Microfiction: a poetics of intertextuality.

Abstract

The genre of microfiction, whose emergence and development took place during the 20th century, has affinity with other genres, such as poetry, aphorism or fable. The features of the microfiction are brevity, narrativity, ellipsis, the presence of an active reader and, most of all, intertextuality, which is the main subject of this article. First we will define intertextuality as the relationship of a text with others at different levels, especially thematic and formal. The microfiction, due to its suggestive and connotative power, refers to other texts and topics of universal literature, and because of that, it is characterized by intertextuality at a thematic level (literary myth and legend, characters and authors) but also at a formal level (the fantastic and police discourse...). The intertextual references are often stained with irony, in a parodic or demystifying vision of the original. In any case, microfiction refers to other texts and literary forms. The criterion for the selection of the short tales, besides their intertextual character, is brevity and narrativity. We have chosen authors and texts written in Spanish, excepting other examples, such as Franz Kafka.

Key words: microfiction, intertextuality, narrativity, fiction, hybridism, genre.