{"title":"Charles E May","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"new-short-story-theories-book-charles-e-may-9780821410875","title":"The New Short Story Theories","description":"The first edition of May's Short Story Theories (1976) opened with an essay entitled \"The Short Story: An Underrated Art.\" Almost two decades later, the short story suffers no such slight. Publishers and critics have become increasingly interested in the form, which has enjoyed a renaissance led by such writers as Raymond Carver, Tobias Wolff, Ann Beattie, Bobbie Ann Mason, and Mary Robison. An important part of this revival of interest, Short Story Theories has continued to attract a strong and loyal audience among students and teachers.  The New Short Story Theories includes a few basic pieces from the earlier volume—Poe's Hawthorne review, Brander Matthew's extension and formalization of Poe's theories, and essays by Randall Jarrell, Elizabeth Bowen, and Nadine Gordimer—but most of the essays are new to the collection.  Addressing problems of definition, historical considerations, issues of technique, and cognitive approaches, essays include:  \"The Tale as Genre in Short Story Fiction,\" by W. S. Penn  \"O. Henry and the Theory of the Short Story,\" by Suzanne C. Ferguson  \"On Writing,\" by Raymond Carver  \"From Tale to Short Story,\" by Robert F. Marler  \"A Cognitive Approach to Storyness,\" by Susan Lohafer  May's new collection will continue to highlight the short story, to provoke debate, and to enrich our experience of a demanding and rewarding literary form.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49618692309265,"sku":"GOR001990476","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49728672465169,"sku":"NGR9780821410875","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50157459079441,"sku":"GOR008698860","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50556578890001,"sku":"GOR009115479","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50591075893521,"sku":"CIN0821410873VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51877456871697,"sku":"CIN0821410873G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52327166116113,"sku":"NLS9780821410875","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52980480082193,"sku":"GOR004709719","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0821410873.jpg?v=1761386401"},{"product_id":"i-am-your-brother-book-charles-e-may-9781490347615","title":"I Am Your Brother","description":"I Am Your Brother Short Story Studies is a study of the short story as a genre, written both for academic and general readers. After establishing the origins of the short story in myth, the book examines issues of genre and history, discusses the difference between the short story and the novel, and analyzes the importance of obsession, mystery, and metaphoric motivation in the form. Chapters also are devoted to mythic perception in the short fiction of John Steinbeck and Bernard Malamud, love and separateness in the short stories of Eudora Welty, and the birth of the modern short story by Anton Chekhov. The final two chapters are extended discussions of the short stories of Raymond Carver and Alice Munro.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50004550910225,"sku":"GOR013834430","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50175012372753,"sku":"CIN1490347615VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51177225126161,"sku":"NIN9781490347615","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1490347615.jpg?v=1750827886"},{"product_id":"short-story-theories-book-charles-e-may-9780821402214","title":"Short Story Theories","description":"Although the short story has often been called America’s unique contribution to the world’s literature, relatively few critics have taken the form seriously. May’s collection of essays by popular commentators, academic critics, and short story writers attempts to assess the reasons for this neglect and provides significant theoretical directions for a reevaluation of the form.  The essays range from discussions by Poe to comments by John Cheever. Frank O’Connor describes the short story as depicting “an intense awareness of human loneliness,” and Nadine Gordimer suggests that the story is more suitable than the novel in rendering the fragmentary modern experience. Eudora Welty sees the story as something “wrapped in an atmosphere” of its own; Randall Jarrell speaks of the mythic basis of the genre. Elizabeth Bowen and Alberto Moravia discuss thematic and structural distinctions between the novel and the story.  The collection also includes discussions of various types of stories, as satiric and lyric, critical surveys of the development of the modern short story, and the status of the form at the present time. An excellent annotated bibliography is also included, which describes 135 books and articles on the short story, evaluating their contribution to a unified theory of the form.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50362509689105,"sku":"CIN0821402218A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50362511130897,"sku":"CIN0821402218G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53522291818769,"sku":"NLS9780821402214","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0821402218.jpg?v=1763477836"},{"product_id":"short-story-book-charles-e-may-9780805709537","title":"The Short Story","description":"With The Short Story: The Reality of Artifice, Charles E. May, a foremost authority on the genre, contributes a major effort to examine the history and characteristics of the short story from a critical perspective. Drawing on twenty-five years' experience studying the form, May argues that the development of the short story has always reflected a tension between the traditional mythic origins of the form and the increasing pressures of modernism to depict 'real life.' The book commences with an incisive overview, tracing how the conventions of the short story have evolved over time, from the form's origins in myth and folktale through its immersions into romanticism, realism, formalism, and, in the contemporary renaissance, the twin streams of magical realism and hyperrealism. In four core chapters May charts the major periods in the genre's development, along the way delving into the stories of a host of representative writers - among them Hawthorne, Poe, Conrad, Chekhov, Hemingway, Porter, Barthelme, and Carver - and offering close readings that entertain as they inform. An in-depth bibliographic essay surveys the principal criticism devoted to the form, while an annotated list of recommended titles furnishes readers with a useful guide to the primary English, American, and European stories of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; a detailed chronology sets forth key publication and birth\/death dates from the 1340s to the 1990s. A masterfully written yet eminently accessible study, The Short Story: The Reality of Artifice constitutes an important new resource for students, scholars, writers, and the reading public at large.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52549584847121,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52549588386065,"sku":"CIN0805709533G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780805709537.jpg?v=1760699118"},{"product_id":"critical-survey-of-short-fiction-book-charles-e-may-9780893560065","title":"Critical Survey of Short Fiction","description":"This set in the Critical Survey Series looks at short fiction and the writers who left their mark on the genre. The series enables readers to focus on the characteristics of the author's work.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53592932778257,"sku":"CIN0893560065G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780893560065.jpg?v=1779667228"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-charles-e-may.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}