An Introduction to Literary Studies PDF

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This book provides a comprehensive survey of literary studies, covering various aspects of different texts including fiction, poetry, drama, film. It also explains different theoretical approaches and writing research papers.

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An Introduction to Literary Studies An Introduction to Literary Studies provides the beginner with an accessible and comprehensive survey of literature. Systematically taking in theory, genre and literary history, Klarer provides easy-to- understand descriptions of a variety of approache...

An Introduction to Literary Studies An Introduction to Literary Studies provides the beginner with an accessible and comprehensive survey of literature. Systematically taking in theory, genre and literary history, Klarer provides easy-to- understand descriptions of a variety of approaches to texts. This invaluable guide includes sections on: fiction poetry drama film covering: a range of theoretical approaches an extensive glossary of major literary and cinematic terms guidelines for writing research papers. Mario Klarer is Associate Professor of English and American Studies at the University of Innsbruck. An Introduction to Literary Studies Mario Klarer LONDON AND NEW YORK Published 1998 (3rd revised edition) by Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt as Einführung in die anglistisch- amerikanistische Literaturwissenschaft © 1998 Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt First published in English 1999 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 1999 Routledge All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Klarer, Mario, 1962– [Einführung in die anglistisch-amerikanistische Literaturwissenschaft. English] An introduction to literary studies/ Mario Klarer. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. English literature—History and criticism—Theory, etc. 2. American literature—History and criticism— Theory, etc. I. Title. PR21.K5213 1999 820.9–dc21 99–25771 CIP ISBN 0-203-97841-2 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-415-21169-7 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-21170-0 (pbk) For Bernadette, Johanna and Moritz Contents Preliminary remarks viii Acknowledgments x 1 What is literature, what is a text? 1 1 Genre, text type and discourse 3 2 Primary and secondary sources 4 2 Major genres in textual studies 9 1 Fiction 9 2 Poetry 27 3 Drama 42 4 Film 54 3 Periods of English Literatures 65 4 Theoretical approaches to literature 73 1 Text-oriented approaches 76 2 Author-oriented approaches 88 3 Reader-oriented approaches 89 4 Context-oriented approaches 91 5 Literary critique or evaluation 97 5 Where and how to find secondary literature 101 6 How to write a scholarly paper 107 7 Suggestions for further reading 119 8 Glossary of literary and cinematographic terms 129 Notes 149 Author and title index 151 Subject index 159 Preliminary remarks This concise introduction provides a general survey of various aspects of textual studies for college students who intend to specialize in English or American literature and want to acquire a basic familiarity with the entire field. The book targets both the European and American college market: it is not only designed for beginners in the European system, where students have to specialize in one or two disciplines upon entering university, but it also meets the requirements for American undergraduates who have opted for a major in English and need an introduction to the more scholarly aspects of literary studies, one which goes beyond freshman Introduction to Literature courses. It therefore serves as a textbook for Introduction to English Literature classes at all major European universities or advanced undergraduate English (honors) courses in the USA and as an independent study guide. Its simple language and accessible style make the book equally apt for English native speakers as well as students of English Literature whose native language is other than English. Unlike most of the existing American textbooks geared toward freshman Introduction to Literature courses, which emphasize the first-hand reading of primary texts, this book targets a slightly more advanced audience interested in the scholarly aspects of literature. The book does not include entire literary texts, but rather draws on a number of very short excerpts to illustrate major issues of literary studies as an academic discipline. An Introduction deals with questions concerning the nature of “literature” and “text,” discusses the three major textual genres, as well as film and its terminology, gives an overview of the most important periods of Literatures in English, and raises issues of literary theory. A separate section explains basic research and composition techniques pertinent for the beginner. An extensive vii glossary of the major literary and cinematic terms gives easy and quick access to terminological information and also serves as a means to test one’s knowledge when preparing for exams. In order to meet the expectations of contemporary textual studies, major emphasis is placed on the accessibility of literary theory for beginners. All major schools and approaches, including the latest developments, are presented with reference to concrete textual examples. Film is integrated as a fourth genre alongside fiction, poetry and drama to highlight the interdependence of literature and film in both artistic production and scholarly inquiry. The chapters on basic research and composition techniques explain today’s standard computational facilities such as the online use of the MLA International Bibliography as well as the most important rules of the MLA Style Sheet and guidelines for research papers. The book owes a great deal to my interaction with students in the Introduction to Literature classes which I taught at the American Studies and Comparative Literature Departments of the University of Innsbruck. I also owe thanks for suggestions and critical comments to friends and colleagues, including Sonja Bahn, Gudrun M.Grabher, Monika Messner, Wolfgang Koch and Elliott Schreiber. Large parts of the book were written during an Erwin Schrödinger Fellowship at the Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities in Santa Monica from 1992 to 1994. The English translation was completed at the National Humanities Center in North Carolina during a Rockefeller Fellowship in 1995/ 96. I am particularly indebted to a number of friends for reading the manuscript. Monika Fludernik, J.Paul Hunter, Ulrich C.Knoepflmacher, Christian Mair, Steven Marcus and Devin Stewart have been very generous in their advice. My biggest thanks go to my companion Bernadette Rangger for critically discussing every chapter of the book from its earliest stages to its final version, f’or having been with me during all these years and for having made these years a wonderful time. Acknowledgments ‘Stop All the Clocks’ on p. 32 from W.H.Auden: Collected Poems by W.H.Auden, edited by Edward Mendelson. Copyright © 1940 and renewed 1968 by W.H.Auden. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc. Part of ‘In a Station of the Metro’ on p. 35 by Ezra Pound, from Personae. Copyright © 1926 by Ezra Pound. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp. ‘l(a’ on p. 37 is reprinted from Complete Poems 1904–1962, by E.E.Cummings, edited by George J.Firmage, by permission of W.W.Norton. Copyright © 1991 by the Trustees for the E.E.Cummings Trust and George James Firmage. Chapter 1 What is literature, what is a text? Look up the term literature in any current encyclopedia and you will be struck by the vagueness of its usage as well as an inevitable lack of substance in the attempts to define it. In most cases, literature is referred to as the entirety of written expression, with the restriction that not every written document can be categorized as literature in the more exact sense of the word. The definitions, therefore, usually include additional adjectives such as “aesthetic” or “artistic” to distinguish literary works from texts of everyday use such as telephone books, newspapers, legal documents and scholarly writings. Etymologically, the Latin word “litteratura” is derived from “littera” (letter), which is the smallest element of alphabetical writing. The word text is related to “textile” and can be translated as “fabric”: just as single threads form a fabric, so words and sentences form a meaningful and coherent text. The origins of the two central terms are, therefore, not of great help in defining literature or text. It is more enlightening to look at literature or text as cultural and historical phenomena and to investigate the conditions of their production and reception. Underlying literary production is certainly the human wish to leave behind a trace of oneself through creative expression, which will exist detached from the individual and, therefore, outlast its creator. The earliest manifestations of this creative wish are prehistoric paintings in caves, which hold “encoded” information in the form of visual signs. This visual component inevitably remains closely connected to literature throughout its various historical and social manifestations. In some periods, however, the pictorial dimension is pushed into the background and is hardly noticeable. 2 WHAT IS LITERATURE, WHAT IS A TEXT? Not only the visual—writing is always pictorial—but also the acoustic element, the spoken word, is an integral part of literature, for the alphabet translates spoken words into signs. Before writing developed as a system of signs, whether pictographs or alphabets, “texts” were passed on orally. This predecessor of literary expression, called “oral poetry,” consisted of texts stored in a bard’s or minstrel’s memory which could be recited upon demand. It is assumed that most of the early classical and Old English epics were produced in this tradition and only later preserved in written form. This oral component, which runs counter to the modern way of thinking about texts, has been revived in our century through the medium of radio and other sound carriers. Audio-literature and the lyrics of songs display the acoustic features of literary phenomena. The visual in literary texts, as well as the oral dimension, has been pushed into the background in the course of history. While in the Middle Ages the visual component of writing was highly privileged in such forms as richly decorated handwritten manuscripts, the arrival of the modern age—along with the invention of the printing press—made the visual element disappear or reduced it to a few illustrations in the text. “Pure” writing became more and more stylized as an abstract medium devoid of traces of material or physical elements. The medieval union of word and picture, in which both components of the text formed a single, harmonious entity and even partly overlapped, slowly disappeared. This modern “iconoclasm” not only restricts the visual dimensions of texts but also sees writing as a medium which can function with little connection to the acoustic element of language. It is only in drama that the union between the spoken word and visual expression survives in a traditional literary genre, although this feature is not always immediately noticeable. Drama, which is —traditionally and without hesitation—viewed as literature, combines the acoustic and the visual elements, which are usually classified as non-literary. Even more obviously than in drama, the symbiosis of word and image culminates in film. This young medium is particularly interesting for textual studies, since word and picture are recorded and, as in a book, can be looked up at any time. Methods of literary and textual criticism are, therefore, frequently applied to the cinema and acoustic media. Computer hypertexts and networks such as the Internet are the latest hybrids WHAT IS LITERATURE, WHAT IS A TEXT? 3 of the textual and various media; here writing is linked to sounds, pictures or even video clips within an interdependent network. Although the written medium is obviously the main concern in the study of literature or texts, this field of inquiry is also closely related to other media such as the stage, painting, film, music or even computer networks. As a result of the permeation of modern textual studies with unusual media, there have been major controversies as to the definition of “text.” Many authors and critics have deliberately left the traditional paths of literature, abandoning old textual forms in order to find new ways of literary expression and analysis. Visual and acoustic elements are being reintroduced into literature, and media, genres, text types and discourses are being mixed. 