Genre Matters: Form, Force, and Filiation

Abstract

It is obviously no longer the case that genres are considered entirely distinct from one another, that each has its own prescriptive rules and criteria for evaluation of works within it, or that critics believe in a rigid hierarchy of genres. But that is not to say that genre no longer matters, that notions of genre have outlived their usefulness. Current approaches to genre emphasize function over form; that is, they are more interested in `genre as social action' than in genre as mere, or pure, literary form--which is to say that literary form is understood as, or in terms of, rhetorical force. In any case, notions of genre are still indispensable on two levels. First, genre terms are necessary if we wish merely to reconstruct and understand the history and development of life writing. Second, the difference between fiction and nonfiction, though not defined by a bright line, still matters in all kinds of ways--not the least of which are legal and ethical. My new project, which investigates the large number of memoirs of fathers published in North America since 1985, illustrates both the inadequacy and the indispensability of genre terms.