THE SHORT STORY

Literary genre Fictional narrative prose

ORIGINS

EARLY PRECURSORS: Anecdotes Parables Fables Folk tales Fairy tales

Roots in oral tradition Emerged as a genre in the early 19th

century Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of the

Grotesque and Arabesque (1839) and Nathaniel Hawthorne’sTwice Told Tales (1842) were early collections of short stories

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)

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

epiphany

May or may not follow dramatic structure

Exact characteristics depend on author

Realistic Read in one sitting No less than 1000 words No longer than 20,000 words