Includes a biography of the author, index, and bibliographical references.

"This course takes you on an exciting ride through an itinerary that samples 23 of the world`s greatest short stories. The form of the genre, as well as the various ways in which it has evolved, is highlighted along the way with a display of the essential nuts and bolts of storytelling - plot, character, setting, style, point of view, and theme. A mix of critical approaches will also be brought in to enhance analysis and interpretation and to explore some of the ways we judge and evaluate short fiction. We will key in throughout the lecture series on methods used by critics to discover meaning - the author, the reader, the language, and the world the story mirrors.
The great Roman poet and satirist Horace said that the purpose of literature is to delight and instruct. Each of the 23 stories we will work with do both in many ways. In addition, each story connects us to a broader version of our lives and the lives of those around us, as well as to a specific cultural and historic context and to what Edgar Allen Poe, perhaps the earliest theorist on the short story, described as the unified aesthetic effect os reading a short story.
We begin with Poe, as well as five other storytellers who anchor us firmly in the narrative art of short fiction of the late 19th century. Poe is not only one of the earliest theorists on the form of the short story, but he is also one of the short story`s pioneer practitioners. His mid-19th-century horror masterpiece "The Cask of Amontillado" serves as an introduction to the genre in its dawning form. With its murderous narrator Montresor confessing his carried-out vengeance and the carnivalesque world Poe plunged into, we have a story strong in sensational effects, a harbinger of the modern psychological short story and a great deal of American and Western popular culture. From Poe, we travel to the more allegorical terrain of Hawthorne`s "Young Goodman Brown" and Gogol`s "The Overcoat". Both are hallucinatory tales with strong moral underpinnings. It was Dostoyevsky (or some say Turgenev or Tolstoy) who said that he and all other fiction writers came out from under Gogol`s overcoat, and he and Hawthorne are both early seminal Fabulists. From this trio of mid-19th-century storytellers, we move to the end of the century, beginning with one of the earliest examples of a well-made tale built on irony and class division, Guy de Maupassant`s classic French set tale "The Necklace". After "The Necklace", we immerse ourselves in the Yalta set love story "The Lady with the Dog". In 1981, Vladimir Nabokov, the author of Lolita, described this Chekhov tale as "one of the greatest stories ever written".

CONTENTS:
Disc 1:
Lecture 1. Excavations: Poe's "The cask of Amontillado"
Lecture 2. Hawthorne's "Goodman Brown" and Lost Faith
Lecture 3. Under Gogol's "Overcoat"
Lecture 4. Maupassant's "The Necklace": Real and Paste
Lecture 5. Chekhov, Love, and "The lady with the Dog"
Lecture 6. James in the Art Studio: "The Real Thing"
Disc 2:

Lecture 7. Epiphany and the Modern in Joyce's "Araby"
Lecture 8. Babel's "My First Goose": Violent Concision
Lecture 9. Male Initiation: Hemingway's "The Killers"
Lecture 10. Kafka's Parable: "A Hunger Artist"
Lecture 11. Lawrence's blue-eyed "Rocking-Horse Winner"
Lecture 12. Female Initiation: Mansfield's "Party"
Disc 3:

Lecture 13. Jackson's Shocking Vision in "The Lottery"
Lecture 14. O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find"
Lecture 15. Paley on Survival and "An interest in life"
Lecture 16. The "Enormous Wings" of Garcia Marquez
Lecture 17. A New World Fable: Malamud's "The Jewbird"
Lecture 18. Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues": a Harlem Song
Disc 4:

Lecture 19. Updike's "A & P": the Choice of Gallantry
Lecture 20. Kingston's Warrior Myth: "No Name Woman";
Lecture 21. Atwood's "Happy Endings" as Metafiction
Lecture 22. Gordimer's "Moment Before" Apartheid Fell
Lecture 23. Carver's "Cathedral": a Story that Levitates
Lecture 24. Why Short Fiction Masterpieces?

