Acknowledgments
Introduction

1: The Evolving Critical Reception of Gabriele Wohmann: 1956-1969

2: Oates in the 1960s: By the North Gate (1963) and Upon the Sweeping Flood (1966)

3: Wohmann's Short Fiction Published in the 1970s

4: The 1970s: Oates at the Height of Her Short Fiction Career

5: Wohmann's Reception in English-Speaking Countries and in the GDR

6: The Selective Reception of Oates's Short Fiction in Germany

7: Wohmann: The 1980s and 1990s

8: Beginnings of a Critical Perspective on Oates's Short Fiction of the 1980s and 1990s

Concluding Observations
Bibliography
Index

Excerpt

From chapter 8

Generally, the 1980s offer a confusing picture of the critical reception of Oates's writings. On the one hand she was now firmly established as an outstanding and challenging American author. This status was also confirmed by her government-sponsored European tour at a time of considerable tension between the superpowers. Secondary literature about her work, including her short fiction, was on the increase. As was the case in the critical reception of Wohmann's work, serious research on Oates only took off toward the end of the seventies and reached a kind of peak by the mid-eighties. By this time her writings became the subject of monographs, dissertations, and articles, which often attempt to summarize what Oates is all about between antithetical title concepts, such as "Obsession and Transcendence" (Waller, 1979), "Execution, Obsession, and Extinction" (Arrowood, 1981), "Destructive and Redemptive 'Order'" (Giles, 1981), "Tradition and Innovation" (Bastian, 1983), "Isolation and Contact" (Norman, 1984), or "Refusal and Transgression" (Wesley, 1993). Yet such formulas, as insightful and useful as they may be in shedding light on certain aspects of Oates's work at a given point in time, cannot do justice to her work over the long range. The author's continuing acclamation of new visions and new voices clearly cannot be subsumed under any one critical concept or dialectic.