(no subject)
Just finished a rough outline of my PhD dissertation prospectus. (A 'prospectus,' in American secondary ed terms, is a formal plan for your book-length research project in your field, called a 'dissertation.') Will start writing it this week. Eek. It's tiring just to think about writing this 15 page document. I can't imagine generating something 10 times that long!
But I'm excited about my topic, though. I just wish I hadn't found my heart gravitating toward a subject matter which requires me to be a passable expert on all of the following things: the novel, the short story, the short story cycle (which is the focus of my project); the Victorian/Realist period, Modernism (my period); and narrative theory. Honestly, either the novel, narrative, or modernism would've been enough by itself. I suppose that's what I get for being interested in genre.
Essentially, a genre is a category we put works of art into. At the highest level, it means differentiating between prose, poetry, and drama, but there are levels below those that divide up those categories. Types of poetry, types of drama, types of prose. In the world of prose, I study fiction, and in the world of fictional prose, I study the novel and the short story cycle.
One could argue that fanfiction is its own genre of fictional prose, one with many different types of subcategories: het, slash, or gen; AU or canon; types of stories based on plot, like PWP; types of story based on theme, like hurt/comfort; types of stories based on sexual kinks, like s/D.
I think genre is interesting because I like to think about how people make sense of what they read. Genres -- the categories we put works into, the labels we give them -- affect our understanding of what we read because they imply rules/parameters that help guide our reading process.
Why does genre matter?
In the fanfic world, think of the recent debate about warnings and triggers. Should warnings be listed separately even if they're implicit in the genre label, such a slave!fic being inherently non-con (or at least dub-con)?
In the "real world," think of how the members of Oprah's book club thought James Frey's account of his life in A Million Little Pieces was awesome and moving...until they realized some of the events had been fictionalized. That the book was marketed in the autobiography genre ensured that people would be strongly affected by his story, since it really happened, but one of the autobiography genre's understood rules (i.e., things readers expect out of a book labeled as such) is that the story really is more or less the truth. The question is, how much more or less? Apparently, in Frey's case, the passage most in question was about something that did indeed happen to him, but he exaggerated the episode for greater artistic effect. Normally, that kind of artistic rendering and structuring of the real world is okay; that is, in fact, often what fiction does for us, re-orders reality to we can see different aspects of it, or see familiar aspects differently. But when something is supposed to be nonfiction, where is the line between artistic rendering of reality and distortion of the truth?
Anyway, in case anybody cares, my dissertation is about the genre of the short story cycle: a group of short stories designed to be read as a coherent whole, usually because they share characters, setting, or theme, that hold together and depend on each other for their meaning more than would a mere collection of stories by the same author. I argue (as do others) that the short story cycle is not a type of novel, but people treat it like it is because they already know the rules for reading novels, and they'd like to stick with those. Mislabeling and mishandling a genre in that way leads to it being read incorrectly; in the case of the short story cycle, as a weird/bad/failed novel.
The stupid thing is this is a problem with literary critics more than with the average reader, who is perfectly able to understand the concept "inter-connected short stories," and who would learn to recognize the genre label "short story cycle" when he or she saw it if critics would just use it. If they would stop behaving as though the novel is the be-all and end-all of storytelling. But they won't do that because they'd apparently have to argue about it for a hundred years and write thousands of books on it first.
Ahaha. /end rant. Just thought some of you might be interested in/curious to know what I'll be spending the next year or two working on. You know, before I start my second master's degree in Library and Information Science so I can turn my back on literary studies to become an academic librarian. *headdesk* I am never, ever getting out of school, apparently.
But I'm excited about my topic, though. I just wish I hadn't found my heart gravitating toward a subject matter which requires me to be a passable expert on all of the following things: the novel, the short story, the short story cycle (which is the focus of my project); the Victorian/Realist period, Modernism (my period); and narrative theory. Honestly, either the novel, narrative, or modernism would've been enough by itself. I suppose that's what I get for being interested in genre.
Essentially, a genre is a category we put works of art into. At the highest level, it means differentiating between prose, poetry, and drama, but there are levels below those that divide up those categories. Types of poetry, types of drama, types of prose. In the world of prose, I study fiction, and in the world of fictional prose, I study the novel and the short story cycle.
One could argue that fanfiction is its own genre of fictional prose, one with many different types of subcategories: het, slash, or gen; AU or canon; types of stories based on plot, like PWP; types of story based on theme, like hurt/comfort; types of stories based on sexual kinks, like s/D.
I think genre is interesting because I like to think about how people make sense of what they read. Genres -- the categories we put works into, the labels we give them -- affect our understanding of what we read because they imply rules/parameters that help guide our reading process.
Why does genre matter?
In the fanfic world, think of the recent debate about warnings and triggers. Should warnings be listed separately even if they're implicit in the genre label, such a slave!fic being inherently non-con (or at least dub-con)?
In the "real world," think of how the members of Oprah's book club thought James Frey's account of his life in A Million Little Pieces was awesome and moving...until they realized some of the events had been fictionalized. That the book was marketed in the autobiography genre ensured that people would be strongly affected by his story, since it really happened, but one of the autobiography genre's understood rules (i.e., things readers expect out of a book labeled as such) is that the story really is more or less the truth. The question is, how much more or less? Apparently, in Frey's case, the passage most in question was about something that did indeed happen to him, but he exaggerated the episode for greater artistic effect. Normally, that kind of artistic rendering and structuring of the real world is okay; that is, in fact, often what fiction does for us, re-orders reality to we can see different aspects of it, or see familiar aspects differently. But when something is supposed to be nonfiction, where is the line between artistic rendering of reality and distortion of the truth?
Anyway, in case anybody cares, my dissertation is about the genre of the short story cycle: a group of short stories designed to be read as a coherent whole, usually because they share characters, setting, or theme, that hold together and depend on each other for their meaning more than would a mere collection of stories by the same author. I argue (as do others) that the short story cycle is not a type of novel, but people treat it like it is because they already know the rules for reading novels, and they'd like to stick with those. Mislabeling and mishandling a genre in that way leads to it being read incorrectly; in the case of the short story cycle, as a weird/bad/failed novel.
The stupid thing is this is a problem with literary critics more than with the average reader, who is perfectly able to understand the concept "inter-connected short stories," and who would learn to recognize the genre label "short story cycle" when he or she saw it if critics would just use it. If they would stop behaving as though the novel is the be-all and end-all of storytelling. But they won't do that because they'd apparently have to argue about it for a hundred years and write thousands of books on it first.
Ahaha. /end rant. Just thought some of you might be interested in/curious to know what I'll be spending the next year or two working on. You know, before I start my second master's degree in Library and Information Science so I can turn my back on literary studies to become an academic librarian. *headdesk* I am never, ever getting out of school, apparently.