Genre

Genre (French for 'kind, sort')[1] is any style or form of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.)

[2] In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other forms of art or entertainment, based on some set of stylistic criteria.

[4] Critical discussion of genre perhaps began with a classification system for ancient Greek literature, as set out in Aristotle's Poetics.

The genres, which were mainly applied to painting, in hierarchical order are: The hierarchy was based on a distinction between art that made an intellectual effort to "render visible the universal essence of things" (imitare in Italian) and that which merely consisted of "mechanical copying of particular appearances" (ritrarre).

[8][9] The most general genres in literature are (in loose chronological order) epic, tragedy,[10] comedy, novel, and short story.

Lyric poetry, the fourth and final type of Greek literature, was excluded by Plato as a non-mimetic mode.

Genette continues by explaining the later integration of lyric poetry into the classical system during the romantic period, replacing the now removed pure narrative mode.

Genette reflects upon these various systems, comparing them to the original tripartite arrangement: "its structure is somewhat superior to…those that have come after, fundamentally flawed as they are by their inclusive and hierarchical taxonomy, which each time immediately brings the whole game to a standstill and produces an impasse" (74).

In his book Form in Tonal Music, Douglass M. Green lists madrigal, motet, canzona, ricercar, and dance as examples of genres from the Renaissance period.

However, Mozart's Rondo for Piano, K. 511, and the Agnus Dei from his Mass, K. 317 are quite different in genre but happen to be similar in form.

People constantly move between environments where diverse forms of music are heard, advertised and accessorised with distinctive iconographies, narratives and celebrity identities that also touch on non-musical worlds.

Genre, and numerous minutely divided subgenres, affect popular culture very significantly, not least as they are used to classify it for publicity purposes.

In philosophy of language, genre figures 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.

[21] Reiff and Bawarshi define genre analysis as a critical reading of people's patterns of communication in different situations.

Devitt, Reiff, and Bawarshi suggest that rhetorical genres may be assigned based on careful analysis of the subject matter and consideration of the audience.

Plato divided literature into the three classic genres accepted in Ancient Greece: poetry, drama, and prose.

These three imitational genres include dramatic dialogue, the drama; pure narrative, the dithyramb; and a mixture of the two, the epic.

Genette further discussed how Aristotle revised Plato's system by first eliminating the pure narrative as a viable mode.

Excluding the criteria of medium, Aristotle's system distinguished four types of classical genres: tragedy, epic, comedy, and parody.

Genette explained the integration of lyric poetry into the classical system by replacing the removed pure narrative mode.

This new system that came to "dominate all the literary theory of German romanticism" (Genette 38) has seen numerous attempts at expansion and revision.

Gennette reflected upon these various systems, comparing them to the original tripartite arrangement: "its structure is somewhat superior to most of those that have come after, fundamentally flawed as they are by their inclusive and hierarchical taxonomy, which each time immediately brings the whole game to a standstill and produces an impasse".

[28] It is also associated with the hyper-specific categories used in recommendations for television shows and movies on digital streaming platforms such as Netflix, and is sometimes used more broadly by scholars analyzing niche forms in other periods and other media.