4. Historical Kinds and theGeneric Repertoire

Many attempts to clarify literary genre founder in the confusion of treat-ing all generic types as belonging to the same category. If there is onlyone range of generic types, the critic faces an impossible task in distrib-uting works among them. As he well knows, most works combine manytypes. This is a different problem from the one presented by genericchange; but the two are linked, as later chapters will argue. First we haveto distinguish (he various sorts of generic types.

Categories

Literary v.!orks can always be grouped in different ways. Thus, Tom Stop-pard's ROJencranz and Gui/dens/ern Are Dead might represent several SOrtSof genre. Like Waiting/or Godot, it could be taken as a modern morality.At the same time, like Gilbert and Sullivan's ROJeneranz and Guildenstern,it could be taken as an epicyclic work extending the fictive world ofHamlet. It is a serious comedy, but it has also been called an absurdistdrama. And in much the same way The Winter's Tale has been treated ascomedy, rragicomedy, near-tragedy, and romance. Part is pastoral; al-though, eV,en in this, Autolycus embodies the contrasting values of whatis variously termed "Hesiodic" (Rosenmeyer) and rogue or "boisterouspastoral" (Taylor).t Again, we recognize a structural type, in which anal-ogous actions (the Hermione plot and the Perdita plot) reflect upon oneanother. Finally, in the sheep-shearing scene, The Winter's Tale hasmasque "elements," as we say.

True, the genres identi~ed vary with the purpose and the knowledge ofthe speaker. A hurried ticket agent may be contenr with "comedy"; acritic may have time for agonizing about minuter distinctions. Moreover,generic types vary in their definition: we do not distinguish much where

HISTORICAL KINDS 55

we are not well informed. And some types may be inherently indistinctand prone to overlap. But much the commonest-and least under-stood-reason for "overlapping" of genres is their belonging to differentcategories. A morality is simply not in the same range of genre as an epi-cyclic work or an absurdist drama. And no progress can be made withoutdifferentiating at least a few of these categories. We shall attempt to dis-tinguish the following: kind or historical genre, subgenre, mode, and COn-ftruetional type. Thus, The Winter'f Tale is a tragicomedy in kind, withparts that are pastoral or romantic in mode. But it is not a romance inkind. Without distinguishing some such categories of genre, criticismmusr sink into incoherent confusion. For analytic convenience we candistinguish the categories in terms of the features making up the genericrepertoire. Only kind and sub genre ever use anything like a completerange of features.

The Generic Repertoire

1\_/ rbe repertoire is the whole range of potential points of resemblance ..thata ge~_~e_'.ii_~iexhiblc Although the process whereby we identify genre isobscure, retrospective analysis can arrive at many characteristic features.Every genre has a unique repertoire, from which its representatives selectcharacteristics. These distinguishing features, it is worth nming, may beeither formalor substantive. As Austin Warren says, generic groupingshould be based "upon both outer form (specific metre or structure) and... upon inner form (attitude, tone, purpose-more crudely, subject andaudience).,,2 And Guillen cautions against the vagueness that comesfrom concentrating exclusively on external features, or on internal onessuch as "the 'essence' of tragedy, or the 'ideas' of the Russian novel.,,3The best of the olde( theorists, in fact, always kept external and internalforms together in discussing the historical kinds. Thus, Aristotle's trag-edy is constituted by realizations of certain elements (mere): namely,story (mythos); character (flhe); dialogue (lexis); characters' thought(dianoia); spectacle (opsis); and song, the lyrical element (melopoiia).'And the best modern criticism concurs. We still think of Attic tragedy ascharacterized by both subsrantive and formal features. The genre is iden-tified n6t only by the presence of epeisodia and stasima, of cerrain metricalpatterns and certain devices (for example, stichomythia), but also of a seri-ous plot with reversals and discoveries, a noble protagonist and emotionsof high intensity, occasioned by a conflict of values. A !ortio'ri with lacer

56 KINDS OF LITERATURE

/

tragedy and with other histOrical kinds. All have characteristic internalforms. It would be wrong to defend genre by arguing that it does not[estrin contents. Indeed, rhat line of thought may have encouraged thenotion of genre as a merely formal encumbrance.

Nor all categories of genre combine internal and external characteris-tics, however. As rhe broad term "genre" is used in this book, it includesnor only rhe hisrorical kinds but also the more or less unstructuredmodes, on the one hand, as well as purely formal constructional types onthe other. These categories can be distinguished by introducing the ideaof generic repertoire. In subgenre we find the same external characteris-tics with the corresponding kind, togethet with additional specificationof comem. It adds an obligatory part-repertoire of substantive rules, op-tional in the kind (to which it is related, therefor~, almost as a subclass).Mode, by contrast, is a selection or abstracti~n' from kind. Ie has few ifany external rules, but evokes a historical kind through samples of its in-ternal repertoire. Compared with historical genre, chen, the subgenre cat-egory adds features, whereas the mode subtracts them. Amoretti 64, forexample, is amatory in mode, Elizabethan sonner in kind, of the blazonsubgenre. Again, what may be called "constructional types" ate purelyformal. They occur in works of many differem kinds-as does the widelydistributed catalogue type, used in the same sonnet. And rhe composi-tion of sonnets to form the sequence Amoretti exemplifies another con-structional type, the collection.

