russian Gogol, the Americans Hawthorne and Poe, and the Frenchman Maupassant (with whom you're already acquainted).

(2) Read Edgar Alan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" (pp. 35-39).  In your initial reading, be alert for elements of plot and the story's point of view.

Still haven't gotten the textbook for the course?  Start figuring out how to borrow the necessary cash, or how to persuade a fellow student to let you share his or her text.  You're continuing to stack up readings to catch up on, but meanwhile you can prevent yourself from falling even further behind in your readings if you keep up with this one.  "The Tell-Tale Heart" (like all of Poe's stories) is widely available on the web.

(3) Work through the discussion, in our glossary of critical concepts, of dramatic monologue.  What exactly is the situation in which the protagonist of Poe's story undertakes to address "us"?  What then do we take to be the setting in which "we" find ourselves here?  That is, where are we, who might we be, and how might we have come to be present so that we could be accosted and addressed in this fashion?  (What implicit fictional role, in other words, does the story invite us to assume?)  What does the speaker want from us?  Why?  Does he get it?

After you've thought these questions through, you might find it interesting to have a look at Martha Womack's comments on the story at the Poe Decoder.

31 Jan (F):  In class today, we'll continue our discussion of "The Tell-Tale Heart."  In preparation for this discussion, make sure that you've worked your way through

(1) the article in our Glossary of Critical Concepts on first-person narration and first-person narrators;

(2) our glossary article on dramatic irony; and 

(3) our study guide on this story.

3 Feb (M):   Before you come to class today, be sure you have made at least one contribution to the class discussion of Eudora Welty's story "Why I Live at the P.O."  To do this, you will need to do all of the following:

(1) Read our editors' introduction to Eudora Welty (pp. 1680-1681).

(2) Then read Welty's story "Why I Live at the P.O." (pp. 1690-1699).

(3) Now would be a good time to read what our editors have to say on the general topic of Point of View (pp. 1871-1873).

(4) Finally, work through our online glossary article on point of view of a story vs point of view of a person or fictional character.

Is the point of view of this story identical with the point of view of its protagonist, the narrator?

    Return to the Course Home Page (English 320:  The Short Story).
    Go to Course Schedule 2 for the assignments beginning with 3 Feb (W).

  Suggestions are welcome.  Please send your comments to lyman@ksu.edu .

   Contents copyright © 2002 by Lyman A. Baker.

Permission is granted for non-commercial educational use; all other rights reserved.

  This page last updated 13 March 2003.