Generic Hybridity Research Articles

Generic Games: The Ending of Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe

Abstract: This article unravels the careful encodings contained in the final sentence, the sphragis , of Longus’ novel Daphnis and Chloe . Building on previous studies on the ending, I delve more deeply into each of the key terms included in the final sentence and argue for the presence of New Comedy as the key complement to Bucolic in the novel’s generic hybridity. I focus on Chloe’s role as focalizer of the final sentence, and through key intratextual and intertextual resonances of the sphragis argue that the novel’s generic games are bound up above all in her experience and educational development.

Looking Back at Wasteland(s): A Historiographic Metafictional Reading of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five

Some moments can never become memories; on the contrary, every breath taken, every word uttered, and every gesture performed are reminiscent of them. Much as the past is said to be past, it never dies. Memories of war belong to this group of the past never past, as in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five (1969). The novel centres on a traumatized survivor of the Dresden bombing of World War II with an untraditional, fragmented, surreal, and impressive narrative style and generic hybridity of science fiction and historiographic metafiction. Slaughterhouse-Five is an example of historiographic metafiction in that it presents the bombing as a historical fact combined with fictional characters and the author's self-references, experiences, and interpretation of the event. The novel is also a significant work with regard to trauma studies inasmuch as it portrays the effects of wars on human psychology, the traumatized protagonist of the novel, along with other characters, including the author himself. Vonnegut employs metafictional elements to display that people experiencing war trauma create figurative wastelands, their minds become confused and disorganized, and the line between reality and fiction blurs, and thereby, he challenges the conventional boundaries between fiction and history. In that regard, what follows is an attempt to demonstrate how wars turn landscapes and human beings into wastelands both literally and figuratively through not only the author’s but also the protagonist Billy Pilgrim’s experiences and, finally, how postmodernism could be a tool to demonstrate those traumas.

Réflexions fragmentées : l'esthétique de l'hétérogénéité dans Cris de Laurent Gaudé

The analysis of the aesthetics of heterogeneity in Cris, a novel by the French writer Laurent Gaudé, and the link between this aesthetics and the writer's writing are at the heart of our reflection in this article. In this fragmented text, Gaudé ingeniously brings together two literary genres, creating an "impure" and chaotic literary universe. Generic hybridity and polyphony become the characteristics of this aesthetic of heterogeneity. This leads us to question the generic identity that vacillates between novel and theater. Moreover, through his writing, Gaudé aims to paint the contemporary Western world after the disillusionment of the modern project and its impact on society and the individual.

‘Multiple belongings’ in Zoë Wicomb’s ‘My Name Is HannaH’ (2005)

This article examines the short story/essay ‘My Name is HannaH’ (2005) by South African-born writer Zoë Wicomb, focusing on its generic hybridity, its translocal quality and its deeply intertextual structure. Retracing the life and works of the South African poet Arthur Nortje through the artifice of fiction, Wicomb exposes the discursive and relational nature of space and identity. By analysing the story’s extremely heterogeneous intertexts and its playful generic inbetweenness, I seek to show how Wicomb refuses any form of categorization or fixed notion, exposing, rather, the seams and fissures of the textuality of reality. Ultimately, I argue that the thematic and formal features of the selected narrative can foreground the relationship between world literature and the short story as a liminal, cosmopolitan and mutable genre, particularly appropriate for the representation of the interconnectedness of our society.

Generic Hybridity, Narrative Polyphony and Uncanny Slums in Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara

Deepa Anappara’s Djinn Patrol on the Purple (2020) centres on the mysterious disappearance of children from the basti of an Indian shantytown, thus immersing the reader into the climate of injustice, grievability and vulnerability of contemporary India. Anappara’s debut novel may be described as a coming-of-age narrative with elements of fantasy and crime fiction. It uses various focal perspectives, relying particularly on the ingenuous gazes and voices of the children from the basti. In my article, I will first explore the formal texture of Anappara’s novel, laying emphasis on its generic hybridity and multi-voiced narrative organization. Then, I will examine how the interface of precarity and resilience is thematised through a focus on the particular topography of the city, emblematic of the issues of grievability and vulnerability of present-day India. I will then conclude by showing how in Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line story-telling may be considered as an act of resistance in a world of social injustice.

Writing a Letter to One’s Muse: Genre memory and epistolography in Carl August Thielo’s Enveloppens eller Saloppens forunderlige Hændelser (1763)

Epistolary texts are often incorporated into 18th-century prose literature, but only rarely do they self-referentially discuss intertextuality as the mimesis of memory (Neumann 2005; 2008). Carl August Thielo’s “comic novel” uses a letter to the Muse to juxtapose a writer’s reliance on literary memoria and the demand for innovation.Drawing on Mikhail M. Bakhtin’s (1984) term “genre memory,” this paper examines the relationship between memory, generic hybridity and epistolography. Genre memory describes how, through the process of “novelization,” genres are incorporated and contemporised by the novel. Creative genre memory drives innovation by giving the most archaic generic elements a voice in narration and by establishing a ground for their hybrid interplay, thus producing a semantic surplus. By connecting this approach to epistolography, generic hybridity is illustrated as a product of material and narrative practices.In lieu of a preface to the reader, Thielo’s text begins with a Muse letter asking for assistance with the poetic work. This opens a discussion of generic differences and similarities, as well as the workings of intertextuality. At the same time, the engagement of texts with literary history is visualised via addresses to a mythical being belonging to literature’s memoria. Hence, the Muse letter depicts how poetical inventio builds on intertextuality to spark inspiration, thereby materialising the otherwise invisible, but crucial stage of writing before writing.This article serves to elaborate a first understanding of novelised epistolography and its potential for literary memory studies, which emphasises material and paratextual aspects over purely linguistic elements.