We have now to look at the generic categories in a litde more detail.

//Kind

\

As I use the term, "kind" is equivalent to "historical genre," or the un-happily named "fixed genre." This pardy agrees with recent criticalusage.5 But to use the currem general term is nor to accept its meaningaltogether, or the whole nomenclature of individual kinds. Some rermsin frequent use, such as "pastoral," really belong in an entirely differentcacegory. Nevercheless, there is a substantial basis of agreement abommany historical kinds. Uncil recendy, they received more anention thangenres of other categories. Menander and other ancient rhetoricians de-scribed many kinds (eide) quite minutely,6 and Greek descriptions wereoften accepted by Latin writers and critics. But the lattet also developed asense of cheir own definite, though changing, customs. Horace may nocrefer ro genre when he wrices of his satires as trespassing ultra legem,7 bur

.,

HISTORICAL KINDS

he is certainly aware of a kind that Lucilius originated: "Cum est Luciliusausus / primus in hunc operis componere carmina morem" (Satires2.1.62-63). Renaissance criticism often returns, similarly, to a kind's his-torical originatOr. It reflects consciousness of tradition, whether repre-senred by an authority (Aristode) or a paradigmatic author (Horace, Pc-trarch). Somecimes in the Middle Ages and often from rhe sixteenthcentury on, kinds are traditionally named, often with the same labelsused in ancient criticism. It is wort~ noting rhar ..rhe names of kinds(from which most other gene~i~t~~"~~-t~ke their ori-gi~S ar~inva~riablY!Lo!!.l}~.A proposition of the form "This work is a Z" (to use Guillen'sformula) normally identifies a historical genre.

KindS-roa.y_.iR this way give the impression of being fixed, definiterhin.g~JQc;:~t~d in hisrory, whose description is a fairly routine marrero Aswe shall see, there is something in the idea of definiteness. But describingeven a familiat kind is no simple matter. We may chink we know what asonner is, until we look into the Elizabethan sonnet and are faced withguatorzain stanzas, fourteen-line epigrams, sixteen-line sonnets, and"sonnet sequences" mixing sonnets with complaints or Anacreonticodes. Besides such historical changes within individual kinds, there arewider changes in the literary model to be allowed for, with their repet-cussions on rhe significance and even categorization of generic features.Srricrly speaking, discussion of a generic repertoire cakes for granted aprevious exploration of the range of constituent features and of their' in-terrelation ("strarification") during the active life of rhe kind. A theoryof possible constituents should be worked out for the period in question.This is no easy undertaking, when forms change so radically and rapidly.Even Roman Ingarden's circumspect organon Das literarische Kumtwerk:Eine Untersuchung aUJ dem Grmzgebiet der Ontologie, Logik und Literatur-wiJsemchajt (1931) failed to take account of the radio play, with its newbearing on the theory of side-text.

Moreover, the survey of the reperroire needs to cover as many literaryconstituents as possible. In spire of its tide, Ingarden's formidable workdeals mainly with the stratification common [0 all discourse: it is by nomeans comprehensive from a literary point of view. An adequace inven-[Ory would have to take historical variations into account, and would in-clude not only {he linguistic features commonly considered (presenta-tional mode, rhetOric, lexis, and so on), but also superstructural featuresmore or less confined to literary discourse (closure, metrical forms, thymevocabularies, tOpics, and so on). All features arc subject [0 changes of

57

58 HISTORICAL KINDS 59KINDS OF LITERATURE

function. Rhyme in Pope's literary world has a different content fromrhyme in Chaucer's world, and this would have to be allowed for intreating the generic function of rhyme in satire. Similarly, the twelve-lineform of many Caroline epitaphs and elegies may have had a generic force,rather than the number symbolism that would have been felt in theifElizabethan predecessors. Almost any feature, it seems, can becomegenre-linked and belong more or less regularly to a kind's repertoire. Thisapplies equally w what used to be called content, as opposed to form.Images, motifs, and topics in the stratum of represented objects all formpart of a repertoire. And, conversely, a work's genre can affeCt its constit-uents' stratification. Thus, graphemes may have quite different functionsin concrete poems and in elegies, and images of the seasons are signifi-cant at different levels in georgics. haiku, and Romantic odes. The exis-tence of such possibilities makes one think that reducing literary kinds covery broad "discourse types" must be a mistake.

