The Problems Defining Genre

606 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Why is the setting important in the story everyday use

The Problems Defining Genre

Genre denotes a systematic way to categorize literature. The term might be considered academic jargon; however, it produces up a set of expectations that allow us to judge literature. These expectations or criteria also allow us to compare with other literature in the same as well as different genres. In spite of these expectations, genre does not dictate a set of rigid rules; in fact, genre is more descriptive than prescriptive.

Problems in defining genre often arise because there are frequently sub-genres: romantic comedy might be considered a sub-genre of comedy, revenge tragedy of tragedy and gothic horror of horror. It becomes increasingly difficult to see where one sub-genre ends and another begins. Also these categories are seldom pure. For example, Hamlet, a revenge tragedy, includes aspects of romance and even a comic scene or two. Our popular culture makes defining genre challenging because what is vital one day might disappear the next. An example of this is the current insistence upon a happy ending. Since tragedy is often characterized by an unhappy or "right" ending, according to Aristotle, popular culture no longer welcomes the tragedy with the relish it did at other times in history.

Our Town being the exception that comes to mind, as well as the one-man shows. Poetry makes frequent use of this voice. In Daddy by Sylvia Plath, the author address "Daddy" throughout the poem. Shannon Chamberlain's use of Aesop's fable The Parrot and his Cage was another example of this single voice narrative. A second voice option is the drama or dialogue that involves talking between two characters with no narration. All of the plays we are reading in class fit this category as well as Stacy Burleson's example of Merlin as a legend in film. Finally, the combination of the narrator plus dialogue is just as it seems, a narrator talks to the audience (or reader) but the characters talk to each other. The TV shows The Fugitive, Dragnet, and Twilight Zone come to mind as examples of this.

Narrative genre, by contrast, focuses on the storyline or plot. Tragedy frequently introduces a problem, there is struggle for control, finally a realistic and often unhappy ending that resolves the problem.

Show More
Related

  • Summary Chapter 2

    247 Words  | 1 Pages

    The authors state, “Genres in literature are categories of writing recognized for their patterns of organization, their

    Read More

  • New England and Chesapeake Regions: Two Distinct Societies at the Beginning of the English Colonies in America

    825 Words  | 2 Pages

    Through their economical systems, governing strategies and populations, the New England and Chesapeake regions grew into very separate societies, although, it was expected. The two groups originally settled their parallels with different opportunities in mind, different goals to accomplish. From these ideals, they moderated every aspect of their society, making this the significant cause of the large contrast between the two settlements. The settlers of the Chesapeake sought a fortune, and built a society from their initial goal, while the settlers of New England sought religious salvation and created communities based on their beliefs. The difference between the ideals of religious and economic gain established two, discrete regions, despite their similarity in English background.

    Read More

  • Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner

    1248 Words  | 3 Pages

    Jackson Pollock." Encyclopedia of World Biography. 2nd ed. Vol. 12. Detroit: Gale, 2004. 379-380. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 2 Apr. 2014.

    Read More

  • The Reasons the United States Entered the Spanish American War

    960 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Spanish-American war cannot be directly sourced to one cause. Rather it was the result of the combination of events pre-dating the war and the spark that ignited our intervention into this conflict. This paper will trace the reasons behind the United States involvement in this war. The United States partaking in this war, was a signal to the rest of the world that the United States was ready to emerged as a world power. By having one of the best Naval Fleets, by the beginning of the war, the United States sent a messaged to the rest of the world that the US is ready and capable to become more involved in foreign affairs. However, it is important to question the importance of each cause that led up to the United States declaring war with Spain and putting itself between them and Cuba.

    Read More

  • The Discourse Community Of The Stock Market

    717 Words  | 2 Pages

    The first type of genre that will be examined is the news article genre. This is the primary genre that is used to relay news and events about the...

    Read More

  • Comparing Aristotle, Antigone And Billy Budd

    4968 Words  | 10 Pages

    Aristotle states that "For Tragedy is an imitation, not of men, but of an action and of life, and life consists in action, and its end is a mode of action, not a quality. Now character determines men's qualities, but it is by their actions that they are happy or the reverse. Dramatic action, therefore, is not with a view to the representation of character: character comes in as subsidiary to the actions. Hence the incidents and the plot are the end of a tragedy; and the end is the chief thing of all.

    Read More

  • Why US Went To War With Spain

    522 Words  | 2 Pages

    One of the reasons the U.S. went to war with Spain was because of public opinion. Citizens began to sympathize with the Cubans after seeing the tragic reports presented in the newspaper. Even though most stories through yellow journalism were exaggerated, individuals felt that Cuban's fight for independence was much like their own from Britain. Without the help of France, Americans would most likely not have won their freedom. These feelings only heightened when Valeriano Weyler, a Spanish general, forced Cubans into barb-wired concentration camps, much like the Nazis did with the Jews, in order to stop the rebellion. As a result, American citizens pushed for war.

    Read More

  • The Genre Cycle

    725 Words  | 2 Pages

    Film scholars around the world agree that all genres of film are part of the “genre cycle”. This cycle contains four different stages that a specific genre goes through. These stages are: primitive, classic, revisionist, and parody. Each stage that the genre goes through brings something different to that genre’s meaning and what the audience expects. I believe that looking at the horror genre will be the most beneficial since it has clearly gone through each stage.

