Re: GEN:Genre or literary form

[Jon Noble <jon_p_noble@YAHOO.COM>]

I

--- ktclemen <ktclemen@UNCG.EDU> wrote:
> I am collaborating on a lesson on genre, and decided
> to scan
> the archives for ideas.  I discovered a past debate
> as to what
> genre really described.  One side felt a genre was
> poetry, fiction,
> non-fiction, etc.  The other side believed that it
> was referring
> to the types of fiction such as science fiction,
> fantasy, etc.
>  I could not find any definitive answer to this
> debate.  My question
> is: Is poetry, fiction, non-fiction, etc better
> referred to as
> a literary form and genre refers to the types of
> fiction?

I have just tried for dictionaries (two US, one British  - the Shorter
Oxford- and one Australian) all four had basically the same definition
which encompases both uses of the term. They really are both correct
but that is not very helpfull. I once checked a dictionary of literary
terms which only gave the "literary form" definition, but I've always
used the type of fiction definition whenever I've used the word. There
are of course also sub-genres such as time travel as a sub- genre of
science fiction or forensic novels as a sub- genre of the mysteries.
There are also stories that belong in two genres such as historical
detective stories (my favourites are Ellis Peters' Cadfael and Lindsay
Davis' Falco)

Jon Noble
Teacher Librarian
Glendale High School
Glendale, NSW, Australia
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