1 Genre, text type and discourse Literary criticism, like biology, resorts to the concept of evolution or development and to criteria of classification to distinguish various genres. The former area is referred to as literary history, whereas the latter is termed poetics. Both fields are closely related to the issue at hand, as every attempt to define text or literature touches not only upon differences between genres but also upon the historical dimensions of these literary forms of expression. The term genre usually refers to one of the three classical literary forms of epic, drama, or poetry. This categorization is slightly confusing as the epic occurs in verse, too, but is not classified as poetry. It is, in fact, a precursor of the modern novel (i.e., prose fiction) because of its structural features such as plot, character presentation and narrative perspective. Although this old classification is still in use, the tendency today is to abandon the term “epic” and introduce “prose,” “fiction” or “prose fiction” for the relatively young literary forms of the novel and the short story. Beside the genres which describe general areas of traditional literature, the term text type has been introduced, under the influence of linguistics. Texts which cannot be categorized under the canonical genres of fiction, drama and poetry are now often dealt with in modern linguistics. Scholars are looking at texts which were previously regarded as worthless or irrelevant for textual analysis. The term text type refers to highly conventional 4 WHAT IS LITERATURE, WHAT IS A TEXT? written documents such as instruction manuals, sermons, obituaries, advertising texts, catalogues, and scientific or scholarly writing. It can, of course, also include the three main literary genres and their sub-genres. A further key term in theoretical treatises on literary phenomena is discourse. Like text type, it is used as a term for any kind of classifiable linguistic expression. It has become a useful denotation for various linguistic conventions referring to areas of content and theme; for instance, one may speak of male or female, political, sexual, economic, philosophical and historical discourse. The classifications for these forms of linguistic expression are based on levels of content, vocabulary, syntax, as well as stylistic and rhetorical elements. Whereas the term text type refers to written documents, discourse includes written and oral expression. In sum, genre is applied primarily to the three classical forms of the literary tradition; text type is a broader term that is also applicable to “non-canonical” written texts, i.e., those which are traditionally not classified as literature. Discourse is the broadest term, referring to a variety of written and oral manifestations which share common thematic or structural features. The boundaries of these terms are not fixed and vary depending on the context in which they appear. 2 Primary and secondary sources Traditional literary studies distinguish between the artistic object, or primary source, and its scholarly treatment in a critical text, or secondary source. Primary sources denote the traditional objects of analysis in literary criticism, including texts from all literary genres, such as fiction, poetry or drama. The term secondary source applies to texts such as articles (or essays), book reviews and notes (brief comments on a very specific topic), all of which are published primarily in scholarly journals. In Anglo-American literary criticism, as in any other academic discipline, regularly published journals inform readers about the latest results of researchers (see Chapter 5). Essays are also published as collections (or anthologies) compiled by one or several editors on a specific theme. If such an anthology is published in honor of a famous researcher, it is often called a festschrift, a term which comes from the German but is also used in English. Book- WHAT IS LITERATURE, WHAT IS A TEXT? 5 length scholarly treatises on a single theme are called monographs. Most dissertations and scholarly books published by university presses belong to this group. In terms of content, secondary literature tries to uphold those standards of scholarly practice which have, over time, been established for scientific discourse, including objectivity, documentation of sources and general validity. It is vital for any reader to be able to check and follow the arguments, results and statements of literary criticism. As the interpretation of texts always contains subjective traits, objective criteria or the general validity of the thesis can only be applied or maintained to a certain degree. This can be seen as the main difference between literary criticism and the natural sciences. At the same time, it is the basis for the tremendous creative potential of this academic field. With changes of perspective and varying methodological approaches, new results in the interpretation of texts can be suggested. As far as documentation of sources is concerned, however, the requirements in literary criticism are as strict as those of the natural sciences. The reader of a secondary source should be able to retrace every quotation or paraphrase (summary) to the primary or secondary source from which it has been taken. Although varying and subjective opinions on texts will remain, the scholarly documentation of the sources should permit the reader to refer back to the original texts and thus make it possible to compare results and judge the quality of the interpretation. As a consequence of these conventions in documentation, a number of formal criteria have evolved in literary criticism which can be summarized by the term critical apparatus, which includes the following elements: footnotes or endnotes, providing comments on the main text or references to further secondary or primary sources; a bibliography (or list of works cited); and, possibly, an index. This documentation format has not always been followed in scholarly texts, but it has developed into a convention in the field over the last several centuries (see also Chapter 6). forms of secondary sources publishing media essay (article) journal note anthology (collection) book review festschrift 6 WHAT IS LITERATURE, WHAT IS A TEXT? forms of secondary sources publishing media review article book monograph formal aspects of aspects of content secondary literature footnotes objectivity bibliography lucid arguments index general validity of quotations thesis The strict separation of primary from secondary sources is not always easy. The literary essay of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is a historical example which shows that our modern classification did not exist in rigid form in earlier periods. This popular genre treated a clearly defined, abstract or theoretical topic in overtly literary language, and thus possessed the stylistic features of primary sources; however, the themes and questions that it dealt with are typical for scholarly texts or secondary sources. From a modern perspective, therefore, the literary essay bridges two text types. In the twentieth century, the traditional classification of primary and secondary sources is often deliberately neglected. A famous example from literature in English is T.S.Eliot’s (1888–1965) modernist poem The Waste Land (1922), in which the American poet includes footnotes (a traditional element of secondary sources) in the primary text. In the second half of the twentieth century, this feature has been further developed and employed in two ways: elements of secondary sources are added to literary texts, and elements of primary sources—e.g., the absence of a critical apparatus or an overtly literary style—are incorporated in secondary texts. The strict separation of the two text types is therefore not always possible. Vladimir Nabokov’s (1899–1977) novel Pale Fire (1962) is an example of the deliberate confusion of text types in American literature. Pale Fire consists of parts—for instance, the text of a poem—which can be labeled as primary sources, but also of other parts which are normally characteristic of scholarly treatises or critical editions of texts, such as a “Foreword” by the editor of the WHAT IS LITERATURE, WHAT IS A TEXT? 7 poem, a “Commentary” with stylistic analysis as well as critical comments on the text, and an “Index” of the characters in the poem. In the (fictitious) foreword signed by the (fictitious) literary critic Charles Kinbote, Nabokov introduces a poem by the (fictitious) author Francis Shade. Nabokov’s novel borrows the form of a critical edition, in which the traditional differentiation between literary text and scholarly commentary or interpretation remains clearly visible. In the case of Pale Fire, however, all text types are created by the author Vladimir Nabokov himself, who tries to point out the arbitrariness of this artificial categorization of primary and secondary sources. The fact that this text is named a novel, even though it has a poem at its center, calls attention to the relativity inherent in the traditional categorization of genres. 8 Chapter 2 Major genres in textual studies As early as Greco-Roman antiquity, the classification of literary works into different genres has been a major concern of literary theory, which has since then produced a number of divergent and sometimes even contradictory categories. Among the various attempts to classify literature into genres, the triad epic, drama, and poetry has proved to be the most common in modern literary criticism. Because the epic was widely replaced by the new prose form of the novel in the eighteenth century, recent classifications prefer the terms fiction, drama, and poetry as designations of the three major literary genres. The following section will explain the basic characteristics of these literary genres as well as those of film, a fourth textual manifestation in the widest sense of the term. We will examine these types of texts with reference to concrete examples and introduce crucial textual terminology and methods of analysis helpful for understanding the respective genres. 