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LITR
4533: Tragedy, UHCL: GENRES--Representational, Narrative, & Subject A course titled "Tragedy"—like one titled "Comedy" or "The Novel" or "Mythology"—is known as a genre course. In studying a "genre," a course studies a type, kind, or class of literature. The study of genre thus exercises the critical act of classification, categorization, or taxonomy. "Genre" is what you're asking about when you say, "What kind of book is that?" or "What kind of movie do you want to see?" But if you ask such questions, you may get several different kinds of answers. The answer to "what kind of book?" may be "a novel" or "a detective novel." The answer to “what kind of movie?” could be “a comedy” or “a romantic comedy.” Correspondingly, the term “genre” can refer to several related but distinct concepts. To systematize our understanding of this concept, this course classifies the uses of genre in three broad, non-exclusive categories. (There may be more.)
These categories are "non-exclusive." That is, they often overlap, and most specimens of literature can usually be classified not by just one of these categories but by all three, as you must do in your genre presentations. For instance, most of the tragedies we read in this course fulfill these categories in the following ways:
For other examples of these multiple genre categories for any text, see the conclusion of this handout. Subject Genre refers to the content, subject matter, "special interest" or "audience appeal" of a text, such as "a crime story" or a "teenage movie." In some regards, this classification is the most obvious use of "genre." When people ask, "What kind of book are you reading?" or "What kind of movie do you want to see?", what they really want to know is, "What is it about?" or “What are you interested in?”—to which one answers, for instance, "A thriller." People outside Literature courses often take representational and narrative genres for granted or remain unconscious of such distinctions. “Special interest” or “audience appeal” makes the connection between the subject of a genre and its audience. For instance, if we answer the movie question with “A chick-flick” or “a guy movie,” we provide information about the audience that also suggests the content of the movie. As usual, though, descriptions of genre can always become more specific, so even within this category, there are several possible layers. For instance, “A guy movie” > “An action adventure movie” > “An Arnold Schwartznegger movie” or “A guy movie” > “A comedy for guys” > “A gross-out / dumbass comedy” > “An Adam Sandler movie” In any case, “subject genre” ends up concerning less the “form” of the genre (as in representational and narrative genres) than some content or something in or about it that can be duplicated from one example to another. Here are some more examples. science fiction techno-thrillers (Tom Clancy, Hunt for Red October, etc.) police drama historical fiction, historical romance monster movies weepers or 3-hanky movies western novel / movie gothic slasher films Tarzan stories / Tarzan movies spy novels / spy movies / A James Bond movie A Harrison Ford movie A Julia Roberts movie A Stephen King book Problems with “subject genre” As with genre studies generally, the “subject genre” definition quickly becomes blurry or crossed-up. Its categories of thought do not remain separate. For instance, notice how easily the concept shifts levels; e. g., “the novel” is a genre, but so is “spy novel” or “detective novel.” Or the distinction between subject matter and audience can be easily confused; for instance, is a “teenage movie” about teenagers or for teenagers? My attitude is not to be frustrated at such fertility but rather to celebrate it, but since academics tend to like for their categories to remain clearer and more consistent, the two following approaches to defining genre (“representational” and “narrative”) tend to have more academic prestige. “Representational genre” refers to the number and types of voices in the genre. There are three types and examples of representative genre, though a single text may shift from one to the other: 1. Narrator or “Single Voice,” in which one speaker or voice speaks directly to the audience. Examples: lyric poems, songs, sermons, lectures, stand-up comic monologues, news reports, or any other situation where a speaker directly addresses an audience, camera, or microphone. 2. Drama or Dialogue, in which two or more characters speak directly with each other, which the audience overhears. Examples: most plays, most movies, most fictional television shows such as sit-coms or police dramas. 3. Narrator + Dialogue, in which two or more characters speak with each other while a narrator speaks directly to the audience. Examples: novels; the epic; “film noir” movies; TV shows like The Wonder Years where an older narrator speaks to the audience while a younger self speaks with other characters. Critical sources for representational genre: Representation (or "imitation") refers to a standard classical concept of art and literature: "Art imitates reality," or "art represents nature." That is, literature (or art) is not nature or reality itself but something humans make that resembles or interprets reality or nature. In this usage, "representation" or "imitation" therefore refers to the way art appears or presents itself. "Representational genre" therefore concerns the appearance or outward show of a literary text to an audience · Are you being told something? (storyteller, narrator, newsreader, standup comic) · Watching a story as it happens between characters? (most dramas, movies, or TV series) · Both watching and being told? (a novel or a film with a narrator)? The standard critical source for "representational genre" is Plato, The Republic. c. 373 BCE: "Narration may be either simple narration, or imitation, or a union of the two." ["Simple narration" refers to a "narrator" or "single-voiced" representation; "imitation" refers to "drama or dialogue," which is in fact the way humans appear when they're talking among themselves; and "a union of the two" refers to "narrator + dialogue," which Plato would have known via the epic.] “Narrative genre” refers to the kind of story or plot that a work of literature tells or enacts. The source for such literary criticism is Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (1957), according to which there are four basic story lines:
