Reading & Composition

Reading & Composition

Reading and Writing Short Stories
Course Number: 
R1B.011
Course Catalog Number: 
21463
Course Type or Level: 
Instructor: 
Pedro Hurtado Ortiz
Days: 
Tu / Th
Time: 
12:30-2
Semester: 
Location: 
89 Dwinelle

Explaining his inclination for short fiction, Jorge Luis Borges wrote: “It is a laborious madness and an impoverishing one, the madness of composing vast books—setting out in five hundred pages an idea that can be perfectly related orally in five minutes.” In this course, we’ll consider several short stories and a couple of novellas to try to understand what the generic advantages of short stories might be. We’ll ask, what sets short stories or novellas apart from novels? What kind of characters can be developed in short stories? What kinds of intellectual problems can short stories propose and in what ways? What, in short, do they do best?

Due to their relative brevity, short stories demand a different economy of reading than longer works. In this course, we’ll practice reading slowly and carefully. Since this is an R&C course, its major goals are to improve students’ skills in close reading, critical thinking, and analytical writing, and to explore the relationships between the three skills. In addition to discussing the texts in class, students will write responses to them in a variety of forms, from literary analysis essays to creative projects. Authors will include Cervantes, Balzac, Flaubert, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry James, Wells, Chesterton, Kipling, Borges, Cortázar, Silvina Ocampo, Robbe-Grillet, Le Guin and Junot Díaz.

Reading List

Miguel de Cervantes, “Rinconete y Cortadillo” (1613)

Arabian Nights, “The Ruined Man Who Became Rich Again Through a Dream” (ca. 15th century)

Honoré de Balzac, “Sarrasine” (1830)

Edgar Allan Poe, “The Purloined Letter” (1844)

Gustave Flaubert, “Hérodias” (1877)

H.G. Wells, “The Secret Egg” (1897)

Henry James, The Turn of the Screw (1898)

Rudyard Kipling, “Beyond the Pale” (1890), “Dayspring Mishandled” (1932)

Jorge Luis Borges, “Three Versions of Judas” (1941), “The Interloper” (1970)

Julio Cortázar, “Letter to a Young Lady in Paris” (1951)

Silvina Ocampo, “Report on Heaven and Hell” (1959)