LITR 4370 TRAGEDY Model Assignments Midterm2 Samples 2017 (midterm2 assignment) Model Answers to Part 1. Genre Definition 2.

Part 1. Continue genre definition and example(s) from Midterm1 .(Index) . .

Faron Samford

3/28/17

What’s the Alternative?

          Genres are used casually in popular culture, as shortcuts by the audience to give them an idea of what the work will be about before they’ve seen the first image or read the first word. Dr. White sums this use of the term genre on his Introductions to Genre webpage “as a contract with the audience” that gives the audience an idea of what elements they can expect (Course website’s “Genre” page). For example, the alternative history genre lets the audience know a few elements to expect from the work. Alternative histories are usually placed in a world that has a common history with ours, but at some key event, the outcome was different. In the case of The Two Georges, that event is the American Revolution, while in The Man in the High Castle, the event is the Axis powers winning World War II. While both are works of alternative history, they could also be classified as detective and spy stories, respectively.  Categorizing works into genres is no exact science by any means though, because very few stories fit neatly into one box. As Kaitlyn Jaschek accurately states in her model midterm from 2015, “if one is looking for an exact box one will end up frustrated.”  In literary terms, genre can be used to categorize works using three main categories; subject/audience identification, formal genre, and narrative.  

          The pop culture usage of the term genre is most closely associated with the subject/audience identification categorization of literary genres, because it “makes the connection between the subject of a genre and its audience” (Course website’s “Genre” page). As described on Dr. White’s Alternative Futures class site, the alternative futures genre, and its subgenre of alternative history, ”mostly operate from a ‘what if?’ premise.”  Categorizing a work as alternative history lets the audience know that they are about to embark on a favorite pastime of humans, wondering “what if?” In historical fiction, the ”what if” concept is used to create a world that most often serves as a backdrop for another type of story. The Two Georges, by Harry Turtledove and Richard Dreyfuss, is a detective story set in modern times in a world where the “what if” revolves around the American Revolution never happening. The story is based around the theft of a painting called The Two Georges, which depicts George Washington and King George signing of a treaty that kept the revolutionary war from happening. This painting is stolen and the hero is embarking on a quest to find and recover the painting while travelling through the world as it is imagined to have evolved by the authors. One of the results of this world has the hero faced with the challenge of the “Sons of Liberty,” an extremist group that wants America to leave the British Empire. Pursuing them through this world has its unique challenges, such as planes only being used by the military, so all travel is by train, air ship, or steamer. In this example, the goal of the hero is to preserve this new world created through this alternate timeline.  In The Man in The High Castle, a television show on Amazon based on the novel of the same name by Phillip K. Dick,  is based on the “what if” where Germany and Japan defeat the United States in World War II, and focuses on the resistance movement in this alternative nineteen sixties America. The hero is drawn into the American resistance movement, which primarily revolves around the search for films that depict history as it happened in what the audience would consider the real world. In order to get access to more information, she goes into the Nazi controlled Eastern Portion of the United States as a spy for the resistance.  At its heart, Castle is primarily a spy story which happens to be set in this alternate reality.

          The formal genre style, or “the form in which the text appears; specifically, the types and numbers of ‘voices’ that present the genre,” varies slightly among works of historical fiction, but is primarily presented as a narrative plus dialogue style (Course website’s “Genre” page). This means that the story is presented via a narrator, as well as witnessing the characters interact with each other. Since the story is set in this alternate world that the authors have created, using this style combining narrative and dialogue allows the author(s) to expose the audience more fully to this world they’ve gone through the trouble to create. The Two Georges is presented in this style. Through this style, not only is the reader able to witness to the conversations between the hero and John F. Kennedy, who is a tabloid newspaper editor in this world, but is also able to be informed by the narrator that he is deeply connected with the Sons of Liberty group, the antagonists of much of the novel. This gives the audience a deeper view into this world. Man in the High Castle is presented in the form of drama, where the characters are interacting with each other and exchanging dialogue while the audience watches and hears. Presented as a television show, the narrator is removed and all of the action and conversations play out on screen. Since the story was adapted from a novel though, it is important to note that the novel is presented in the narrative plus dialogue style that is more common to the genre as a whole.

The narrative classification of genre “refers to the type of story or plot that a work of literature tells or enacts” (Course website’s “Genre” page). The narrative classification is divided into four types of stories; tragedy, comedy, romance, and satire. Alternative histories typically fall under the narrative genre of romance, which “often includes a hero’s quest, showing all of the trials and tribulations until the original goal, or prize, has been met” as explained by Karissa Guererro in her model assignment from 2015.  The Two Georges is an adventurous journey through this alternative America pursing the thieves of the painting, and trying to stop the terrorists. In the end, the painting is recovered, the terrorists have been foiled, and the hero has saved the day and been knighted. The Man in the High Castle follows the romantic journey of the characters for the search for the source of movies indicating the past of our world. The characters are motivated by “a vision of transcendent grace” as they search for the meaning of the movies in which they’ve spied a world with our history, where they are free from living under the Nazis and Japanese.  

          While clearly not definitive, genre is a convenient tool that can be used to not only help give one an idea of what to expect from a particular work, but also to allow people to find other works they may be interested in, as well as a way to organize all the different stories encountered in one’s mind.