SOURCE: Rozga, Margaret. “Joyce Carol Oates: Reimagining the Masters, or, a Woman's Place Is in Her Own Fiction.” In American Women Short Story Writers: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Julie Brown, pp. 281-94. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1995.

In the following essay, Rozga offers a feminist interpretation of Oates's reworkings of Anton Chekhov's “The Lady with the Dog” and James Joyce's “The Dead.”

Novelist, poet, playwright, and critic, as well as short story writer, Joyce Carol Oates achieved mastery of the short story at an early age. Born in Millersport, New York, on June 16, 1938, educated at Syracuse University (B.A., 1960) and the University of Wisconsin (M.A., 1961), Oates published her first two volumes of short stories, By the North Gate (1963) and Upon the Sweeping Flood and Other Stories (1966), before she was age 30. Shortly thereafter, she received a special award from the O. Henry Short Stories Award...