Talk:Literary genre

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 1 September 2020 and 11 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): SumayyahGhori, Bfedil17. Peer reviewers: Drgolds.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 02:43, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Literary Genres

What is your favorite kind of Literary Genre? After all, with so many kinds, there has to be at least one that suits your fancy. Alexa Bellstrom In reference to the "citation needed," after the inclusion of “creative non-fiction” in the list of the most general types of genre. I agree with this challenge, as “creative-non- fiction seems to be much more specific than the other six examples. However, “creative non-fiction” could refer to any type of biography, or journalism, memoirs, travel journals, etc. But then, why does “non-fiction” require “creative” to modify it? Whether or not something is creative is of a dubious nature. Isn’t all writing essentially creative, and act by which person puts down something that did not exist previously? Rauto (talk) 23:13, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm glad I accidentally came upon this page so that I know to keep my students away from it. Wili has some useful pages on literature, not this one. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:2C6:5000:6A61:7525:8FA6:2340:DCCB (talk) 19:01, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

Magical Realism

I noticed that for the Literary Genre page, there is no link for Magical Realism. I'll have to fix that...Every single genre present herein is some kind of a perfect representation of yourself...

Non-poetic Epic?

In the context of literary genres, does "epic" always imply poetry? I'm working on links to the Epic disambiguation page and this is coming up qutie often. John (Jwy) 00:07, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Comment on 55 Fiction

Please go through 55 Fiction and suggest changes/improvements, if any. Also, please suggest how it can be suitably linked with with other articles (if it deserves to be). -Ambuj Saxena (talk) 11:39, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

That is very good

It is a scholarly article. The whole article does not need cleanup and references:

• Todorov, M.MBakhin, etc... --Escalda 03:20, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Category genres

Should there be mention of the "hack" division of romance and sci fi, generally referred to as "category romance" or "category sci-fi" ? This refers to things like the Silhouette line of romances, or the D&D line of science fiction. Generally of lower quality, though not infrequently a good author may begin there and then move on to the "single-title" romance (i.e. where the author's name is more important than the series name). The publishing houses definitely recognize this class of books... --Bookgrrl ^holler/lookee here 00:07, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure what to call the 'branded' Romance lines. In F&SF, the proper term is "media tie-in" novels. The ongoing flood of Star Trek books is an obvious example.

I haven't made any changes to the Wikipedia article. In case it proves helpful, my writers group has compiled a long list of literary fiction genres and subgenres.

http://www.cuebon.com/ewriters/genres.html

71.131.26.109 06:20, 6 October 2007 (UTC) -Paul C

Literary genre is clearly distinct from Genre Fiction

Literary genre is clearly distinct from Genre Fiction. Please do not confuse the two. Also please do not use the article as a promotion tool for SF and Fantasy. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.63.150.78 (talk) 12:53, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

'Unsigned,' perhaps you could be more specific in your remarks? I know that most writers and publishers will distinguish between 'genre' and 'literary' fiction. In the USA it's almost a class-warfare thing!

As for 'promoting' F&SF literature, what gave you that idea? Guess I missed the ads.

In fact, in compiling a thorough list of subgenres, we learned that science fiction has more than 80 -- twice that of any other publishing genre. Fantasy and Romance come in second, while all others have just a few. Thus, in an article such as this one, SF is going to dominate the text.

http://www.cuebon.com/ewriters/genres.html

(Anyone is welcome to expand other sections of this Wikipedia article, and speaking of shameless promotions, to suggest additions to my web-based list.)

