A reader of the epyllion by Dracontius, the elegy by Maximianus, and the epigram by Luxorius should not expect that these works--and these new embodiments of the 'old' genres--will be wholly identical with their 'archetypes'. Were it so, it would mean that we read but second-rate versifiers, indeed. We may expect rather that thanks to the reading of Dracontius's epyllion, Maximianus's elegy, and Luxorius's epigram our understanding of these very genres may become fuller and deeper than if it was narrowed only to the study of the 'classical phase' of the Roman literature. Therefore, I have decided to employ in the title of my book the expression genres rediscovered. I have found it fair to emphasize that the poets whose works have been studied here merit appreciation for their creativity, and indeed courage, in reusing and reinterpreting the classical--and truly classic--literary heritage. In addition, I have found it similarly fair to stress that for the students of Latin literature the borderline between the 'classical' and the 'post-classical' is, and should be, flexible. It is not my intention of course to imply that aesthetic and poetological differences should be ignored or blurred. Quite the reverse, these differences are profound and multidimensional and as such must be properly understood and explained. The main issue is the fact that studies of Latin literature--or rather of literature in general - and especially generic studies require a proper, i.e. diachronic, perspective. A description of a certain genre based merely on its most important or generally known representative/representatives will always risk becoming incomplete and limited. In genology, one must be utterly prudent in defining the 'main' and the 'marginal', the 'relevant' and the 'negligible'. In this sense, an insight into a few genres practiced by some 'classical'--and classic--Roman poets from the perspective of their 'post-classical' followers may be, also for a genologist, an intriguing rediscovery.

This volume explores how postcolonial texts have determined the evolution or emergence of specific formal innovations in narrative genres. While the prominence of questions of cultural identity in postcolonial studies has prevented due attention to concerns of literary form and aesthetics, this book gives premium to the literary, aiming to delineate the evolution of specific narrative techniques as part of an emerging postcolonial aesthetics. Essays delineate elements of an emergent postcolonial narratology across a variety of seminal generic forms, such as the epic, the novel, the short story, the autobiography, and the folk tale, focusing on genre as a powerful tool for the historicizing of literature and orature within cultural discourses. Investigating the heuristic value of concepts such as mimicry, writing back, translation, negotiation, or subversion, the book considers the value of explanatory paradigms for postcolonial generic models. It also explores the status of postcolonial comparative aesthetics versus globalization studies and liberal concepts of the transnational, taking issue with the prominence of Western concepts of identity in discussions of postcolonial literature and the favoring of mimetic forms. This volume offers a unique contribution to the study of narrative genre in postcolonial literatures and provides valuable insight into the field of postcolonial studies on the whole.

Drawing on research conducted in New Guinea, Indonesia, Melanesia and Taiwan, the contributors to this volume focus on how expressive genres such as music and dance are of enduring significance to social organization.

Genre Studies around the Globe: Beyond the Three Traditions exemplifies rich and vibrant international scholarship in the area of non-literary genre studies in the early 21st century. Based on the Genre 2012 conference held in Ottawa, Canada, the volume brings under one cover the three Anglophone traditions (English for Specific Purposes, the Sydney School, Rhetorical Genre Studies) and the approaches to genre studies developed in other national, linguistic, and cultural contexts (Brazilian, Chilean, and European). The volume contributors investigate a variety of genres, ranging from written to spoken to multimodal, and discuss issues, central to the field of genre studies: genre conceptualization in different traditions, its theoretical underpinnings, the goals of genre research, and pedagogical implications of genre studies. This collection is addressed to researchers, teachers, and students of genre who wish to familiarize themselves with current international developments in genre studies.

This book explores the social significance of letter writing. Letter writing is one of the most pervasive literate activities in human societies, crossing formal and informal contexts. Letters are a common text type, appearing in a wide variety of forms in most domains of life. More broadly, the importance of letter writing can be seen in that the phenomenon has been widespread historically, being one of earliest forms of writing, and a wide range of contemporary genres have their roots in letters. The writing of a letter is embedded in a particular social situation, and like all other types of literacy objects and events, the activity gains its meaning and significance from being situated in cultural beliefs, values, and practices. This book brings together anthropologists, historians, educators and other social scientists, providing a range of case studies that explore aspects of the socially situated nature of letter writing.

The first systematic, corpus-based and theoretically rigorous approach to the description and analysis of multimodal documents. Drawing on academic research and the experience of designers and production teams, Bateman uses linguistically-based analysis to show how different modes of expression together make up a document with a recognisable genre.

Film/Genre revises our notions of film genre and connects the roles played by industry critics and audiences in making and re-making genre. Altman reveals the conflicting stakes for which the genre game has been played and recognises that the term 'genre' has different meanings for different groups, basing his new genre theory on the uneasy competitive yet complimentary relationship among genre users and discussing a huge range of films from The Great Train Robbery to Star Wars and from The Jazz Singer to The Player.

The Power of Genre was first published in 1986. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. The Power of Genre is a radical and systematic rethinking of the relationship between literary genre and critical explanation. Adene Rosmarin shows how traditional theories of genre—whether called "historical," "intrinsic," or "theoretical"—are necessarily undone by their attempts to define genre representationally. Rather, Rosmarin argues, the opening premise of critical argument is always critical purpose or, as E. H. Gombrich has said, function, and the genre or "form" follows the reform. The goal is a relational model that works. Rosemarin analyzes existing theories of genre — those of Hirsch, Crane, Frye, Todorov, Jauss, and Rader are given particular attention—before proposing her own. These analyses uncover the illogic that plagues even sophisticated attempts to treat genre as a preexistent entity. Rosmarin shows how defining genre pragmatically – as explicitly chosen or devised to serve explicitly critical purposes – solves this problem: a pragmatic theory of genre builds analysis of its metaphors and motives into its program, thereby eliminating theory's traditional need to deny the invented and rhetorical nature of its schemes. A pragmatic theory, however, must be tested not only by its internal cohesion but also by its power to enable practice, and Rosmarin chooses the dramatic monologue, an infamously problematic genre, and its recent relative, the mask lyric, as testing grounds. Both genres—variously exemplified by poems of Browning, Thennyson, Eliot, and Pound—are ex post facto critical constructs that, when defined as such, make closely reasoned sense not only of particular poems but also of their perplexed interpretive histories. Moreover, both genres dwell on the historicity, textuality, and redemptive imperfection of the speaking self. This generic obsession ties the poems to their reception and, finally, to the openended, processes of hermeneutic question-and-answer stressed in Rosmarin's framing theory.

Ever felt mortally embarrassed when all your friends are discussing the merits of "the 5 points of Calvinism" and you don't have the foggiest idea what they're talking about? Ever kicked yourself for not knowing which popes reigned the shortest amount of time? (First on the list is Pope Urban VII, who ruled for a whopping 13 days.) Well, where else could you find the answer to all your problems, but in A Theological Miscellany-a maddeningly addictive cornucopia of trivia and smorgasbord of stuff that will keep you up late at night, reading just one more page. The best little book of trivia and oddities you'll ever find. . . . And if not the best, then certainly in the top ten.