Genre Investigation

Jordan Harrison

What is genre?

Genre is the term for any category of literature or other forms of art or entertainment, e.g. music, whether written or spoken, audial or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres are formed by conventions that change over time as new genres are invented and the use of old ones are discontinued. Often, works fit into multiple genres by way of borrowing and recombining these conventions.

What theorists relate to genre?

Daniel Chandler suggests conventional definitions of genres tend to be based on the notion that they constitute particular conventions of content (such as themes or settings) and/or form (including structure and style).

Also Chandler has the view that very few works have all the characteristics of the genre in which they participate.

Jane Feuer has divided ways to categorize genres into three different groups. Aesthetic, ritual and ideological.

Amy J. Devitt focuses on rhetorical genre. Viewing genre as a rhetorical device gives the author and the reader more freedom and "allows for choices."

Carolyn Miller suggests that ‘the number of genres in any society depends on the complexity and diversity of society’.

What genre theories relate to the horror genre?

Daniel Chandler theory on how genres are based on themes, settings and structure matches the horror genre with the idea of a villain, a victim, a twist and often a hero.

Also Amy J. Devitt’s idea of rhetorical genre and how the author and reader generate the genre by their own perception can apply to all genres including the horror genre as it is how the author/reader sees a media text.