The generic repertoire, as usually described, may be typified by Guil-len's ilst of the features of picaresque. Guillen specifies eight character-istics: the picaro, a distinctive character-type seen in clearly defined situ-ations such as orphanhood; the pseudoaucobiographical form, implyingan ironic double perspective; rhe narrator's prejudiced view; his tendencyto generalize from exemplary experience, so that the form is "closed"ideologically; the stress on problems of earning and livelihood; the obser-vation of many different social groups; the picaro'J movement "horizon-tally through space and vertically through society"; and the loosely epi-sodic narrative structure using recurrent motifs, circular patterns,incremental processes, and embedded sub narrations. Naturally, this baldsummary does little justice to Guillen's sensitive treatment. Nevertheless, -'it may serve to bring out limitations of method. Thus, the synchronicapproach must ignore differences between early picaresque (Lazarillo)and modern symbolic picaresgue (Felix Krull).8 Again, analysis is aban-doned whenever a feature proves to be less than universally distributed:the p!caro is "not always the servant of many masters" and "The place ofsatire.. is not guite secure in the picaresgue." At such points onc isbound to feel that a family resemblance theory would have encouragedmore far-reaching exploration. For example, in many early picaresguenovels, the p!caro's versatile servant role, with its opportunity for altruis-tic identification, is a highly significant feature. Nor does Guillen'smethod allow him to say anything about picaresque's tenuous miJe-en-Jcene, the thinness of almost aU its characters, or the picaro's own insecure

identity. Pursuing the chimera of universal characteristics results, that is,in a much abbreviated inventory of the repertoire. Finally, the merging ofkind and mode means that picaresque is treated as a subclass of novel,whereas in fact it began as a separate kind, with its own external StruC-cure. Nevertheless, Guillen has made an invaluable survey of the picaresgue repertoire. It has the right kind of variety, ranging as it does oversubstantive and formal elements.

The guesrion naturally arises whether we have w think of such a ge-neric repertoire as listing only "field marks" or special genre linked fea-tures (which would thus be quite distinct from the far greater number of"ordinary" features). Or are the kinds complete organizations? And areall constituents whatsoever ordered generically? Many literary features ofall sortS (topical allusions, puns, half-rhymes) appear in several kinds-although nOt usually in very many, or at random. A few, such as struc-cure, occur in all. However, a great many features must be articulated ge-nerically, at least in the broad sense of being suitable, for the kinds tohave any existence. And certain features seem to be more closely genre-linked (amoebean dialogue in eclogue, Hymen in epithalamium).Spenser's lines

Hymen is awake,And long since ready forth his mask ro move,With his bright tede that flames with many a flake

(Epithalamion 25-27)

have alliteration, common in some Elizabethan poetic genres; inversions,consonant with an elevated style height; and the tede, or pine-torch,epithalamic in a much more special way. Unless we connect the torchwith the keroi (tapers) of epithalamium, the passage would hardly be in-telligible. And we sh-o~ld certainly miss the beauciful development of theconvention later, in the "thousand rerches flaming bright" in the heav-ens, with its suggestion that the spiritual gualities symbolized by tbe':kfroi lead up to stellification. This is a brief example. But it is easy re seethat if such generic indicarers are commonly missed, the kind as a wholemust be misunderstood.

Within this nuclear family of generic indicators, we may further dis-tinguish local features, such as incipitJ or closure types, and more dis-persed features, such as emotional tonaliey or scale. These latter may beelusive, but they exert a pervasive influence on other constituents. Mostelusive of all are "absent features," that is, features normally excluded

HISTORICAL KINDS

60 KINDS OF LITERATURE uS may once have had communicative or "internal" value-as with nu-merological patterns. But for the present purpose there is no need to goinra such quesdons. In practice, the criterion of strUcture is not usuallyhard ra apply. Aetic tragedy has manifestly some such strUcture as pro-Logue / choraL song / episode / choral song .. / exode, whereas neoclassicaltragedy has a five-act strUcture. Aristotle may hint at the demonstrabilityof external structure when he speaks of the "members into which tragedyis quantitatively divided,,,11 in a passage that greatly influenced Parriliand other Renaissance theorists. If each kind had a characteristic struC-ture that was peculiar to it alone, this would almost suffice to distinguishie. So Renaissance masque-one of the kinds that have a unique struc-

ture-is very readily identified.But external structure is seldom so exclusive. (Division into chapters,

[or example, occurs with many kinds.) Then we may look for a moredistinctive strUcture in minuter details, or at a slightly different level ofstratification. And we may nnd it-perhaps in stanza forms (the ro-mance-six; the strophe), in rhetorical divisions (the parts of a classicaloration; the invocatio, principium, initium of epic), Of in the sections ofnarrative (episodes in epic; interlaced segments in medieval romance).With very short forms, the external StrUcture may reside in word divisionor grammati~al patrern, as when a Renaissance impresa or emblem mottocomprises a single word group. (William Drummond's Short Discourseupon Impresa1 even argues that the best impre1a or "word" should be "onlyof twO words, as gang warily; or it is good of one only, as 1emper. The far-ther it is from tWO,it is the more imperfecr.") And graffiti have elabo-rately structured sound patterns. With larger kinds, division inca num-bered external parts may be generically distinctive. Thus, Renaissancebrief epics and biblical epics are commonly divided into four or six orseven books, whereas classical epics are divided intO twelve or twenty-four books--either in accordance with ancienc precedents or with num-ber symbolisms (the hexaemeric six; -the encyclopedic twenty-four). Inearlier literature, numerological strUcture regularly contributed co ge-neric differentiation: triumphal poems usually had symmetrical structureswith a central emphasis; epithalamia were divided by temporal or nuptial

numbers.1l3. In ancient criticism, metrical 1tructure was especially genre-linked.

