NP : Was " genres are literature too" thread

[alice wellintown]

see, as well, the fourth essay in Frye's Anatomy of Criticism
(Rhetorical Criticism: Theory of Genres). Frye repeats his earlier
complaint that we have an inadequate classification system to put
genres in. Though he too turns to Aristotle and to Plato, he finds
that what the Greeks give us is far too limited fpr a study of genres;
moreover, he contends that a study need to calssify so much as calrify
the traditions and affinities, and thereby bring out the large number
of literary relationships that would not be noticed otherwise (248).


>> Maybe related, the last chapter of Terry Eagleton's latest--The Event of
>> Literature--takes up the question of what do literary theories all have in
>> common?  His candidate for the honor is the Unconscious.  All but one
>> theory by his lights consider what is written as a Strategy for dealing
>> with the Unconscious or the otherwise hidden.  He talks a lot about
>> Freud's ideas on repression, etc. So literature--in theory--is the
>> repressed, acceptable version of what's somehow down deep and hidden.
>> This is a very inadequate paraphrase, but it might serve the purpose of
>> suggesting that possibly  literary and genre fiction are sisters under the
>> skin.
>>
>> The colonel's lady and Judy O'Grady are sisters under the skin--Kipling
>>
>> P
>>
>>
>>
>> On 10/14/2012 12:05 PM, alice wellintown wrote:
>>> And the abstract unifying agent in GR works because, though
>>> implausible, it is convincing. So, Wood has no serious objection to
>>> Pynchon's talking dogs or clocks, but to his rhetorical faliure, that
>>> is, P fails not because verisimilitude is essential or even prefered,
>>> but because P fails to convince us that all these characters and plots
>>> are plausible under the unifying agent. The abstraction pulls the
>>> characters on and off the stages like a puppet parade in a space
>>> opera.
>>
>