Ways of Reading Third Edition - Martin Montgomery, Alan Durant, Nigel Fabb, Tom Furniss, Sara Mills 2007

Activity 4.1
Unit 4 Recognizing genre
Section 1 Basic techniques and problem-solving

This activity explores the ability of readers and viewers to recognize text types almost instantly and fairly precisely. (You can check the general claim that readers and viewers can do this by surfing channels on a TV or scanning radio frequencies.)

Four brief extracts are given below. Each is from the beginning (or very near the beginning) of the work it comes from. All four extracts are from works that in a broad sense are in the ’novel’ genre; but arguably they are placed differently in relation to that genre.

1 Make a list of qualities or attributes of each text that support the idea that it is broadly in the novel genre. Compare what happens when you do this by invoking a list of ’essential features of a novel’ and when you start with a looser, prototypical idea of what a novel is or with a particular novel you are familiar with, using that novel as an exemplary case. (See discussion in this unit for details of these approaches.)

2 Now identify any qualities or attributes of each text that suggest it may be problematic in relation to the novel genre. Take care only to identify features that would affect inclusion in or exclusion from the genre; this will oblige you to distinguish attributes you take to be criteria for the novel genre from more general description of the extract.

3 Finally, consider how exposure to further cues in a text may prompt revision to an initial genre categorization. Even without knowing or trying to research answers, decide what you would now look for in the continuation of each extract in order to test the genre judgements you have made so far.

Text A

A

In the beginnings of the last chapter, I informed you exactly when I was born; - but I did not inform you how. No; that particular was reserved entirely for a chapter by itself; - besides, Sir, as you and I are in a manner perfect strangers to each other, it would not have been proper to have let you into too many circumstances relating to myself all at once. - You must have a little patience. I have undertaken, you see, to write not only my life, but my opinions also; hoping and expecting that your knowledge of my character, and of what kind of a mortal I am, by the one, would give you a better relish for the other: As you proceed further with me, the slight acquaintance which is now beginning betwixt us, will grow into familiarity; and that, unless one of us is in fault, will terminate in friendship.

(Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (1759-67), Volume 1, Chapter 6)

Text B

B

Of late years an abundant shower of curates has fallen upon the north of England: they lie very thick on the hills; every parish has one or more of them; they are young enough to be very active, and ought to be doing a great deal of good. But not of late years are we about to speak; we are going back to the beginning of this century: late years - present years are dusty, sunburnt, hot, arid; we will evade the noon, forget it in siesta, pass the midday in slumber, and dream of dawn.

If you think, from this prelude, that anything like a romance is preparing for you, reader, you never were more mistaken. Do you anticipate sentiment, and poetry, and reverie? Do you expect passion, and stimulus, and melodrama? Calm your expectations; reduce them to a lowly standard. Something real, cool and solid lies before you; something unromantic as Monday morning, when all who have work wake with the consciousness that they must rise and betake themselves thereto.

(Charlotte Bronte, Shirley (1849), Chapter 1)

Text C

C

My father has asked me to be the fourth corner at the Joy Luck Club. I am to replace my mother, whose seat at the mah jong table has been empty since she died two months ago. My father thinks she was killed by her own thoughts.

’She had a new idea inside her head,’ said my father. ’But before it could come out of her mouth, the thought grew too big and burst. It must have been a very bad idea.’

The doctor said she died of a cerebral aneurysm. And her friends at the Joy Luck Club said she died just like a rabbit: quickly and

with unfinished business left behind. My mother was supposed to host the next meeting of the Joy Luck Club.

The week before she died, she called me, full of pride, full of life:

’Auntie Lin cooked red bean soup for Joy Luck. I’m going to cook black sesame-seed soup.’

’Don’t show off,’ I said.

(Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club(1989), Chapter 1: ’Jing-Mei Woo, The Joy Luck Club’)

Text D

(Tom Phillips, A Humument: A Treated Victorian

Novel [1980], 4th edn (2005))

Reading

Aristotle (c.400 bc), Poetics (many editions available, e.g. in (1996) trans. Malcolm Heath, Harmondsworth: Penguin).

Duff, D. (ed.) (2000) Modern Genre Theory, London: Longman.

Frye, N. (1957) Anatomy of Criticism, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, esp. pp. 158-239.

Fuller, J. (1972) The Sonnet, London: Methuen.

Watt, I. (1972) The Rise of the Novel, Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Williams, R. (1966) Modern Tragedy, London: Chatto & Windus.