"This course takes you on an exciting ride through an itinerary that samples 23 of the world`s greatest short stories. The form of the genre, as well as the various ways in which it has evolved, is highlighted along the way with a display of the essential nuts and bolts of storytelling - plot, character, setting, style, point of view, and theme. A mix of critical approaches will also be brought in to enhance analysis and interpretation and to explore some of the ways we judge and evaluate short fiction. We will key in throughout the lecture series on methods used by critics to discover meaning - the author, the reader, the language, and the world the story mirrors.
The great Roman poet and satirist Horace said that the purpose of literature is to delight and instruct. Each of the 23 stories we will work with do both in many ways. In addition, each story connects us to a broader version of our lives and the lives of those around us, as well as to a specific cultural and historic context and to what Edgar Allen Poe, perhaps the earliest theorist on the short story, described as the unified aesthetic effect os reading a short story.
We begin with Poe, as well as five other storytellers who anchor us firmly in the narrative art of short fiction of the late 19th century. Poe is not only one of the earliest theorists on the form of the short story, but he is also one of the short story`s pioneer practitioners. His mid-19th-century horror masterpiece "The Cask of Amontillado" serves as an introduction to the genre in its dawning form. With its murderous narrator Montresor confessing his carried-out vengeance and the carnivalesque world Poe plunged into, we have a story strong in sensational effects, a harbinger of the modern psychological short story and a great deal of American and Western popular culture. From Poe, we travel to the more allegorical terrain of Hawthorne`s "Young Goodman Brown" and Gogol`s "The Overcoat". Both are hallucinatory tales with strong moral underpinnings. It was Dostoyevsky (or some say Turgenev or Tolstoy) who said that he and all other fiction writers came out from under Gogol`s overcoat, and he and Hawthorne are both early seminal Fabulists. From this trio of mid-19th-century storytellers, we move to the end of the century, beginning with one of the earliest examples of a well-made tale built on irony and class division, Guy de Maupassant`s classic French set tale "The Necklace". After "The Necklace", we immerse ourselves in the Yalta set love story "The Lady with the Dog". In 1981, Vladimir Nabokov, the author of Lolita, described this Chekhov tale as "one of the greatest stories ever written".

DVD CONTENTS:

Disc 1:
Lecture 1. Excavations: Poe's "The cask of Amontillado"
Lecture 2. Hawthorne's "Goodman Brown" and Lost Faith
Lecture 3. Under Gogol's "Overcoat"
Lecture 4. Maupassant's "The Necklace": Real and Paste
Lecture 5. Chekhov, Love, and "The lady with the Dog"
Lecture 6. James in the Art Studio: "The Real Thing"

Disc 2:
Lecture 7. Epiphany and the Modern in Joyce's "Araby"
Lecture 8. Babel's "My First Goose": Violent Concision
Lecture 9. Male Initiation: Hemingway's "The Killers"
Lecture 10. Kafka's Parable: "A Hunger Artist"
Lecture 11. Lawrence's blue-eyed "Rocking-Horse Winner"
Lecture 12. Female Initiation: Mansfield's "Party"

Part 2.

Disc 3:
Lecture 13. Jackson's Shocking Vision in "The Lottery"
Lecture 14. O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find"
Lecture 15. Paley on Survival and "An interest in life"
Lecture 16. The "Enormous Wings" of Garcia Marquez
Lecture 17. A New World Fable: Malamud's "The Jewbird"
Lecture 18. Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues": a Harlem Song

Disc 4:
Lecture 19. Updike's "A & P": the Choice of Gallantry
Lecture 20. Kingston's Warrior Myth: "No Name Woman";
Lecture 21. Atwood's "Happy Endings" as Metafiction
Lecture 22. Gordimer's "Moment Before" Apartheid Fell
Lecture 23. Carver's "Cathedral": a Story that Levitates
Lecture 24. Why Short Fiction Masterpieces?