This chapter explores the rather striking manner in which at key moments in the history of philosophy, in the discipline’s attempts at self-definition, the genre or literary form of poetry plays a key role. Philosophy, at these moments, has been defined, inter alia, as the enemy of poetry, the guiding light for the philosopher who can only try and inevitably fail to emulate its brilliance, or as the anomalous guest at the philosophical table with whom the host discipline has (...) relations which result in either generative or degenerative effects. Insofar as it lays claim to or liaises with philosophy – as we have come to know it today – poetry has thus played a part in the self-definition of genre theory. The aim of this chapter is to capture a very specific set of transfers, transpositions, metonymies and other modes of reversible relations of substitution and surrogacy between philosophy and poetry, and along the way between genre-theory-as-philosophy and poetry. (shrink)

Much of the world's literature and criticism has been shaped by ideas about the nature, function and value of literary genres. Modern developments in critical theory and the emergence of new media such as film and television, have put in question traditional categories, and challenged the assumptions on which earlier genre theory was based. This anthology, the first of its kind in English, charts these new developments and contains judicious selections from major twentieth-century theorists including Mikhail Bakhtin, (...) Gérard Genette and Jacques Derrida. (shrink)

This book puts a creative new reading of Hans-Georg Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics and literary genre theory to work on the problem of Scripture. Reading texts as Scripture brings two hermeneutical assumptions into tension: that the text will continually say something new and relevant into the present situation, and that the text has stability and authority over readers. Given how contested the Bible's meaning is, how is it possible to 'read Scripture' as authoritative and relevant? Rather than anchor meaning (...) in author, text or reader, Gadamer's phenomenological model of hermeneutical experience as Spiel ('play') offers a dynamic, intersubjective account of how understanding happens, avoiding the dead end of the subjective-objective dichotomy. Modern genre theory addresses some of the criticisms of Gadamer, accounting for the different roles played by readers in different genres using the new term Lesespiel ('reading game'). This is tested in three case studies of contested texts: the recontextualization of psalms in the book of Acts, the use of Hagar's story (Genesis 16) in nineteenth-century debates over slavery and the troubling reception history of the rape and murder in Gibeah (Judges 19). In each study, the application of ancient text to contemporary situation is neither arbitrary, nor slavishly bound to tradition, but playful. (shrink)

Fans of ‘roguelike’ video games have long been engaged in an intense debate over what this genre label means, and how we should understand the task of thinking about it. This article argues that the attempt to define ‘roguelike’ known as the ‘Berlin Interpretation’ is an example of the ‘prototype theory’ of categorization in action, and considers the strengths and weaknesses of this type of categorization for understanding video game genres. Using examples from roguelike fan discourse, it shows (...) how the problem with the Interpretation lied in its privileging game mechanics as the salient features of games on which to ground its definition, where a more productive place to start would have been experience and skills, which can also be extrapolated from prototypical examples. (shrink)

Le Yaoundé PhD Seminar-Theories of Justice est un séminaire international et pluridisciplinaire qui se tient depuis 2012 à Yaoundé. Il réunit des professeurs et des doctorants africains et non africains ainsi que des professionnels et des représentants de la société civile autour de questions de justice sociale et de politique publique. À l'initiative de doctorants africains et non africains, il a été mis en place conjointement par la Chaire Hoover de l'Université catholique de Louvain et par le Centre d’études et (...) de recherches sur la justice sociale et politique de l’Université catholique d’Afrique centrale dans le but de bâtir une véritable solidarité entre le Nord et le Sud dans le domaine de la formation académique et de la recherche. The Yaoundé PhD Seminar-Theories of Justice is an international and multidisciplinary seminar which is held since 2012 in Yaoundé. It brings together teachers and African and non-African doctoral students as well as professionals and representatives of civil society around issues of social justice and public policy. At the initiative of African and non-African students, it has been implemented jointly by the Hoover Chair of the Catholic University of Louvain and the Centre of studies and research on social justice and political of the Catholic University of Central Africa in order to build a genuine solidarity between the North and the South in the field of academic training and research. (shrink)

Affect Theory, Genre, and the Example of Tragedy employs Silvan Tomkins' Affect-Script theory of human psychology to explore the largely unacknowledged emotions of disgust and shame in tragedy. The book begins with an overview of Tomkins' relationship to both traditional psychoanalysis and theories of human motivation and emotion, before considering tragedy via case studies of Oedipus, Hamlet, and Death of a Salesman. Aligning Affect-Script theory with literary genre studies, this text explores what motivates fictional characters (...) within the closed conditions of their imagined worlds and how we as an audience relate to and understand fictional characters as motivated humans. (shrink)

Providing an alternative to pyschoanalytically based descriptions, this major study presents a unique, new theoretical account of the way emotions and thought patterns interact in creating aesthetic effects in films. Using diverse examples, Torben Grodal shows how films activate effects in the viewer and how these effects are moulded by genres which determine the way in which characters will react in given situations.