Though distinct, these narratives often work in combination—for instance, romantic comedy. Or an episode of one narrative genre may appear in another, like the comic gravedigger’s scene in the tragedy of Hamlet. Tragedy. The story begins with a problem that is significant to society, its leaders, or its representatives. The problem may originate in the “tragic flaw” of the hero or heroine, or it may represent a temptation or error that human beings recognize, such as greed, vanity, or self-righteousness. Either way, the error or fault or problem is intimate and integral to our human identities; it is not "objectified" to a villain or outside force, as in romance. The action consists of an attempt to discover the truth about the problem, to follow or trace or absorb its consequences, to restore justice (even at cost to oneself), or to regain moral control of the situation. The tragedy ends with the resolution of the problem and the restoration of justice, often accompanied by the death, banishment, or quieting of the tragic hero. Comedy. This story-line also often begins with a problem or a mistake (as in mistaken identity), but the problem is less significant than tragedy. The problem may involve a recognizable social situation, but unlike tragedy, the problem does not intimately threaten or shake the audience, the state, or the larger world. The problem often takes the form of mistaken or false identity: one person being taken for another, disguises, cross-dressing, dressing up or down. The action consists of characters trying to resolve the problem or live up to the demands of the false identity, or of other characters trying to reconcile the “new identity” with the “old identity.” Comedy ends with the problem overcome or the disguise abandoned. Usually the problem was simply “a misunderstanding” rather than a tragic error. The concluding action of a comedy is easy to identify. Characters join in marriage, song, dance, or a party, demonstrating a restoration of unity. (TV "situation comedies" like Friends or The Cosby Show end with the characters re-uniting in a living room or some other common space.) Occasionally, as in slapstick or farce, comic endings are “circular” with the beginning: the comic characters simply “run away,” supposedly to continue the comic action elsewhere, as in the conclusion of some sketches by the Three Stooges or Laurel and Hardy. In “dark comedy,” the conclusion is sometimes one of exhaustion, as in The War of the Roses or Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Romance. This story may open as though all is well, but action usually begins with a problem of separation. Characters are separated from each other (e. g., a true-love romance), or a need arises to rescue someone (a lost-child story); or characters are separated from some object of desire (as with the search for the Holy Grail or Romancing the Stone or a lottery ticket). Action often takes the form of a physical journey or adventure; characters may be captured or threatened and rescued. Action may take the form of a personal transformation or a journey across class lines, as in Cinderella, Pretty Woman, or An Officer and a Gentleman. The conclusion of a romance narrative is typically “transcendence”—“getting away from it all” or “rising above it all.” The characters “live happily ever after” or “ride off into the sunset” or “fly away” from the scenes of their difficulties (in contrast with tragedy’s social engagement or comedy’s restored unity). Characters in romance tend to be starkly good or bad, in contrast with tragedy’s “mixed” characters. The problem that starts the action is usually attributed less to a flaw in the hero than to a villain or some outside force. (Most Hollywood movies are romances, but some “independent movies” involve tragedy.) Satire. The word “satire” appropriately comes from the Greek for “mixed-dish,” as its story-line tends to be extremely episodic and opportunistic. In fact, the satiric narrative depends for its narrative integrity on the audience’s knowledge of the original story being satirized. For instance, Hot Shots appears to be simply an unconnected series of goofy scenes unless you’ve seen Top Gun, in which case you know that episodes from the satire spoof or parody episodes from the original film. Young Frankenstein similarly depends on a familiarity with the original Frankenstein or at least with the cliches of old-time horror movies. (As a single-voiced example, an impersonator depends on his audience’s knowledge of a celebrity’s mannerisms and foibles.) Structurally, the satirical narrative will end somewhat like the original narrative, but, in terms of tone, the seriousness or pretensions of the original narrative will be deflated. ********************* Every work of literature will involve at least one representational genre, one narrative genre, and one subject genre. *A stand-up comedian’s monologue is “single-voiced” in representation and “comic” in terms of narrative (by attempting to conclude on a big audience-uniting laugh.)
*The novel The Scarlet Letter
(See also the example on p. 1 of this handout.) As exhausting as this handout may be, it’s not exhaustive! “Genre” remains a flexible, mobile, slippery, and capacious term and concept. The purpose of these classifications is more to exercise critical thinking than to provide final answers. For those considering graduate school, some problems inherent in “genre studies” “Genre courses” like “Tragedy,” “Comedy,” “Introduction to Fiction (or Poetry or Drama),” or “Film as Literature” tend to be popular mainstays in college curricula, but genre scholarship as such has a lackluster reputation. Why? ·
Genres may be regarded as elementary
knowledge. ·
Genres impinge on so many other subjects
that one’s findings may evade reduction or specification. ·
Any attempt at finality in describing a
genre may ascribe an artificial purity or purity to an evolving entity. More
dynamically, the following provisions can liberate the study of genre: ·
The concept of genre involves a number
of distinct dimensions or facets. ·
One genre often overlaps with another. ·
There are “no pure genres”—or
examples are so few as to prove the rule. |