The Literary Short Story
Author of this webpage: Renée Goodvin
The literary short story is a distinct literary genre and, at its simplest, can be defined as a fictional narrative brief enough (500 - 10,000 words) to be conveyed during a single hearing or reading. Roots of the Literary Short Story:
Stories, in one form or another, have existed all throughout history, from the Old Testament stories of Ruth and Jonah to the episodes and incidents of the Greeks and Romans. However, the roots of the literary short story can be traced to the fables, epics, tales, and romances of the Middle Ages that contributed directly to man's love of narrative and his desire to develop of formal kind of story-telling.
The literary short story developed in the 19th century as a distinct literary genre as a direct result of the growth of periodicals for leisure reading and the introduction of Edgar Allan Poe, the genre's originator and first critical theorist, onto the literary scene.
The Short Story According to Poe:
In his review of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Twice Told Tales (1842), Poe established the first rules for the short story. He advocated a prose tale (Poe's term for a short story) as a narrative that could be read at one sitting, from a half an hour up to two hours. He was adamant that such a story should be limited to "a certain unique or single effect" to which every other detail was subordinate. This concept emphasized unity of mood, time, space, and action working together to achieve the "certain unique or single effect."
The Literary Short Story:
Despite its brevity, a short story shares features such as plot, characterization, and point of view with the novel. However, in order to achieve Poe's ideal of the "certain unique or single effect," a short story has a succinct straightforward plot and characters that are disclosed in action and dramatic encounter rather than description and comment. In addition, by only including the number of characters and scenes necessary to the plot, concise narration and economy of setting are encouraged, therefore allowing the story to be communicated to the reader in its allotted time.
A typical plot of the literary short story begins near the climax and revolves around a character with a specific problem to solve. The plot climaxes when a recognizable change (for better or worse) occurs in the character or his/her situation as a direct result of having solved (or having failed to solve) the problem. Once the climax has been reached, the story quickly draws to a close.
Notable writers of the literary short story in English include Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain, O. Henry, Ernest Hemingway, Flannery O'Connor, and Eudora Welty.
Some Short Story Links:
- The O. Henry Awards
- Established in 1918, the O. Henry Awards is an annual collection of the year's best stories published in American and Canadian magazines and written by American or Canadian authors.
- The American Short Story: A Selective Chronology
- A selective chronology of the American short story by James Plath, Professor of English at Illinois Wesleyan University.
- Twenty Great American Short Stories
- Online texts of twenty great American short stories, including "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," by Ambrose Bierce, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," by Washington Irving, and "The Tell Tale Heart," by Edgar Allan Poe.
Some information for the following page is adapted from:
Merriam Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature
The Oxford Companion to the English Language, ed., by Tom McArthur and
Writer's Encyclopedia ed., by Kirk Polking
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Last updated January 27, 2005