Genre theory, as it has developed in the last forty years, has made use of what I call a constitutive concept of genre, a concept that has built into it the assumption that genre plays a central epistemic role in the interpretation of verbal discourse. In this paper I argue that there are theoretical problems with such a concept that have not been recognized and that make it unsuitable as a critical instrument in literary history and (...) literary studies. A fruitful concept of literary genre needs to be pragmatic with only a heuristic and not an epistemic function. As an example, the article looks at the criticism produced in connection with the picaresque novel and in particular at the account given of the origin of the genre, an account that could not have been given if one had employed a constitutive concept of genre. (shrink)

Edward S. Small _Direct Theory: Experimental Film/Video as Major Genre_ Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1994 ISBN 0-8093-1920-9 122 pp.

Literary genre theory and rhetorical genre theory have stopped speaking to each other. Outside the lively trading station named Bakhtin, exchanges between the two fields are rare. Even though literary scholarship has turned from questions of genre identification to broader examinations of relations among genres, and rhetorical genre theory has focused not only on the social functioning of genres but also on their identifying features, each critical practice is cut off from the resources (...) of the other. It is possible to read very widely in genre theory without encountering a single cross-citation.This article argues that both rhetorical and literary genre theory are constrained by a controlling metaphor of .. (shrink)

If science fiction is a genre, then attempts to think about the nature of science fiction will be affected by one’s understanding of what genres are. I shall examine two approaches to genre, one dominant but inadequate, the other better, but only occasionally making itself seen. I shall then discuss several important, interrelated issues, focusing particularly on science fiction : what it is for a work to belong to a genre, the semantics of genre names, the (...) validity of attempts to define genres, and the connections between genre and normativity. One important but neglected clue to the nature of genres lies in the kinds of disagreements they generate over the assignment of works to genres. I conclude by explaining why these disagreements tell us something about the nature of genres, and discussing in some detail two famous cases of disagreement about whether some work or works are science fiction. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to interpret systematically M. M. Bakhtin’s views on genre. Although Aristotle was the first among philosophers – and one of the first among thinkers in general – who focused on the issues of artistic and rhetorical genres, philosophy ignored these issues for a considerably long time. One of the first philosophers who approached the issue of genre within a wider context of the philosophy of language was Mikhail M. Bakhtin, a Russian philosopher (...) and literary scholar. As early as in the 1920s he started to reflect on the so-called small speech genres. It later served him as the basis for a remarkable theory of the primary and secondary genres. Bakhtin is a world-wide renowned novel theoretician, but his genre theory is no less topical, since it corresponds with the issues focused on by philosophers much later. (shrink)

This article examines genre as knowledge organization. Genres are fluid and historically changing categories, and there are different views about the scope and membership of specific genres. The literature generally agrees that genre is a matter of discrimination and taxonomy, and that it is concerned with organising things into recognisable classes, existing as part of the relationship between texts and readers. Genre can be thought of as a sorting mechanism, and genres are not only a matter of (...) codes and conventions but also call into play systems of use and social institutions. This article explores the history of genre analysis across a broad range of disciplines, including literary studies, rhetorical and social action studies, and English for academic and professional purposes. It considers genre theory as a framework for librarianship and knowledge organization and explores the use of genre within librarianship and knowledge organization. Finally, the article discusses the Library of Congress Genre/forms Terms for Library and Archival Materials which, itself an evolving and changing standard, offers a step towards standardisation regarding genre terms and the scope of genre categories. (shrink)

This study investigates the cognitive-pragmatic motivations for the emergence of a genre of health communication called Patient Decision Aid. It elucidates genre as struggle, i.e. how the emerging genre exemplifies various struggles on three strata: the difficulties facing patients, doctors, and health providers at practice level; the changes anticipated to take place at discourse level; and the tensions in the pragmatics-cognition-society nexus. Particularly illustrated here are five struggles that characterize changes or breakthroughs that PDAs are anticipated to (...) make. It suggests that the five struggles roughly correspond to five principles for genre theory proposed by Berkenkotter and Huckin, with some modification of the latter. It also illustrates that genre intervenes in the complexity between social issues and social cognition and that PDAs as a new genre involve restructuring, reshaping and redesigning the key discourse facets. Based on examples of Chinese-language PDAs officially released in Taiwan and on information from health professionals, policy makers, and PDA developers, this study contributes empirical evidence toward a better understanding of an emerging genre. (shrink)

