Anti-tales: from Diderot to Sena

Abstract

Analysis on how the means used by two texts (“Very short story”, by Jorge de Sena, and “This is not a story”, by Denis Diderot) explore the subversion of different principles regarding the short story, using not only their most firmly established elements but also the reader’s expectations, eluding them in a more or less deliberate way. Sena’s short story begins – and ends – with a (self)reflection about the concept of brevity in a short story and its implications in the very act of storytelling, leaving only a brief space for the actual story, through an action he defines as “storytelling waiver”. In Diderot’s short story, the author takes advantage of the reader’s expectations, anticipating an outcome that will be an exact match to his early indications. The absence of an element of disturbance, in a text in which it happens exactly what the storyteller advises in the beginning, becomes deafening and, at the same time, provocative, especially if we consider the warning translated both in its title (“This is not a short story”) as well as in the ensuing passage: “or which is, in case of doubt, a bad short story”. In both cases there is a defiance underlying – largely by using irony – that exposes the necessity of its reinterpretation in the light of the principles which they seek to fracture.