The word "short story" can seem unfamiliar to the one who is not experienced in literary affairs. Many people got used to call this genre the story. However the short story has the features inherent only to it.
Genre features of the short story
The short story is a prosaic narrative genre in literature. It is characterized by brevity, neutral style of statement and lack of psychologism. At the same time short stories have a sharp plot and an unexpected outcome. Often speak about them, meaning synonym story.
The short story became known in ancient times when it had close connection with myths and ritual magic. Already then the main attention in similar works was paid to the active party of human life, but not to contemplate.
The plot in which there is a place to sudden changes of situations makes related the short story with other small epic genres (fairy tale, the fable). The difference of the short story from them is that it is deprived of the magic phenomena and an allegory, and its plot is different: tragic, comical, sentimental.
History of development
As the isolated genre the short story was selected in Renaissance. The most striking example of that era - the "Decameron" written to Giovanni Boccaccio. Having extended across Europe, the short story found the distinctive features. First, it is the sharp and dramatic plot including unusual incidents and turns of events. Secondly, strict composite structure, without excessive opisatelnost. Thirdly, in the short story attention is always paid to one event, usually extraordinary, and sometimes paradoxical and supernatural. The mark on this genre was left by each literary era. For example, at the time of romanticism the short story differed in mysticism, the plot was under construction around the surprising incident changing everyday life of heroes. Works E can be examples. On, P. Merimee, E.T.A. Hoffman, early N.V. Gogol. During a realism era the short story was often forced out by other short narration, for example, the story. However as a genre it did not cease to exist. The writers living at a turn of the 19-20th centuries usually devoted short stories of a mysterious role of destiny in human life, its unpredictability. Short stories these years were created by G. de Maupassant, O. Henry, A.P. Chekhov, I.A. Bunin and others. Foreign short-story writers often played with a form and composition of works, did them irrational, entered grotesque characters. The Soviet authors (I. Babel, M. Zoshchenko, V. Kaverin) entered the new subjects connected, in particular, with postrevolutionary reality into the short story. Now the popularity of the short story practically came to naught. The genre is forced almost completely out by the story.