Indeed, meters were so rigorously connected with particular kinds as toprovide a basis of classification. Quintilian and others probably regardedpastOral as "heroic" because it used the hexameter line. But since then,

from a kind (puns, for example, from neoclassical epic and from Vicro-rian hymns). In facr, it may well be chat the majority of generic featuresoperate unconsciously, until, perhaps, some gross infringement of ruledraws them to our attention. To understand the kinds, therefore, wehave to take inca account a very wide range of features.

It may help to glance at the variety of features that have been generi-cally organized; mentioning a few of the commonest, some familiar cocriticism, and others that have been passed over. The arrangement is in-formal, since we are not in a position co say what structured sequence orsystem (if any) generic features form during cecognition.

9

1. Most kinds have a distinctive repre1entationaL aspect, such as narrative,dramatic, discursive. They may have several. Thus, English Renaissancetragedy, although predominantly dramatic, oft~!l has subsidiary lyric ornarrative sections (songs, nuntiu1 speeches). In the English kind, the lyricelements are usually motivated, or at least occasioned by the action; un-like ancient tragedy, in which independent choruses occupy relativelyfixed formal positions. Similarly, eighteench-centucy English georgic maymingle descriptive, expository, and lyric aspects. And an Elizabethansonnet sequence such as Astrophit and Stella is primarily lyric (as C. S.Lewis said, "It is not a way of telling a story"), and secondarily narrativeand dramatic. Renaissance critics could regard the eclogue, with its dia-logue, as a dramatic form: "The Poet devised the Eclog~e long after theother dramatic poems."IO However, Renaissance eclogue differs from theancient type in freer use of lyric and narrative.

2. Every kind is characterized by an external structure. This point gainsforce from {he comparative definiteness of the feature. True, the termstrucrure is sometimes applied ro rather doubtful internal patterns (in-cluding some whose existence is not so brilliantly elusive as to achieveincontestability), but that is not so here. I mean "strucrure" simply inthe o~>tensible,obvious sense: the linear sequence of parts. Structures ofthis crude order can usually be demonstrated, so that factual disagree-ment about them is rare. We may dispute the significance, but hardly thefact, of such a sequence aspoetic induction / antima1que / mtnque / epiLogue.This gives kind a certain palpability, by comparison with mode, which isnot characterized by external struCture.

The idea of external struCture entails a few theoretical complications.For instance, structure can be "external" in different ways: whether byphysical division into chapters, stanzas, and the like, or by conventionalorganization of the contents. Moreover, structures that seem external to

61

62 KINDS OF LITERATUREHISTORICAL KINDS 63

profound historical changes have loosened the old connections that mayonce have existed between meters and kinds. From early times, in fact,critics seem to have felt this tendency: Aristotle writes of iambics as for-merly used for invective, but extended to comedy.13 Some think of theform as prompcly "becoming neutralized and abdicating its role as a ge-neric labd.,,14 This may be something of an overstatement, but it is truethat 'over a longer period-partly through expressive modifications,partly as a result of domination by single forms (the Augustan couplet;Romantic and Victorian blank verse)-metrical structure has lost mostof its generic implication. Even meters that used to be limited co a fewkinds are now available for many, if not all. Nevertheless, triple rhythmsare still confined to a fairly narrow range of kinds-as polysyllabic rhymesare, to satire and light verse (Hudibra.s; Byron; Lehrer). D And many con-ventions, not all of them .well underscood, still link certain stanzaic andmetrical forms with single kinds. Everyone knows a ballad's or a nurseryrhyme's rhythm, even modified by a de la Mare or a Causley. Haiku, lim.erick, clerihew, and many other short forms have each a unique metricalstructure. In one or two exceptional cases, meter is actually more closelygenre-linked now than in former times. Common Meter is mainly asso-ciated with the Christian hymn, whereas the ancient hymn lacked a met-rical form.16

4. As every kind has a formal structure, so it must have a .size. Thiscorollary 6f the doctrine of quanritative parts is by no means trivial. In-deed, size counts as a critical factor from a generic point of view. Hereliterary and linguistic organizations diverge. There are no linguistic con-straints on the length of an utterance, whereas genre often determineslength precisely (sonnet; computisric verse) and always exerts constraintson it. From Callimachus on (Epigrammata 13), writers have expressedkeen awareness of this. Wordsworth twice voiced his sense of the son-net's restricred scale: finding it compatible with variety and solace, lav-ishing on it images of possibility ("hermit's cell," "key,,).17 But with afew honorable exceptions such as Paul Zumthor, critics have shown littleappreciation of the point. AristOtle merely speaks of tragedy's action as"of a cereain magnitude" ("meden echon megethos"), the length beingfixed by the limits of the competitive occasion and of the audience's abil.ity ro grasp the work as a whole. His Renaissance exponenrs went intothe dimensions somewhat more closely. In fan, Renaissance treatmenrsof most kinds touch on size. Chapelain, a little later, srill sees the lengthof the Adom as raising serious problems of kind. Bu t modern theorists

