Symposium

Microstories and other microforms

University of Minho | Braga

October 6-7, 2011 | ILCH Auditorium (ground floor)

PRESENTATION

[Página em Português]

The ubiquity of the new media (internet, videogames, DVDs, etc) and of new physical supports for writing (mobile phone and computer screens, Twitter) have triggered a considerable development in the production and circulation of stories and, simultaneously, new physical constraints as well as new “languages” which have changed traditional literary genres (novels, novellas and short stories). This has lead to the creation of short and very short texts supposedly able to respond to the fast pace and zapping mode that characterize our current relationship with the media. Hence the proliferation of short and very short narratives, also commonly referred to as microstories, microfictions, micronarratives (three similar but distinct terms), among many other designations (sudden fiction, dwarf stories, texticles) referring to a challenging phenomenon: telling stories that can be read between two subway stops or even in the lift.

Microstories are grounded on everyday life, on media culture. They are similar to headlines and are made of urban legends and "fait divers". As a crucial part of the universe of urban narratives, the microstory stands at the crossroads between the traditional short story, literature and urban folklore. It exists in all languages, though Spanish, French, English and Portuguese are the ones we chose to study. Microstories absorb, imitate and rewrite genres (popular and literary), forms (fait divers, haiku, exquisite corpse), and registers (comic, tragic, grotesque, fantastic). They also recycle stereotypes, parody literary and non-literary texts, reshape frames of reference, and adapt themselves to different physical supports, media and art forms. The minuscule, concise and elliptic form of microstories, together with their contamination by non-narrative genres and forms (gnomic and lyric genres), raises questions of minimum criteria of narrativity (how to tell or attempt a transformation from one state to the other in a very short number of words). Fragmentary and fleeting, microstories, particularly those from blogs and Twitter, accumulate themselves in open series (like lists) thus establishing a connection between the minuscule and the immense or the infinite.