Genre Theory
What is a genre? Is it a natural class, a rulebook, a historical institution, or a contract between writer and reader? Comparative genre theory wrestles with how literature can be sorted into kinds at all, and what happens when works break the rules.
Definition
The theory of literary genre — the study of how, whether, and on what principles literary works can be classified into kinds, and of how generic norms function for writers and readers.
Scope
Treats the theory of literary genre as a comparative problem: taxonomic and archetypal systems, structuralist definitions of individual genres, historical accounts of genres as evolving kinds and modes, and deconstructive challenges to the very logic of generic classification. Concerns the concept of genre itself rather than the history of any single kind.
Core questions
- Is genre a natural category, a set of rules, or a historically contingent institution?
- How are individual genres defined and bounded?
- What role do genre expectations play in the reading and writing of texts?
- What happens when a work mixes or violates genres — does it confirm or undo the concept?
Key theories
- Archetypal taxonomy
- Frye organized literature into modes and genres by recurrent archetypes and mythic structures, seeking a total systematic map of literary kinds.
- Genres as kinds and modes
- Fowler argued that genres are historically changing 'kinds' united by family resemblance rather than fixed definition, and distinguished concrete kinds from looser modes.
- Structural definition of a genre
- Todorov defined the fantastic structurally through the reader's sustained hesitation between natural and supernatural explanation, modeling how a single genre can be rigorously specified.
- The law of genre
- Derrida argued that every text participates in genres without belonging to one, so that the 'law' of genre is always also a principle of contamination and excess.
History
Inheriting the classical division of genres, modern genre theory took a systematic turn with Frye's 1957 Anatomy and a structuralist turn with Todorov's 1970 study of the fantastic (English 1975). Fowler's 1982 Kinds of Literature emphasized historical change, while Derrida's 1980 'The Law of Genre' radically questioned the possibility of clean generic boundaries, framing later debate.
Debates
- Classification versus contamination
- Whether genres can serve as stable classes (Frye, Fowler) or whether, as Derrida argued, every text exceeds and mixes genres so that pure belonging is impossible.
Key figures
- Northrop Frye
- Alastair Fowler
- Tzvetan Todorov
- Jacques Derrida
Related topics
Seminal works
- frye1957
- fowler1982
- todorov1975
- derrida1980genre
Frequently asked questions
- Can a single work belong to more than one genre?
- Yes. Most theorists recognize generic mixing, and Derrida went further, arguing that texts participate in several genres without strictly belonging to any, so generic boundaries are inherently porous.