LITR 4370 TRAGEDY Midterm2 Samples 2015 (midterm2 assignment) Model Answers to Part 1. Genre Definition 2.

Part 1. Continue genre definition and example(s) from Midterm1: Using the Introduction to Genres page, redevelop / revise and extend your "working definition" of genre in all three categories (Subject / Audience, Formal, Narrative) and use them to analyze the genre of your choice you began in Midterm1. Cite, explain, and analyze two or more examples of your genre from your reading, viewing, or listening experience and  and 2 research sources from course website or beyond. (total length: 6-8 paragraphs, 3+ double-spaced page equivalent)

Nona Olivarez

Genre: More Blurred Lines than a Robin Thicke Song

Picture this. You step inside your local Barnes and Noble book store and the smell of fresh roasted coffee overwhelms your senses as your eyes dart back and forth while you take in your surroundings. There’s a big task at hand: deciding which area of books to tackle first. Conveniently the books are organized into different sections with a big square name tag hanging down from the ceiling, each one pertaining to a particular category. The words romance, science-fiction, mystery/thriller are printed neatly and purposefully on different square pieces of plastic with the intention to help the consumer, you, find which type of book they would like to read. This form of categorization is seen not only in bookstores but in music stores and even on websites such as Netflix, and presents an example of how we, as humans, attempt to organize the world around us so we can reach the highest level of efficiency as possible. Furthermore each carefully organized category is seen as a type of genre, specifically subject genre, and allows the reader to know what type of book they are about to read.

            The term genre does not solidify each work of art into a category; instead genre functions as a “yardstick” to measure the piece of art by (Dr. White’s course website). Genre is a word that describes a piece of art, such as literature, and functions only as means to classify works of art by similar, recurring characteristics. For instance if you’re looking for a particular mystery novel at Barnes and Noble you might find that the novel you are looking for is not in the mystery section as expected, but instead in the romance section because it simultaneously contains characteristics of romance as it does mystery. This occurs because genres tend to be fluid and frequently come together as a confluence like when two rivers meet. Often, genres overlap as witnessed in many of our readings including the Bacchae which the discussion leader, Eric Anderson, pointed out contains elements of comedy even though the Bacchae is famously labeled a tragedy. Another example of genre mixing occurs in the play Oedipus at Colonus, which contains aspects of Romance as well as Tragedy. For example the character Theseus is the obvious good guy and can be identified as the romantic hero when he saves Ismene and Antigone, the damsels in distress, from the clutches of Creon, the obvious bad guy; the good guy versus the bad guy is an aspect of Romance while tragic characters tend to be more complex, yet here it is existing in a tragic play. Moreover at the end of the play Oedipus’ death acts as a sort of transcendence like riding of into the sunset, which is the type of ending that is most often associated with Romance and not Tragedy. Therefore, there are “no pure genres” which means all works of art contain elements from more than one genre (Dr. White’s course website). As Rebecca Bridgmohan states in her essay, “whether genres pertain to a movie, a play, or another form of literature or art, they become less confusing when you begin to understand them as categories that can be interchangeable, rather than ‘set in stone’”.

            Genre is divided into three different parts including subject/audience genre, formal genre, and narrative genre. Firstly subject genre refers to when someone calls a movie a “chick flick” or a “tear jerker”, which classifies the work of art in its simplest form of content. On the other hand, formal genre is concerned with the arrangement of the text, meaning how the story is being told through voice. If the character speaks directly to the audience, like in a poem, then the work of art becomes labeled “single voice”, yet if the character speaks to the audience and also has a conversation with other characters it is called narrator plus dialogue, and further if the character only speaks to other characters without involving the audience it is referred to as dialogue. As an illustration, Pope’s Essay on Man is “single voice”, Shakespeare’s Hamlet is narrator plus dialogue, and Sophocles’ Antigone is dialogue.  Lastly narrative genre pertains to the story/plot, and there are four main story lines: romance, tragedy, comedy, and satire. Each story line follows a pattern of certain characteristics that determines what type of narrative genre the literature falls under. However as mentioned before these lines of division are often blurred, which explains why some works of art are described as “romantic-comedies” and not just one or the other.

            Comedy is a narrative genre that deserves a little more explanation because of its characteristics that so often blur into other genres. Aristotle’s Poetics asserts that comedy “is an imitation of characters of a lower type”, unlike the higher type of noble characters portrayed in tragedy; the lower type character is usually physically funny looking and oftentimes makes a spectacle of him/herself like the actress Rebel Wilson in the movie Pitch Perfect. On the opposite side there is comedy that is witty and relies more on intellectual humor rather than physical humor known as “high comedy”, so of course there exists a “middle-class comedy” that uses a little bit of both high and low comedy. Aristophanes play, Lysistrata, is a perfect example of middle-class comedy because there is just as much wit as there is scatological or “low” humor. In Michael McDonald’s essay, “In on the Joke”, he discusses Meta-Humor or Meta-Comedy by describing it as a new idea and occurs when a comedy is self-aware “it is openly mocking or doing the tropes that it is mocking”. This is not an idea I knew of before reading his essay, and I find it quite interesting because not many comedies can do this. Michael explains this type of humor typically involves high comedy because of the witty references made from “other shows, books, or movies”. The movie sequel 22 Jump Street comes to mind when thinking of Meta-Humor because it acts self-aware that it is following the same story line as the first movie 21 Jump Street, and frequently makes jokes at the fact that the same things are occurring just in a different manner. Now that I’ve learned what Meta-Humor or Meta-Comedy means I can fully appreciate it and recognize when comedies are successfully able to portray this difficult type of comedy.

            The story line of a comedy is pretty simplistic in the sense it begins with a problem of little actual danger or consequence, and then the problem is resolved happily at the end displaying a “restoration of unity” (Dr. White’s course website). For example, at the end of Lysistrata everyone is happily dancing and rejoicing because of their new found unity where not only the men and women are reunited, but the cities at war also reach terms of peace. The Greek god Dionysus is typically associated with Comedy and particularly Lysistrata because of the many phallic images that identify with Dionysian worship (Dr. White’s course website). Nietzsche would mostly likely describe the end scene of Lysistrata as Dionysian because the characters consume wine and as we college students call it, commence “party mode”, but from an Apolline point of view the scene of unity also brings everything together.

While Lysistrata is mostly seen as a Comedy there are apparent aspects of desire and loss that are primarily associated with Romance. The women in an attempt to convince the men to decease fighting decide to withhold themselves sexually from their husbands. This deprivation of sex creates a sense of loss for the men since they no longer have their wives to fulfill their needs, and as a result of loss an unyielding desire becomes evident as most of the men find themselves humorously unable to control their sexual urges physically. Conclusively, Lysistrata is just one of many examples of how genres overlap and blur the lines that separate them.

            The next time you find yourself at Barnes and Noble remember that each section labeled by a genre is merely a guideline for you to follow, and just because a novel is classified a Romance it does not necessarily mean it will be full of mushy love scenes, or that a Comedy is simply a bunch of poorly written jokes with all too predictable characters because in reality literature is substantially more complex than simply what genre defines it as.