Genres

While historically we think about genres in Aristotelian terms (Drama, Poetry, Philosophy), nowadays Genre refers more  to sub-categories in fiction, like Detective novel, Science fiction, romance, Thriller, True crime, Historical fiction, chick-lit. or Young Adult. The novel is still a relatively young form (certainly when compared to Drama, or Poetry), but it has massively branched out into different types - Genres.

A recurring debate at school is to do with the relationship between Literature (with a capital 'L',  whatever that means) and genres: is a detective novel appropriate for schools? Is Young Adult a form of entertainment, or can it be done in class on a par with so-called literary texts? Surely chick-lit cannot be literature, and as such should not be handled in class? Is Literature a genre, and if it is, what are its characteristics?

You can see immediately how those questions relate to your beliefs, and those of your society, about what Art is, what Literature is, and what the role of those is: what is a novel for? How should we treat those texts: as exemplars of Art? As springboards for our own thoughts? As repository of a great author's thoughts? As a sacred view on the world by a sacred author? As a piece of cultural history enshrined in a canonical approach? As cultural history tout court?

For our approach, the issue of genre is only relevant in terms of readership (attractiveness of the text, readability, teachability, potential themes): if a Young Adult novel offers great possibilities in terms of discussions, is exciting to read and has a premise that appeals to young readers, then that novel is appropriate for our purposes. But if a classic novel makes for a difficult reading, has features that puts off inexperienced readers, and (or) limits itself to one or two themes at most, then that novel is inappropriate for our purposes.

The second issue with Genres is that each of them is built around a number of tropes: recurring features common to that genre. For example, it's common (although not systematic by any means) to have spaceships and advanced technology in Science Fiction: those are tropes, like Aliens, far-off planets or robots. Detective fiction will typically be organised around a few of its own tropes too: a murder, a detective/investigator, different suspects, red herrings and false leads, and then a solution, typically at the end of the text. What is important to understand is that it is only familiarity with a genre that makes those tropes transparent: the less familiar you are with a genre, the more these tropes will stand in your way and will impede your interpretive reading.

If you never read Science fiction, you may well experience difficulties with 'suspending disbelief', as the famous phrase goes: what? A spaceship? that's ridiculous! What? Aliens? but they don't exist! But the moment you are familiar with a genre, you see through those tropes: not only do they not impede your reading, they now take on additional meaning. An Alien is nothing more than Difference, the Other - sometimes a mirror of humankind, sometimes an inverted image, sometimes a different worldview, but always a way to reflect on ourselves, who we are, what we do and why. A spaceship is a mode of transport, and different planets become ways to explore cultural differences.

At this stage, we might want to remember Philosopher of music Peter Kivy's useful distinction: writing about hearing a Mozart symphony for the first time, Kivy says: ‘If you’ve never heard Mozart’s Symphony n.4, the first time you hear it, you will hear the music, but not the performance’ (Kivy, 2003). The difference is of course linked to Genres, readability and therefore interpretation: the music is a whole, the performance is the music individualised.

The more you hear the same music, the more each performance of it becomes identifiable and unique. Knowledge of different performances increases your understanding of both the music (symphony n.4 as a whole) and each performance. You can easily compare that to genres in fiction. 

Detective is a genre: each detective novel is a performance of that genre. The more detective novels you read, the better your understanding of both each novel (good, bad etc.) and of the genre as a whole (how does it work, tropes, characteristics etc.). Remember that your learners will typically hear the music but not the performance, since their personal knowledge of any genre is likely to be slim: what seems to you transparent might be very obscure to them, and tropes that are so familiar to you that you don't really think about them will probably be alien to your learners.

This all comes back to the choices you have to make: what do you want to achieve with the text? What are your aims? Introducing learners to Dickens is not the same as making them think, or engaging their sense of citizenship, so once again, you need to consider the relationship between your aims and your text selection.

A third issue with Genres is that, while they are helpful in categorising and labelling, they also encapsulate everything that is wrong with categories. While a biologist may categorise organic matter according to scientific laws and objective criteria (DNA for example), literary people can't do that, and certainly not to the extent that a hard science can. This is neatly summarised by Alberto Manguel (1996): 

'Filed under Fiction, Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels is a humorous novel of adventure; under Sociology, a satirical study of England in the 18th-C.; under Children's Literature, an entertaining fable about dwarves and giants;

under Fantasy, a precursor of Science-Fiction; under Travel, an imaginary voyage; under Classics, a part of the Western literary canon.

Categories are exclusive; reading is not - or should not be.

Whatever classifications have been chosen, every library tyrannises the act of reading, and forces the curious, alert reader to rescue the book from the category to which it has been condemned’.

We must beware of arbitrary categories, and recognise that one same trope can belong to two genres, or that a text may make use of tropes from different genres: it's very common for a Science fiction novel to make use of Detective novels' tropes, or for a Romance novel to be also Young Adult and Fantasy. Ultimately, what matters is not the genre of the text but what you can do with that text. If a Science fiction story helps you discuss important social issues while a Shakespearian sonnet does not, you have a choice to make - irrespective of categories and their socio-cultural image.