INTRODUCTION THE SHORT STORY The short story as an independent genre originated in the U.S.A. where, from the beginning of the 18th century, tales (often anonymous) of different lengths and styles were regularly published in magazines. A famous American short-story writer, Edgar Allan Poe, played an important role in giving importance to the short story as a separate literary genre. In his essay Twice-told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne. A Review (1842) Poe wrote: The initial consideration was that of extent. If any literary work is too long to be read at one sitting, we must be content to dispense with the immensely important effect derivable from unity of impression. It is clear that the brevity must be in direct ratio of the intensity of the intended effect. [...] For, if two sittings be required, the affairs of the world interfere and everything like totality is at once destroyed. [...] My next thought concerned the choice of an impression or effect , to be conveyed. [...] I say to myself, in the first place, Of the innumerable effects, or impressions, of which the heart, the intellect, or (more generally) the soul is susceptible, what one shall I, on the present occasion, select? [...] My next question referred, then, to the tone of its highest manifestation. [...] Then I looked for something that might serve as key-note [...] some pivot upon which the whole structure might turn. [...] The next point to be considered [...] was the locale . For this [...] it has always appeared to me that a close circumspection of space is absolutely necessary to the effect of insulated incident: it has the force of a frame to a picture. It has an indisputable moral power in keeping concentrated the attention. [...] In another important essay, The Philosophy of the Short Story (1884), the American critic Matthews Brander affirms that the most prominent feature of a short story is its symmetry of design that a writer can build up concentrating on a single character, emotion or event. In other words short stories are rarely complex in so far their setting 5