The book compiles twelve essays on the history of the short fiction in English in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. They cover short fiction written in Great Britain, United States, Ireland, Africa and the Caribbean. The approaches are diverse so that the reader can have a comprehensive view of the issue. It is intended for graduate and doctoral students as well as for researchers of the short fiction.

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Santiago Rodríguez Guerrero-Strachan, editor

Fragmentos de realidad: Los autores y las poéticas del cuento en lengua inglesa

Valladolid: Ediciones Universidad de Valladolid, 2015

ISBN: 978-84-8448-828-6

José R. Ibáñez Ibáñez, José Francisco Fernández y Carmen Mª Bretones Callejas, editors

Contemporary Debates on the Short Story

Bern: Peter Lang, 2007

ISBN: 978-3-03911-X

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To read a book review in The Journal of the Short Story in English, click here

Contemporary Debates on the Short Story brings together the contributions of nine outstanding scholars in the field of the short story to reveal some of the many directions in which the genre is expanding. This book is a reasoned and well-documented anthology which casts light on new aspects of the short story. It participates in the current trend of the short story criticism characterized by the gathering in one single volume of a diversity of approaches with the main aid of promoting discussion on this thriving area of literary studies. All in all, the short story emerges in this study as a dynamic and flexible form that reacts and adapts better than any other literary genre to the challenges of the sceptical times we are in.

José Francisco Fernández Sánchez, editor

Creadores de evocación. Nuevos artículos sobre relatos cortos de autores británicos contemporáneos

Almería: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Almería, 2005

ISBN: 84-8240-752-X

This collection of essays focuses on the short stories of twelve authors writing in English in modern times. It follows the spirit of a previous collection of essays, Breves e intensos (2001), in the sense that each chapter explores the literary production of one particular writer. It differs from the other volume in that writers from the margins of the British Islands are now the main subject of study. Thus, apart from four chapters devoted to ‘central’ English figures (J.R.R. Tolkien, A.S. Byatt, Ian McEwan and Jane Rogers), eight sections analyse the short stories by Scottish authors (Alasdair Gray, James Kelman, Jackie Kay), Irish authors (Elizabeth Bowen, Bernard Mac Laverty) and postcolonial authors (Salman Rushdie, Hanif Kureishi and Ben Okri).

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Edited Books

In this volume nine academics from an assortment of Spanish universities tackle the issue of the irregular reception of Nobel Prize winner Samuel Beckett in Spain. Together with James Joyce, Samuel Beckett is probably the author on whom more research articles have been written in recent decades in the Western hemisphere. However, a debate in depth on the meaning of his work has not taken place in Spain. This collection of essays aims to redress that situation and represents a first step towards achieving a fruitful conversation between Spanish academic criticism and Beckett's oeuvre.  Special attention has been paid to the editorial and theatrical history of an emblematic work in the Beckett canon such as Waiting for Godot. The study of the censorship of Beckett's texts in Spain is also subject to scrutiny. Individual chapters are devoted to the reception of other Beckett titles, such as Happy Days and How It Is, with the aim of understanding the factors that determined the reception of Beckett to the full measure that critical analysis can provide. It was in two regions of Spain, Galicia and Catalonia, where the performance of Beckett's theatre had an important repercussion, and two experts from a Galician and a Catalan university, respectively, expand at large on an historical survey of Beckett's theatre in those territories. Likewise, the study of Beckett in Spain from a Francophone perspective was considered necessary because it was French the foreign language that was being taught in secondary and higher education when Beckett first appeared in Spain. The volume ends with a critical bibliography on Beckett in Spanish academic publications, as a way of offering a starting point for future research on the Irish author in Hispanic letters.

José Francisco Fernández Sánchez, editor

Samuel Beckett en España

Valladolid: Ediciones Universidad de Valladolid, 2020

ISBN: 978-84-1320-085-9

Award-winning British novelist Margaret Drabble is renowned for her fiction, stories that gave voice to the new woman of the 1960s and continue to illuminate the conflicting roles of women in the twenty-first century. Drabble's long affiliation with the theatrical world also inspired her to experiment with the dramatic form. She wrote two plays – one for television, Laura (1964), and one for the stage, Bird of Paradise (1969). This new critical edition makes both plays available for the first time, giving Drabble fans a new vantage point from which to understand her work. In Laura and Bird of Paradise, Drabble mines the familiar territory of social class, domestic life, and questions of destiny, which have been the hallmark of her writing. As in her novels, both plays reveal a deep curiosity about the world and a piercing commentary on the social issues of her time. The volume's introduction and accompanying critical essays, including those written by three members of Lindisfarne Research Group, give valuable insight into the plays' historical and social context, and explore the artistic solutions that an accomplished author of fiction found when writing for the stage. Offering a fascinating complement to Drabble's prodigious oeuvre, this volume also provides a glimpse into a specific period in English letters, one that shaped an influential generation of writers.

