Early American Short Narratives: Developing a scholarly corpus of early forms of short narratives in American literature prior to 1800

本研究项目旨在建立一个关于1800年以前美国文学早期短篇叙事形式的学术语料库。之前的研究主要集中在1740年至1820年间美国杂志上的一些孤立的短叙述实例上，该研究对这些研究进行了回应和扩展，纳入了殖民时期的故事，这些故事最初是用英语以外的语言写成的。例如，将首次系统地调查来自中部殖民地的德国资料，以及改编自法语和英语杂志的故事。到目前为止，学者们大多忽略或只提及项目所审查和收集的各种形式的殖民地短叙事，以展示早期美国短叙事的多种实践和来源，以及它在塑造美国文学中的作用。因此，需要对早期美国短篇叙事进行批判性的编辑和系统的调查，为在跨大西洋的美国文化和文学研究框架下的进一步研究提供文本基础。

This research project aims at developing a scholarly corpus of early forms of short narratives in American literature prior to 1800. It responds to and extends previous research that has so far concentrated on isolated instances of short narration in American magazines between 1740 and 1820 by including narratives from colonial times and originally written in languages other than English. For example, German sources from the middle colonies will be systematically surveyed for the first time as well as stories adapted from French and English magazines. So far, scholars have mostly neglected or made only passing references to the various forms of colonial short narration that the project reviews and collects to show the multiple practices and sources of early American short narration as well as its role in shaping American literature. A critical edition and systematic survey of early American short narrative is therefore needed to offer a textual basis for further research in a transatlantic framework of American cultural and literary studies.