The Novelle is a characteristic German literary form, easier to
recognize than to define, except as a brief novel or a long short story.
The main body of this book is devoted to interpretative essays on
individual Novellen. In a sense they all illustrate one central problem:
the relationship of the narrator to his story, and the importance of
this relationship for its interpretation. Professor Ellis begins with an
analytical chapter which faces the problem of defining the genre, using
an approach derived from conceptual analysis. The individual studies are
of works by Kleist, Tieck, Hoffmann, Grillparzwe, Keller, Storm,
Hauptmann and Kafka. This is a book which will help students and
scholars to categorize and criticize an important genre, and it may well
serve as an introduction to the whole study for the English-speaking
reader.