THE SHORT STORY

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THE SHORT STORY

• Literary genre
• Fictional narrative prose

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ORIGINS

• EARLY PRECURSORS
• Anecdotes
• Parables
• Fables
• Folk tales
• Fairy tales

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• Roots in oral tradition
• Emerged as a genre in the early 19th century
• Edgar Allan Poes Tales of the Grotesque and
  Arabesque (1839) and Nathaniel HawthornesTwice
  Told Tales (1842) were early collections of short
  stories

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• The growth of print magazines and journals in the
  late 19th century created a strong market demand
  for short fiction between 3,000 and 15,000 words
  in length, esp. in the United States
• American literary form (arguable)

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CHARACTERISTICS

• Single incident
• Single plot
• Single setting
• Few characters
• A short period of time
• Character experiences an epiphany

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• May or may not follow dramatic structure

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• Exact characteristics depend on author
• Realistic
• Read in one sitting
• No less than 1000 words
• No longer than 20,000 words