Proposal-paper

XXXIV Aedean Conference (Almería 2010)

PANEL: SHORT STORY (Coordinator: Santiago Rodríguez Guerrero-Strachan)

SESSION 1

Go West: From the Homosocial to the Homosexual in Annie Proulx's “Brokeback Mountain”
José Mª Yebra Pertusa (University of Zaragoza)

Girls Interpreting the War in Ellen Gilchrist’s “Victory over Japan” and Bobbie Ann Mason’s “Detroit Skyline, 1949”
Candela Delgado Marín (University of Sevilla)

Killing the Beast at Home: Destroying Maternal Bonds in Moira Crone’s “The Ice Garden”
José Ramón Ibáñez Ibáñez (Universidad de Almeria)

SESSION 2

De mujeres y pájaros: “Birds of America” de Lorrie Moore
Blasina Cantizano Márquez (University of Almeria)

Aproximaciones a una “tradición menor”: El relato corto contemporáneo en Gran Bretaña
María del Mar Ruiz Martínez (University of Almeria)

SESSION 3

Joyce’s Gabriel and Woolf’s Mabel: Identity Crises in “The Dead” and “The New Dress”
Margarita Estévez Saá (University of Santiago de Compostela)

Two Worlds Diverged in a Tale: the Analysis of Jane Bowles’ “Everything is Nice” and “A Quarelling Pair”
Emilio Cañadas Rodríguez (University Camilo Jose Cela)

SESSION 4 (ROUND TABLE)

Through the Eyes of a Child: Innocence Assailed in Modernist and Postmodernist English Short Fiction
Jorge Sacido Romero (University of Santiago de Compostela)
Participants: Jorge Sacido Romero, Chair, María Casado Villanueva, Laura Mª Lojo Rodríguez (University Santiago de Compostela)

SESSION 5 (ROUND TABLE)

The Portrait of a Lady: Women and their Representation in American and Canadian Short Stories
Patricia San José Rico (University of Valladolid)
Participants: Patricia San José Rico (Chair), Marta Guitierrez Rodríguez, María de Carmen Garrido Hornos, María Antonia Mezquita Fernández (University of Valladolid)

SHORT STORY
ABSTRACTS

Go West: From the Homosocial to the Homosexual in Annie Proulx's “Brokeback Mountain”
José Mª Yebra Pertusa (University of Zaragoza)

My main aim in this paper is analysing the cultural schizophrenia that lies behind the western, as reflected in Annie Proulx's “Brokeback Mountain” (1997): although considered an ultra-masculine genre, it has frequently displayed homoerotic undertones that have been often problematic for critics, readers and spectators alike. In my opinion, this apparent incongruity between the homosocial and the homosexual constitutes the main target of Proulx's short story and the eponymous film by Ang Lee (2004). What I attempt to demonstrate is that Brokeback Mountain is not an isolated phenomenon, but one deeply embedded in a long tradition of homoerotic westerns. In this light, we will see that whereas twentieth-century culture managed to virtually erase explicit same-sex desire from westerns, texts like Proulx's accomplish a process of rehabilitation at the turn of the millennium. In other words, -with the help of Chris Packard's Queer Cowboys and Other Male Friendships in Nineteenth Century American Literature (2006)-, we will understand that the western is not the monolith we are used to, but a rather multifarious genre in need of revision and re-surfacing.
Keywords: Homoeroticism, homosexuality, masculinity, the Western, and satyriasis.

Girls Interpreting the War in Ellen Gilchrist’s “Victory over Japan” and Bobbie Ann Mason’s “Detroit Skyline, 1949”
Candela Delgado Marín (University of Sevilla)

The American short story writers Ellen Gilchrist and Bobbie Ann Mason in their works “Victory over Japan” and “Detroit Skyline, 1949” respectively portray the formative process that two young girls undergo in a post World War II environment. Their different backgrounds determine the characters’ procedure when facing the grotesque descriptions of the conflict. However, both girls resort to imagination in order to soothe their fears and insecurities. Their fanciful constructs establish connections between the strange and the familiar. Nonetheless, when fancy fails, the girls turn to verbal aggressive attacks, used as protection against any potential face-threatening act. Their personas show assertiveness but their easily affected sensibilities are frightened by the new elements they have to confront and by the violent language the adults use around them. The two authors convey war trauma from the perspective of two innocent, curious, observant and sensitive young female characters whose innocence creates involuntarily a sharp study of the painful sense of uncertainty left by wars.
Keywords: Bobbie Ann Mason, Ellen Gilchrist, American Short Story,Post-War Effects, Grotesque and Fancy.

Killing the Beast at Home: Destroying Maternal Bonds in Moira Crone’s “The Ice Garden”
Jose Ramón Ibáñez Ibáñez (Universidad de Almeria)

The aim of this paper is to offer a symbolic interpretation to “The Ice Garden”, the story that opens up the short story cycle What Gets Into Us (2006) by Moira Crone. Firstly, the story is set in the theoretical framework of the short story cycle as devised by Forrest Ingram. Secondly, the text analyzes the role of the narrator, Claire McKenzie, who is victimized by the repressive attitude of her mother, and obsessed by the destructive power of physical beauty. Special attention will be paid to the use of mythological images and war metaphors throughout the story, as well as the shifting from Oedipus complex attitude to an Electra complex displayed by young Claire which may enable us to understand why she failed to help her mother in the final tragic moments of her existence.
Keywords: Short story cycle, Southern short story, mythological imagery, Oedipus complex

De mujeres y pájaros: “Birds of America” de Lorrie Moore
Blasina Cantizano Márquez (University of Almeria)

Este trabajo es un estudio crítico de la colección de relatos Birds of America (1998) de la autora norteamericana Lorrie Moore. Además de una aproximación general a la figura y obra de la autora, se analizan los relatos que componen esta colección en base a dos de sus características esenciales: las imágenes y metáforas relacionadas con las aves, y la existencia de una amplia variedad de personajes femeninos que protagonizan la mayoría de las historias. Las relaciones personales, sentimentales y familiares de estos personajes femeninos las identifican y caracterizan como mujeres reales, contemporáneas, con vivencias y experiencias extraídas del mundo real.
Keywords: mujeres, aves, madres.