The Glocal Practice of Anthropomorphism: Storying Chinese Wild Animals for Young Readers

This article examines the generic dilemma in the representation of realistic wild animals in Shixi Shen’s Jackal and Wolf (2012) and Gerelchimeg Blackcrane’s Black Flame (2013), whereby the glocal features of anthropomorphism are found pertaining to the narrative artistry. Drawn from anthropomorphism studies, literary animal studies, and Chinese cultural tradition, it is argued that Shen’s mode of narration subscribes to the generic hybridity as a strategy of moral education to attract juvenile readers, whereas Blackcrane’s story enacts anthropomorphism critically towards the environmental ethics of witnessing. Conjoining the poetics of wild animal stories across cultures, this study further proposes the ethical capacity of anthropomorphism in storying wild animals in the Anthropocene.

Sex meets espionage: the romantic enigma in Elizabeth Bowen's feminist spy thriller

ABSTRACT Situating Elizabeth Bowen within a feminist literary history of experimentation with the conventions of popular genre fiction, this essay investigates the innovative generic hybridity of Bowen's WWII spy thriller, The Heat of the Day (1948). Through the imbrication of international espionage and a romance plotline, the novel demonstrates the intrusion of the wartime state into women's everyday lives and intimate relationships. Drawing connections between patriarchal oppression of women's sexual and political lives, Bowen maps the psychological struggle of the thriller onto the interpersonal conflicts of a love triangle, creating a romantic enigma her spy characters must solve. The result of the genre hybridity in Bowen's romance-thriller, I argue, is a rejection of the masculinized notions of patriotism associated with the spy thriller and endemic to the British political system at mid-century, and the reclamation of intimate spaces as sites of feminist political action and solidarity during times of war.

A Critical Companion to Old Norse Literary Genre

A Critical Companion to Old Norse Literary Genre

Brief Encounters: Sensation Fiction and the Short Story

Building on recent work on sensation short fiction, which has convincingly argued for the form’s significance to our knowledge of mid-Victorian sensationalist culture more broadly, this article examines Wilkie Collins’s ‘A Marriage Tragedy’ (1857–58), and Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s ‘Levison’s Victim’ (1870) and ‘The Mystery at Fernwood’ (1861). Through a focus on generic hybridity, marriage, and identity, the connections and divergences between the short and long forms of literary sensationalism are traced, from the passing of the Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act in 1857 to the first Married Women’s Property Act of 1870. These particular markers reflect the distinct emphasis on matrimony within these texts during a crucial period of public interest in the Marriage Question. It is argued that the sensation short story is more heavily characterised by gothic tropes than its longer counterpart, even as it eschews the supernatural. Female characters in these stories encounter marriage as an uncanny site of terror and are silenced and traumatised by these intimate experiences. Despite the legal reforms and ongoing public debate of the 1860s and 1870s, writers of the sensation short story suggest that modern marriage retains the threats to female liberty, safety, and sanity that characterised the gothic narratives of an earlier period.

Bad Realism

Bad Realism

[Rec] and beyond: Spanish cinema, digital technology and the transnationalization of horror

The horror franchise [Rec] (2007-2014) is one of the most remarkable accomplishments in 21st century Spanish cinema. While banking on transnational modes of address such as the ‘found footage’ aesthetics and the imperfect look of digital technology, these films also build upon existing traditions within Spanish cinema and television. At the same, from an financial standpoint, it is the most successful Spanish franchise ever in the international arena while obtaining sizeable box-office receipts in the domestic market. This article analyzes how the [Rec] saga deploys a variety of discourses to appeal to horror aficionados while utilizing popular cultural artifacts to engage national audiences. Firstly, it situates [Rec] within the history of recent Spanish cinema, scrutinizing the generic hybridity at the core of several post-1990 national film products to ultimately study how this interplay will turn central in the constant re-articulation of the franchise. Secondly, it positions [Rec] within the transnational rise of the ‘found footage’ horror subgenre, contextualizing it by analyzing other significant efforts such as The Blair Witch Project. Thirdly, it explores this transnational dimension through a detailed analysis of the different films’s marketing campaigns and how they relate to other products like Quarantine (2008), US remake of the first Spanish film. In this regard, it approaches how [Rec] conceptualizes film spectators as Internet, socially networked, users who participate in diverse, complementary, discourses across multiple online platforms.

