Welty's Fictional Arts In The Golden Apples

The Golden Apples, which Eudora Welty described as her favoritebook, is the most complex and highly symbolic collection of stories. Herfictional techniques have won more and more critical acclaim. Thisdissertation explores Welty's fictional art in The Golden Apples on threelevels.The first chapter centers on Welty's conversational art. Since thepublication of the stories, more and more criticism has being focused onWelty's peculiar narrative technique---small town gossip. She seems toavoid the depiction of extraordinary events as her subject matter, but stickto the apparently insignificant. This technique helps to avoid thenarrowness of certain conventional literary techniques. Moreover, the storyproves to reveal the whole of its meaning through small trifles andeveryday details. Chapter two studies Welty's mythological allusions. Mostof the myths in The Golden Apples are from Celtic folklore, ancient Greekand Roman mythology. Through the mythology, Welty makes us see thesesmall town southerners from the perspective of myth, and even beyond thatin its varying an changing forms, personified and even deified by ancientpeople. In her fiction the uses of myth and symbol seem to have thegreatest power to provide depth and beauty. Chapter three focuses on theimagery in The Golden Apples. The images relate and unify the individualcareers, and, the most important, they support and embody its themes.From the three levels discussed above, we find that it is not difficult tosee why Eudora Welty considered The Golden Apples the closest to herheart of all her books. Her excellent fictional art has been fully shown inthis book. It is just because of Welty's excellent fictional art that assuresher place in literary canon.