TIL - A (2) - Truewayist

Q. 1

Literary genres
The notion of genre immediately raises several questions : fortunately, some of these vanish once we have formulated them explicitly. The first question is: are we entitled to discuss a genre without having studied (or at least read) all the works which constitute it? But one of the fist characteristics of scientific method is that it does not require us to observe every instance of a phenomenon in order to describe it; scientific method proceeds rather by deduction. We actually deal with a relatively limited number of cases, from them we deduce a general hypothesis, and we verify this hypothesis by other cases, correcting (or rejecting) it as need be. Whatever the number of phenomena (of literary works, in this case) studied, we are never justified in extrapolating universal laws from them; it is not the quantity of observations, but the logical coherence of a theory that finally matters. The level of generality on which a genre is to be located raises a second question. Are there only a few genres (i.e., lyric, epic, dramatic), or many more? Are genres finite in number or infinite? A third problem is a matter of aesthetics. We are told that it is pointless to speak of genres (tragedy, comedy, etc.), for the work of art is essentially unique, valuable because of what is original about it that distinguishes it from all other works, and not because of whatever in it may resemble them. Such a position is not, strictly speaking, false; it is simply inappropriate. We may certainly like a work for one reason or another; this is not what defines it as an object of study. The motive of an intellectual activity need not dictate the form which that activity ultimately assumes. The concept of genre (or species) is borrowed from the natural sciences. Now there is a qualitative difference as to the meanings of the terms “genre” and “specimen,” depending on whether they are applied to natural beings or to works of the mind. In the former case, the appearance of a new example does not necessarily modify the characteristics of the species; consequently, the properties of the new example are for the most part entirely deducible from the pattern of the species. Being familiar with the species tiger, we can deduce from it the properties of each individual tiger; the birth of a new tiger does not modify the species in its definition. The impact of individual organisms on the evolution of the species is so slow that we can discount it in practice. Similarly in the case of linguistic utterances (though to a lesser degree): an individual sentence does not modify the grammar of the language, and the grammar must permit us to deduce the properties of the sentence. The same is not the case of the realm of art or of science. Here evolution operates with an altogether different rhythm: every work modifies the sum of possible works, each new example alters the species. We might say that in art we are dealing with a language of which every utterance is agrammatical at the moment of its performance. More exactly, we grant a text the right to figure in the history of literature or of science only to the extent that it produces a change in our previous notion of the one activity or the other. Texts that do not fulfil this condition automatically pass into another category: that of so-called “popular” or “mass” literature in the one case; in the other, that of the academic exercise. To return to our subject, only “popular” literature (detective stories, serialized novels, science fiction etc.) would approach fulfilling the requirements of genre in the sense that would be inapplicable to strictly literary texts. Such a position obliges us to make our own theoretical assumptions explicit. Dealing with any text belonging to “literature”, we must take into account a double requirement. First, we must be aware that it manifests properties that it shares with all literary texts, or with texts belonging to one of the sub-groups of literature (which we call, precisely, genres). It is inconceivable, nowadays, to defend the thesis that everything in the work is individual, a brand-new product of personal inspiration, a creation with no relation to works of the past. Second, we must understand that
a text is not only the product of a pre-existing combinatorial system (constituted by all that has virtual literary properties); it is also a transformation of that system. We can already say, then, that every literary study must participate in a double movement: from the particular work to literature generally (or genre), and from literature generally (from genre) to the particular work. To grant a temporary privilege to one direction or the other – to difference or to resemblance – is a perfectly legitimate transaction. Why then raise these outdated problems? Gérard Genette has answered perfectly: “Literary discourse is produced and developed according to structures it can transgress only because it finds them, even today, in the field of its language and style”. For there to be a transgression, the norm must be apparent. Moreover, it is doubtful that contemporary literature is entirely exempt from generic distinctions; it is only that these distinctions no longer correspond to the notions handed down from the literary theories of the past. We are of course not obliged to keep to these notions now; indeed there is a growing necessity to elaborate abstract categories that could be applied to contemporary work. More generally, failing to recognise the existence of genres is equivalent to claiming that a literary work does not have any relationship to already existing works. Genres are precisely those intermediaries by which the work assumes a relation with the universe of literature.

What does the author mean by “genre”?