Gender and genre issues in short stories written by women[mesa redonda]

Abstract

In this round table we intend to review the remarkable contribution of women to the development of the short story in English as well as to discuss the possibility of detecting gender differences in their stories both at a thematic and at an aesthetic level. Therefore, Mª Jesús Lorenzo Modia will describe the antecedents of the short story in the eighteenth century through the emergence of periodical publications such as The Tatler and The Spectator. Stories by male and female writers included in these and other publications will be analysed by Lorenzo Modia in order to provide a panorama of the eighteenth-century short story. Margarita Estévez Saá will review the proliferation of short stories written by women in the nineteenth century and study the peculiar case of the ghost story, a favourite "subgenre" for women readers and writers. María Losada Friend will exemplify with the figure of Edna O'Brien and her work Lantern Slides, the contribution of women writers to the so-called "composite novel" commenting on its function as a unifying structure of short stories and studying some of its antecedents and possible sequels in English and Irish literature. Finally, José Manuel Estévez Saá will discuss the panorama of multiethnic postcolonial short stories written by women in the twentieth century and the interest of the thematic and aesthetic concerns displayed by their authors.