Bases para la comprensión del género "relato breve" como modelo narrativo específico de representación del tiempo.

Abstract

The short story genre embodies a sense of our existence as separation from the flow of time by focusing on one stimulus, on the character of a perception which strikes us as containing sorne truth. It represents an attempt at grasping the inner texture of isolated segments of our life, snatching them out of time in order to exorcise them. In this sense, the short story offers the most fulfilling narrative embodiment of the concept of epiphany because it roots its significance by concentrating on a fragment of experience, a moment in time where past experiences converge and are subject to revision. Although in the novel several revelatory points in time can take place, the short story achieves significance by concentrating on just one. Therefore, such points are not presented as a culmination of a previous period of transition or evolution: they retain a certain quality of arbitrariness or mystery.

The aim ofthis paper is to review sorne theories about the nature of the short story in order to identify and evaluate the role they assign time in their understanding ofthe genre. We will apply to these theories our own hy pothesis: we can give different «destinies» to our experience according to the form we choose to recall or to express it, that is, as a transit that leads us from one stage to another, or as an image-or a limited set of images-that help us to discover the power and potential of certain isolated perceptions unbound from the continuity oftime. The first option gives shape to life in the form of a novel, the second one, in the form of a short story.