Edgar Alan Po i teorija kratke priče

Abstract

The concept of effect elaborated in his poetry, Edgar Allan Poe applied to the short story. In his well-known review of Hawthorne’s Twice-Told Tales (1842), Poe claims that apart from a poem the demands of a genius are best fulfi lled in the short story requiring from a half hour to one or two hours to be read in order to obtain the unity of effect and make it functional. According to Poe, in a well written story, each element has to fit into a previously conceived plan to contribute to the overall effect of the whole. This paper deals with fundamental postulates of Poe’s short story theory.