Margaret Drabble

The Plays of Margaret Drabble. A Critical Edition

José Francisco Fernández Sánchez, editor

New York: Syracuse University Press, 2018

ISBN: 978-0-8156-3605-2

José Francisco Fernández Sánchez, editor

Breves e intensos. Artículos sobre relatos cortos de autores británicos contemporáneos

Almería: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Almería, 2001

ISBN: 84-8240-349-4

This collection of articles is intended as an introduction to the storytelling of some of the best-known contemporary British authors who have stood out as storytellers. In some cases, these are well-established authors whose novels have eclipsed narratives that deserve to be considered separately. In other cases, we have masters from different sub-genres who have not been given the necessary critical attention; finally, there is a group of young authors who either complement their literary careers with high quality short stories or else decide to devote themselves solely to this narrative form.

José Francisco Fernández & Pascal Sardin, editors

Translating Samuel Beckett around the World

Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021

ISBN: 978-3-030-71730-8

This book has as its object of study the global reception of Samuel Beckett and tries to answer a number of questions: in which areas of the world was Beckett first translated? Why were Beckett’s texts sometimes slow to penetrate certain cultures? How were national literatures impacted by Beckett’s oeuvre? Translating Beckett around the World brings together leading researchers in Beckett studies to discuss these questions and explore the fate of Beckett in their own societies and national languages. It also reveals unknown aspects of Beckett interacting or cooperating with translators of his work in countries such as Argentina, Israel and Italy, and provides ample examples of Beckett’s presence in countries in which there has previously been minimal coverage, e.g. China, Turkey, India and Pakistan. Every contribution is accompanied by exhaustive information on the main translations of Beckett in each language under study.

Samuel Beckett and Translation explores the idea that at the core's of Beckett's work there is no fixed centre but a constant movement between variants of French and English. This collection of newly commissioned edited essays opens up original lines of enquiry into this restless impulse and how it finds a resonance in Beckett's writings. Topics, including Beckett's self-translations, translations of other authors and poetics of translation, are discussed in an Introduction and thirteen chapters followed by a section of commentary from seasoned translators who have worked on Beckett's texts. In examining the full range of Beckett's literary genres, this book presents how the high voltage release by Beckett's bilingualism informs the intricacies of his literary production. This volume includes especially commissioned by three translators who worked on Samuel Beckett.

José Francisco Fernández & Mar Garre García, editors

Samuel Beckett and Translation

Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2021

ISBN: 978-1474483827

Amanda Ellen Gerke, Santiago Rodríguez Guerrero-Strachan and Patricia San José Rico, editors

The Poetics and Politics of Hospitality in U.S. Literature and Culture

Series: Critical Approaches to Ethnic American Literature

Leyden: Brill/Rodopi, 2020

ISBN: 978-90-04-40793-0

The Poetics and Politics of Hospitality in U.S. Literature and Culture explores hospitality in a range of cultural expressions from a variety of approaches. The authors analyze and discuss forms of hospitality in canonical literature, ethnic literatures, language or movies. These span from the classical to the contemporary and includes a focus on language, power, hybridism, and sociology. The common theme in these contributions is that of American identity. By looking at a diversity of representations of American culture, using a multiplicity of approaches, the authors convey the richness of American hospitality as a vital aspect of its culture.

José R. Ibáñez & Santiago Rodríguez Guerrero-Strachan, editors

Retrospective Poe: The Master, His Readership, His Legacy

Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023

ISBN: 978-3-031-09985-4

Retrospective Poe: The Master, His Readership, His Legacy provides the reader with analyses of Edgar Allan Poe's writing. The book focuses on new readings that engage with classical and (post)modern studies of his work and the troubling literary relationship that he had with T.S. Eliot. Whilst the book examines Poe's influence in Spain, and how his figure has been marketed to young and adult Spanish reading audiences, it also explores the profound impact that Poe had on other audiences, such as in America, Greece, and Japan, from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century. The essays attest to Poe's well-deserved reputation, his worldwide legacy, and his continued presence in global literature. This book will appeal particularly to university teachers, Poe scholars, graduate students, and general readers interested in Poe's oeuvre.

Madalina Armie & Verónica Membrive, editors

Trauma, Memory, and Silence of the Irish Woman in Contemporary Literature: Wounds of the Body and the Soul

Routledge, 2023

ISBN: 978-1032409641

This volume studies the manifestations of female trauma through the exploration of multiple wounds, inflicted on both body and mind (Caruth 1996, 3) and the soul of Irish women from Northern Ireland and the Republic within a contemporary context, and in literary works written at the turn of the twenty-first century and beyond. These artistic manifestations connect tradition and modernity, debunk myths, break the silence with the exposure of uncomfortable realities, dismantle stereotypes and reflect reality with precision. Women's issues and female experiences depicted in contemporary fiction may provide an explanation for past and present gender dynamics, revealing a pathway for further renegotiation of gender roles and the achievement of equilibrium and equality between sexes. These works might help to seal and heal wounds both old and new and offer solutions to the quandaries of tomorrow.