Critical Concepts

Genre and genres | mythos and mythoi

Genre in general

The term "genre" means kind or sort.  Usually when we think of genres we are thinking of games or game-like practices that "are what they are" in virtue of certain rules (or "conventions") by which the participants "play by" in order for the game to take place.  

All games of American football, for example, share certain constitutive rules -- whether we have to do with an informal sandlot tag match, a 5th-grade city league flag football contest, an indoor 8-man "arena" game, or an NCAA or an NFL contest.  Each of these in turn falls in its own genre (some sub-genre of American football).  And if we want, we can form a more general notion (notice that "general" and "genre" come from the same word stem) if we want to consider a genre that would include all of these and professional Canadian football as well.  We can go further yet and consider as an even broader genre by noticing the family resemblances between what characterizes these and what goes on in Australian football -- and, if we want to focus on yet more general similarities, what the British call football, and we in the US are used to calling rugby.  (You might see what you can turn up by doing a search on www.google.com on a phrase like "football rules").  There are no generally recognized terms for these genres, but we could coin them to suit ourselves.  An even higher level of common denominator would take in what Europeans and Latin Americans mean by "football," that is, what in the US goes under the name of "soccer."  

These "generic" similarities are in these cases the residue of distinctive "genealogies":  that is, they have emerged by a complicated history of evolutionary divergence.  You can get a glimpse of this history of "football" (in this widest sense) at the History of Football page at the Technical University of Berlin.  American football itself has not always been what it is today, as you can discover from a page on American football history.

Note that there is nothing that rules out considering a given game to belong to more than one genre.  For many purposes, it might make more sense, in classifying soccer, to fasten upon what it shares with, say, the various forms of hockey (ice hockey, field hockey), lacrosse, polo (in water or on horses), and (as we say) "the like."

And, as both the evolution of the general football family of games and the phrase "the like" indicate, genres are open-ended.  We can delimit them as we find convenient for special purposes, just as we can form new games if we judge that doing so will make them more interesting (cf. the acceptance of the forward pass in American football, or the introduction of the three-point shot into basketball in recent years) or safer (cf. the introduction of penalties for grasping a facemask [when there weren't even such things as facemasks in, say, 1928] or for certain kinds of blocks).

Genres as "literary kinds":  two schemes of classification 

The term "genre" has found a place in quite different sorts of classification systems useful in the discussion of literature.  Both are important.  But to avoid confusion, we need to get clear, in a given context, which one is being called into play.

One familiar scheme distinguishes between narrative, dramatic and lyric works, according to whether we have a story conveyed by a story-teller (as in Homer's epics or in novels or short stories), or a story conveyed by enactment (e.g., on a stage or through film), or a speaker's expression of emotion.  Each of these types of literary practice has developed its own repertory of techniques and a range of sub-genres.  Sometimes one finds added to these three a genre of "exposition" (the sermons of John Donne or the verse epistles comprising Alexander Pope's Essay on Man are notable examples), in which the speaker's aim (the speaker here generally being put forward as the author) is to explain a topic or convince us, by argument, of a thesis.

A different classification that has claimed the interest of students of literature is one elaborated by the critic Northrop Frye in the third essay of his Anatomy of Criticism:  Four Essays (1957):  tragedy, comedy, romance, and satire.  Frye appropriates the Greek term mythos (plot; plural mythoi) as an alternative term for these "generic plots."   (He also sometimes calls them "pregeneric elements of literature," since they they are more fundamental in narrative ("stories" in general) than drama and narration, forming the material out of which these are made).

        [A]re there narrative categories of literature broader than, or logically prior to, the ordinary literary genres?  There are four such categories:  the romantic, the tragic, the comic, and the ironic or satiric.  We get the same answer by inspection if we look at the ordinary meanings of these terms.  Tragedy and comedy may have been originally names for two species of drama, but we also employ the terms to describe general characteristics of literary fictions, without regard to genre.  It would be silly to insist that comedy can refer only to a certain type of stage play, and must never be employed in connection with Chaucer or Jan Austen.  Chaucer himself would certainly have defined comedy, as his monk defines tragedy, much more broadly than that.  If we are told that what we are about to read is tragic or comic, we expect a certain kind of structure and mood, but not necessarily a certain genre [in the ordinary sense of the term].  The same is true of the word romance, and also of the words irony and satire, which are, as generally employed, elements of the literature of experience, and which we shall hear adopt in place of "realism."  We thus have four narrative pregeneric elements of literature which I shall call mythoi or generic plots. 
        If we think of our experience of these mythoi, we shall realize that they form two opposed pairs.  Tragedy and comedy contrast rather than blend, and so do romance and irony, the champions respectively of the ideal and the actual.  On the other hand, comedy blends insensibly into satire at one extreme and into romance at the other; romance may be comic or tragic; tragic extends from high romance to bitter and ironic realism.

Note:  Frye preferred the terms myth and mythoi to the terms genre and genres, because he thought clarity would be better served by reserving the latter terms to the usages already in place when he directed attention to the more basic generic plots the genres of narration and drama exploited.  He may have been right.  But his discussion has been so influential as to shape the general critical usage of the term "genre" itself.  Nowadays, when we encounter the term "literary genre," we have to ask ourselves whether we have to do with the older classification (narration, drama, lyric, essay) or with Frye's own classification (tragedy, comedy, romance, satire), a classification of what Frye called mythoi. 

What makes these different "basic plots" different?   A Frye notes in passing, they embody different structures, and these structures in turn make for different moods.  Structure in turn entails the prevalence of certain types of characters.  And distinctive moods tend to lend themselves to certain thematic possibilities.

One of the useful features of the concept of genre is that it calls our attention to the role of convention in shaping expectation.  If we are able to enjoy watching (or playing) both American football and soccer, that is because we are familiar with the rules that makes each what it is, and know what to look for as a skillful and strategic in each kind of game.  (We are, that is, "critics" --  not in the sense that we find fault, but in the sense that we know what to attend to.  [The term "critic" derives from the Greek verb krinein, meaning to pick or pick out, select.]  If we are not critics in this sense, we don't tune in to what is relevant, and are thus unable to experience the particular kind of enjoyment each sport affords.)  Similarly, the more kinds of literary genres (and sub-genres) we are familiar with, the more kinds of appropriate curiosities, depending on what we are confronted with, we are equipped to bring to bear -- and the more kinds of interesting experiences we are able to enter into.  Conversely, if we try to read a romantic tragedy as an ironic tragedy, we are going to be just plain baffled -- as we are if we try to make sense of Australian football by trying to bring to bear what we have picked up as the kinds of notions that "make sense of" what goes on in games of American football.  It's like insisting on doing a waltz when your partner is bent on doing the watusi.  There's a fatal disconnect between you (the reader) and your counterpart (the work you're trying to read).

Hey, there's always the library!  But if you'd like to acquire a copy of Frye's book (you'll be inspired to take lots of notes in the margins), be advised that Anatomy of Criticism, Updated Edition with an Introduction by Harold Bloom (paperback, August 2000) is available (new and used)

For a used copy of one or another printing (hardcover or paperback), check out what's available at 

Consider supporting your local bookseller.  In Manhattan, Kansas, that's Claflin Books and Copies, in the strip mall across from the Marlatt dorm complex at the corner of Claflin Road and Denison Avenue.  The ISBN is 0691069999.

  Suggestions are welcome.  Please send your comments to lyman@ksu.edu .

   Contents copyright © 2002 by Lyman A. Baker. 

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  This page last updated 26 August 2002 .