The Ideology of Genre: A Comparative Study of Generic Instability

Thomas O. Beebee

Jan 1994 · Penn State Press

About this ebook

In a series of comparative essays on a range of texts embracing both high and popular culture from the early modern era to the contemporary period, The Ideology of Genre counters both formalists and advocates of the &"death of genre,&" arguing instead for the inevitability of genre as discursive mediation. At the same time, Beebee demonstrates that genres are inherently unstable because they are produced intertextually, by a system of differences without positive terms. In short, genre is the way texts get used. To deny that genres exist is to deny, in a sense, the possibility of reading; if genres exist, on the other hand, then they exist not as essences but as differences, and thus those places within and between texts where genres &"collide&" reveal the connections between generic status, interpretive strategy, ideology, and the use-value of language.

About the author

Thomas O. Beebee is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and German at the Pennsylvania State University and author of &"Clarissa&" on the Continent: Translation and Seduction (Penn State, 1990) and co-translator (with Qing-yun Wu) of The Remote Garden by Bai Hua (1994).