ABSTRACT

This chapter challenges some of the conventional views of the Latin American short story, arguing that the oral, mythical or 'primitive' aspects of the form are dialectically intertwined with features of modern aesthetics and technological media. It argues that the generic, spatio-temporal limits of the short story are connected not only with historical limits — the Benjaminian 'death of the storyteller', the decay of rural communities, the rupture from tradition — but also medial boundaries, the sites at which the short story form is infiltrated by other media, whether the fragmentary novel or the poem, the newspaper article or the photograph, the cinematic shot or the sculpture. The chapter is concerned with critics have often fallen short of acknowledging the structural dialectical relations. The aim of this chapter is to tie in his witty ars poetica, without detracting from its singularity, with the web of dialectical relations that underpin the short story form.