Foreword by K. Narayana Chandran
Acknowledgements

1. Introduction
2. Mimetic Homage: Allusions, Echoes, Parallels
3. Between Sources and Intertexts
4. Intertextual Dimensions
5. Links and Sequels: Some Intratextualities
6. Conclusion

Works Consulted
Index

Dust-Jacket Blurb

Oates's short fiction, argues P. Sreelakshmi, offers very suggestive critiques of the classics it reads, and in so doing, underscores the crucial importance reading relations assume, viz., those between a writer and her literary forbears, and those between the writer and her readers. Drawing pointed and crucial distinctions between sources, analogues, echoes, allusions, and "reimaginings", Sreelakshmi explores intertextualities in Oates whose stories often present fictional studies of the fiction they seem to re-read and re-write.

In six closely argued and well illustrated chapters Elective Affinities also shows how Oates conducts radical experiments with fictional forms and engages with increasingly plural, dialogical, and highly non-representational fiction true to her postmodern allegiances.

"The metacraft of fiction to which Dr. Sreelakshmi directs us throughout her book is a highpoint both in itself and the enabling frame it provides for her discussion. This is very fine and nuanced work indeed." (K. Narayana Chandran, "Foreword" Elective Affinities).

Excerpt

From the introduction:

Oates's recent fiction, in any case, can hardly be labeled 'postmodernist' in any strict sense. As a result, we read her 'realistic' fiction alongside her 'anti-realist' works and marvel at the gains of a writer who enjoys the best of two worlds without ceding the mystery of art, or its creative challenge to the artist. At home with the classics and commercials, in the realist and anti-realist fictional worlds alike, Oates presents, in fact, an interesting case of a writer as reader. Her texts continue open-ended dialogues with several texts not only of the present but of the past. Her short stories, both as fiction and as short, provocative critiques of the tradition and the genre they represent, therefore, offer a unique challenge to the reader. As fictional studies of fiction, they very often reread classic stories in remarkably original ways and thereby help us rethink the limits and possibilities of the short story as a genre.