The book looks at the uses of the ordinary in the short stories of T.F. Powys and V.S. Pritchett. It observes two models the theme is explored in: the violation (ekstasis), and the preservation (stasis). It explores the use of the theme in terms of: characterization, events, setting, narrativity, eventfulness, causality and narrative rhetoric. This formalist-narratological study of T.F. Powys' and V.S. Pritchett's short fiction reestablishes both authors as important contributors to the history of the short story form. It also discusses how writers, who did not belong to the modernist avant-garde innovation, address the problems of the short story form in the twentieth century. The study takes a close look at the uses of the ordinary and analyses character, setting, and event presentation, narrators, audiences, narrativity, eventfulness, causality, and narrative rhetoric. It presents two kinds of short fiction and two kinds of the ordinary: the ecstatic one, focused on violations of norm, and the static kind that reassures its patterns. Contents: The ordinary in literature - The short story - Non-canonical short fiction writers - Modernism and the canon - Formalism - The rhetoric of narrative, narrativity, eventfulness, character presentation, causality - Social realism - Polemics with realism - Stasis-ekstasis as an organizing principle of narrative. Milosz Wojtyna holds a Ph.D. from the University of Gdansk, Poland. He specializes in 20th and 21st century British fiction, contemporary narrative theory and non-canonical short fiction writers from Britain and the Continent. He is a translator and publisher.