tend ro speak rather dismissively of wordage limirs for novel, novella, andshan srory. 18 The guestion is nor an idle one: differences of size havemany repercussions on the nature of the reading experience.Kinds may be considered short, medium, or long. Variarion of reading

habits counts against much finer graduation, although in particular in-stances it may be useful: Puttenham distinguishes elegy from epigram bysizc. Shore kinds include many sranzaically defined forms (strambotta;sestina), most songs (madrigal; blues), odes, elegies, many ill-defined"lyric" kinds (confessional poem; imagist poem), various epigraphickinds (cpitaph; motto), sayings (proverb; aphorism; maxim; modernepigram), literary riddles (acrostics; charades-as we know from Emma)"such things in general cannot be too shore"), prose forms of a few para-graphs (prose poem; character), shore narratives (parable; "short shoresrory"). More than one of a short kind can be read or performed on asingle occasion. Hence, they may aim ae effects of variety or contrast withother items in a series.Medium works can also be completed at a sirring, but nOt more than

twO or three at most would usually be attempted. Exisring indcpen-dendy, they tend to have a more comprehensive, balanced content. POSt-Renaissance dramatic and orarorical kinds (sermon; declamaeion) aremostly of medium length. So are the shorr story, fairy tale, brief epic,essay, and tracr. Medium verse kinds include eclogue, descriptive sketch,verse satire. Poe may have overstressed the single sirring as a threshold.But we can agree that extension of the reading experience beyond it hasmany formal implications.Works in long kinds normally reguire more than one sitting. They are

regularly divided, indecd~ into parts of no more than medium length thatreflect the duration of n~)Ci.~nalreading sessions. Discontinuiries betweenthe parts have a profound effect on the total impression. In epic, ro-mance, novelistic kinds, biography, journal-all kinds of long narra.tives-a sense of time's lapse is vitaL A reader is to feel that he has notonly visited but inhabited the fictive world. All long kinds, whether nar-rative or not, share cerrain fearures. Among these the transition is nota-ble: external and internal divisions lend themselves to exploitation, byway of closure, lead-in, suspense, entrelacementJ or other narrative or ex-posirory effects.

A specific magnitude, then, is a sine qua non of every kind. Each fallsinto one of the ranges of size mentioned above. Anomalies have a way ofproving this rule. For example, the immensely long Satire 0/ the Three EJ.

HISTORICAL KINDS

taW is closely reiaced to medieval morality, and in any case was per-formed in special circumstances: Renaissance critics were actually muchexercised abour the stamina of audiences, which they put at three hoursor so. Again, several kinds straddle the division between short and me-dium (episcle; ballad; fabliau; fable). But these terms may cover morethan one kind, ro say nothing of mixtures. This is certainly true of epic(brief; classical), on borh sides of rhe border between medium and long.Similarly with satire. There is at first some plausibility in GilbertHighet'S idea that its protean diversity, so baffling to genre theorists, im-plies a specially free, mecamorphic, passe-partout form. But sarire turnsout not to be a kind, but a whole group of genres, well characterized byHighet himself. such as monologue, parodic satire, and narrative satire.In parodic satire, any literary (or nonliterary) .eype can be parodied, in-cluding forms of various length. from hy~~ t'o dictionary and scholarlyedition (Bierce's Devil's Dictionary; Pope's Dunciad). However, this isobviously a mixed genre (and as such will be considered in a later chap-ter). None of the unmixed satiric kinds has a comparably elastic size.And with Menippean or narrative satires there seems to be a fairly strictlimit, about the length of Gulliver's Travels. Longer satires seem [Q workagainst the generic grain. A brillianc success in this direction might con-sritute a new kind; as it is, we must call The Apes of God and Giles Goatboygenerically inept, as well as coo long.

le follows that a genre not characterized by any definite size is not a

kind, in the present sense.5. Closely related to size is scale. Scale, when combined with other fea-

cures, may serve as rather a sensitive generic indicator. In a first reading ofCranford, for example, the abrupt dispatch of Captain Brown may be oneof the places where we begin to idencify the kind. If promising charactersgo down at chis rate, we feel, the book is more likely to be a composite ofskerches than, say, a Richardsonian novel. Similarly, picaresque's frequentchanges of setting establish a scale that is enough co rule out several fea-

tures chara.cteristic of other kinds of narrative.6. We have inherited a strong suspicion of the idea that subject may be

limited generically. It has become a dogma that no subject is poetic orunpoetic. But if subject is properly understood, there really are unpoetiC

subjects.In ancient and again in neoclassical literature, a firm decorum related

subjects with kinds and so with external forms. Time and again, Horaceand other critics said, or implied, as much: "In what measure [that is,hexameter] the exploits of kings and captains and the sorrowS of war

may be written, Homer has shown" (ArJ Poetica 7,-74); "A theme forcomedy refuses to be set forth in verses of tragedy; so the feast ofThyestes scorns to be tOld in everyday cones that almost suit the comicstage" (I\. 89-91). In the Middle: Ages, the little secular genre theory thatexisted stressed subject more than form, as in the rota Vergiliana. Renais-sance critics resumed the ancient assumption: "Toute sorte de Poesie al'argument prapre a song subject," says Ronsard.19 Indeed, "mattersheroical and pastoral" (Sidney) were distinguished so sharply thac theycould be consciously mingled.20 Nevertheless, Rosalie Colic is righc todraw special attention to the great Scaliger's constant use of "matter asthe definer of kind.,,21 The assured comprehensivenes with which he as-signs a whole range of topics to each kind-always it is "harum materiamultiplex"-certainly astonishes. It leads Rosenmeyer to smile at the"divisionary ardour" with which Scaliger "merrily scramble[s] formaland substantive criteria." But most critics of that time would have accepted the scrambling in principle, even if they themselves lacked versa-tility and learning to perform it as powerfully as Scaliger.

