Discoveries

Fifty Stories of the Quest

Second Edition

Edited by Harold Schechter and Jonna Gormely Semeiks

Reflecting today's growing emphasis on multiculturalism, the second edition of this remarkably successful anthology offers twelve additional contributions from the new generation of writers currently revitalizing the short story form, including Amy Tan, Bharati Mukherjee, R.K. Narayan, Stephen Milhauser, Ellen Gilchrist, and Patrick McGrath. Organized around the successive stages of humanity's most durable myth, the hero's quest narrative pattern delineated by renowned mythologist Joseph Campbell, this edition offers a summary and explication of Campbell's analysis of the quest motif, a new biographical introduction to Campbell's life and work, and a section of concise biographical entries on each of the fifty authors.

Discoveries

Fifty Stories of the Quest

Second Edition

Edited by Harold Schechter and Jonna Gormely Semeiks

Description

Reflecting today's growing emphasis on multiculturalism, the second edition of this remarkably successful anthology offers twelve additional contributions from the new generation of writers currently revitalizing the short story form, including Amy Tan, Bharati Mukherjee, R.K. Narayan, Stephen Milhauser, Ellen Gilchrist, and Patrick McGrath. Organized around the successive stages of humanity's most durable myth, the hero's quest narrative pattern delineated by renowned mythologist Joseph Campbell, this edition offers a summary and explication of Campbell's analysis of the quest motif, a new biographical introduction to Campbell's life and work, and a section of concise biographical entries on each of the fifty authors.
As in the earlier edition, the quality and quantity of the selections give instructors the freedom to present the stories in whatever order and structure they choose. For those who wish to take advantage of the anthology's thematic organization, the editors provide questions for discussion and possible writing assignments that do not sacrifice the comprehensive diversity of the selections or their identity as distinctive works of literature open to various interpretations. A highly accessible introduction to the technical aspects of the close analysis of fiction, this text also offers a number of special features: two supplementary tables of contents, one organized by alternate themes, and one by the traditional elements of fiction; an introductory essay defining those technical elements and including a sample analysis of one the stories in the anthology; and a glossary of critical terms.

Previous publication dates

October 1983

Discoveries

Fifty Stories of the Quest

Second Edition

Edited by Harold Schechter and Jonna Gormely Semeiks

Contents by Alternate Themes
Contents by Technical Elements
Introduction: The Quest
The Elements of Fiction
Chapter One: The Call
Blackberry Winter, Robert Penn Warren
Paul's Case, Willa Cather
Astronomer's Wife, Kay Boyle
The Island at Noon, Julio Cort((a'))zar
The Liberation, Jean Stafford
The Story of an Hour, Kate Chopin
Adventure, Sherwood Anderson
Chapter Two: The Other
William Wilson, Edgar Allan Poe
The Lost Explorer, Patrick McGrath
Double Face, Amy Tan
Getzel the Monkey, Isaac Bashevis Singer
The Story of a Dead Man, James Alan McPherson
Yellow Woman, Leslie Silko
A Good Man is Hard to Find, Flannery O'Connor
He and I, Alberto Moravia
Chapter Three: The Journey
My Kinsman, Major Molineux, Nathaniel Hawthorne
Babylon Revisited, F. Scott Fitzgerald
A Worn Path, Eudora Welty
The Open Boat, Stephen Crane
Idiots First, Bernard Malamud
Big Boy Leaves Home, Richard Wright
Behind the Blue Curtain, Steven Millhauser
Through the Tunnel, Doris Lessing
Night-Sea Journey, John Barth
Chapter Four: Helpers and Guides
The Poet, Hermann Hesse
The Lesson, Toni Cade Bambara
Cathedral, Raymond Carver
Awakening, Isaac Babel
The Sky is Gray, Ernest J. Gaines
Under the Banyan Tree, R.K. Narayan
The Conversion of the Jews, Philip Roth
Blacam((a'))n the Good, Vendor of Miracles, Gabriel Garc((i'))a M((a'))rquez
Chapter Five: The Treasure
Araby, James Joyce
Semley's Necklace, Ursula K. Le Guin
Janus, Ann Beattie
A Tree ((EMB)) A Rock ((EMB)) A Cloud, Carson McCullers
The Blue Jar, Isak Dinesen
The Middle Drawer, Hortense Calisher
Flying Home, Ralph Ellison
The Oranging of America, Max Apple
The Revolt of "Mother", Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
Chapter Six: Transformation
The Horse-Dealer's Daughter, D.H. Lawrence
Twin Beds in Rome, John Updike
The Management of Grief, Bharati Mukherjee
O Yes, Tillie Olsen
The Legend of St. Julian the Hospitaller, Gustave Flaubert
Traveler, Ellen Gilchrist
Rip Van Winkle, Washington Irving
Christmas, Vladimir Nabokov
How Wang-Fo Was Saved, Marguerite Yourcenar
Glossary of Critical Terms
Biographies of the Authors