1 Fiction Although the novel emerged as the most important form of prose fiction in the eighteenth century, its precursors go back to the oldest texts of literary history. Homer’s epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey (c. 7th century BC), and Virgil’s (70–19 BC) Aeneid (c. 31–19 BC) influenced the major medieval epics such as Dante Alighieri’s (1265–1321) Italian Divina Commedia (Divine Comedy; c. 1307–21) and the early modern English epics such as Edmund Spenser’s (c. 1552–99) Faerie Queene (1590; 1596) and John Milton’s (1608–74) baroque long poem Paradise Lost (1667). The majority of traditional epics center around a hero who has to fulfill a number of tasks of national or cosmic significance in 10 MAJOR GENRES IN TEXTUAL STUDIES a multiplicity of episodes. Classical epics in particular, through their roots in myth, history, and religion, reflect a self-contained worldview of their particular periods and nationalities. With the obliteration of a unified Weltanschauung in early modern times, the position of the epic weakened and it was eventually replaced by the novel, the mouthpiece of relativism that was emerging in all aspects of cultural discourse. Although traditional epics are written in verse, they clearly distinguish themselves from other forms of poetry by length, narrative structure, depiction of characters, and plot patterns and are therefore regarded—together with the romance—as precursors of the modern novel. As early as classical times, but more strongly in the late Middle Ages, the romance established itself as an independent genre. Ancient romances such as Apuleius’s Golden Ass (2nd century AD) were usually written in prose, while medieval works of this genre use verse forms, as in the anonymous Middle English Arthurian romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (fourteenth century). Despite its verse form and its eventful episodes, the romance is nevertheless considered a forerunner of the novel mainly because of its tendency toward a focused plot and unified point of view (see also the sections on plot and point of view in this chapter). While the scope of the traditional epic is usually broad, the romance condenses the action and orients the plot toward a particular goal. At the same time, the protagonist or main character is depicted with more detail and greater care, thereby moving beyond the classical epic whose main character functions primarily as the embodiment of abstract heroic ideals. In the romances, individual traits, such as insecurity, weakness, or other facets of character come to the foreground, anticipating distinct aspects of the novel. The individualization of the protagonist, the deliberately perspectival point of view, and above all the linear plot structure, oriented toward a specific climax which no longer centers around national or cosmic problems, are among the crucial features that distinguish romance from epic poetry. The novel, which emerged in Spain during the seventeenth century and in England during the eighteenth century, employs these elements in a very deliberate manner, although the early novels remain deeply rooted in the older genre of the epic. Miguel de Cervantes’ (1547–1616) Don Quixote (1605; 1615), for instance, puts an end to the epic and to the chivalric romance by MAJOR GENRES IN TEXTUAL STUDIES 11 parodying their traditional elements (a lady who is not so deserving of adoration is courted by a not-so-noble knight who is involved in quite unheroic adventures). At the same time, however, Cervantes initiates a new and modified epic tradition. Similarly, the Englishman Henry Fielding (1707–54) characterizes his novel Joseph Andrews (1742) as a “comic romance” and “comic epic poem in prose,” i.e., a parody and synthesis of existing genres. Also, in the plot structure of the early novel, which often tends to be episodic, elements of the epic survive in a new attire. In England, Daniel Defoe’s (1660–1731) Robinson Crusoe (1719), Samuel Richardson’s (1689–1761) Pamela (1740–41) and Clarissa (1748–49), Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones (1749), and Laurence Sterne’s (1713–68) Tristram Shandy (1759–67) mark the beginning of this new literary genre, which replaces the epic, thus becoming one of the most productive genres of modern literature. The newly established novel is often characterized by the terms “realism” and “individualism,” thereby summarizing some of the basic innovations of this new medium. While the traditional epic exhibited a cosmic and allegorical dimension, the modern novel distinguishes itself through grounding the plot in a distinct historical and geographical reality. The allegorical and typified epic hero metamorphoses into the protagonist of the novel, with individual and realistic character traits. These features of the novel, which in their attention to individualism and realism reflect basic socio-historical tendencies of the eighteenth century, soon made the novel into a dominant literary genre. The novel thus mirrors the modern disregard for the collective spirit of the Middle Ages that heavily relied on allegory and symbolism. The rise of an educated middle class, the spread of the printing press, and a modified economic basis which allowed authors to pursue writing as an independent profession underlie these major shifts in eighteenth-century literary production. To this day, the novel still maintains its leading position as the genre which produces the most innovations in literature. The term “novel,” however, subsumes a number of subgenres such as the picaresque novel, which relates the experiences of a vagrant rogue (from the Spanish “picaro”) in his conflict with the social norms of society. Structured as an episodic narrative, the picaresque novel tries to lay bare social injustice in a satirical way, as for example Hans Jacob Christoph von Grimmelshausen’s (c. 1621–76) German Simplizissimus (1669), Daniel Defoe’s Moll 12 MAJOR GENRES IN TEXTUAL STUDIES Flanders (1722) or Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones (1749), which all display specific traits of this form of prose fiction. The Bildungsroman (novel of education), generally referred to by its German name, describes the development of a protagonist from childhood to maturity, including such examples as George Eliot’s (1819–80) Mill on the Floss (1860), or more recently in Doris Lessing’s (*1919) cycle Children of Violence (1952–69). Another important form is the epistolary novel, which uses letters as a means of first person narration, as for example Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (1740–41) and Clarissa (1748–49). A further form is the historical novel, such as Sir Walter Scott’s (1771–1832) Waverly (1814), whose actions take place within a realistic historical context. Related to the historical novel is a more recent trend often labeled New Journalism, which uses the genre of the novel to rework incidents based on real events, as exemplified by Truman Capote’s (*1924) In Cold Blood (1966) or Norman Mailer’s (*1923) Armies of the Night (1968). The satirical novel, such as Jonathan Swift’s (1667–1745) Gulliver’s Travels (1726) or Mark Twain’s (1835–1910) The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), highlights weaknesses of society through the exaggeration of social conventions, whereas utopian novels or science fiction novels create alternative worlds with which to criticize real socio- political conditions, as in the classic Nineteen Eighty-four (1949) by George Orwell (1903–50) or more recently Margaret Atwood’s (*1939) The Handmaid’s Tale (1985). Very popular forms are the gothic novel, which includes such work as Bram Stoker’s (1847– 1912) Dracula (1897), and the detective novel, one of the best known of which is Agatha Christie’s (1890–1976) Murder on the Orient Express (1934). The short story, a concise form of prose fiction, has received less attention from literary scholars than the novel. As with the novel, the roots of the short story lie in antiquity and the Middle Ages. Story, myth, and fairy tale relate to the oldest types of textual manifestations, “texts” which were primarily orally transmitted. The term “tale” (from “to tell”), like the German “Sage” (from “sagen”—“to speak”), reflects this oral dimension inherent in short fiction. Even the Bible includes stories such as “Job” or “The Prodigal Son,” (c. 4th–5th century BC) whose structures and narrative patterns resemble modern short stories. Other forerunners of this subgenre of fiction are ancient satire and the aforementioned romance. MAJOR GENRES IN TEXTUAL STUDIES 13 Indirect precursors of the short story are medieval and early mod-ern narrative cycles. The Arabian Thousand and One Nights, compiled in the fourteenth and subsequent centuries, Giovanni Boccaccio’s (1313–75) Italian Decamerone (1349–51), and Geoffrey Chaucer’s (c. 1343–1400) Canterbury Tales (c. 1387– 1400) anticipate important features of modern short fiction. These cycles of tales are characterized by a frame-narrative—such as the pilgrimage to the tomb of Saint Thomas Becket in the Canterbury Tales—which unites a number of otherwise heterogeneous stories. On their way to Canterbury, the pilgrims tell different, rather self- contained tales which are only connected through Chaucer’s use of a frame-story. The short story emerged as a more or less independent text type at the end of the eighteenth century, parallel to the development of the novel and the newspaper. Regularly issued magazines of the nineteenth century exerted a major influence on the establishment of the short story by providing an ideal medium for the publication of this prose genre of limited volume. Forerunners of these journals are The Tatler (1709–11) and The Spectator (1711–12; 1714), published in England by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, who tried to address the educated middle class in short literary texts and commentaries of general interest (essays). Even today, magazines like The New Yorker (since 1925) still function as privileged organs for first publications of short stories. Many of the early novels appeared as serial stories in these magazines before being published as independent books, for example, Charles Dickens’ (1812–70) The Pickwick Papers (1836–37). While the novel has always attracted the interest of literary theorists, the short story has never actually achieved the status held by book-length fiction. The short story, however, surfaces in comparative definitions of other prose genres such as the novel or its shorter variants, the novella and novelette. A crucial feature commonly identified with the short story is its impression of unity since it can be read—in contrast to the novel—in one sitting without interruption. Due to restrictions of length, the plot of the short story has to be highly selective, entailing an idiosyncratic temporal dimension that usually focuses on one central moment of action. The slow and gradual build-up of suspense in the novel must be accelerated in the short story by means of specific techniques. The short story’s action therefore often commences close to the climax (in medias res—“the middle of the matter”), 14 MAJOR GENRES IN TEXTUAL STUDIES reconstructing the preceding context and plot development through flashbacks. Focusing on one main figure or location, the setting and the characters generally receive less detailed and careful depiction than in the novel. In contrast to the novel’s generally descriptive style, the short story, for the simple reason of limited length, has to be more suggestive. While the novel experiments with various narrative perspectives, the short story usually chooses one particular point of view, relating the action through the eyes of one particular figure or narrator. The novella or novelette, such as Joseph Conrad’s (1857–1924) Heart of Darkness (1902), holds an intermediary position between novel and short story, since its length and narratological elements cannot be strictly identified with either of the two genres. As this juxtaposition of the main elements of the novel and the short story shows, attempts