Carson McCullers, The Ballad of the Sad Cafe

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Carson McCullers initially published

The Ballad of the Sad Café

in

Harper’s Bazaar

magazine in August 1943. It was collected in 1951 as a novella, alongside several other short stories.

Though a unique work in its own right, Ballad can be linked back to McCullers’s 1940 debut novel The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, which introduced several concerns that she would pursue in a more concentrated manner in future works. For instance, whereas her 1946 novel The Member of the Wedding takes as its core the tomboy subplot found in Heart, Ballad prominentlytakes up Heart’s concerns with the white working class. Ballad is also notable, among other things, for its allegorical nature and its ambiguous narrative voice – which alternately withholds information from the reader and directly engages

3826 words

Citation: Seymour, Nicole. "The Ballad of the Sad Cafe". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 07 July 2012 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=1517, accessed 19 March 2024.]

1517 The Ballad of the Sad Cafe 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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