Structure
Dunn and Morris list several methods that authors use to provide unity to the collection as a whole (the examples are theirs):
- the cycle focuses on a geographical area: The Country of the Pointed Firs, Dubliners, The Women of Brewster Place, Like Water for Chocolate
- the cycle focuses on a central protagonist: Cosmicomics, Winesburg, Ohio, The Woman Warrior, A Certain Lucas
- the cycle features a collective protagonist: In Our Time, Go Down, Moses, Love Medicine, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza
- the cycle uses patterns to create coherence: Three Lives, Exile and the Kingdom, The Golden Apples, A Yellow Raft in Blue Water
- the cycle focuses on story-telling: The Way to Rainy Mountain, Pricksongs & Descants, Lost in the Funhouse, How to Make an American Quilt
Read more about this topic: Short Story Cycle
Famous quotes containing the word structure:
“The verbal poetical texture of Shakespeare is the greatest the world has known, and is immensely superior to the structure of his plays as plays. With Shakespeare it is the metaphor that is the thing, not the play.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“Science is intimately integrated with the whole social structure and cultural tradition. They mutually support one other—only in certain types of society can science flourish, and conversely without a continuous and healthy development and application of science such a society cannot function properly.”
—Talcott Parsons (1902–1979)
“The question is still asked of women: “How do you propose to answer the need for child care?” That is an obvious attempt to structure conflict in the old terms. The questions are rather: “If we as a human community want children, how does the total society propose to provide for them?””
—Jean Baker Miller (20th century)