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Article: Stops on the way to "Shiloh": a special case for literary empiricism. (The Short Story: Theory and Practice)
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- September 22, 1993
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CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1993 Northern Illinois University. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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One of literature's memorable semiotic moments occurs in Stephen Crane's classic short story "The Open Boat." The desperate men in the lifeboat see a speck on the distant shore. Eventually, the speck becomes a man. He is waving his arms at the crew. Relief! Rescue at last? No, it appears that the man is only giving them a friendly hail, misreading their condition as they misread his signal.
This essay is about other semiotic moments, some of them in a short story by Bobbie Ann Mason, some of them in the history of short-fiction theory. I will be waving my arms too, but let me begin by listing my premises:
1) storying is a primary mode of cognition (counting, ...