Within the past twenty years, critics have begun to reassess the writings of Constance Fenimore Woolson, works that were all but forgotten by the generation that succeeded her. One of the constants that has emerged from this and earlier scholarly writing is the opinion that Woolson's short fiction constitutes some of the best of her work. Thus, this study evaluates Woolson's literary achievement as a short story writer by providing a full examination of Castle Nowhere: Lake-Country Sketches, Rodman the Keeper: Southern Sketches, Dorothy and Other Italian Stories, The Front Yard and Other Italian Stories, and the short fiction not included in published collections of the tales. / The dissertation begins with a biographical portrait, which describes the personal and professional influences on Woolson's short fiction. Acquiring a taste for travel from her father, Woolson, for most of her life, led a transient existence. She vacationed in the Great Lakes as a child, attended schools in Ohio and New York, later accompanied her mother throughout her trips in the South, and toured Europe leisurely for the last fourteen years of her life. An admirer of European and American realists--especially Bret Harte and later Henry James--Woolson, with her avid curiosity for people and places and with her keen powers of observation, drew heavily upon her travels for the realistic settings and characters of her stories. Publishing her tales in the most prominent magazines of her day, Woolson enjoyed the critical praise and friendship of such eminent literary figures as E. C. Stedman, Paul Hamilton Hayne, William Dean Howells, and Henry James. / Throughout her fiction Woolson dealt with the forces affecting the nation as well as the individual in the last half of the nineteenth century. Chapter III examines Woolson's thematic concerns. In her Great Lakes fiction, Woolson considers life in the city as well as in the country, endorsing most frequently the value of the rural experience. In her Southern tales, Woolson laments the passing of the old order of the South, and she acknowledges the difficulty of a reconciliation between the sections during the Reconstruction era. And in her Italian stories, while admiring the beauty and charm of Europe, she consistently endorses New World rather than Old World values. In addition to these regional themes, the chapter examines Woolson's concern throughout her fiction with artistic integrity, unrequited love, and magnanimity or heroic self-sacrifice. / In her wide travels Woolson came in contact with a variety of American and European characters. And in her fiction, Woolson felt it her mission to record as objectively as possible life within the regions she visited. However, her stories, like those of many other local colorists, are a blend of the romantic and the realistic. Many of her settings are closely described, while others are cast in a romantic haze. Her characters are often carefully drawn and well-rounded, but some are clearly eccentrics--religious fanatics and recluses--or they are models of virtue, characters who display the magnanimous qualities Woolson so greatly admired. Many of these characters appear, too, in sentimental tales of love, stories whose plots follow the popular formulas of the day in portraying idealized love. Thus, the final chapter of the dissertation addresses the romantic and realistic elements of Woolson's fiction by examining Woolson's literary technique--her settings, her characterizations, and her plots. Despite her romantic tendencies, Woolson is shown to be the realist she steadfastly claimed she was. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 41-01, Section: A, page: 0250. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1980.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_74016 |
| Contributors | GINGRAS, ROBERT., The Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 217 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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