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genre
A genre is a division of a particular form of art according to criteria particular to that form. In all art forms, genres are vague categories with no fixed boundaries. Genres are formed by sets of conventions, and many works cross into multiple genres by way of borrowing and recombining these conventions. The scope of the word "genre" is usually confined to art and culture. In genre studies the concept of genre is often compared to originality.
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Overall definition
Genre is originally a French word meaning "kind", "sort" or "type"; in grammatical terminology, it means gender, and refers to the grammatical categories of masculine, feminine and (in descriptions of some languages other than French) neuter gender (the noun "genre" itself belongs to the masculine gender in French, for example).
In general there are three types of genre:
- Those of setting, such as westerns or science fiction;
- Those of mood, such as comedy or horror;
- Those of format, such as musicals or non-fiction.
The genre's may also be defined in film by the target audience (e.g. pre-teen or teen). They may also be catagorised by the production values of the film (e.g. blockbuster, independent, b-movie)
In artforms such as music, painting, and sculpture, genre tends to be determined by format and style.
Genres are often divided into sub-genres. In literature, for instance, can be organized according to the "poetic genres" and the "prose genres". Poetry might be subdivided into epic, lyric, and dramatic, while prose might be subdivided into fiction and non-fiction. Further subdivisions of dramatic poetry, for instance, might include comedy, tragedy, melodrama, and so forth. This parsing into subgenres can continue: "comedy" has its own genres, for example, including farce, comedy of manners, burlesque, and satire.
Generic conventions
In every field of art there are conventions that may simply be expectations (paintings are rectangular) and stock devices (a comedy ends with a marriage, but a western can end with the hero riding off into the sunset). These are generic conventions which are very closely tied to a particular artistic genre, and help to define what that genre is. Some of these conventions may develop into clichés.
Genre and audiences
Although most genres are often only vaguely definable, genre considerations are one of the most important factors in determining what a person will see or read. Many genres have built-in audiences and corresponding publications that support them, such as magazines and websites. Books and movies that are difficult to pigeonhole into a genre are often less successful commercially.
"Hierarchy of Genres"
In the field of painting, there exists a "hierarchy of genres" associated with the Académie française which once held a central role in academic art. These genres in hierarchical order are:
These categories played an important role between the 17th century and the modern era, when painters and critics began to rebel against the many rules of the Académie française, including the Académie's preference for history painting.
Genre in philosophy
The concept of "genre" has played a notable role among philosophers of language, figuring very prominently in the works of philosopher and literary scholar Mikhail Bakhtin. Bakhtin's basic observations were of "speech genres" (the idea of heteroglossia), modes of speaking or writing that people learn to mimic, weave together, and manipulate (such as "formal letter" and "grocery list", or "university lecture" and "personal anecdote"). The work of Georg Lukács also touches on the nature of literary genres, appearing separately but around the same time (1920s–1930s) as Bakhtin.
See also
Genre articles by field
- Biblical genre
- Computer and video game genres
- Crime fiction
- Film genre
- Genre fiction
- Horror (genre)
- Literary genre
- Romantic fiction
- Music genre
- Spy fiction
- Webcomic genres
- Western (genre)