"An important contribution to contemporary jurisprudential debate and to legal thought more generally, Just Interpretations is far ahead of currently available work."--Peter Goodrich, author of Oedipus Lex "I was struck repeatedly by the clarity of expression throughout the book. Rosenfeld's description and criticism of the recent work of leading thinkers distinguishes his work within the legal theory genre. Furthermore, his own theory is quite original and provocative."--Aviam Soifer, author of Law and the Company We Keep.

Standard theories define fiction in terms of an invited response of imagining or make-believe. I argue that these theories are not only subject to numerous counterexamples, they also fail to explain why classification matters to our understanding and evaluation of works of fiction as well as non-fiction. I propose instead that we construe fiction and non-fiction as genres: categories whose membership is determined by a cluster of nonessential criteria, and which play a role in the appreciation of particular works. I (...) claim that this proposal captures the intuitions motivating alternative theories of fiction. (shrink)

There can be little doubt that human consciousness is now suffused with narrative. In the West, narrative is the focus of a number of lucrative industries and narratives proliferate as never before. The importance of popular genres in current narrative is an index of the demise of authorship in the face of new media and has necessitated the renewal of the term "genre" in narrative analysis over the last hundred years or so. However. this article attempts to make clear (...) that the concept of genre and the notion of a textual formula in narrative are not the same thing. Genre, in contrast to formula, is concerned precisely with the issue of how audiences receive narrative conventions; however, much genre theory has treated genre as a purely textual entity. The current article argues that genre should properly be considered as an "idea" or an "expectation" barboured by readers and identifies in textual-based genre theory of the last two thousand years the perpetuation of ahistoricality and canonisation. (shrink)

Genre discourse is widespread in appreciative practice, whether that is about hip-hop music, romance novels, or film noir. It should be no surprise then, that philosophers of art have also been interested in genres. Whether they are giving accounts of genres as such or of particular genres, genre talk abounds in philosophy as much as it does the popular discourse. As a result, theories of genre proliferate as well. However, in their accounts, philosophers have so far focused (...) on capturing all of the categories of art that we think of as genres and have focused less on ensuring that only the categories we think are genres are captured by those theories. Each of these theories populates the world with far too many genres because they call a wide class of mere categories of art genres. I call this the problem of genre explosion. In this paper, I survey the existing accounts of genre and describe the kinds of considerations they employ in determining whether a work is a work of a given genre. After this, I demonstrate the ways in which the problem of genre explosion arises for all of these theories and discuss some solutions those theories could adopt that will ultimately not work. Finally, I argue that the problem of genre explosion is best solved by adopting a social view of genres, which can capture the difference between genres and mere categories of art. (shrink)

This thesis is concerned with the ways in which meaning is generically mediated in the novel. In particular it addresses the productive diversity of meanings generated by critical interpretation and asks how, given this diversity, comprehension and consensus might be possible. I argue that the construction of subject, object, space and time is achieved in the novel through different manifestations of four key metaphors: voice, view, setting and event. These metaphors supply meanings that rely on a common experience of embodiment. (...) Embodiment supplies the basis for an intersubjectively established consensus which identifies subjects and objects in terms that correspond to the semiotic, syntagmatic and semantic uses of metaphor. I begin by surveying and reviewing certain constructionist accounts of language and meaning in order to establish the importance of metaphor in conveying meaning in rhetorical, rather than linguistic, terms. I then discuss two examples of continental philosophy on speech: Derrida on voice and Foucault on discourse. I demonstrate how meaning is rhetorically constructed according to the use to which metaphors are put—whether they denote formal, semantic, or functional aspects of meaning—through an explication of Foucault’s theory, reserving Derrida’s grammatology for my analysis of the stabilisation of meaning in the theory of certain narratologists (Gérard Genette and Marie-Laure Ryan). Voice and view are key terms in literary theory, and I examine refinements to these metaphors in Genette and Ryan. The insistence of these narratologists on restricting the rhetorical dimension of meaning undermines the value of the literary work, prompting me to argue for a relaxing of such constraints. I read Peter Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang for its uses of voice and point of view, many of which expose the limitations of the narratological approach. This is a theoretical thesis, which engages a wide range of perspectives—constructionist, deconstructionist, sociological and structuralist—together with their various accounts of language, metaphor, speech and meaning. In terms of sociological approaches to genre and discourse, I employ the chronotope as a critical tool, examining it in the context of the theme of the country house to demonstrate the role of two of my key metaphors, setting and event, which are important for the construction of space and time in abstract terms. Focusing on novels by Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, and Kazuo Ishiguro, in which the country house defines the space and the temporality through which thematic and “material” elements are mediated, I reveal how the chronotope supplies an overarching coherence that unites thought and event in narrative. My readings of these novels describe a theory that is concerned with the rhetorical capacities of genre rather than with taxonomic constructions of form. To this end I argue that the metaphorical dimensions of narrative—voice, view, setting and event—be loosely drawn, according to the acknowledged mutability of genre. I also emphasise the constructive effect of metaphor whilst according it a rhetorical versatility consistent with the mutability and instability of genre as a semiotic tool, concluding that consensus is achieved in our readings of novels through the form’s reliance on these four key metaphors of embodiment. These metaphors have ordinary, everyday, widespread usage beyond narrative theory; in appreciating their rhetorical value, it must be noted nonetheless that any confusion that ensues is productive, for it results in the diversities of meaning and form celebrated in the literary work. (shrink)