More recently, decorum of subject has been obscured through the mu-tability of kinds. The skeptic can say, "It is now clear that no such line isto be easily drawn, or is perhaps to be drawn at all.,,22 George Watsonrefers to the old error of supposing that only great men could have tragicfates-Ibsen has shown us that tragedy is not about kings. But we shouldnot conclude from changes in tragedy's maeter thac it has none. Tragedyis not a "treatment" chat might be applied to any subject. The problemof subject is toO often approached via tragedy, a kind that happens tooffer special difficulties in this regard. Even so, we can say that some sub-jects are inherently so somber that any but a grave, tragic presentation ofthem would be inconceivable in good literature.

Decorum of subject is also misunderstood because "subject" haschanged in meaning. Of course many aCtions can be treated indifferentlyas comedy or tragedy-so long as "action" is left vague enough, or de-fined selectively. But subjects need to be allowed their ordinary specificityof associated actions and topics. The broad situation of bedroom farcecould doubtless be treated with tragic solemnity-but then the subject,in its full sense, would be different. With some shan kinds, subject isgenerally agreed to be constant. Epiraphs are normally about the deedsand qualities of a particular deceased person and their claim on our at-tention; funeral elegies are about the thoughts and feelings of rhose whomourn; proverbs are about common shared experiences.It is a half-truth chat literature has been liberated from decorum of

64 KINOS OF LITERATURE

KINDS OF LITERATUREHISTORICAL KINDS 67

subject. Certain individual constraints on subject have undoubtedly re-laxed. However, their place has simply been taken by ochers, althoughthese remain unformulated. Anti-intentionalism has concealc:d this, byconfusing subject with intention. So Valery (or Robert Creeley) willdeny writing about a subject. Then, if ever, is the time to suspect an in-tentional fallacy. He may have intended, only, not to have a subject. Butin any case, writing about "no subject" itself implies a choice of genre.There is a subtype of process poem characterized by ostensible avoidanceof subject and by concealed preference for a very narrow range of topicsindeed, mostly trivia or rudimentary universal experiences. A characteris-tic subjeCt is, in a word, the unmarked form. If there is no appropriatematter, or very various matter, this itself becomes a characteristic pecu-liarity-as with 1630 epigram or epistle. Without pretending that everykind has a precise range of subjects all its own, we can claim the obverse:that no kind is indifferent to subject.

7. Closely related are the values inherent in all kinds. These have beenamong the themes of several fine studies, such as Rosenmeyer's GreenCabinet, with its account of the epicurean values in certain pastoral kinds.A kind's values tend to elude brief treatment, but they are nonethelesshighly characteristic. They operate in very different ways. Thus, proverbs

! impart a relatively unformulated wisdom. B"ut the values of epic and ro-mance constitute definite,systems: one thinks of the rank-ordered virtuesof classical and of Christian epic, contrasted in Paradise Lost; or the chi-valric codes of medieval romance; or the partly pre-Christian values ofNorse saga.23 In such kinds, much of the meaning may lie in a modifica-'tion of the value-system.

Elusive though generic values may be to the theorist bent on formula-tion, they seem accessible enough to the reader. We soon begin to recog-nize the moral world of the sagas. Such intuitions take us some way. Buta kind's values are not quite co be identified with the values of the moral"world" it portrays. The vernacular homeliness of 1580 eclogue; the inti-macy of Augustan satiric verse epistle; the professional precision of 1970thriller-all these communicate values that figure littk in the life theyrepresent. For the values of a literary kind are often deeply hidden. Satiremay seem chaotic or nihilistic, but in reality it is more often traditional,if nOt conservative. Its positive values are so implicit, are offered withsuch elaborate obliguity of surprise and such sudden denouement, that inorder co communicate themselves they must be venerably familiar.(Postmodern underground satire proves the rule: it is addressed to true

believers who already share the satirist's views.) A distinctive value of sat-ire is its strangely secure candor-as if confident that truth exposed isbetter than truth colored or made bearable.

