The short story: The long and the short of it

Not Just Prose

“…Here, contrary to the process described by Pratt (1981), it is the novel that must be explained with reference to the short story. But this does not amount to the process of rewriting that I allude to above.…”

“…The matter of the hierarchical relationship between the novel and the short story has been addressed by Mary Louise Pratt (1981) in her canonical article on the short story. That both genres are not held in equal regard, she argues, is made quite apparent in the countless critical attempts to define the short story, all of which repeatedly allude to the novel in order to distinguish the short story from it.…”

What is a Short Story Besides Short? Questioning Minds in Search of Understanding Short Fiction

“…[…] there is no single characteristic or cluster of characteristics that the critics agree absolutely distinguishes the short story from other fictions. (Ferguson 1994:218) In the same vein, another sceptical critic, Mary Louise Pratt (1994), claims that a working definition of the short story can only be formulated by reference to other genres, more precisely to the complex novel. This means that the relation between the two paired genres would be "highly asymmetrical" or a "hierarchical one with the novel on top and the short story dependent" (96).…”

Announcement-Annotation Texts: Definition, Correlation and Synthesis

“…Others suggest the volume within a conventional printed sheet (Panchenko, 2013, p. 213) or 60 newspaper lines (Nechaev, 1997, p. 46). English linguists deem and consider the SFT volume should be 300-500 or maximum 1500 words (Pratt, 1981), Russian linguists set down the volume from 25 till 650 words (Plotnikova, 2012). Due to the Internet operation intensification, scientists are prone to discuss the SFT in a size within "one screen" (while reading on a display we do not need to scroll the page) (Plotnikova, 2012, p. 23).…”