to explain the nature of these genres rely on different methodological approaches, such as reception theory with respect to reading without interruption, formalist notions for the analysis of plot structures, and contextual approaches for delineating their boundaries with other comparable genres. The terms plot, time, character, setting, narrative perspective, and style emerge not only in the definitions and characterizations of the genre of the novel, but also function as the most important areas of inquiry in film and drama. Since these aspects can be isolated most easily in prose fiction, they will be dealt with in greater detail in the following section by drawing on examples from novels and short stories. The most important elements are: Plot (What happens?) Characters (Who acts?) Narrative Perspective (Who sees what?) Setting (Where and when do the events take place?) a) Plot Plot is the logical interaction of the various thematic elements of a text which lead to a change of the original situation as presented at the outset of the narrative. An ideal traditional plot line encompasses the following four sequential levels: MAJOR GENRES IN TEXTUAL STUDIES 15 exposition—complication—climax or turning point— resolution The exposition or presentation of the initial situation is disturbed by a complication or conflict which produces suspense and eventually leads to a climax, crisis, or turning point. The climax is followed by a resolution of the complication (French denouement), with which the text usually ends. Most traditional fiction, drama, and film employ this basic plot structure, which is also called linear plot since its different elements follow a chronological order. In many cases—even in linear plots—flashback and foreshadowing introduce information concerning the past or future into the narrative. The opening scene in Billy Wilder’s (*1906) Sunset Boulevard (1950) is a famous example of the foreshadowing effect in film: the first person narrator posthumously relates the events that lead to his death while drifting dead in a swimming pool. The only break with a linear plot or chronological narrative is the anticipation of the film’s ending— the death of its protagonist—thus eliminating suspense as an important element of plot. This technique directs the audience’s attention to aspects of the film other than the outcome of the action (see also Chapter 2.4: Film). The drama of the absurd and the experimental novel deliberately break with linear narrative structures while at the same time maintaining traditional elements of plot in modified ways. Many contemporary novels alter linear narrative structures by introducing elements of plot in an unorthodox sequence. Kurt Vonnegut’s (*1922) postmodern novel Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) is a striking example of experimental plot structure which mixes various levels of action and time, such as the experiences of a young soldier in World War II, his life in America after the war, and a science-fiction-like dream-world in which the protagonist is kidnapped by an extra-terrestrial force. All three levels are juxtaposed as fragments by rendering the different settings as well as their internal sequences of action in a non-chronological way. Kurt Vonnegut offers an explanation of this complex plot structure in his protagonist’s report on the unconventional literary practice of the extra-terrestrial people on the planet Tralfamadore: 16 MAJOR GENRES IN TEXTUAL STUDIES Tralfamadorian…books were laid out—in brief clumps of symbols separated by stars…each clump of symbols is a brief, urgent message—describing a situation, a scene. We Tralfamadorians read them all at once, not one after the other. There isn’t any particular relationship between all the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully, so that, when seen all at once, they produce an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep. There is no beginning, no middle, no end…What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen at one time.1 Kurt Vonnegut is actually talking about the structure of his own novel, which is composed of similarly fragmentary parts. The different levels of action and time converge in the mind of the protagonist as seemingly simultaneous presences. Vonnegut’s technique of non-linear narrative, which introduces traditional elements of plot in an unconventional manner, conveys the schizophrenic mind of the protagonist through parallel presentations of different frames of experiences. Slaughterhouse-Five borrows techniques from the visual arts, whose representational structures are considered to be different from literary practice. Literature is generally regarded as a temporal art since action develops in a temporal sequence of events. The visual arts, however, are often referred to as a spatial art since they are able to capture one particular segment of the action which can then be perceived in one instant by the viewer. Vonnegut and other experimental authors try to apply this pictorial structure to literary texts. Multi-perspectival narratives which abandon linear plots surface in various genres and media, including film and drama, always indirectly determining the other main elements, such as setting and character presentation. b) Characters While formalist approaches to the study of literature traditionally focus on plot and narrative structure, methods informed by psychoanalysis shift the center of attention to the text’s characters. A psychological approach is, however, merely one way of evaluating characters; it is also possible to analyze character MAJOR GENRES IN TEXTUAL STUDIES 17 presentation in the context of narratological structures. Generally speaking, characters in a text can be rendered either as types or as individuals. A typified character in literature is dominated by one specific trait and is referred to as a flat character. The term round character usually denotes a persona with more complex and differentiated features. Typified characters often represent the general traits of a group of persons or abstract ideas. Medieval allegorical depictions of characters preferred typification in order to personify vices, virtues, or philosophical and religious positions. The Everyman- figure, a symbol of the sinful Christian, is a major example of this general pattern in the representation of man in medieval literature. In today’s advertisements, typified character presentations re- emerge in magazines, posters, film and TV. The temporal and spatial limitations of advertising media revive allegorical and symbolic characterization for didactic and persuasive reasons comparable to those of the Middle Ages. A good example of the purposeful use of typified character presentation occurs in the opening scene of Mark Twain’s, “A True Story” (1874). It was summer-time, and twilight. We were sitting on the porch of the farmhouse, on the summit of the hill, and “Aunt Rachel” was sitting respectfully below our level, on the steps —for she was our servant, and colored. She was a mighty frame and stature; she was sixty years old, but her eye was undimmed and her strength unabated. She was a cheerful, hearty soul, and it was no more trouble for her to laugh than it is for a bird to sing… I said: ‘Aunt Rachel, how is it that you’ve lived sixty years and never had any trouble?” She stopped quaking: She paused, and there was a moment of silence. She turned her face over her shoulder toward me, and said, without even a smile in her voice. “Misto C—, is you inarnest?”2 The first paragraph of this short story provides a very formal configuration, where characters are reduced to mere types, yet still reflect a highly meaningful structure. The most significant constellation is rendered in one sentence: “Aunt Rachel’ was sitting respectfully below our level, on the steps—for she was our servant, and colored.” The phrase “Misto C—, is you inarnest?” further 18 MAJOR GENRES IN TEXTUAL STUDIES specifies the inherent relationship. Twain manages not only to juxtapose African Americans and whites, slaves and slave-owners, but also female and male. In this very short passage, Twain delineates a formal relationship between two character types which also represents a multi-leveled structure of dependence. He introduces typified characterization for a number of reasons: as a stylistic feature of the short story which does not permit lengthy depictions, and as a meaningful frame within which the story evolves. The analyses of African American and feminist literary theory focus on mechanisms of race, class, and gender as analogously functioning dimensions. By juxtaposing a black, female slave with a white, male slave-owner, Twain highlights these patterns of oppression in their most extreme forms. The setting—a farm in the South of the United States—and, above all, the spatial positioning of the figures according to their social status (“‘Aunt Rachel’ was sitting respectfully below our level, on the steps”) emphasizes the mechanisms of dependence inherent in these mere character types. The individualization of a character, however, has evolved into a main feature of the genre of the novel. Many modern fictional texts reflect a tension between these modes of representation by introducing both elements simultaneously. Herman Melville’s (1819–91) novel Moby Dick (1851), for instance, combines allegorical and individualistic elements in the depiction of its main character in order to lend a universal dimension to the action which, despite being grounded in the particularities of a round figure, nevertheless points beyond the specific individual. Both typified and individualized characters can be rendered in a text through showing and telling as two different methods of presentation. The explanatory characterization, or telling, describes a person through a narrator, for example, the depiction of Mr Rochester by the protagonist in Charlotte Brontë’s (1816– 55) novel Jane Eyre (1847). Mr. Rochester, as he sat in his damask-covered chair, looked different to what I had seen him look before; not quite so stern—much less gloomy. There was a smile on his lips, and his eyes sparkled, whether with wine or not, I am not sure; but I think it very probable. He was, in short, in his after dinner mood…3 MAJOR GENRES IN TEXTUAL STUDIES 19 In this example from a Victorian novel, the character is represented through the filter of a selective and judging narrator. This technique deliberately places the narrator in the foreground, inserting him or her as a judgmental mediator between the action and the reader (see the section on point of view in this chapter). Dramatic characterization, or showing, does away with the position of an obvious narrator, thus avoiding any overt influence on the reader by a narrative mediator. This method of presentation creates the impression on the reader that he or she is able to perceive the acting figures without any intervening agency, as if witnessing a dramatic performance. The image of a person is “shown” solely through his or her actions and utterances without interfering commentary, thereby suggesting an “objective” perception which leaves interpretation and evaluation solely to the judgment of the reader. Ernest Hemingway’s (1899–1961) texts are among the most famous for this technique, which aims at an “objective” effect by means of a drama-like presentation. “Will you have lime juice or lemon squash?” Macomber asked. “I’ll have a gimlet,” Robert Wilson told him. “I’ll have a gimlet too. I need something,” Macomber’s wife said. “I suppose it’s the thing to do,” Macomber agreed. “Tell him to make three gimlets.”4 This passage from “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” (1938) exemplifies this technique, typical of Hemingway, which offers only the facade of his characters by dwelling solely on exterior aspects of dialogue and actions without further commentary or evaluation. Dramatic presentation, however, only pretends to represent objectively while it always necessarily remains biased and perspectival. As shown above, one can distinguish between two basic kinds of characters (round or flat), as well as between two general modes of presentation (showing or telling): Kinds of characters typified character individualized character flat round 20 MAJOR GENRES IN TEXTUAL STUDIES Modes of presentation explanatory method dramatic method narration dialogue—monologue Similar to typification and individualization, explanatory and dramatic methods hardly ever appear in their pure forms, but rather as hybrids of various degrees, since the narrator often also acts as a character in the text. Questions concerning character presentation are always connected with problems of narrative perspective and are therefore hard to isolate or deal with individually. The following section on point of view thus inevitably touches upon aspects already mentioned. c) Point of view The term point of view, or narrative perspective, characterizes the way in which a text presents persons, events, and settings. The subtleties of narrative perspectives developed parallel to the emergence of the novel and can be reduced to three basic positions: the action of a text is either mediated through an exterior, unspecified narrator (omniscient point of view), through a person involved in the action (first person narration), or presented without additional commentary (figural narrative situation). This tripartite structure can only summarize the most extreme manifestations, which hardly ever occur in their pure form; individual literary works are usually hybrids combining elements of various types of narrative situ-ations.5 The most common manifestations of narrative perspectives in prose fiction can, therefore, be structured according to the following pattern: omniscient point of view first person narration through external narrator who refers to by protagonist or protagonist in the third person by minor character figural narrative situation through figures acting in the text MAJOR GENRES IN TEXTUAL STUDIES 21 Texts with an omniscient point of view refer to the acting figures in the third person and present the action from an all-knowing, Godlike perspective. Sometimes the misleading term third person narration is also applied for this narrative situation. Such disembodiment of the narrative agent, which does away with a narrating persona, easily allows for changes in setting, time, and action, while simultaneously providing various items of information beyond the range and know-ledge of the acting figures. Jane Austen (1775–1817), for example, introduces an omniscient narrator of this sort in her novel Northanger Abbey (1818): No one who had ever seen Catherine Moreland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be a heroine. Her situation in life, the character of her father and mother, her own person and disposition, were equally against her. Her father was a clergyman, without being neglected, or poor, and a very respectable man, though his name was Richard— and he had never been handsome. He had a considerable independence, besides two good livings—and he was not in the least addicted to locking up his daughters. Her mother was a woman of useful plain sense, with a good temper, and, what is more remarkable, with a good constitution.6 As evident in this example, an omniscient narrator can go back in time (“Catherine Moreland in her infancy”), look into the future (“to be a heroine”) and possess exact information about different figures of the novel (“Her situation in life… Her father… Her mother…”). This omniscient point of view was particularly popular in the traditional epic but also widely used in the early novel. First person narration renders the action as seen through a participating figure, who refers to her-or himself in the first person. First person narrations can adopt the point of view either of the protagonist or of a minor figure. The majority of novels in first person narration use, of course, the protagonist (main character) as narrator, as for example, in Laurence Sterne’s (1713– 68) Tristram Shandy (1759–67) or Charles Dickens’ (1812–70) David Copperfield (1849–50). The opening lines of J.D.Salinger’s (*1919) The Catcher in the Rye (1951) also refer to this tradition of first person narration by the protagonist. “If you really want to 22 MAJOR GENRES IN TEXTUAL STUDIES hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it.”7 These first person narrations by protagonists aim at a supposedly authentic representation of the subjective experiences and feelings of the narrator. This proximity to the protagonist can be avoided by introducing a minor character as first person narrator. By depicting events as seen through the eyes of another person, the character of the protagonist remains less transparent. A number of novels which center around a main figure, such as Herman Melville’s (1819–91) Moby Dick (1851) or F.Scott Fitzgerald’s (1896–1940) The Great Gatsby (1925), mystify the protagonist by using this particular technique. The opening words of Moby Dick, “Call me Ishmael,” are uttered by the minor character Ishmael, who subsequently describes the mysterious protagonist Captain Ahab. In The Great Gatsby, Nick relates the events around the enigmatic Gatsby from the periphery of the action. Through this deliberately chosen narrative perspective, the author anticipates thematic aspects of the evolving plot. In the figural narrartive situation, the narrator moves into the background, suggesting that the plot is revealed solely through the actions of the characters in the text. This literary technique is a rela-tively recent phenomenon, one which has been developed with the rise of the modern novel, mostly in order to encourage the reader to judge the action without an intervening commentator. The following example from James Joyce’s (1882–1941) A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) renders the action through the figural perspective of the protagonist. The fellows had seen him running. They closed round him in a ring, pushing one against another to hear. —Tell us! Tell us! —What did he say?… He told them what he had said and what the rector had said and, when he had told them, all the fellows flung their caps spinning up into the air and cried: —Hurroo!… The cheers died away in the soft gray air. He was alone. He was happy and free.8 MAJOR GENRES IN TEXTUAL STUDIES 23 This example shows how a particular point of view can be rendered through different modes of presentation. In the above passage, direct speech and mental reflections are employed to reveal the action through the perspective of the protagonist. In contrast to an omniscient point of view, this form of third person narrative is bound to the perspective of a figure who is also part of the action. If a text shifts the emphasis from exterior aspects of the plot to the inner world of a character, its narrative technique is usually referred to as stream of consciousness technique. Related narratological phenomena are interior monologue and free indirect discourse. The narrator disappears, leaving the thoughts and psychic reactions of a participating figure as the sole mediators of the action. Influenced by Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis, this technique found its way into modernist prose fiction after World War I.Based on associations in the subconscious of a fictitious persona, it reflects a groundbreaking shift in cultural paradigms during the first decades of the twentieth century, when literature, under the influence of psychoanalysis and related sciences, shifted its main focus from the sociologically descriptive goals of the nineteenth century to psychic phenomena of the individual. James Joyce is considered the inventor of this technique, best exemplified by the final section of his novel Ulysses (1922), which strings together mental associations of the character Molly Bloom. A famous example in American literature is William Faulkner’s (1897–1962) renderings of impressions and events through the inner perspective of a mentally handicapped character in The Sound and the Fury (1929). These experimental narrative techniques of character presentation became the major structural features of Modernism, thereby characterizing an entire literary era at the beginning of the twentieth century. A good example is Virginia Woolf’s (1882–1941) novel Mrs Dalloway (1925), which presents events not only through the thoughts of one person, but also through a number of other figures. As indicated by the title, the character Clarissa Dalloway is at the center of the novel, yet Virginia Woolf depicts her protagonist through the psyches of different personae. These figures cross paths with Clarissa Dalloway, reacting to her and thus revealing a new character trait of the protagonist. Through the interaction between the different mental reflections, as well as a number of other structural elements, the novel achieves a closed 24 MAJOR GENRES IN TEXTUAL STUDIES and unified form. It is a striking example of how the use of narrative perspective, character presentation, setting, and plot- structure can create an interdependent network of elements which work toward a common goal. Modernist and postmodernist novels introduce these techniques in very overt ways, often even changing narrative perspectives within one text in order to highlight decisive shifts in the course of action or narrative. The Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood (*1939), for example, begins the first section of her novel The Edible Woman (1969) in first person narration by the protagonist. The second part is then rendered in a figural narrative situation in order to emphasize the general alienation of the main character. “Marian was sitting list-lessly at her desk. She was doodling on the pad for telephone messages. She drew an arrow with many intricate feathers, then a cross-hatch of intersecting lines. She was supposed to be working…”9 When Marian regains her identity at the end of the novel, Atwood also switches back to the original first person narration. “I was cleaning up the apartment. It had taken me two days to gather the strength to face it, but I had finally started. I had to go about it layer by layer” (ibid.: 289). Later on, Atwood even lets the protagonist reflect about these narratological changes when Marian says: “Now that I was thinking of myself in the first person singular again I found my own situation much more interesting” (ibid.: 290). Atwood’s novel is an obvious example of how thematic aspects of a text, such as the protagonist’s loss of identity, can be emphasized on a structural level by means of narratological techniques such as point of view. d) Setting Setting is another aspect traditionally included in analyses of prose fiction, and it is relevant to discussions of other genres, too. The term “setting” denotes the location, historical period, and social surroundings in which the action of a text develops. In James Joyce’s (1882–1941) Ulysses (1922), for example, the setting is clearly defined as Dublin 16 June 1904. In other cases, for example William Shakespeare’s (1564–1616) Hamlet (c. 1601), all we know is that the action takes place in medieval Denmark. Authors hardly ever choose a setting for its own sake, but rather embed a story in MAJOR GENRES IN TEXTUAL STUDIES 25 a particular context of time and place in order to support action, characters, and narrative perspective from an additional level. In certain forms of prose fiction, such as the gothic novel, setting is one of the crucial elements of the genre as such. In the opening section of “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1840), Edgar Allan Poe (1809–49) gives a detailed description of the building in which the uncanny short story will evolve. Interestingly, Poe’s setting, the House of Usher, indirectly resembles Roderik Usher, the main character of the narrative and lord of the house. I know not how it was—but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit.… I looked upon the scene before me—upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain—upon the bleak walls—upon the vacant eye-like windows—upon a few rank sedges—and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees— with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation… Perhaps the eye of a scrutinising observer might have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag direction, until its way down became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn.10 The description of the facade of the house uses words such as “features,” “eye-like,” and “depression” which are reminiscent of the characterization of a human face. “White trunks of decayed trees” refers to the end of Roderik Usher’s family tree—he will die without heirs, the last of his line. The crack in the front of the building mirrors the divided psyche of the lord of the house. At the end of the story, Poe juxtaposes the death of Usher with the collapse of the building, thereby creating an interdependence between setting, characters, and plot. The modernist novel Mrs Dalloway (1925) by Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) also relies heavily on setting to unite the fragmentary narrative perspectives into a single framework. As mentioned above, Woolf employs the mental reflections of a number of figures in her novel ultimately to characterize her protagonist, Mrs Dalloway. Only through her carefully chosen use of setting can Virginia Woolf create the impression that the different perspectives or thoughts of the characters occur simultaneously. A variety of indicators in the text specifically grounds all events at a particular 26 MAJOR GENRES IN TEXTUAL STUDIES time and in a certain location. The action is situated in the city of London, which provides the grid in which the various reflections of the characters are intricately interwoven with street names and well-known sights. Temporal references such as the tolling of Big Ben, a sky-writing plane, and the Prime Minister’s car appear in a number of episodes and thereby characterize them as simultaneous events that occur within different sections in the general setting of the city of London. At the outset of the novel, Woolf introduces temporal and spatial elements into the setting (see the italicized phrases in the following passage) which will later re-surface in the perspectival narratives of the respective mental reflections of the characters. Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself… For having lived in Westminster—how many years now? over twenty—one feels even in the midst of the traffic, or walking at night, Clarissa was positive, a particular hush, or solemnity; an indis-cernible pause; a suspense (but that might be her heart, affected, they said, by influenza) before Big Ben strikes. There! Out it boomed. First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden Circles dissolved in the air. Such fools we are, she thought, crossing Victoria Street…in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June. For it was the middle of June. The War was over.11 Virginia Woolf consciously borrows from the visual arts, attempting to integrate formal elements of cubism into literary practice. The simultaneous projection of different perspectives in the characterization of a figure is a central concern of cubist art, which also tries to represent an object as seen from a number of perspectives in space simultaneously. This example once again highlights the fact that the various levels of fiction, including plot, setting, point of view and characters, tend to receive full meaning through their interaction with one another. In the interpretation of literary texts, it is therefore important to see these structural elements not as self- contained and isolated entities, but rather as interdependent elements whose full meaning is only revealed in the context of the other features and overall content of the text. Ideally, the MAJOR GENRES IN TEXTUAL STUDIES 27 structural analysis of these levels in literary texts should not stop at the mere description of these features, but rather show to what ends they are employed. 2 Poetry Poetry is one of the oldest genres in literary history. Its earliest examples go back to ancient Greek literature. In spite of this long tradition, it is harder to define than any other genre. Poetry is closely related to the term “lyric,” which derives etymologically from the Greek musical instrument “lyra” (“lyre” or “harp”) and points to an origin in the sphere of music. In classical antiquity as well as in the Middle Ages, minstrels recited poetry, accompanied by the lyre or other musical instruments. The term “poetry,” however, goes back to the Greek word “poieo” (“to make,” “to produce”), indicating that the poet is the person who “makes” verse. Although etymology sheds light on some of the aspects of the lyric and the poetic, it cannot offer a satisfactory explanation of the phenomenon as such. Most traditional attempts to define poetry juxtapose poetry with prose. The majority of these definitions are limited to characteristics such as verse, rhyme, and meter, which are traditionally regarded as the classical elements that distinguish poetry from prose. These criteria, however, cannot be applied to modern prose poetry or experimental poetry. Explanations of the genre which combine poetic language with linguistic elements other than rhyme and meter do more justice to non-traditional forms such as free verse or prose poems. These approaches examine as lyric phenomena the choice of words as well as the use of syntactic structures and rhetorical figures. Although these elements dominate in some forms of poetry, they also appear in drama or fiction. In spite of the difficulties associated with the definition of poetry, the above-mentioned heterogeneous criteria outline the major qualities that are conventionally attributed to poetry. The genre of poetry is often subdivided into the two major categories of narrative and lyric poetry. Narrative poetry includes genres such as the epic long poem, the romance and the ballad, which tell stories with clearly developed, structured plots (see Chapter 2.1: Fiction). The shorter lyric poetry, the focus of the 28 MAJOR GENRES IN TEXTUAL STUDIES following comments, is mainly concerned with one event, impression or idea. Some of the precursors of modern poetry can be found in Old English riddles and charms. These cultic and magic texts, for example the following charm “Against a Wen”, which is supposed to help to get rid of boils, seem strange today, but were common in that period. Wen, wen, little wen, here you must not build, here have no abode, but you must go north to the nearby hill where, poor wretch, you have a brother. He will lay a leaf at your head. Under the paw of the wolf, under the eagle’s wing, under the claw of the eagle, may you ever decline! Shrink like coal on the hearth! Wizen like filth on the wall! Become as small as a grain of linseed, and far smaller than a hand-worm’s hip-bone and so very small that you are at last nothing at all.12 These religious or magical charms form the beginning of many national literatures. It has already been mentioned in the discussion of the primordial roots of literature that the magical-cultic dimension contributed decisively to the preservation of texts in early cultural history. The next step in poetic expression abandons these overtly cultic origins and uses music as a medium, as for example the Middle English anonymous “Cuckoo Song” (c. 1250), which could be accompanied by an instrument. Cuccu Cuckoo Summer is icumen in, Summer has come, Lhude sing, cuccu! Sing loud, cuckoo! Groweth sed and bloweth med The seed grows and the meadow blossoms, And springth the wode nu; And the wood springs; Sing cuccu! Sing, cuckoo!13 MAJOR GENRES IN TEXTUAL STUDIES 29 In this Middle English example, the onomatopoeia (verbal imitation of natural sounds) of the cuckoo’s calling is clearly audible. The acoustic dimension is a typical feature of poetry, one which continues in modern pop songs. Singers like Bob Dylan (*1941) are often counted among the poets of the late 1950s and 1960s because the lyrics of their songs are comparable with poems. In the Old English period, ancient forms of poetry such as the elegy, which laments the death of a dear person, were newly adapted. Thomas Gray’s (1716–71) “Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard” (1751) or Walt Whitman’s (1819–92) “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” (1865–66) are examples from later periods. The ode, which was also known in classical antiquity, was revived in the Renaissance and used in the subsequent literary periods. As John Keats’ (1795–1821) “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (1820) demonstrates, it consists of several stanzas with a serious, mostly classical theme. However, the most important English literary form with a consistent rhyming pattern is the sonnet, which, from the Renaissance onward, has been used in poetry primarily to deal with the theme of “worldly love” (see the section on “rhythmic-acoustic dimension” in this chapter). Although some elements discussed in the chapter on fiction can also be applied to the analysis of poetry, there are, of course, idiosyncratic features associated with the genre of poetry in particular. The following elements are not restricted to poetry alone, but never-theless stand at the center of attention in analyses of this genre. An important and controversial term is “image” or imagery, which is pertinent to a number of divergent issues under discussion. The word itself can be traced back to the Latin “imago” (“picture”) and refers to a predominantly visual component of a text which can, however, also include other sensory impressions. Imagery is often regarded as the most common manifestation of the “concrete” character of poetry. Even if an abstract theme is at the center of the poem, the poet still uses concrete imagery in order to make it more accessible. The concrete character of poetic language can be achieved on lexical-thematic, visual, and rhythmic- acoustic levels which reflect the most important elements in poetry: lexical-thematic dimension 30 MAJOR GENRES IN TEXTUAL STUDIES diction rhetorical figures theme visual dimension rhythmic-acoustic dimension stanzas rhyme and meter concrete poetry onomatopoeia a) Lexical-thematic dimension The issue of the narrator, which has been dealt with in the context of point of view and characters in the treatment of fiction, is usually referred to in poetry with the terms “voice” or “speaker.” As poetry is often regarded as a medium for the expression of subjective, personal events—an assumption which does not always correspond to the facts—the issue of the speaker is central in the analysis of poems. The question whether the speaker and the author are one and the same person is, of course, also relevant for fiction. In the novel and in the short story, however, a distinctive use of point