Social Criticism

Abstract

The treatment of ‘social criticism’ as a genre can occur only within a classification system that has moved away from structural definitions of genre and towards functional or a/effectual definitions. Social criticism takes many forms apart from the non‐fiction prose treatise that is its most familiar guise. More attitude or perspective than type of writing, social criticism is the often impassioned motive behind many novels, poems, and plays. To read a work as social criticism is to consider how it protests the limits imposed on human interaction – including, sometimes, the generic limits imposed on writing – and how it arouses resistance.