Taylor - Modern Genre Theory

MODERN GENRE THEORY

________________

Edited and Introduced by

DAVID DUFF

First published 2000 by Pearson Education Limited

Published 2014 by Routledge
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ISBN 13: 978-0-582-36805-7 (pbk)

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress, USA

Modem genre theory / edited and introduced by David Duff.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents: Criticism of the theory of artistic and literary kinds / Benedetto Croce The literary fact / Yury Tynyanov Fairy tale transformations / Vladimir Propp Epic and novel / Mikhail Bakhtin The problem of speech genres / Mikhail Bakhtin The mythos of summer : romance / Northrop Frye Royal genres / Ireneusz Opacki Theory of genres and medieval literature / Hans Robert Jauss Genre-systems and the functions of literature / Rosalie Colie Magical narratives / Frederic Jameson The origin of genres / Tzvetan Todorov The architext / Gerard Genette The law of genre / Jacques Derrida Transformations of genre / Alastair Fowler Genre and gender / Mary Eagleton.

ISBN 0-582-36806-5. ISBN 0-582-36805-7 (pbk.)

1. LiteratureHistory and criticismTheory, etc. 2. Literary form. I. Duff, David, 1962

PN45.5.M56 1999

Set by 35 in 9/11 Palatino

LONGMAN CRITICAL READERS

General Editor:

STAN SMITH, Research Professor in Literary Studies, Nottingham Trent University

Titles available:

MARY EAGLETON, Feminist Literary Criticism

GARY WALLER, Shakespeares Comedies

JOHN DRAKAKIS, Shakespearean Tragedy

RICHARD WILSON AND RICHARD DUTTON, New Historicism and Renaissance Drama

PETER WIDDOWSON, D.H. Lawrence

PETER BROOKER, Modernism/Postmodernism

RACHEL BOWLBY, Virginia Woolf

FRANCIS MULHERN, Contemporary Marxist Literary Criticism

ANNABEL PATTERSON, John Milton

CYNTHIA CHASE, Romanticism

MICHAEL ONEILL, Shelley

STEPHANIE TRIGG, Medieval English Poetry

ANTONY EASTHOPE, Contemporary Film Theory

TERRY EAGLETON, Ideology

MAUD ELLMANN, Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism

ANDREW BENNETT, Readers and Reading

MARK CURRIE, Metafiction

BREAN HAMMOND, Pope

STEVEN CONNOR, Charles Dickens

REBECCA STOTT, Tennyson

LYN PYKETT, Reading Fin de Sicle Fictions

ANDREW HADFIELD, Edmund Spenser

SUSANA ONEGA AND JOS ANGEL GARCA LANDA, Narratology: An Introduction

TESS COSSLETT, Victorian Women Poets

BART MOORE-GILBERT, GARETH STANTON AND WILLY MALEY, Postcolonial Criticism

ANITA PACHECO, Early Women Writers

JOHN DRAKAKIS AND NAOMI CONN LIEBLER, Tragedy

ANDREW MICHAEL ROBERTS, Joseph Conrad

JOHN LUCAS, William Blake

LOIS PARKINSON ZAMORA, Contemporary American Women Writers: Gender, Class, Ethnicity

THOMAS HEALY, Andrew Marvell

JANE STABLER, Byron

STEVE ELLIS, Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales

RICHARD KROLL, The English Novel, Volume I, 1700 to Fielding

RICHARD KROLL, The English Novel, Volume II, Smollett to Austen

CRISTINA MALCOLMSON, Renaissance Poetry

HARRIET DAVIDSON, T.S. Eliot

JEREMY TAMBLING, Dante

KIERNAN RYAN, Shakespeare: The Last Plays

RICHARD WILSON, Christopher Marlowe

NIGEL WOOD, Jonathan Swift

JENNIFER BIRKETT AND KATE INCE, Samuel Beckett

RICHARD DUTTON, Ben Jonson

DAVID DUFF, Modern Genre Theory

Contents

This anthology evolved slowly, and its contents have been influenced by a number of people whose advice and encouragement I very gratefully acknowledge. My idea for a collection of modern writings on genre originated during my residence in Poland, where I had the good fortune to work in an English department which embodied some of the strongest theoretical traditions of Eastern Europe. My initial debt, then, is to my former colleagues at the University of Gdask, in particular Andrzej Zgorzelski and Joanna Kokot, who shared and deepened my interest in genre theory, and alerted me to important Polish contributions in this field. My thanks, too, to David Malcolm, who agreed to translate the essay of Ireneusz Opacki which appears in this volume, and whose career, like mine, has spanned Gdask and Aberdeen. My colleagues, and former colleagues, at Aberdeen have been similarly supportive of this project. I am particularly grateful to Paul Coates, whose sophisticated command of theory and intimate knowledge of Polish he generously put at my disposal; to George Rousseau, who commented very perceptively on a draft of the Introduction and, over a series of conversations, answered a host of other queries; to Ian Maclachlan, Michael Syrotinski and other members of the Aberdeen Critical Theory Seminar, who responded enthusiastically to an exploratory paper I gave, and made some valuable suggestions; to Gert Ronberg, who helped me on linguistic matters; and to Frank Krutnik and Liz Mahoney, who gave useful advice on other aspects of my topic. Jean Gregorek, from further afield, performed a similar service; as did Graham Allen, with whom I conversed profitably on the subject of intertextuality. I warmly acknowledge too the personal and intellectual hospitality I received in 1996 during a visit to the University of Regensburg, where I discussed plans for this anthology, and received expert guidance on German genre theory. Thanks also to Ann Shukman, who translated the Tynyanov essay, and shared her knowledge of Russian Formalism; and to the Faculty Research Committee at the University of Aberdeen, who allocated funds which paid for this and the Opacki translation. Stan Smith has been a most responsive general editor, and Liz Mann an equally courteous publisher; my gratitude to them extends to members of the production staff at Longman, and to my excellent copy-editor, Katy Coutts. Finally, I must thank Helen Lynch, whose passion for this subject is not as great as my own, but who occasionally brought to bear her intelligence upon it; and our two lovely daughters, Konstancja and Miriam, both of whom learnt to pronounce the word genre not long after the word daddy which is no mean achievement.