8. Each kind has an emotional coloration, which may be called mood-almost in the sense of Milton's "That strain I heard was of a highermood," where he raises Lycidas in generic pitch. Mood plays a speciallyvital part in gothic romance, where it often colors character, atmosphere,and natural description in an unmistakable way. But even when moodhas been a conscious preoccupation of the writer, it remains notoriouslyineffable to the critic. Some of the theorists ridiculed for their fatuoushypostatizations ("the tragic spirit"; "the essence of comedy") may havehad chis feature in mind. However that may be, mood seems undoubt-edly to belong among the features of kind. Sometimes, it can be asso-ciated with local indicators of genre-a point to which we shall return ina later chapter.9. Many kinds used to have a characteristic occasion, at least initially. In

these occasional kinds (epithalamium; epicede; genethliacon), relationswith ritual and custom were particularly intimate and rich-as Scaligerwas fond of demonstrating. Puttenham jocosely refused to call songsperformed at supper epithalamies, since rhe kind's first part had properlyto coincide with the bedding, whereas the second covered the bride's in-expert "shrieking and outcry." But occasion has been a feature of otherkinds too. Attic tragedy was partly determined by festival requirements;and several of Shakespeare's plays have a'large festal element. In TwelfthNight! much in the action and the ~haracters would once have been rec-ognized as appropriate to the Twelfth Night festivities.24

Some kinds depend heavily on the original occasion. Occasion and setting controlled so IT"!-a~yof the motifs, images, and ideas of masque chatthe form survives only 'in a- ghostly way without them. With such forms,information may have to be supplied by annotation, or by addition of atitie. An epigraph that explained itself on stone must in print be entitled:"Written over a Study" or "Epitaph. On Sir William Trumbull."

Changes in the social function of literature have made occasion lessimportant. But it still operates: some contemporary poetic kinds are cal-culated to answer reguirements of the poetry reading.

10. Occasion, in its imaginary, attenuated form, coalesces with the Sty-listic feature attitude, which is often characteristic in the shorr poetickinds.2~ Ancient lyrical forms, for example, often seem to imply actualinterpersonal relations; and these may remain associated with equivalent

I

I!II

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HISTORICAL KINDS 6968 KINDS OF LITERATURE

later kinds. Thus, the propernptikon or valedicrion of equal to equal, char-acterized by affection, may reflect the relation of fellow pupils at rhetoricschoo1.26And Donne's "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" adopes asimilarly intimate stance (not unmixed, though, with the didactic atci-tude of the superior-to-inferior propernptikon). In the same way, the poemof patronage presupposes the special ani tude, deferential yet advisory, ofpoet to patron. And even the contemporary confessional poem has itsdistinctive attitude. This is not, as one might expect, spontaneously inti-mate. Ir is more deliberately staged-almost like the attitude of one inthe act of adding to a public personality or "image." Thus, confessionalpoems convey gratuitous information that would be out of place in an"overheard" meditation by Yeats or Eliot. Lowell will tell us the namesof his summer cottage's "owners, Miss Barnard, .and Mrs. Curtis," or re-mark: "Our cookbook is bound like Whitman's Leaves of GraJs- / goldtitle on green." The confessional attitude here contrasts with that of theverse epistle, whose intimate direct address limits informativeness.

11. Narrative kinds may have a distinctive mise-en-scene. This is a highlydeveloped feature with romance, science fiction, the gothic short story,and the psychological novel. With certain types of verisimilar novel,however, setting may be insignificant.27 Similarly in poetry: the 1915-18war poem has an elaborately conventional realistic mise-en-JCene, whereasthe pastoral eclogue, through a.11historical periods, is with few excep-tions set in country lacking any detailed realization wh}tsoever.

12. Character is the focus of much existing genre theory. This usuallyinvolves much fine-drawn moral analysis, since character is ehe personalform of such values. In epic, the generic protagonist has gone through a

I long course of development, bur has always had a strategic moral signifi-cance, Spenser sketched its generic context when he relared his Arthur toprevious examples of "a good governor and a virtuous man": Homer's,Virgil's, Ariosto's, and Tasso's "dissevered ... parts in twO persons.,,28 Inhis own multiple heroes he plays on this convention by many differen-tiations, as when he craps the reader into accepcing various respectablyheroic forms of pride (the Redcross Knight's spiritual pride; Guyon'saristocratic disdain). And Milton, similarly, experts readers to recognizehis Satan as hero of the pagan epic that Paradise Lost as a whole is not. Inother kinds, coo, character has long been treated as genre-linked. AristO-tle says that the tragic protagonist should be "a man not preeminenrlyvirtuous and just," whose misfortunes are brought on "not by vice anddepravity but by some error of judgment" (Poetics 1453a). The Aristote-lian re9uirement chac the tragic hero should be a "man of note" is altered

in the Renaissance, so that the stress falls on rank rather than prosperity.Rank becomes a means of distinguishing tragic and comic characters-aconvention from which Shakespeare effectively departs. Lacer still, charac-ter, in the sense of personality, is a main focus of genre criticism. In de-bating whether Pepita Jimenez is a "religious novel," Patmore discusses italmost exclusively in terms of charaCter. Today Bradleian character analy-sis is officially out of favor. But we stili smuggle something very like itinto criticism of novels, where many words are spent determiningwhether a narrator i$ "reliable" or nOt (or some fine shade, as with TheGood Soldier, in between). Only we are not used to thinking of this asrelated to hismcical kind.