The paper takes as its point of departure a more modern, pragmatics-based concept of “genre” at the base of which is the a notion of a social activity in a specific configuration or actional purpose, with use of language embedded in and determined by these pragmatic, language-external vectors. Such a concept lends itself more easily to a conceptualization of a complex social action like mobbing as a unitary, coordinated activity, with all component actions steered by a joined overarching goal. (...) Testing the notion of “genre” on such a complex borderline case will at the same time bring out both defining structural properties of mobbing actions and the theoretical issues incumbent on the notion of “genre”, especially how far the concept can be stretched to cover complex, multimedial social actions. (shrink)

Genres inform our appreciative practices. What it takes for a work to be a good work of comedy is different than what it takes for a work to be a good work of horror, and a failure to recognize this will lead to a failure to appreciate comedies or works of horror particularly well. Likewise, it is not uncommon to hear people say that a film or novel is a good work, but not a good work of x (where x (...) is the genre of that work). A work can be good all things considered, but genre membership provides us with an additional set of evaluative criteria over and above those of the medium, which colors how we interpret and appreciate the work. Given this importance, it is not surprising that philosophers of art have been interested in providing an account of what, exactly, a genre is. Despite this interest, there is not widespread agreement about what it takes for something to be a genre, nor what kinds of considerations are relevant in determining whether a work is a member of that genre. Beyond this, we might also want to know to what degree we ought to consider genre in evaluating a work of art and why it should matter at all. Here, I explore the variety of recent theories that philosophers have taken up on the topic of genre and why we should ultimately think of genres as artistic practices rather than the alternatives. (shrink)

This study develops a biosemiotic framework for a descriptive phenomenology. We incorporate the set _utterance-genre-lifeworld_ in biosemiotic theory by paralleling it with the Peircean-Uexküllean notions of _sign_, _habit_, and _Umwelt_ (respectively). This framework for empirical semiotic studies aims to complement the concepts of _affordance_ and _scaffold_, as applied in studies on learning. The paper also contributes to bridging Bakhtinian-Hallidayian-Habermasian views on utterance, genre, and lifeworld with biosemiotics. We exploit the possibility that biosemiotics offers to bring together hermeneutic (...) and phenomenological analysis. We relate these views to integrated _levels_ in a systemic framework for communication. Signs are seen as inter-dependent construction elements in utterances. Repeated use of utterances in shifting contexts generates shared recognizable _kinds_ of communication, or genres. ‘Life-genre’ is used in a zoo-communication context, to avoid anthropocentrism. _Life-genre_ serves animals’ life-functions. Genres make up a systemic network of communicational resources, along with the related concepts of event, affordance, and scaffold. Utterance, genre, and lifeworld have five aspects, constituting an integrative approach to communication: form, content, act, time, and space. Semiosis and positioning are _processes_ that connect aspects and levels. Levels, aspects, and processes make up the framework as a system. While biosemiotics supports a phenomenological notion of life-genre, in turn, this notion also contributes to the development of the former, bridging a gap between organisms’ sign experience on a micro-level and organisms’ phenomenal lifeworld/Umwelt. Comparisons of _lifeworld_ and _Umwelt_ reveal that, although not identical, these are sufficiently similar to be perceived as an overall _macro-_level for signs and communication. Starting from a construal of utterance and genre as dynamic, dialogical, and reciprocal, genre is positioned as _meso_-level, mediating between signs in utterances and the lifeworld/Umwelt level. We propose _genres_, understood as semiotic scaffoldings built through affordances, as an analytical concept to capture meso-level phenomena. Scaffolding is determined by both ongoing events and (pre-)available genres. Events are manifestations of these scaffolding processes. Identifying animal and educational communication as two particularly relevant fields for future applications, we compare key socio-semiotic concepts to the notions of sign, habit, and Umwelt. The notions affordance and scaffolding are particularly important to think of learning as continuous with adaptation. An overall aim is to broaden as well as finetune semiotic _phenomenology_ as a platform for empirical analyses of communication. We conclude by exemplifying and summarizing how the framework facilitates this. (shrink)

