The short story cluster: A neglected literary genre

This dissertation argues for a reconceptualizing of the way we read and understand certain kinds of short story collections. The first chapter provides an extensive historical overview (from Ovid\u27s Metamorphoses to Toomer\u27s Cane) of composite narratives, along the way distinguishing a number of variations within the genre. The second chapter examines the increasing scholarship on story collections, provides my own theory of the genre, and explores examples of the two most conspicuous sub-genres: the short story sequence—a series of autonomous yet connected works such as Winesburg, Ohio; and the story collection—a volume of short fiction that possesses only vague or incidental unity. The balance of the dissertation focuses on what I call the “story cluster,” a subgenre located between the sequence and the mere collection. Employing reader response theory and close reading, these three chapters explore Sherwood Anderson\u27s The Triumph of the Egg, Willa Cather\u27s Youth and the Bright Medusa, and Ernest Hemingway\u27s Men Without Women, demonstrating how extratextual evidence (commentary revealing a writer\u27s intentions), anterior links (textual markers such as titles, subtitles, and prefaces), primary interior links (recurring major themes), and secondary interior links (recurring symbols and images) allow us to understand these ostensibly “random” volumes as complex composite performances—close generic relatives of the more popular and critically explored story sequences, such as Winesburg, Ohio and In Our Time