of view techniques easily creates a distance between the narrator and the author. In longer poetic forms, the narrative situation can be as complex as that of the novel or the short story. A good example is Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s (1772–1834) ballad “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (1798). Here, a frame narrative in a figural narrative situation relates an incident in which a wedding guest is addressed by an uncanny mariner. “It is an ancyent Mariner,/And he stoppeth one of three” (1–2). The Mariner then recounts his adventures in a detailed first person narration. “Listen, Stranger! Storm and Wind,/A Wind and Tempest strong! /For days and weeks it play’d us freaks” (45–47). By placing the story of the “Mariner” within a frame narrative, Coleridge presents the plot of the ballad on two levels (frame narrative and actual plot) as well as in two narrative situations (figural and first person narration). The ballad assumes a position between the epic long forms and the lyric short forms. In spite of a well-developed plot and complex narrative perspective the ballad is, however, surpassed by the epic and the romance in size and complexity. The use of poetic language, more than the use of complex narrative situations, distinguishes poetry from other literary MAJOR GENRES IN TEXTUAL STUDIES 31 genres. Concrete nouns and scenes are employed in order to achieve this particular effect. In his “Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard” (1751), which deals with human transitoriness, Thomas Gray (1716–71) uses concrete images such as a cemetery, the ringing of a bell, a farmer returning from tilling, darkness and tomb stones. Objects and expressive scenes are described in order to make the poem concrete, although the actual theme of transitoriness is abstract. An elegy by W.H.Auden (1907–73) uses a similar technique. Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with a muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.… He was my North, my South, my East, my West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong. The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep the wood; For nothing now can ever come to any good.14 As this 1936 poem shows, Auden consciously introduces concrete objects (“juicy bone,” “sun”) and everyday situations (“working week,” “Sunday rest”) in order to treat the theme of mourning on a level that is familiar to the reader and therefore emotionally loaded. In contrast to philosophical texts, which remain abstract in their expression, poetry tries to convey themes in a concrete language of images. Images and concrete objects often serve the additional function of symbols if they refer to a meaning beyond the material object. A cross in Christian thinking is, for example, much more than two crossed wooden bars. The poet can either use a commonly known, conventional symbol or create his own private symbol which develops its symbolic function in its particular context. The albatross in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s (1772–1834) “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (1798), for example, is a private symbol. In the course of the poem, the murdered bird becomes a symbol of natural order which has been destroyed by man. It is only in the 32 MAJOR GENRES IN TEXTUAL STUDIES context of Coleridge’s ballad that the albatross takes on this far- reaching symbolic meaning. Further stylistic features include rhetorical figures, or figures of speech. These classified stylistic forms are characterized by their “non-literal” meanings. Rhetorical handbooks distinguish more than two hundred different figures, of which simile and metaphor are those most commonly used in poetry. A simile is a comparison between two different things which are connected by “like,” “than,” “as,” or “compare,” as in Robert Burns’ (1759–96) poem “A Red, Red Rose” (1796): Oh, my love is like a red, red rose That’s newly sprung in June; My love is like the melody That’s sweetly played in tune.… The equation of one thing with another without actual comparison is called metaphor. If Burns said “My love is a red, red rose”, instead of “Oh, my love is like a red, red rose,” the simile would be transformed into a metaphor. In his poem “Auguries of Innocence” (c. 1803), William Blake (1757–1827) uses a different metaphor in every stanza: To see a world in a grain of sand And a heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour. A grain of sand is used as a metaphor for the world, a flower for the sky, and so on. In the metaphor and in the simile, two elements are juxtaposed: the tenor (the person, object or idea) to which the vehicle (or image) is equated or compared. In “Oh, my love is like a red, red rose,” “my love” functions as the tenor and “red rose” as the vehicle. Rhetorical figures are widely used in poetry because they produce a “non-literal” meaning and reduce abstract or complex tenors to concrete vehicles, which again enhances the concrete character poetry ought to achieve. The “concreteness” or closed form of poetry is often evoked in literary theory by calling the poem a “verbal icon” or “verbal picture.” An often-quoted example is the poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (1820), in which the Romantic poet John Keats (1795–1821) MAJOR GENRES IN TEXTUAL STUDIES 33 describes a painted Greek vase. It is an example of the use of imagery to achieve a pictorial effect. In the detailed description of various pictorial scenes, the poem is equated with a vase and is thus supposed to become part of the closed, harmonious form of the artifact. Thou still unravished bride of quietness, Thou foster child of silence and slow time, Sylvan historian, who canst thus express A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme. The line “Thou foster child of silence and slow time” indicates that on the vase—as in any work of plastic art—time stands still. People are thus able to overcome their own transitoriness—evoked through the urn as a container for the ashes of the dead—through artistic production. Even 2,000 years after the artist’s death, the work of art has the same power it had at the time of its creation. The pictorial portrayal on the vase is juxtaposed and compared with the lines of the poem, “who canst thus express/A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme.” In the last stanza Keats directly refers to the round, closed shape of the vase as a model for poetry: O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede Of marble men and maidens overwrought, With forest branches and the trodden weed; Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral! The “silent form” of the Attic vase is the poem’s dominant concrete image, one which is not used for its own sake but rather to refer beyond the object to the form of poetry as such. In the description of the visual images on the vase, pictorial art is juxtaposed with literature; the closed and self-contained structure of the vase becomes a model for poetry. The durability of the work of art is praised and contrasted with man’s ephemeral existance. The image of the vase therefore serves a triple function: as a symbol for pictorial art, as a model for the form of poetry, and as a concrete object which refers to the abstract theme of transitoriness and eternal fame. In the first two decades of the twentieth century, the movement of imagism continued this tradition of pictorial expression in 34 MAJOR GENRES IN TEXTUAL STUDIES poetry. The theoretical program of this literary “school,” which is closely associated with the American poet Ezra Pound (1885– 1972), focused on the “condensation” of poetry into powerful, essential images. The German word for poetry, “Dichtung,” was considered to mean the same as the Latin “condensare” (“to condense”), thus fitting very well the imagists’ preoccupation with the reduction of poetry to essential “pictures” or “images.” According to Pound, poetry should achieve the utmost clarity of expression without the use of adornment. Pound voices this opinion in one of his manifestos (1913): “An ‘Image’ is that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time… It is better to present one Image in a lifetime than to produce voluminous works.15 The following poem from 1916 is practical example of imagism: IN A STATION OF THE METRO The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough. This poem was preceded by several longer versions until Pound reduced it to three stanzas by using an expressionistic word- picture for the portrayal of the crowds in a metro station. He starts with the people in the darkness of the station and then equates them with “Petals on a wet, black bough” (see metaphor). By using a pictorial element which is at the same time a common theme in Chinese nature painting, Pound emphasizes the pictorial character of his poem. Pound drew on the Japanese poetic form of haiku as examples of this “condensing” form of poetry. They, too, contain three lines and on a thematic level refer to times of the day or seasons. These Japanese short poems are usually rendered in Chinese characters, which are far more suitable than our alphabetical writing for conveying the pictorial-concrete dimension which fascinated the imagist poets. The Chinese pictogram, which combines writing and picture, greatly influenced the imagists, whose main occupation was to present pure verbal images to their readers. They intended to compensate for the lack of the pictorial dimension in alphabetical writing by condensing language as much as possible. MAJOR GENRES IN TEXTUAL STUDIES 35 b) Visual dimension While imagery in traditional poetry revolves around a transformation of objects into language, concrete poetry takes a further step toward visual art, concentrating on the poem’s shape or visual appearance. This movement, which was revived in the twentieth century, has a long tradition, reaching from classical antiquity to the Latin Middle Ages and on to seventeenth-century England. Among the best-known picture-poems of English literature are George Herbert’s (1593–1633) “Easter Wings” (1633) and “The Altar” (1633). As shown on the next page, Herbert’s poem conveys a visual as well as a verbal image of an altar, which the poet has constructed from parts which have been given to him by God. The building blocks of the altar are the words, which Herbert assembles in the shape of an altar. Herbert thus places himself in the Christian tradition, in which existence begins with the word: “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1.1). Herbert builds an altar out of words and, upon it, he offers to God the poem, i.e., the very words themselves. The Altar A broken Altar, Lord, Thy servant rears, Made of a heart and cemented with tears; Whose parts are as Thy Hand did frame; No workman’s tool hath touched the same. A heart alone Is such a stone, As nothing but Thy power doth cut. Wherefore each part Of my hard heart Meets in this frame To praise Thy frame To praise Thy name, That if I chance to hold my peace, These stones to praise Thee may not cease. Oh, let Thy blessed sacrifice be mine, 36 MAJOR GENRES IN TEXTUAL STUDIES And sanctify this altar to be Thine. The following concrete poem by E.E.Cummings (1894–1962) is a modern example of an abstract visual-verbal arrangement, which— despite its idiosyncrasies—works according to structural principles similar to those seen in George Herbert’s text: l(a le af fa ll s) one l iness The text of the poem can be reconstructed as follows: “a leaf falls loneliness” or “l(a leaf falls)oneliness”. E.E.Cummings uses a single leaf falling from a tree as a motif for loneliness, arranging