Israel Joshua Singer's novellas: An analysis of their creative elements

Israel Joshua Singer's corpus of twelve novellas is analyzed for the purpose of tracking, over the course of his twenty-five year literary career, the belletristic changes therein. The study attempts to show that three such changes are prominent. First, there is an improvement in technical proficiency from the standpoint of plot architectonics. Second, there is a decline in the author's level of imagistic creativity. Third, there is a brightening of the author's thematic.;Reasons are given for electing to interpret I. J. Singer's final novella as an autobiographical parable; on the strength of which hypotheses are advanced in explanation of the belletristic changes in his literary career.;An explanation is offered to justify this study's focus on the author's novellas rather than on his short stories or novels. It is also shown that evidence regarding belletristic changes educed from the latter bodies of works gives limited support to--and in no way contradicts--the findings based on the corpus of novellas.