Cuebon (talk) 18:25, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

There should be a clear announcement made about what the POV of the article is. There is a confusion, and the article is so thin and the examples so unbalanced that it can easily be made to look very conservative and ignorant of literary critic evolution. I say it's better than nothing, but there are already various articles that do the exact same thing better... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Poioumena (talk • contribs) 10:54, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

New template

Template:Infobox literary genre

-- TimNelson (talk) 00:39, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Text moved from the article (17 March 2012)

I removed the following part (added by 78.144.228.160, Revision as of 18:01, 14 March 2012) from the article:

'''Genres are also what the story is about. So i could have a book about a detective in a rainforest discovering a lost city and that would be adventure. Also i could write a story about a dark abyss in a graveyard, that would be gothic/horror and so on... HOPE I HAVE BEEN HELPFUL! :)'''

Please, use the talk page of an article for your suggestions, or follow WP:MOS for writing onto the main/article namespace. Thank You! –pjoef (talk • contribs) 12:30, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Criticism of the concept

The article states that "The concept of 'genre' has been criticized by Jacques Derrida". Shouldn't there be some explanation of what this criticism is? At least a brief summary of why Derrida has criticised it. There are two citations provided, but I don't have access to either of them. As it stands currently I don't see how this sentence is a worthwhile part of the article.

Wikipedia is not a reliable source

Billyh45, I would like to introduce you to a new concept: Wikipedia articles are not reliable sources. See WP:RS: "although Wikipedia articles are tertiary sources, Wikipedia employs no systematic mechanism for fact checking or accuracy. Thus Wikipedia articles (or Wikipedia mirrors) are not reliable sources for any purpose." Hence, it is not relevant that the Wikipedia article Literature says, "Literature can be classified according to whether it is fiction or non-fiction"). Please do not invent made-up excuses for restoring uncited and inaccurate content, as you did here. You are quite wrong if you believe the content of a Wikipedia article settles any dispute at another article. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 02:23, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

If WP cannot be a reliable source, then how can Template:Infobox book be a reliable source for Talk:Extraordinary_Popular_Delusions_and_the_Madness_of_Crowds#Genre? Anyway I have now used the University of Vermont as a reliable source. Nonfiction can be a genre. Billyh45 (talk) 06:50, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Potential edit ideas to improve this article

Hi all,

I've read through this page's content and noted its sparse information and major content gaps. I would like to help fix this issue. I think that one of the major issues is the rigidity in the understanding of what a literary genre encompasses- the article focuses on classical standardized literary genre forms only. Another big issue is the dated information- I think that not only can more recent references be found, but that more information regarding potential emerging literary genres or changes to standard genres can be added. Genres as a construct are flexible and bound to change- some background/history on genre changes in the literary realm would be interesting to add in as well.

I propose including these three sources: 1. Duff, David. Modern genre theory. Routledge, 2014. Discusses the history of literary genre, genre evolution, and current modern literary genre theory. 2. Todorov, Tzvetan, and T͡Svetan Todorov. The fantastic: A structural approach to a literary genre. Cornell University Press, 1975. Discusses the categorization of literary genres and arguments regarding the necessity of genres in the current genre-muddled literary canon. 3. Farrell, Joseph. “Classical Genre in Theory and Practice.” New Literary History, vol. 34, no. 3, 2003, pp. 383–408. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20057790. Accessed 14 Oct. 2020. Discusses the start of classical genre theory; can help with making distinct sections for modern versus classical genre types and ideologies.

Any thoughts/ideas?

SumayyahGhori (talk) 03:42, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Potential points of improvement

My plans on improving this article starts with having more sources to verify information already on the page. Maybe looking at scholarly journals and articles on the topic of literary genre. Also, to have a history section about the topic of how the term started to grow in use and whether or not the definition of it has changed. Also,trying breaking down major examples of literary genre as a section, most of the examples used in the page are very limited and doesn't provide enough information. I hope we can start to strengthen this page, together.

Thanks ~~

The 'imaginative' genre

The paragraph on the 'imaginative' genre (novels?) claims that fiction was invented in 18th century Europe. The citation for this is someone's book review in a sociology journal.

Fiction was not invented in 18th century Europe. The book most often called the first novel is from 11th century Japan.

Also, it seems absurd to claim that novels were invented because 18th century Europe had lots of wars and political instability. Wars and political instability have existed for literally all of human history.

I would like to remove that paragraph entirely but am writing this instead to see if someone wants to fix it.

Qatarperegrine (talk) 22:55, 7 May 2022 (UTC)