the letters vertically instead of horizontally in order to trace the leaf’s movement visually. In the act of reading, the eye can follow the course of the leaf from top to bottom and also from left to right and back. In one instance, this movement is underlined by an arrangement in the form of a cross. The technical term for this cross-like placement of words or letters is chiasmus, which derives from the Greek letter “chi” (“X”). Here, the chiasmus is formed by a cross-like arrangement of letters in two consecutive lines: af fa This poem contains further visual elements which form an interdependent network with levels of content. The double “1” of the word “falls” is at the center of the poem. These letters can easily be read as two “I”s for the first person singular, thus underlining the fall from “two-someness” to loneliness. In “l-one- liness” only one “1” remains, or, as Cummings expresses it: one 1 MAJOR GENRES IN TEXTUAL STUDIES 37 As these examples show, traditional and experimental poetry often work with the pictorial aspects of language and writing or aim at combining these aspects. Attempts to turn a poem into a quasi- material object can be achieved not only on a thematic level through the use of concrete nouns or scenes, but also on the visual level through a particular layout of letters, words or stanzas. c) Rhythmic-acoustic dimension In order to achieve the concrete quality of poetic language, sound and tone are employed as elements with their own levels of meaning. By choosing certain words in a line or stanza, a poet can produce a sound or tone which is directly related to the content of the statement. The acoustic element, like a poem’s visual appearance in concrete poetry, can enhance the meaning of a poem. The following passage from Alexander Pope’s (1688–1744) “Essay on Criticism” (1711) is a self-reflexive example of this technique: True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, As those move easiest who have learned to dance. ‘Tis not enough no harshness gives offense, The sound must seem an echo to the sense: Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows, and the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows; But when loud surges slash the sounding shore, The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar. (365–72) In these lines, Pope points out that, in what he considers a good poem, content and sound harmonize and form a unity (“The sound must seem an echo to the sense”). In lines 5 and 6, he mentions the west wind (Zephyr) and suggests its natural sound through the deliberate choice of words whose sounds (“z,” “ph,” “w,” “oo,” “th”) are reminiscent of a gentle breeze. In lines 7 and 8, the harsh noise of the sea breaking on the shore is imitated by words with less gentle sounds (“sh,” “gh,” “v,” “rr”). This unifying principle of sound and sense is of course not a goal for every poet, and 38 MAJOR GENRES IN TEXTUAL STUDIES modern examples often work against this more traditional attitude toward unity. Meter and rhyme (less often, rime) are further devices in the acoustic dimension of poetry which hold a dominant position in the analysis of poems, partly because they are relatively easy to objectify and measure. The smallest elements of meter are syllables, which can be either stressed or unstressed. According to the sequence of stressed and unstressed syllables, it is possible to distinguish between various metrical feet, whose number consequently indicates the meter. In the analysis of the meter (scansion), a line is first divided into syllables. The example here is the verse “The woods are lovely, dark and deep” from Robert Frost’s (1874–1963) poem “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening” (1923): The—woods—are—love—ly,—dark—and—deep After the division into syllables, stressed syllables (´) and unstressed syllables (˘) are identified. The technical term for this process is scansion: Thě—woóds—ăre—lóve—lў,—dárk—ǎnd—deép According to the sequence of stressed and unstressed syllables, the line can be divided into feet: Thě—woóds |—ăre—lóve |—ly,—dárk |—ănd—deép. The four most important feet are: 1 lambus, or iambic foot: an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable(˘´) Thě cúr | fěw tólls | thě knéll | ǒf pár | tĭng dáy. 2 Anapest, or anapestic foot: two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable(˘˘´) Ănd thě sheén | ǒf thěir spéars | wǎs lǐke stárs | ŏn thě seá. 3 Trochee, or trochaic foot: a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable(´˘) Thére thěy | áre, mў | fíftў | mén ănd | wóměn. MAJOR GENRES IN TEXTUAL STUDIES 39 4 Dactyl, or dactylic foot: one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables(´˘˘) Júst fŏr ă | hándfǔl ǒf | sílvěr hĕ | léft ǔs. According to the number of feet, it is possible to distinguish monometer (1), dimeter (2), trimeter (3), tetrameter (4), pentameter (5), and hexa-meter (6). In the description of the meter of a line, the name of the foot and the number of feet are mentioned. The first line of Thomas Gray’s (1716–71) “Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard” (1751) (“Thě cúr | fěw tólls | thě knéll | ŏf pár | tĭng dáy”), which consists of five iambic feet, is termed iambic pentameter. This meter, which is close to the rhythm of natural speech and therefore popular in poetry and drama, is also referred to as blank verse. Another popular meter in English is iambic hexameter, which is also called Alexandrine. Alongside meter, rhyme adds to the dimension of sound and rhythm in a poem. It is possible to distinguish internal, end and eye rhymes. Internal rhymes are alliteration and assonance. Alliteration is the repetition of the same consonant at the beginning of words in a single line (“round and round the rugged rock the ragged rascal ran”). If a vowel is repeated instead (either at the beginning or in the middle of words) it is called assonance (“Thou foster child of silence and slow time”). Alliteration was the most common rhyming pattern in Old English and in some types of Middle English poetry. The opening lines of William Langland’s (c. 1330–86) Middle English “long poem” Piers Plowman (c. 1367–70) are good examples of a meter in which alliteration and stress complement each other. In a sómer séson, | | whan sóft was the sónne I shópe me in shroúdes, | | as Í a shépe were, In hábits like a héremite, | | unhóly of wórkes Went wýde in this wórld, | | wónders to hére. In this meter, every line contains four stressed syllables with additional alliterations, while the number of unstressed syllables varies. In the middle, the line is split into two halves by a caesura which marks the beginning of a new unit of thought. The most common rhyming scheme in modern poems is end rhyme, which is based on identical syllables at the end of certain lines. To describe rhyme schemes, letters of the alphabet are used 40 MAJOR GENRES IN TEXTUAL STUDIES to represent identical syllables at the ends of a line, as in the following poem by Emily Brontë (1818–48), “Remembrance” (1846): Cold in the earth—and in the deep snow piled above thee, a Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave! b Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee, a Served at last by Time’s all-severing wave? b This system of identification helps to highlight the rhyme structure of complex poems by reducing them to their basic patterns. Eye rhymes stand between the visual and the acoustic dimension of a poem, playing with the spelling and the pronunciation of words, as in these lines from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s (1772– 1834) “Kubla Khan” (1816): Then reached the caverns measureless to man, And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean: And ‘mid this tumult Kubla heard from far Ancestral voices prophesying war! The syllables “an” at the end of the first two lines are examples of eye rhyme, as the sequence of the letters “a” and “n” is identical, but pronounced differently in the two verses. Eye rhymes play with the reader’s expectations. When reading the two lines in Coleridge’s poem, one is tempted to pronounce the syllable “an” in “man” and “ocean” in such a way that the two words rhyme. By the time one gets to the word “ocean”, however, it has become clear that they only rhyme visually and have to be pronounced differently. Eye rhymes permit authors to highlight certain words by creating a tension between visual and acoustic levels and thus to direct the reader’s attention to specific elements of the poem. The multitude of different stanzas in English poetry can be reduced to a few basic forms. Most poems are composed of couplets (two verses), tercets (three verses) or quatrains (four verses). The sonnet is an example of the combination of different stanzas. According to the rhyming scheme and the kind of stanzas, one can distinguish between Shakespearean, Spenserian and Italian (or Petrarchan) sonnets. In the Renaissance, sonnet cycles— consisting of a number of thematically related poems—became popular as a result of Italian influence. These cycles enabled poets MAJOR GENRES IN TEXTUAL STUDIES 41 to deal with certain topics in greater detail while working within the sonnet form. The English or Shakespearean sonnet, which holds a privileged position in the English tradition, deserves a more detailed explanation. It consists of three quatrains and one couplet. The fourteen lines are in iambic pentameter and follow the rhyme scheme abab cdcd efef gg. Shakespeare’s (1564–1616) sonnet “That time of year thou may’st in me behold” (1609) fulfills these criteria: That time of year thou may’st in me behold a When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang b Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, a Bared ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. b In me thou see’st the twilight of such day c As after sunset fadeth in the west; d Which by-and-by black night doth take away, c Death’s second self that seals up all in rest. d In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire e That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, f As the deathbed whereon it must expire, e Consumed with that which it was nourished by. f This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong, g To love that well which thou must leave ere long. g Each segment of this sonnet (the three quatrains and the couplet) consists of a coherent sentence. The four sentences are connected on a thematic level by repetition: “in me behold” in the first verse, “In me thou see’st” in the fifth and the ninth, and “This thou perceiv’st” in the thirteenth. In each quatrain, an image is introduced which fits into the theme of the sonnet as a whole and works toward the couplet. In the first stanza, boughs without leaves are mentioned, followed by the setting sun and darkness in the second, and a dying fire in the third. Images from various areas all function as signs of mortality. In the couplet, a connection is drawn between these signs, which are visible in the speaker’s face, and love. Indirectly, Shakespeare sees human love as arising out of the certainty of man’s death. In this sonnet, the close connection between formal and thematic elements is clearly visible. Ideally, in traditional poetry, the lexical-thematic, visual and rhythmical-acoustic dimensions—used here to illustrate the most 42 MAJOR GENRES IN TEXTUAL STUDIES important elements of the genre—should link with each other. The idea of unity, according to which several levels of expression connect, is most dominant in poetry, but, to a lesser degree, also characterizes other genres. One ought to be cautio

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