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Literary Genres

Literary Genres. Genres. to sort texts into categories e.g., thriller, novel, song, landscape descriptions of the above: to specify conventions for readers: how to understand texts (lectures) for authors: why to produce them ( Ars Poeticas ) how to produce them

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Literary Genres

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  1. Literary Genres

  2. Genres to sort texts into categories e.g., thriller, novel, song, landscape descriptions of the above: to specify conventions for readers: how to understand texts (lectures) for authors: why to produce them (Ars Poeticas) how to produce them classification on the basis of ─ theme or topic: pastoral, 'whodunnit' ─ mode of address: direct: letters to be overheard: most dramas ─ attitude or anticipated response: elegies, war poetry

  3. other uses of genre layout of library and bookshop shelves creates expectations, controls markets and audiences (success → more, e.g., in Hollywood) + defeated expectations: collage, pastiche, irony postmodernism as a celebration of genre

  4. Elegy In Gk and Roman literature: any poem using the elegiac couplet (dactylic hexameter + dactyilic pentameter) Since the Renaissance: a sustained poetic meditation on a solemn theme, particularly on death From: Ian Ousby, The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English, Cambridge University Press (CUP)

  5. Famous elegies John Milton, Lycidas (1638) pastoral elegy: classical + Christian traditions (a Cambridge friend drowned in the Irish sea) http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/lycidas/ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Adonais(1821) upon news of Keats’ death from mourning to his immortality Spenserian stanzas Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751) rural life, human potential, mortality poet’s death vs art; gentle gloominess

  6. Shelley, Adonais I weep for Adonais - he is dead!O, weep for Adonais! though our tearsThaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!And thou, sad Hour, selected from all yearsTo mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers,And teach them thine own sorrow, say: "With meDied Adonais; till the Future daresForget the Past, his fate and fame shall beAn echo and a light unto eternity!“ (first stanza only)

  7. Spenserian stanza Spenserian stanza: A stanza devised by Spenser for The Faerie Queene, founded on the Italian ottavarima. It is a stanza of nine iambic lines, all of ten syllables except the last, which is an Alexandrine. There are only three rhymes in a stanza, arranged in an ababbcbccrhyme scheme. Sidelight: The longer length of the Alexandrines in the last lines provides emphasis and a sense of closure to the stanzas. http://www.poeticbyway.com/gl-s.html

  8. Thomas Gray, “Elegy written in a country churchyard” The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,And leaves the world to darkness and to me.Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,And all the air a solemn stillness holds,Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds:Save that from yonder ivy-mantled towerThe moping owl does to the moon complainOf such as, wandering near her secret bower,Molest her ancient solitary reign. (first 3 stanzas only)

  9. Elegiac stanza Elegiac stanza: elegiac stanza, in poetry, a quatrain in iambic pentameter with alternate lines rhyming. Though the older and more general term for this is heroic stanza, the form became associated specifically with elegiac poetry when Thomas Gray used it to perfection in “An Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard” (1751).  http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/184112/elegiac-stanza

  10. Intertextuality The semiotic notion of intertextuality introduced by Julia Kristeva is associated primarily with poststructuralist theorists. Kristeva referred to texts in terms of two axes: a horizontal axis connecting the author and reader of a text, and a vertical axis, which connects the text to other texts (Kristeva 1980, 69). Uniting these two axes are shared codes: every text and every reading depends on prior codes. Semiotics for Beginners by Daniel Chandler http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem09.html See Kristeva, Julia, Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art. New York: Columbia University Press, 1980

  11. Allusion a literary device that stimulates ideas, associations, and extra information in the reader's mind with only a word or two. Allusion means 'reference'.  The reader must be aware of the allusion and must be familiar with what it alludes to. Allusions are commonly made to the Bible, nursery rhymes, myths, famous fictional or historical characters or events, and Shakespeare.

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