Aproximaciones a una “tradición menor”: El relato corto contemporáneo en Gran Bretaña
María del Mar Ruiz Martínez (University of Almeria)

La “short story” ha sido un género literario tradicionalmente relegado a un segundo plano debido a la supremacía de la novela y a la consideración errónea de la narrativa breve como un arte de menor prestigio y a la vez carente de la solvencia y determinación de otras formas. Definido el relato por algunos autores y críticos como un género híbrido entre la novela y la poesía, este artículo pretende estudiar la situación actual y las diferentes transformaciones sufridas por el relato corto en Gran Bretaña durante las últimas décadas del siglo XX con el fin de ofrecer una síntesis acerca de su posición en el panorama literario actual.
Keywords: relato corto, Gran Bretaña, siglo XX, poética del cuento.

Joyce’s Gabriel and Woolf’s Mabel: Identity Crises in “The Dead” and “The New Dress”
Margarita Estévez Saá (University of Santiago de Compostela)

Following Irish writer Eavan Boland’s distinction between “presence” and “influence” of an author in the work of another author, we argue in the present paper that there is a noticeable “influence” of James Joyce’s short story “The Dead” in Virginia Woolf’s “The New Dress.” The relationship between both authors was certainly “intense” at a human personal level, as well as “formal” at an artistic and aesthetic one. Taking into account Anthony Elliott’s reflections on the agents involved in the construction of the self, this paper analyses the concomitances to be detected in both stories which deal with identity crises suffered by their respective protagonists; two stories that also share the use of similar symbolism and employ an analogous structure. Our comparison of both stories also recalls Joyce’s concept of “epiphany” and Woolf’s notion of “moment of being.”
Keywords: Joyce, Woolf, identity, short story

Two Worlds Diverged in a Tale: the Analysis of Jane Bowles’ “Everything is Nice” and “A Quarelling Pair”
Emilio Cañadas Rodríguez (University Camilo Jose Cela)

Despite her short literary career, the American writer Jane Bowles is nowadays considered as a "cult writer" and as a "celebrity" and her short story production is an example of her narrative achievements. In "Everything is Nice" and "A Quarrelling Pair", Bowles shows the way to understand her literary universe presenting in the core of her writing pairs of female characters confronted by their cultural, religious, personal, affective or sexual interpretation of life. At the same time, Bowles, in these two examples of her short fiction, will offer a dialogued, semi-biographical and sometimes dramatic universe centred in a feminist approach. In both stories, Bowles' female characters will discover how easily their worlds turn out to be uncomfortable places to be part of and to live in.
Keywords: Short story theory, Jane Bowles, feminism

In modernist and postmodernist literature, we come across radical reformulations and crude subversions of the Romantic view of the children’s pristine innocence and unadulterated imaginative force. The aim of this round table is to examine modernist and postmodernist reformulations of the childhood theme by paying special attention to “An Encounter”, from James Joyce’s 1914 collection Dubliners, and to Ian McEwan’s “Homemade” (First Love, Last Rites, 1975). Slavoj Žižek’s distinction between modernism and postmodernism in terms of a shift of perspective on the symbolically subversive aspects of social reality will provide a general theoretical framework onto which to graft a set of historical and discursive features constitutive of the childhood theme. If the child in the Joyce story experiences how the fantasy-world of games and daydreams is spoilt by marginal adult perversity, in McEwan’s “Homemade” it is the young protagonist who playfully embodies all kinds of social dysfunctions (cynicism and perversion among them).
Keywords: childhood, short story, modernism, postmodernism, Joyce, McEwan

The Portrait of a Lady: Women and their Representation in American and Canadian Short Stories
Patricia San José Rico (University of Valladolid)
Participants: Patricia San José Rico (Chair), Marta Gutierrez Rodríguez, María del Carmen Garrido Hornos, María Antonia Mezquita Fernández (University of Valladolid)

During the last recent decades, much attention has been paid to the issue of women’s writing, and the representation of women in literature. This is coincidental with the rise of feminism and the defense of women rights both in the political and sociological scenes. Literature, therefore, has seen a change not only in the rise and recognition of women writers but also in the treatment of the female character in women’s and men’s literary productions alike. The aim of this round table is to study the evolution of the representation of women in short stories in the American continent from the Nineteenth Century up to nowadays. Through the three contributions in this round table, we will see how the different historical and social changes that have taken place during the last two centuries (the shift from Puritanism to a more democratic frame of mind in the U.S., the American Civil War, the rise of feminism and the fight for women’s rights) have contributed to a shift of both female writers and female characters from obscurity and negative connotations to the openness of overt activism. The main focus of this round table will be to promote the dialogue between the speakers and the audience on the issues of women’s representation in American and Canadian short stories, the link between the evolution of society and of literature and the increasing importance of this genre in the field of literary studies.
Keywords: Women, Feminism, Representation, American, Canadian, Short Story.