Genre Boundaries Of The Terms ‘Novella/Short Story/Qissa’ In 20th-Century European Fiction And Uzbek Prose: A Theoretical Comparison

Abstract

This article investigates the genre boundaries signaled by the terms novella, short story, and qissa across 20th-century European fiction and Uzbek prose. Building on narratology, historical poetics, and reception theory, it proposes a comparative framework that distinguishes terminological usage, structural features, and publishing conventions from underlying poetics. The study combines conceptual analysis with a small, purpose-built corpus of paratexts (prefaces, blurbs, catalog entries) and text-internal markers (focalization, plot architecture, motif density) taken from representative works in German, Anglo-American, Russian, and Uzbek traditions. Results indicate that although length has remained a pragmatic criterion, genre identity is secured less by word count than by dominance of a governing incident (unerhörte Begebenheit), by epiphanic closure, or by sectional narration with longitudinal temporality. In European usage, the novelle gravitates toward a concentrated causal core and symbolic motif chains; the short story tends toward epiphanic compression with an aesthetics of omission; and the повесть (often translated “novella”) emphasizes longitudinal exposition. In Uzbek literary practice, hikoya (short story) aligns closely with the Chekhov–Hemingway axis of minimalism, whereas qissa oscillates between the European “novella” and the Russian повесть, thereby producing translation and cataloging asymmetries. The discussion argues that the terms function as mobile labels whose meanings are stabilized by national publishing habits and pedagogical canons rather than by an absolute set of formal traits. Implications are drawn for translation, criticism, and curriculum design in comparative literature.