| Among the Southern American outstanding writers, Eudora Welty (1909-) is celebrated as one of everlasting prestige. Even in the recent ten years, some of the most significant literary awards, both in and out of the United States, show appreciation for her.With her success in short stories, Welty was first brought to the attention of the literary world. Though her talent as a writer is shown later in her novella and novels as well as in criticism and essays, she is best in short fiction, which is her most favorite form. There are a wide range of subjects and varied methods in her stories. In the whole sense, variety is the distinct trait of Welly's fiction creation. In this thesis Welly's relationship with Ihe Soulh, her perennial themes and her remarkable techniques are studied in regard to her short stories. Her imperfection is pointed out as well.Welty was born and had grown up in South, but her parents were not native Southerners. Therefore, in her writing, Welty at once is salurated in the familiar details of Southern life and history, and takes a detached view of the past and present of South. Welty stresses the importance of place. Her stories must be set in some concrete places, where she may give the reins to her imagination. Welty usually takes her material from the life thai she knows intimately. Undoubtedly, Southern life is of this sort. In the early years, she had traveled through Mississippi because of her job. She met all kinds of people, keeping the scenes of unforgettable scenery and moving faces with her camera, feeling the uncommon meanings latent in mundane life. It is the experience behind her Kodak that gives her the impulse to write stories.Besides her own literary attainments, Welty has profited from the Southern customs of storytelling. Her characters are thorough Southerners. Their dramatic acts and their humorous or raffish speech bring the Southern manners alive on the page. The traditional sense of family and community provides Welty with a natural basis for her fiction. However, the rise and fall of a family or a society are not her themes. Welty is conslantly concerned with the feelings and conflicts lhal are universal in any human being. She has always been absorbed in Ihe puzzles in Ihe mind of individuals and the complexily of changing human relationships. With the philosophical vision, she has an insight into the mystery of man's heart and the profundity of common life. With the artistic imagination, she creates a series of characters in different status to unfold man's self-exploration, his need for love and beauty, his pursuit of the meaning of life.It is impressive that Welly is keeping on experimenting with the ways of telling slories, Some critics consider "shape" as Welly's primary achievement in the short slory genre. Welly's ficlion musl not be read only through the lens of subject matler. The research on Welly's outstanding techniques ismade in three aspects here: the mingling of imagination and reality; the implication of symbolism and myth; the techniques of painting and photography applied in writing.The significance of imagination in art has been widely recognized. Welly's rare achievement is to lead readers into the worlds of reality and fantasy, miraculously at once. Many of her stories have the surface of ordinary life. But the characters and incidents are often paradoxical. Hence, the impossibility in reality seems to have its possibility in some way. In fact, the irrationality in the world of fantasy is exactly the reflection of a real world losing its reason.The extremely miraculous use of symbols and myths makes the stories of common people have the sense of heroic legends. The meanings of the fiction become profound for the words and action of the characters are interpreted in the sense of religion and culture. Moreover, the allusion of symbol and myth is used to convey the mysteries of human existence that Welty explores. Strongly influenced by painting and photography, Welty always makes her stories believable by depicting the natu...
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