The concept of literary genre

Abstract

Genre theory, as it has developed in the last forty years, hasmade use of what I call a constitutive concept of genre, a concept that hasbuilt into it the assumption that genre plays a central epistemic role in theinterpretation of verbal discourse. In this paper I argue that there aretheoretical problems with such a concept that have not been recognizedand that make it unsuitable as a critical instrument in literary history andliterary studies. A fruitful concept of literary genre needs to be pragmaticwith only a heuristic and not an epistemic function. As an example, thearticle looks at the criticism produced in connection with the picaresquenovel and in particular at the account given of the origin of the genre, anaccount that could not have been given if one had employed a constitutiveconcept of genre