The 200 Genres of the Short Story

Abstract

This paper aims at questioning, among other things, Charles E. May’s well-known “unified theory of the short story”. As Bonheim sees it, May’s theory would deserve to have added to it a unified theory of short story sub-genres, for the concept of “unified theory” may suggest that varieties of story invite varieties of theory, and indeed, differences between types of story can be as revealing as their similarities. Detailed criticism presupposes the discovery of a great variety of subgenres, together with a great variety of search-engines that might allow the critic to unearth relevant differentiations. An all-embracing theory of sub-genres will have, in addition to an explanatory power, an exploratoty power as well, and will make it possible for the critic, not only to assign a story to a sub-category or subgenre, but also to a category such as analytic vs. synthetic, thus taking into consideration technique as well as content. On the assumption that the genres have in fact emerged by chance rather than through scholarly analysis, students taking part in a University of Cologne seminar were asked to write down half a dozen short story types that they had not seen labelled. The feedback proved to be quite overwhelming, for the resulting master list included well over 200 entries, which would be eventually reduced to the round number of 200. These short story types would in turn be arranged in alphabetical order and carefully analysed and considered in order to reach some final and revealing hypotheses, which proved to be much more revealing than the original list itself.