THE GENRE OF THE SHORT STORY IN MODERN ENGLISH LITERATURE (LATE XX – EARLY XXI CENTURY)

The article considers the development of the short story in British literature from the 1970s to the first decade of the twenty-first century. Long regarded as a minor form overshadowed by the novel, the short story in this period shows signs of renewed vitality and formal inventiveness. The study aims to describe the main tendencies that shaped the genre and to explain how they changed its poetics. The material includes collections by A. Carter, I. McEwan, A. Smith, J. Barnes and K. Ishiguro. Using comparative, structural and narratological analysis, five tendencies are singled out: the rewriting of inherited plots, the weakening of the traditional epiphany in favour of the open ending, experiments with narrative voice, the cyclisation of collections, and the move towards extreme brevity. It is argued that, rather than dissolving into the novel, the modern short story defines itself more sharply through its own limits.