The Short Story As A Genre

The Short Story as a Genre
Ever since the human being felt the necessity to share their experiences and whole lives, they felt this same need to tell those to the youngest ones and so on. Amazing stories and tales passed from generation thru generation in order to preserve the culture, tradition, believes and language, all of this by simply oral communication. Until one day, after the inventionof codes, hieroglyphs or writing, this entire legacy was written. The story is a narration of something that happened, in the majority of cases, fictional (to teach a moral lesson). The short story wasn't recognized as a true art or a genre form until the 1900's when innovative writers like Poe, Hawthorne, de Maupassant, Chekov and Twain perfected the format. Short tales appear in an extremelybig range of themes, for example; religion, traditions, as myths, magic, romance, adventures and heroism, as many more. Also it haves a numerous classifications by its style, purpose and organization.
The origin of the short story is hard to tell, but the most antique stories are found in oriental societies; is known of the existence of written Arabian stories old as 4000 years. And of coursethose came from the legends and traditions of their ancestors. Two of the most important and known of those collections are A thousand and one nights and Calila and Dimna. Of course they suffered from changes, adaptations and imitations from the European literature but maintain the oriental style and characteristics. Calila and Dimna is one of the longest and oldest collections of an apologue. Theapologue is a brief fable or allegorical story with exaggerated details in order to express a moral doctrine or a useful lesson, without saying it explicitly. The apologue is the oldest form of story known. A thousand and one nights is a collective creation of adventure stories of Arabs, Persians, Jews and Egyptians. It’s important to know that its definite writing was in the XVI century; atfirst was just only transmitted by oral communication, because of this; this collection can’t entirely be considered from one and only origin, it suffered from an enormous range of changes as many translations of language and the addition of new parts.
By the middle Ages; folk tales, romantic, heroic or tragic ballads, Greek and Scandinavian myths and fairy tales became increasingly popular.Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales were widely read during this era. Later, in the 1660's the first periodicals or news papers appeared in Germany and some parts od Europe, most of them political or secular in nature. By the early 1700's British periodicals were being published at more regular intervals and included a wider range of material. These pamphlets or booklets were immediately embraced by thepopulace. Editors were always looking for short material to fill their pages and satisfy the public demand. Short fictional stories fit naturally into those spaces. Charles Dickens gained a huge following with his serialized stories, of course, now his stories are considered classics. As the 19th century approached, more and more writers began experimenting with the short story format and variousnew themes.
As this genre developed thru centuries, its characteristics did the same. The modern short story haves several parts, elements or distinctions that makes it a genre. The most important characteristic it’s the length, it’s what marks the general difference between a novel and a short story. Another general characteristic is that is very concise, the information offered in the story isrelevant to the tale being told; unlike a novel, where the story can diverge from the main problem. Usually it tries to leave behind a single impression or effect.  Because they are concise, writers depend on the reader bringing personal experiences and prior knowledge to the story.
The short story possesses more specific elements, those are: setting, plot, conflict, character, point of view...