The latest Spanish-speaking prose genres «cuento» and «relato»

The article deals with analysis of “cuento” and “relato” genres in the latest Spanish prose. The relevance of this study is due to the lack of research on this issue in the modern Russian literary criticism. The article provides an overview of the cuento and relato genres in the latest Spanish-language literature. The subject of the study is the composition of the genre complexes cuento and relato today in Spanish-language literature based on the analysis of Spanish-language authors flash fiction collections. The author of the article shows that today the cuento genre is a genre complex that combines such genres as “fairy tale” and “anecdote”. This judgment is also supported by the fact that the Spanish term “cuento” is traditionally translated into Russian as “fairy tale” and/or “novella/short story”. In this aspect, the Spanish theory of literature runs counter to the assertion of domestic literature, according to which the antecedent of a short story is an anecdote, but not a fairy tale, since an anecdote and a fairy tale have diametrically opposite reference, creative and receptive world views. Based on the analysis of texts, collections of short fiction, the author shows that the leading role in shaping the principles of worldview Hispanic authors played magic realism which defined the modern genre of short fiction. The second genre complex “relato” consists of parables and stories, since it puts the situation of moral choice at the forefront, moving the portraits and characters of the characters, their emotional experiences to the background.