Genre (literature)

I

Introduction

Genre (literature), in literature, a category, kind, sort, or style of literary or artistic work.

II

Definition

The idea of genre is notoriously difficult to define, and mention of the term gives rise to two further questions of definition. First, what kinds of literary form should properly be called genres? Poetry, for instance, is now generally thought of as a literary “mode”, being too broad and too varied to be called a genre. The various types and forms of poetry are more properly called genres, for instance the epic or the lyric. Secondly, when should a literary work be said to be of one genre and not another? Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of answer to this question: a genre can be defined either by the formal properties of the work, or by its subject matter. Thus, a poem is held to be a sonnet if it is 14 lines long, while, on the other hand, it is described as an elegy if it speaks of the death of a loved or admired person. In fact, though, neither form nor subject matter alone will usually be sufficient to define a genre. So, by convention, a sonnet is a poem about love; while the word “elegiac” originally denoted not a concern with death, but a specific Greek poetic metre (see Versification). For all these difficulties of definition, however, genre is among the most enduring of literary concepts, introduced by the Greek philosopher Aristotle and now enjoying yet another revival in contemporary literary criticism. It reflects a deep urge, in writers and readers, to classify literary works, and it is the difficulty of performing such classification which has kept the term alive.

III

The Uses of Genre

Artists choose to work in a particular genre for a variety of reasons. The simplest, and most obvious, is that they want to say something which has in general been expressed in a given form in the past. For instance, “Adonais” by Percy Bysshe Shelley is elegiac because the poet wanted to honour and lament the death of his friend, the poet John Keats, and such sentiments had always been expressed in the form of an elegy. Elegy, in fact, has proved a most enduring genre, and is a useful example of the way genres develop. When dealing with subjects as difficult to contemplate as death, writers inevitably look for models; and the more such models are used, the more the style in which previous writers have treated the subject hardens into a genre. As a result, it is hard, now, to think of speaking about death any other way than elegiacally.

Certain subjects therefore lend themselves to certain genres by association. A more complex reason for choosing to write in a particular genre is to signal some attitude to the past and to literary history—respect, perhaps, or antagonism. For instance, writers sometimes stay faithful to the conventions of a particular genre in order to indicate respect for the tradition embodied in those conventions. Arthur Miller's play Death of a Salesman (1949) honours and identifies with both the tragic tradition, especially as defined by Aristotle, and also those dramatists who have sustained that tradition. More specifically, a writer might use genre to acknowledge the importance of a particular predecessor. Alexander Pope deliberately wrote his Moral Essays after the style of Horace, thereby discharging the debt of influence he felt to the Roman poet.

A slightly less generous reason for writing in a given genre can be the desire to emulate the past and previous writers (an impulse which does, though, signal a measure of respect). Thus in the first book of The Prelude,William Wordsworth asserts himself as Milton's equal, and so as a poet capable of epic. Other generic decisions signify a fondness for the past. So familiar, for instance, are the conventions of pastoral poetry that simply to mention them is to indicate nostalgia for a time when life was less complicated. The idyll has a similar function. Equally the decision to use a new (or long neglected) genre is often rooted in an artist's desire to distance himself or herself from a previous generation of artists. Thus in the 1940s the American poet Robert Lowell signalled his dislike for experimental writing by imitating the rigorously formal poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins.

A further and increasingly important reason an artist will work within the confines of a given genre is to establish a contract with the audience. This contract can be used by the artist to tell the audience how to interpret the work. Thus, by a series of conventional signals (such as props, dialogue, or production values) the director of a James Bond film lets his audience know that certain things are likely to happen, and, for instance, that the violence that ensues should not be taken too seriously. The artist can also use the generic contract to identify with his chosen audience. In much the same way that gang members bond by the use of slang, so Alexander Pope used conventional satirical references to declare his aesthetic and political associations with the Scriblerus club and its admirers. Working from within the same club Jonathan Swift put the generic contract to more subversive use. His A Modest Proposal (1729) was written in the style of an economic treatise. It was however, a parody, Swift's aim being first to attract readers of such works, and then to undermine the attitudes such works conventionally convey.

From Aristotle to Roland Barthes, literary critics have shown great interest in genre. Critics have asked different questions of genre than writers. They have asked: what makes one genre different from another; whether some genres are intrinsically superior to others; why some genres (biography, for instance) have proved more enduring than at others; why some genres, like the epic, flourish at certain times and not at others; how new genres develop; how much generic integrity should be preserved; and what an interest in, or hostility towards, generic conventions tells us about a particular culture.

IV

Classical Origins of Genre

Aristotle was the first critic to dwell on questions of genre. His Poetics applied the same attempt at classification to literature that he had developed in his writings on natural science. In the opening statement of the Poetics he announces his intention to discuss not only the art of poetry in general, but also its “species and their respective capacities”. He divides poetry into five categories—epic, tragedy, comedy, dithyrambic (wild, hymn-like) poetry, and flute- and lyre-playing—and the majority of the Poetics is occupied with the task of differentiating between these species. For Aristotle such species, or genres, differ according to their use of means (rhythm, language, harmony); their object (tragedy, for instance treating noble characters, and comedy ignoble characters); and the manner in which they recount events, whether by third- or first-person narration, or dramatically. Central to the Poetics is the argument for a hierarchy of genres, Aristotle famously contending that tragedy was better, because less vulgar, than epic. He was also the first critic to discuss generic development, describing how tragedy and comedy evolved out of epic and iambs (low invectives) respectively. Most importantly perhaps, Aristotle develops the concept of “decorum”, by which he argues that certain forms are naturally suited to certain subjects. It follows from this that writers are urged to stay within, and not to mix, generic conventions, the conventions reflecting “natural” distinctions.

Much Roman discussion of genre took the form of handbooks on rhetoric, for instance Institutio Oratoria (The Training of an Orator, c. ad 95) by Quintilian and Rhetorica ad Herennium, believed to be by Cicero, which described the forms orators should use to gain maximum rhetorical effect on any given occasion. It was the poet Horace, however, who made the most substantial Roman contribution to genre studies, his Ars Poetica offering a subtle development of Aristotle's rather dogmatic arguments. Horace provides a brief history of several genres—epic, elegiacs, iambics, and lyric poetry—and argues that the poet must appreciate the importance of generic difference. However, he also argues that it is sometimes necessary to invent new forms, as certain Roman writers had, though such forms, he insisted, must be self-consistent.