English modernist short story today: concept and research issues

The article presents a critical analysis of the concept of the modernist short story, surveys contemporary directions in its study, and examines the research opportunities opened by a broader view of this concept. The classic understanding of the modernist short story has emerged under significant influence of such authors as Joyce, Mansfield, and Woolf. By the last decades of the twentieth century, this understanding took the shape of the “impressionist” concept of the genre, which singles out such key traits as relative insignificance of the plot, foregrounding of the aesthetic form, innovative narrative techniques, and a focus on the perceiving consciousness. Since the beginning of the twenty first century, the impressionist concept of the genre and its extrapolation to the modern short story in general have been criticized. A major trend in contemporary studies is not to restrict the notion of the modernist short story only to a handful of overtly innovative texts by a small number of canonical authors but to consider a wider range of stories where a reflection on consciousness and subjectivity at a radical turn in history takes a less experimental form. A brief analysis of May Sinclair’s short stories, which follow preestablished narrative conventions, shows the value of the extended concept of the modernist short story.