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

本研究旨在建立一个1800年以前美国文学中短篇小说早期形式的学术语料库。它响应并扩展了以前的研究，迄今为止集中在1740年至1820年之间的美国杂志中的简短叙述的孤立实例，包括殖民时代的叙述，最初是用英语以外的语言写的。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是略加提及该项目所回顾和收集的各种殖民短篇叙事形式，以展示早期美国短篇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，有必要对早期美国短篇小说进行系统的梳理和评论，为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.