TheShortStory • Fiction, by one definition, is narrative writing drawn from the imagination of the author rather than history or fact. • The primary purpose of fiction is to entertain, but it can also instruct, edify, or persuade. • While more frequently associated with novels and short stories, drama and poetry can also be forms of fiction. • Fables, parables, fairy tales, and folklore also contain fictional elements. • Historical fiction is a combination of historical characters, settings, or events with imaginative elements. • Science fiction relies on scientific facts or assumptions as foundations for adventures in space, in the future, etc. • Short stories have no specific origin; no one person, or even country, invented the genre. Virtually every country has had the short story for hundreds, even thousands, of years. Literature similar to the short story (in form) has been found on ancient Egyptian papyri, dating from 3000 to 4000 B.C. Old Testament short stories of Ruth, Ester, and Jonah (as well as New Testament parables) are other good ancient examples. • Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey can be considered collections of Greek short stories (although they are labeled collections of epic narrative poetry). • Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Virgil’s The Aneid are good Roman examples. • The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer is also a collection of short stories, written in Old English. Before printing presses, and even handwriting, people told stories orally, what is now referred to as an oral tradition. Stories were memorized, and passed on from generation to generation, of which folklore is a form.

The tale is a short narrative, true or fictitious, that sets forth strange events in a bare summary, without detailed characterization. The tales from the brothers Grimm, for example, came from such an oral tradition among people living near Germany’s Black Forest (“Snow White,” “Hansel and Gretal,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Rapunzel,” and “Rumpelstiltskin”). Tall tales rely on common language, realistic detail, and humor to relate extravagantly impossible happenings involving characters with superhuman qualities (Paul Bunyan, for example). Fairy tales are set in a world of magic and enchantment. Hans Christian Anderson is among the most famous, authoring “The Little Mermaid,” for example. To date, we have collected over 900 versions of the “Cinderella” story. “Beauty and the Beast” and “Sleeping Beauty,” both old French tales, would fall into this category.

Fables are also short, but contain a moral, or statement of truth. Talking animals are common. Aesop’s fables are among the most famous, such as that of the tortoise and the hare. Others include Kipling’s Jungle Books, Harris’ Uncle Remus stories, and Orwell’s Animal Farm. 19th-century authors such as Sir Walter Scott, Washington Irving, Edgar Allen Foe, and Nathaniel Hawthorne made the short story a genre, a specific type or kind of literature. Later authors such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway adapted the short story to represent “a slice of life.” Short stories are brief, concise, usually fictional narratives, which often include an epiphany, some moment of insight, discovery, or revelation by which a character’s life, or view of life, is greatly altered. Short stories usually Have: • a limited number of characters • focus on a single chain of events which • transpires over a short time span Traditionally, there has, in the short story, been a reliance on details for character and plot development. Characters are revealed through a series of events, and the creation of vividly rendered scenes. Focus for analysis is on character development and theme. It is structured, artistically crafted, compact.