English 891AT - S-The Short Novel

This seminar will study the form in between the novel and the short story. Longer than a short story but shorter than a novel, the novella/the long short story/the short novel is a form whose precise nature lies in the grey area between two more notorious and infamous cousins. If a short story burns with a momentary, gem-like flame and a novel indulges its digressions, what characteristics define the in-between form? It is precisely the answers to this question that this seminar will seek as we look deeply at around twenty novellas, classic and contemporary, including Mikhail Bulgakov (The Heart of a Dog), Gayl Jones (Corregidora), Denis Johnson (Triumph Over the Grave), Clarice Lispector (The Hour of the Star), Graham Greene (The End of the Affair), Annie Proulx (Brokeback Mountain), Juan Pablo Villalobos (Down the Rabbit Hole) and others.

Open to Doctoral & Masters students in English and MFA English majors only.