SUMMARY
Since short story theory describes the genre as centered around particular individuals, and its concept of time as defined by the moment, it seems rather impossible for a short story to do anything with history, which is a long term narrative of larger groups of people. This somewhat disinterestedness of literary critics in historical short narratives is surprising, because the rise of short story analysis goes back to the same time as the postmodern concepts of history. Problematization of history, the most important achievement of postmodern metafiction, might be performed by a short story too. This paper analyzes Kálmán Mikszáth's historical short fiction in this theoretical frame, first of all because he always makes his readers realize the story's epistemological frames, which in historical plots may hint at the doubts concerning the notion of history.