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Modern Genre Theory
About This Book
Since Aristotle, genre has been one of the fundamental concepts of literary theory, and much of the world's literature and criticism has been shaped by ideas about the nature, function and value of literary genres. Modern developments in critical theory, however, prompted in part by the iconoclastic practices of modern writers and the emergence of new media such as film and television, have put in question traditional categories, and challenged the assumptions on which earlier genre theory was based. This has led not just to a reinterpretation of individual genres and the development of new classifications, but also to a radically new understanding of such key topics as the mixing and evolution of genres, generic hierarchies and genre-systems, the politics and sociology of genres, and the relations between genre and gender.
This anthology, the first of its kind in English, charts these fascinating developments. Through judicious selections from major twentieth-century genre theorists including Yury Tynyanov, Vladimir Propp, Mikhail Bakhtin, Hans Robert Jauss, Rosalie Colie, Fredric Jameson, Tzvetan Todorov, GĆ©rard Genette and Jacques Derrida, it demonstrates the central role that notions of genre have played in Russian Formalism, structuralism and post-structuralism, reception theory, and various modes of historical criticism. Each essay is accompanied by a detailed headnote, and the
volume opens with a lucid introduction emphasising the international and interdisciplinary character of modern debates about genre. Also included are an annotated bibliography and a glossary of key terms, making this an indispensable resource for students and anyone interested in genre studies or literary theory.
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1 Criticism of the Theory of Artistic and Literary Kinds*
Benedetto Croceās forthright condemnation of the doctrine of artistic and literary kinds (genres), and of other supposed āerrorsā of aesthetic theory, inaugurated the twentieth-century debate on genre and remains a standard point of reference, if only for the extremity of its views. In this brief extract from his famous treatise on the theory and history of aesthetics, the Italian philosopher presents his reasons for abandoning the whole idea of genres, except for purely pragmatic purposes such as arranging books on shelves. Theories of genre, he claims, especially when codified into definitions and rules, impoverish artistic creation and criticism alike, inhibiting originality, setting up erroneous standards of judgement, and belying the tendency of true art to break rules and violate norms. None of these arguments is entirely new, as Croce acknowledges in a later chapter of the Aesthetic (XIX, iii) where he surveys the history of genre theory and reveals the tradition of resistance to the doctrine of kinds; and in many respects his own position is simply an extreme version of the Romantic conception of art as self-expression. But Croce gives new force to the anti-generic view by grounding it in a distinction, fundamental to his whole philosophical system, between intuitive and logical knowledge, forms of thought which he sees as independent of and irreducible to one another. Aesthetic objects belong to the former, generic categories to the latter domain; to discuss a work of art in terms of genre is thus to falsify its nature, and commit what philosophers call a ācategory mistakeā. A history of genre is, likewise, an empty abstraction which Croce believes can tell us nothing about the nature of the aesthetic.For a more recent philosophical critique of the concept of genre, see Derrida (Chapter 13). Most of the other theorists in this anthology reject Croceās view; for a direct rebuttal, see Jauss (Chapter 8). The intellectual context of Croceās work is discussed by RenĆ© Wellek, Four Critics: Croce, ValĆ©ry, LukĆ”cs and Ingarden (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1981), and John Paul Russo, āAntihistoricism in Benedetto Croce and I.A. Richardsā, in Theoretical Issues in Literary History, ed. David Perkins (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991).
2 The Literary Fact*
Translated into English here for the first time, this seminal essay by Yury Tynyanov demonstrates the subtlety and depth of Russian Formalist thinking on the question of genre. Where earlier Formalist theory had concentrated on poetic language and adopted a synchronic perspective in order to analyse the notion of āliterarinessā, Tynyanov here explores the historical dimension of literature, focusing on the phenomenon of literary change. Historical considerations, he argues, severely complicate the quest for literariness, since what is deemed literary (a āliterary factā as distinct from a fact of everyday life) is constantly shifting, not least because genres themselves perpetually evolve ā through their own internal development, but also by competing with and modifying one another, and hence moving up or down the hierarchy of genres. The essay examines how and why these evolutionary processes occur, and in so doing reflects on the methodological problems of studying an object in continuous transition. Central to the discussion is the concept of āsystemā, a metaphor Tynyanov variously applies to the individual work, the individual genre, and literature as a whole, each of which he stresses is a dynamic rather than a static system, constituted not by the peaceful interaction of different elements, but by the supremacy or foregrounding of one element that subjugates and colours the rest (an extension of the Formalist concept of the ādominantā, previously applied to poetic language). One important methodological implication is that genres cannot be studied in isolation, only in relation to one another ā a conclusion reinforced by Colieās work on Renaissance genre-systems (Chapter 9)....
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Table of Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Key Concepts
- Introduction
- 1 Benedetto Croce Criticism of the Theory of Artistic and Literary Kinds
- 2 Yury Tynyanov The Literary Fact
- 3 Vladimir Propp Fairy Tale Transformations
- 4 Mikhail Bakhtin Epic and Novel: Toward a Methodology for the Study of the Novel
- 5 Mikhail Bakhtin The Problem of Speech Genres
- 6 Northrop Frye The Mythos of Summer: Romance
- 7 Ireneusz Opacki Royal Genres
- 8 Hans Robert Jauss Theory of Genres and Medieval Literature
- 9 Rosalie Colie Genre-Systems and the Functions of Literature
- 10 Fredric Jameson Magical Narratives: On the Dialectical Use of Genre Criticism
- 11 Tzvetan Todorov The Origin of Genres
- 12 GĆ©rard Genette The Architext
- 13 Jacques Derrida The Law of Genre
- 14 Alastair Fowler Transformations of Genre
- 15 Mary Eagleton Genre and Gender
- Notes on Authors
- Further Reading
- Index