Resumen de Poe's narratives: tales or short stories?

Margarita Rigal Aragón, Beatriz González Moreno

• Edgar Allan Poe is traditionally acclaimed as the father of the short story.

  However, when he referred to his narratives the word he used was that of tales.

  This is the reason why our purpose is to analyze both his definition of tale and his short narratives. Without being totally conscious of it, Poe created a complete new theory about the genre he mastered. He stated that a Tale must have a singleness of effect, a unity achieved by originality of plot and that it should require from half an hour to one or two hours in its perusal. It can be appreciated the presence of a new complexity which distinguished the real short story from the more relaxed line of events in the earlier tale, as it has been put forward by Walter Allen or James Miller. Bearing this in mind, we will try to establish in which of his stories he succeeded in applying his own theory of story telling and in which others he failed to do so, considering the distinction established between grotesques and arabesques.