Literary genre is the most important element of a writer’s craft, of a reader’s understanding, of a critic’s tool-box. In every kind of literary (and non-literary) writing, it is genre that governs and shapes language, style, form, address and the engagement with the literary tradition; in deciding how to write about a particular subject, literary genre is the writer’s first consideration. In this module, we will study genre from the points of view of both writer and reader: that is, as a crucial part of the writer’s craft and as a powerful critical tool for the reader. As such, the workshops accompanying the lectcures will focus on developing close reading skills as well as exploring genre through creative writing exercises in poetry, prose and drama.
The module will examine a range of texts, classic to contemporary, drawn from the different genres of poetry, prose narrative, and drama. It will identify and explore the terms by which particular genres are designated and literary traditions built. Chosen texts will illustrate the flexibility, adaptation, and evolution of specific genres across time and space, in dialogue with other cognate texts and authors. The forms, language, style and structure of the selected works will be studied within the broader framework of genre. Texts to be studied include plays from Shakespeare to the present, poems from the sixteenth century to the present, and American short stories from the nineteenth century onwards.