    Read More

  • Griselda Pollock: Article Analysis

    985 Words  | 2 Pages

    The article Artists Mythologies and Media Genius, Madness and Art History (1980) by Griselda Pollock is a forty page essay where Pollock (1980), argues and explains her views on the crucial question, "how art history works" (Pollock, 1980, p.57). She emphasizes that there should be changes to the practice of art history and uses Van Gogh as a major example in her study. Her thesis is to prove that the meaning behind artworks should not be restricted only to the artist who creates it, but also to realize what kind of economical, financial, social situation the artist may have been in to influence the subject that is used. (Pollock, 1980, pg. 57) She explains her views through this thesis and further develops this idea by engaging in scholarly debates with art historians and researcher, and objecting to how they claim there is a general state of how art is read. She structures her paragraphs in ways that allows her to present different kinds of evidences from a variety sources while using a formal yet persuasive tone of voice to get her point across to the reader.

    Read More

  • Tragedy In Death Of A Salesman

    1132 Words  | 3 Pages

    Aristotle defines tragedy in his respected piece Poetics and many other forms of literature. Many tragic heroes such as Oedipus Rex and Romeo and Juliet fit well into this mold of a tragic hero as defined by Aristotle. For example, they were flawed but well intentioned and their lives ended in a catastrophic death. Those plays, and many others in the genre, had all the elements of a tragedy: plot, character, thought, diction, melody, and spectacle. They were fantastic displays of misery that aroused pity and fear in the audience.

    Read More

  • The Causes and Effects of the Spanish-American War

    964 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Spanish-American war was fought in the year 1898, 33 years after the end of the Civil War in 1865. The threat of Spain upon Cuba blazed the patriotic hearts of the Americans as what appeared to be Spain torturing its territories. There are many causes that can be credited to the condition of these territories and surprisingly, but not too ironically, it can be clearly traced to that of the American people.

    Read More

  • Genre As A Genre

    862 Words  | 2 Pages

    According to Dictionary.com, genre is defined as “a class or category of artistic endeavor having a particular form, content, technique.” Genre is a tool used to generate a clear idea of what a movie will be about. It helps producers create an outline to engage their target audience and ensure similarities in the narrative elements. In the reading by Rick Altman he says, “Stephen Neale expresses the commonly held opinion when he says that ‘each new genre film constitutes an addition to an existing generic corpus and involves a selection from the repertoire of generic elements available at any one point in time’” (Altman 1999). This quote describes exactly what the genre romantic comedies consist of. The genre stems from two obvious sources, romance films and comedy films, and it takes elements from each genre to create a whole new spin on films. Romantic comedies are light-hearted, humorous, and dramatic movies with the portrayal that “true love” comes from human relationships in an ordinary life. This genre has been popular to audiences from the early years of film making because it allows people to believe that relationships and situations depicted in these movies could happen to them. It is also popular for producers because of the ability to construct a film that is known to make a hit at the box offices on a low budget. Rick Altman says, “Current understanding of genre depends on the assumption that generic terms and concepts are few, neat, and clear” (Altman 1999). The basic structure of these films first portrays the unfulfilled desire of love in the lives of the main characters, next comes a situation that they are put in that provides a chance for potential romance, and then though several obstacles the protagonist realiz...

    Read More

  • Aristotle’s Elements of Tragedy

    1479 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Aristotle’s book, Poetics, he defines tragedy as, “an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and possessing magnitude; in embellished language, each kind of which is used separately in the different parts; in the mode of action and not narrated; and effecting through pity and fear” (Aristotle 1149). Tragedy creates a cause and effect chain of actions that clearly gives the audience ideas of possible events. The six parts to Aristotle’s elements of tragedy are: Plot, character, language, thought, spectacle, and melody. According to Aristotle, the most important element is the plot. Aristotle writes in Poetics that, “It is not for the purpose of presenting their characters that the agents engage in action, but rather it is for the sake of their actions that they take on the characters they have” (Aristotle 1150). Plots should have a beginning, middle, and end that have a unity of actions throughout the play making it complete. In addition, the plot should be complex making it an effective tragedy. The second most important element is character. Characters...

    Read More

  • Elements of Tragedy in Hamlet

    1012 Words  | 3 Pages

    In 350 B.C.E., a great philosopher wrote out what he thought was the definition of a tragedy. As translated by S.H. Butcher, Aristotle wrote; “Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions. . . . Every Tragedy, therefore, must have six parts, which parts determine its quality—namely, Plot, Characters, Thought, Diction, Spectacle, Melody. (http://www.cnr.edu/home/bmcmanus/poetics.html)” Later in history, William Shakespeare wrote tragedies that epitomized Aristotle’s outline of a tragedy. Shakespeare’s Hamlet is one such tragedy.

    Read More

  • Examples Of Language Socialization

    1710 Words  | 4 Pages

    Storytelling is an interaction between two or more individuals speaking on an event using words, images, sounds, dramatization, props, etc. Stories or narratives are shared for the purpose of education, entertainment, cultural preservation, or teaching lessons. Narratives aren 't just interesting because of the story being told but how the story is being told. Narratives have many features that not only group them together but differentiate them as well. The person who is narrating the story is also given insight to when listening to, reading, or watching a

    Read More

More about The Problems Defining Genre

Open Document