Mikrostāsta jēdziens mūsdienu literatūrā

Abstract

The glorious, overwrought, and ambitious modernism of the early 20th century has gradually been replaced by minimalism in art, architecture and other cultural expressions. In such a changing environment, minimalism trends also appear in the literature. Turning to the analysis of literary fiction over the last hundred years, critics of Romanic and Anglo-Saxon literature have come to the conclusion of the emergence of a new literary genre. In Anglo-Saxon literature, among many other names of this genre, the most recognizable name is flash fiction, while in Spanish, the term microrrelato has been established in the last decade. However, in Latvian literature, the characteristics of the genre correspond to minimas written by Aivars Eipurs. The paper aims to provide insight into the development and textual characteristics of flash fiction and to seek its equivalents in the literature of different Western nations. The study looks at the concept of flash fiction and its synonyms in English, Spanish, French, Russian, and Polish languages, includes definitions of flash fiction as an independent literary genre of a variety of authors and sets out the key features and examples. In addition to the concept of flash fiction, it includes concepts of intertextuality and ellipsis, which, along with humor and metafiction, are essential linguistic elements of flash fiction. Flash fiction merges different genres and their patterns into a new literary form consisting of certain linguistic, syntactical, and pragmatic texting techniques. In building the theoretical base of the study, the emphasis was placed on the critics of contemporary Spanish literature less known in Latvia, such as professor Irene Andrés-Suárez (b. 1948) of the University of Neuchatel (Switzerland), Argentinian writer and literary critic David Lagmanovich (1927–2010) and Mexican literary critic Lauro Zavala (b. 1954). Examples of the genre are mostly referred to by Hispanic authors.