An Organon of Life Knowledge: Genres and Functions of the Short Story in North AmericaPaperback, 17 September 2019

Can fiction teach us how to live? This study offers a fresh take on the North American short story, exploring how the genre has engaged in the construction and circulation of life knowledge. Echoing the resurgence of short-story scholarship in recent years, it contributes to the growing field of literature and knowledge studies. Drawing on stories from the late nineteenth century to the present by authors such as Henry James, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Eudora Welty, Junot D¡az, and Alice Munro, Michael Basseler examines how knowledge about life and how to live it is generically constituted and, vice versa, how literary genres such as the short story are embedded in broader cultural frameworks of knowledge production.