Editors' Introduction

Editors' Introduction

Riding East—Western Myths, Nostalgia, and the Crossing of Generic Boundaries in Hidalgo (2004)

<i>Riding East</i>—Western Myths, Nostalgia, and the Crossing of Generic Boundaries in <i>Hidalgo</i> (2004)

Scatter and resist Ferrier writing Fukushima

This article explores the many ways in which Michaël Ferrier, novelist, academic, and essayist, writes about the triple disaster, known in the west as ‘Fukushima’, that struck Japan on 11 March 2011. He travelled up to the stricken area from Tokyo and wrote a witness account of his experiences, Fukushima: récit d’un désastre [‘Fukushima, Account of a Disaster’] (2012). During the ten years since Ferrier has continued to write prolifically about the disaster and its aftermath. This article discusses the hybrid genres used in Fukushima: récit d’un désastre to capture the appalling realities Ferrier witnessed and analyses how the generic hybridity arises from what I call an aesthetics of scatteredness, a model that also accurately describes the ensemble of his writings on Fukushima. It will also show how Ferrier’s generic choices indicate his ecological awareness and his desire to decentre the human in the context of disaster writing.

Generic hybridity in Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life

ABSTRACT This article explores the use of contrasting features from diverse literary genres in Hanya Yanagihara’s second novel A Little Life, published in 2015 and shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. These contrasting features are at times defined as different generic conventions altogether as in the case of Antibildungsroman by Gerhart Mayer or anti-fairy tale by Andre Jolles. Novel’s thematic concerns such as child sexual abuse, violence, self-injury, suicide on the one hand and male friendship, optimism, resilience on the other provide a challenging content to narrate and to read. This article examines how the novel makes use of conventions and motifs from Bildungsroman, Antibildungsroman, fairy tale, and anti-fairy tale to narrate trauma and the impossibility of recovery. Although the author is clear about her intentions regarding her use of cross-genre or hybrid genre, there is no extensive analysis as to how the application of various motifs from those genres complements the story. As the author moves from one convention to the next, it becomes increasingly clear to the reader that the novel defies expectations as well as any generic categorization.

Clichés orientalistes et stéréotypes formels dans un roman satirique : le cas de La vieille dame du riad de Fouad Laroui

This article analyses the novel “La vieille dame du riad” (2011) by Fouad Laroui, a Moroccan-Dutch writer of French expression. We examine the strategies (generic and intertextual) used by the novelist to ridicule the Orientalist prejudices which persist in the current time. Generic hybridity (the presence of some elements of the detective story, fantasy novel and oriental tale) is used to develop the satirical dimension of the novel.

Ensayo literario: hacia una teoría de la traducción

This article aims to contribute to the theoretical systematization of constituent aspects of the essay, in order to consider them in the practice of translation of this genre: argumentative superstructure, essayist narrator, ethical responsibility, generic hybridity, cultural references, and figures of speech and thought. To this end, we introduce a critical conceptualization of the essay and we review the theoretical-critical field of literary translation, both of traditional genres and of the essay, on which there are considerably less studies. We conclude that the identification and translation of these features result in the preservation of the stylistic and argumentative intentions of the essayist narrator, via which the translation constitutes an instance of ethical responsibility, both towards the author of the source text and the reader of the target text.

Ensayo literario: hacia una teoría de la traducción

Este artículo se propone contribuir a la sistematización teórica de rasgos constitutivos del ensayo, con miras a considerarlos en la práctica de traducción: superestructura argumentativa, narrador ensayista, responsabilidad ética, hibridez genérica, referencias culturales y figuras retóricas y de pensamiento. Para este fin, nos aproximamos a una conceptualización crítica del género; revisamos el campo teórico-crítico de la traducción literaria, tanto de géneros tradicionales como del ensayo, considerablemente menor. Concluimos que la identificación y traducción de estos rasgos redundan en la conservación de la voluntad de estilo y la intención argumentativa del bnarrador ensayista, con lo que la traducción se constituye una muestra de responsabilidad ética, tanto para con el autor del texto meta como para el lector de éste.

El microrrelato en perspectiva

The micro-story, cataloged by many as a subgenre of the short story and by others as a fourth narrative genre, currently occupies a privileged place in the studies of theory and literary analysis. And although its origin, denomination and foundational characteristics seem delimited, it remains in the focus of studies, research, academic journals and, of course, works of authors and anthologies. The explanation for this explosion and expansion of the micro-story is its discursive, formal, thematic and pragmatic characteristics, which favor its protean character. Before addressing the micro-story and defining the constant and systematic attributes that typify it, we will expose its possible characterizations in the territory of brevity. First, we will deal with the discursive features: hyper-openness, narrativity, conciseness and expressive intensity, generic hybridity and fragmentariness; then, the formal ones: relevance of the title, simple structure, typified characters, absence of descriptive paragraphs, the value of the ellipsis and the surprise endings; in terms of the theme: intertextuality and metaliterature coexist with humor and parody; finally, the pragmatic features, which seek the complicity of the active reader able to find out the true meaning of a meticulously prepared text.