The author departs from traditional genre criticism, presenting a central argument that can be read two ways: from a rhetorical perspective, in which each part examines the interpretive work that a specific narrative device demands within a set of exemplary texts; and, from a historical perspective, in which each part emphasizes the contextual function of these devices by examining the stories as expressions of the four most prominent narrative styles that developed between the early nineteenth century and the 1980s - romanticism, realism, modernism, and minimalism.