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Literary Kinds
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Reporting in on our rhizomic discussion
We began today's class by building a "web" among us, using points of likeness. This seemed hard to do, and we ended up using very general categories ("woman," "student"). We next turned to discussion about the klutziness/user-unfriendliness of our course page...there are too many places to "click," and so we get discouraged from being responsive to one another's comments....how to work w/ this limitation?
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A Criticism of Genres or an Essay on the Database?
Perhaps our past discussion influenced how I read Folsom's essay, but what captured me in his words was not an argument about databases and archives, or even about his own Walt Whitman Archive; it was his conflict between the organization of literature and the constraints of genres. Folsom remarks that "peculiarity to person, period, or place always leads to division and discrimination, always moves away from and against universality" (1572). Everything that I read in Folsom's writing seemed to me to center around the limitations of genre. Whitman himself pushed against the restraints of being bound into one idea, one limited section of the written word.
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Objectivity
The word genre has come to be understood as an encompassing set of characteristics that help readers to place a piece of literature into a category filled with works of a like kind. Yet, genres ultimately evoke much more thought and importance than the simple type-casting of literary works. Both Wai Chee Dimock and Stephen Owen imply that genres are no longer rigid guidelines that absolutely define every piece of literature; however, both respect the importance of genres to the world.
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Genres as Guidelines
When reading Wai Chee Dimock's article "Introduction: Genres as Fields of Knowledge," I found myself agreeing with the author's theorization that the concept of genre in literature is meant to be seen as a general guideline to categorize things rather than a way to, as Dimock said, "put things into a pigeonhole." Branching off that same idea, Dimock also expressed the idea that genre should not limit a work of literature. Just because it's categorized as epic or lyric doesn't mean that the work has to entirely fit a certain format, and there is room for change in all genres that inevitably comes with time and the gathering of new knowledge.
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genres, another need to label
As Dimock points out, theorists from Benedetto Croce to Jacques Derrida have objected to the concept of genre because something as complex as literature cannot be "anatomized ahead of time, segregated by permanent grouping." Categorizing literature may seem like an easier way of finding a specific read that fits one's interest; however this categorization of literature speaks closely to the human need to label. As these theorists have argued, literature is too complex to be broken down into different categories before they are even written. It is true that with the passage of time these categories have changed, but for a work of literature that is written in a certain period, it has to be placed within a genre, whether it fits perfectly or not.
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Discomfort with in-betweens
In thinking more about and sharing the images we read in class on Tuesday, I found that the in-between nature of the images seemed to cause discomfort to me and others. Why should the existence of in-between objects elicit disgust? Similarly, our readings mentioned historical attempts by Westerners to either make other cultures' literary works fit into Western genres or establish those other cultures as deficient for not matching the Western pattern closely. Why is maintaining the open mind to the evolution of genre that Dimock and Owen call for so difficult? Do we need computers to do this for us?
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genre lines: never rigid
The evolutionary model is often mentioned in the context of the evolution of genre. As I read Owens' essay, I was reminded of something I read about evolution itself - that humans only see themselves as a drastically different species because all the intermediate species between humans and monkeys are extinct. When considering every species that has ever existed, classification is much more difficult because things that seem very defined start to run into each other. Humans have to search for patterns over long periods of time and then categorize them.
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Genres are here to stay
When considering the definition of the word genre it seems highly unlikely that one could classify every piece of writing in a manner that is organized and logical, yet mankind creates taxonomies for everything in life--literature included. The question seems to be why would one insist on a method of sorting texts by genres if it proves to be as dysfunctional as both Wai Chee Dimock and Stephen Owen claim? The answer seems to be that even the most general of divisions, such as the epic, lyric, and narrative, provide clarification for the public to a certain extent. Although a text might not perfectly fit in a prototypical genre, it could still qualify for the genre if it meets the general standards.
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thoughts
Dimock's piece stresses the need for "literary studies to be more fluid in its taxonomies" (1384), and states that it should not emphasize divisions so much and should instead focus on the relationships within literature. The resulting "fluid curriculum" would have a unique shape, formed by empirical organization of knowledge. It is a freer way of thinking about literature: in this new way, one is simply "observing the meandering paths of this body of material" rather than immediately assigning it to a strict category. Let the literature breathe.
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The Genres of History
The definition of "genre" is dependent upon the personal and public opinion of the era. As Stephen Owen points out, a piece of literature once defined a "history" can change, along with the generation and its opinions, to become instead a "romance," and even then to "the novel in antiquity," simply by one individual's translation. But if what is supposed to be a defining marker of the contents of a work can be thrown away so easily, as "unwanted baggage," then genre cannot be anything more than a classification based upon the thoughts and beliefs of the public and intellectuals of the time. Wai Chee Dimock speaks of the "history of genre"; but is it not more fitting to say the genres of history?
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The Elusive Genre
Genres are used to classify or "ground" a subject. To have a piece of literature named an "epic" emphasizes certain qualities and may even give it qualities that can then be used in analysis. To give it an identity is to immediately restrict the work to a preconceived paradigm. The authors of the two pieces we read (Wai Chee Dimock and Stephen Owen) actively reject this. Are Dimock and Owen afraid of the oversimplifiation of literature, something of which that should be appreciated for the complexity within itself?
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Genre As An Evolution
Both of these articles were similar in the fact that not only did they look at genre as being defined and morphed by history and culture, but also at genre as one way in which culture can be shaped. It was discovered that China did not have an early epic (Owen, 1390) and Europeans brought their own perception of what an epic was to Chinese culture. Would a different type of Chinese "epic" have developed had the European ideas not invaded? Would this Chinese epic have created a new genre? Would other writing then have fallen into this new genre? Referring to genres, Dimock says that "none does its work in isolation, and none without a continuous stream of input from other genres" (1380).
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Beyond the Nature of Genre
In their essays, both Owen and Dimock present persuasive arguments for the malleable, pliable nature of genre. The implications of this conception are taken up by Jeanette Winterson. She argues that the norms associated with genre facilitate greater creativity by authors. Referring to both Orlando and Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, she writes that in “either case there is an immediate challenge to genre-boxing but there is to, an invitation to believe. To accept what will follow as truth and as the kind of truth only possible between people who know each other well… We can be taken in by someone who offers truth with a wink and says ‘I’m telling you stories. Trust me.”
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Permeable Boundaries
The use of genre as a classifying method seems at first, and deceptively, to be a mere practical necessity--an organizing tool of the intellect to make the overly abundant world of phenomena accessible within the limits of perception and analysis. The more one considers genre, however, the more one realizes that the manner in which we make such a world accessible is not passive, rather an active selection informed by cultural imperatives. Inevitably, such selection (and selective omission) leads to categories and hierarchies that point less to the inherent qualities of the object as to human motivations to delimit and exalt certain perceived characteristics.
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Liquid and Organized
What struck me was that both readings, though arriving at their destinations by completely different routes (one through the digital age, one through ancient history), managed to depit genre as something fluid from the very begining --no matter what human beings attempt to mold it into. Neither author put on the appearance of believing that genre is (and was) just as simple as a division into epic, lyric, and dramatic.
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Man-made
When it comes to analyzing literature, genre is a given. We read books, digest them, and place them into categories, where they lie helplessly until public or cultural opinion scoops them up and plops them down into yet another slot. As human being we accept genre as something undying and ever-present, something that is the cause of much controversy in the literary world, but it is important to realize that genre is very much man-made. We have placed this great, categorical burden upon ourselves.