The Ideology of Genre: A Comparative Study of Generic Instability - Softcover

Beebee, Thomas O.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0271010231 ISBN 13: 9780271010236

Publisher: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994

Synopsis

In a series of comparative essays on a range of texts embracing both high and popular culture from the early modern era to the contemporary period, The Ideology of Genre counters both formalists and advocates of the "death of genre," arguing instead for the inevitability of genre as discursive mediation. At the same time, Beebee demonstrates that genres are inherently unstable because they are produced intertextually, by a system of differences without positive terms. In short, genre is the way texts get used. To deny that genres exist is to deny, in a sense, the possibility of reading; if genres exist, on the other hand, then they exist not as essences but as differences, and thus those places within and between texts where genres "collide" reveal the connections between generic status, interpretive strategy, ideology, and the use-value of language.

About this title

About the Author

Thomas O. Beebee is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and German at the Pennsylvania State University and author of "Clarissa" on the Continent: Translation and Seduction (Penn State, 1990) and co-translator (with Qing-yun Wu) of The Remote Garden by Bai Hua (1994).

Edition details

• Publisher: Pennsylvania State University Press
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0271010231
• ISBN 13: 9780271010236
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 312