A Theory of Reality is an unchanged, high-quality reprint of the original edition of 1899. Hansebooks is editor of the literature on different topic areas such as research and science, travel and expeditions, cooking and nutrition, medicine, and other genres. As a publisher we focus on the preservation of historical literature. Many works of historical writers and scientists are available today as antiques only. Hansebooks newly publishes these books and contributes to the preservation of literature which has become rare (...) and historical knowledge for the future. (shrink)

Narratives are everywhere. We tell narratives about ourselves and we make the world meaningful through storytelling. We position others through the narratives we tell and are positioned by stories told about us. And yet, while narratives have, of course, been analysed in critical discourse studies (CDS), including in one of its most popular approaches, the discourse-historical approach (DHA), this article proposes to go a step further by systematically integrating the concept of narrative into the core of the DHA. More specifically, (...) I consider narrative from the perspective of the concept of narrative genre. That is, I propose a focus on how meaning arises via the narrative genres of romance, tragedy, comedy and irony, i.e. through (modes of) emplotment. Such an integration does not contradict the DHA’s (and CDS’) focus on detailed textual analysis or reject existing foci, e.g. on argumentation, but recognises the centrality of the narrative form for social life and offers further concepts for empirical analyses. This focus on narrative genre contributes, furthermore, to the critical study of meaning-making by revising Jürgen Habermas’ Critical Theory and offering a novel integration of the latter into the DHA, thus providing a theoretically justified, immanent foundation for its critique. (shrink)

This contribution explores how Forrester’s work on cases has opened up an arena that might be called ‘the medical case as a travelling genre’. Although usually focused on the course of disease in an individual patient and authored mostly by one medical author, medical case histories have a social dimension: Once published, they often circulate in networks of scholars. Moreover, scholars of the history of literature have shown that numerous medical cases seem to travel easily beyond the context of (...) medical science into the realm of popular literature and journalism. After tracing the idea of cases travelling in Forrester’s Thinking in Cases, I discuss several contributions by authors who, in the wake of interdisciplinary research on cases in the past two decades, have dealt in different ways with this idea. In the third section, I present my own research on a case of self-crucifixion that was widely discussed in 19th-century Europe. I suggest that understanding the case as a ‘traveling genre’ – an expression borrowed from literary genre theory – highlights the role of readers and publication formats as constitutive for cases, and enables us to see more clearly what cases do for scientists and writers who work with them. (shrink)

Outlines a theory of genres: of what they are, what they do, and what they explain. The central notion is that of a genre‐for‐a‐community, which depends on psychological facts concerning tendencies of expectation in the audience. The minimal conditions for a genre to be instantiated are weak; Outlines some stronger conditions which allow us to focus on self‐conscious genre‐based effects. Suggests that genre, even thus strengthened, has only a very weak explanatory role. Gives accounts of (...) genre identity across time, and of genre change. (shrink)

This paper is a tentative attempt to identify some basic-level conceptual and theoretical problems underlying the mainstream genre theory, which adversely affect the analysis of rapidly evolving, complex and hybrid genres in the modern communicative space. Having discussed these problems, I go on to I argue that the space of contemporary public communication should be viewed as not only an “analytic problem”, but also/rather a domain whose explorations could potentially revise the existing principles of genre theory. (...) In particular, I suggest such explorations should focus on the conception of genres as abstractions, activators and realizers of context, flexible macrostructures, social field entities, assigners of interpersonal roles. Notwithstanding a possible advancement of genre theory resulting from this approach, I conclude that it is only a first and admittedly uncertain step in trying to establish a sound theoretical framework for communicative genres in the modern discourse space. (shrink)