SOURCE: Kramer, Karl D. “Short Story: The Art of Moral Revelation.” In The Chameleon and the Dream, pp. 11–27. The Hague, the Netherlands: Mouton & Co. B. V., 1970.

In the following essay, Kramer scrutinizes the development of the short story by Chekhov and other authors, including the connection between the nineteenth century tale and the twentieth century short story.

One of the most representative practitioners of the short story, Anton Čexov appeared at a point in the history of the genre when its fundamental qualities were undergoing refinement. Before looking at the process of Čexov's individual literary development, one needs to isolate these qualities of the genre and to indicate some of the ways in which Čexov's own refinements mark him as one of the first of modern short story writers. Like the elegiac poem, the short story is a form which shows us what a thing or person is...