Talk:Outline of literature/Archive 1

Archive 1

On (literary) genre:

Genre needs to be thought about. It troubles me, because it doesn't actually articulate a useful category scheme, but rather is more descriptive in a metaphoric sense. A novel is an empirical form because of a sense of minmum length (it needs to be about 50,000 words or more). But genre in the modern sense does not have any empirical basis (or at least very little) and doesn't lend itself to clear distinction. Something can be pretty close to empirically a "novel." But that novel can be sci-fi satire, horror romance, romantic biographical science fiction with an old west twist... the fluid nature of genre troubles me. I know it is something everyone wants to pin down as a taxonomic system for literature, and for that reason many people will want to include it in this basic list, but in my experience that approach raises more questions then it answers. fantasy fiction is a good example of the problem of genre. Anyway, I felt I should raise the issue here where we are trying to decide how literature should look. --trimalchio

you're welcome to leave it for art history, then, where it has two separate and specific meanings. At the least it should be 'literary genre' ; ) --MichaelTinkler

yeah. Good point, Michael. I meant literary genre. Not Dutch paintings of cows. ;) -- -t