135042 PS PS Lit. Cross-Currents: Small Forms II: Flash Fiction and Micro-Stories (2021W)

The spectrum of names is wide: Flash fiction, sudden fiction, short short story, microrrelato, minificción, Kürzestgeschichte. They all designate stories of exceptional brevity. In fact, brevity is so essential that it becomes a generic marker. Established as a special form of narrative during the 20th century, anthologized under the name "flash fiction" since the 1990s, the form has in recent years found a new digital audience on Twitter, Facebook and other social media, reaching a new peak. Traditional publishing houses, too, accept it as literature (see Stefanie Sargnagel's Statusmeldungen). But is all "twitterature" the same as flash fiction?
These aspects will be addressed on both a practical and theoretical level in class:
How can we distinguish between flash fiction and other short forms? Is this always possible? What can comparative literature do with very short texts? Which tools do we have to analyze them? How do we contextualize them in literary history and within contemporary literature? Is it a new kind of literature or has it already been institutionalized?
Apart from these questions, we will explicitly consider different publication contexts (newspapers, magazines, books, online) in order to complete our overview of the form.