Date of Graduation
Spring 2009
Degree
Master of Arts in English
Department
English
Committee Chair
Wayne Blackmon
Abstract
The following collection of stories represents an experiment in physical lyricism and secular humanism, a style of writing perfected by Ivan Bunin, the first Russian to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Chiaroscuro has also been influenced by other writers and styles, most notably Anton Chekov, Isaac Babel, Henry James, Ernest Hemingway, and Raymond Carver. In particular, Carver's prose style catapulted minimalism to the level of art, and often dealt with difficult issues in a third-person, object-heavy narrative. There are four stories in the collection: "The Lexicon of the Sword" (fencing and child molestation in twenty-first century Los Angeles); "The Emperor Norton" (journalism and tourism in nineteenth-century San Francisco); "The Surgeon" (humanity and revolution in a small Spanish-speaking island nation); and "The Artist" (oil painting and social interaction between different generations and expatriates in Boston).
Keywords
fiction, stories, entertainment, vivid and continuous dream
Subject Categories
English Language and Literature
Copyright
© Benjamin Paul Pfeiffer
Recommended Citation
Pfeiffer, Benjamin Paul, "Chiaroscuro" (2009). MSU Graduate Theses. 2558.
https://bearworks.missouristate.edu/theses/2558
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