Of the relatively small number of literary character types, criticism hasmosrly confined itself to one: the hero--or, since his "decline," the anti-hero.29 Other types, wich the partial exception of the Fool, have receivedlittle extended attention.~o This has obscured the association of severalkinds with distinctive characters, who may nevertheless be vital to theirgeneric communication. As Rosenmeyer has shown, much of the effectof ehe Theocritean and Virgilian pastoral eclogues has to do with shad-ings of the shepherd character. The ancient shepherds are youthful andsimple, unlearned and innocent. The same is largely true of Elizabethaneclogue (Sidney; Drayton; Browne); excepr rhar a few shepherds havelearned from the Petrarchan tradition to be relatively experienced. Still,the pastoral cast includes no character remotely like the pedam of com-edy: indeed, it properly excludes even the georgic types, who are given todidacticism and necessarily bener supplied with precise information.Even without formulating such differences, we are unlikely to miss them.The lines and limits of pastoral 'character are still recognizable in complexmixtures, as when Shakespeare's Perdita becomes involved in debace withPolixenes. From a similar point of view, the engage intellectuals inSpenser's Shepherd's Calendar, if not without Continental precedent, con-stitute a striking enough instance of generic mixture.

In addition to character types, there are also types of character. Charac-ter scale may be genre-linked. So picaresque has "thin" characters,whereas the verisimilar novel commonly has more or less solid ones. AndCommedia dell'Arte comedy is distinguished by Cjuasi-permanent charac-ters, who belong as much to the performer's world as 1:0 the fictionaL

13. Neoclassical theorists early discovered that the action of a kind mayhave a characteristic structure. So "entanglement" or entrelacement andmultiplicity of episodes typefied romance. In this it contrasted with epic.Chapelain pronounces chac "uniey of action, among the general rules that

KINDS OF LITERATUREHISTORICAL KINDS

every epic poem must observe, is in especial the principal one wichoutwhich the poem is not [an epic] poem but a romance.,,31 Romancesconsequently lack perfection, since "they pile adventure upon adventure,and include fights, loveaffairs, disasters and other things, of which onewell treated would make a laudable effect, whereas together they destroyeach other." He failed ro see how a reader could be moved by an actionthat did not give a "continuous" impression.32 Some Renaissance criticsvalued mtrelacement differently, but they would not have disagreed aboutits being a distinguishing feature of romance.

Discontinuous action also characterizes several modern kinds, such asthe mosaic novel (Dos Passos' Manhattan Transfer; Doctorow's Ragtime)and the "work-inprogress' novel. Much of the latter's action is concernedwith the writing of a book-sometimes the novel itself--or some otherarristic enterprise that symbolizes the literary one (Sterne's TristramShandy; Lessing's Golden Notebook; Nabokov's Pale Fire). The discontinuous action of the kind is pretty regularly reflected in an external divisioninto very shorr sections.

In a somewhat different way, a([ions may be related to moral patterns.So Northrop Frye has described the action of Elizabethan comedy as char.acterized by the pattern of entering, responding to, and leaving a "greenworld." There are several other comic structures, however, such as that ofillusion and enlightenment (Much Ach; Twelfth Night). Kinds seldomhave a single, defining action.

14. Every kind has its range of appropriate Jtyle: indeed, some havetheir being mainly through rhetorical organization. Their rhetorical se-lections follow in parr from the subject matter of the genre. Medievalcritics linked the three ancient style heights with Virgil's three paradig.matic works, and hence with other matters and kinds of equivalent dig.nity. And they specified figures appropriate to these "styles" in some de.tail-for example, Geoffrey de Vinsaufs ornatus dijJiciiiJ, consisting of tenhighstyle tropes.33This seems a mechanical system; but the adjustmentof style came co be governed, in the Renaissance, by a subtle decorum,which went far beyond mere distribution of kinds among styles:34

Rosemond Tuve and other scholars have explored the criterion of decorum in terms of subject constraint. But it might also be considered aspare of the organization of the genres themselves.

We may distinguish at least two ways whereby style matches genre.First, cereain kinds and groups of kinds may have their own lexical range.Within the literary diction of the period, individual kinds often havespecial preferences, both positive and negative. The latter have sometimesbeen absolute, as with Cowley'S unguestioning assumption that "spoUJeisnot an heroical word,,,n or Elijah Fenton's similar feeling about cow.heel(which in Pope's Homer has to become "That sinewy fragment... / Where to the pastern.bone, by nerves combined, / The wellhornedfoot indissolubly joined,,).36 But a kind's congenial words are JUSt as spe.cific. Aureate diction was right for late medieval encomium. Tudor loveelegy liked sighs to be "smoky." And around 1595 "sweet" had a specialgeneric force in the amatory epigram and epigramsonnet. But the classi.cally inspired epigram boasted its capacity to admit all styles and subjects.And literature has increasingly come to rely on such kinds as are capableof a broad stylistic range.

More subtly, style can match kind by varying the proportions betweenrhererical figures. Besides the three seyle.height proportions, Renaissanceand neoclassical critics again recognized others of a specific nature. Somefigures (such as hyperbole) were prominent in encomiastic kinds, somein devotional elegy (paradox, meiosis), some in pa~tOral.ki~ds (a;;ph-ura..),scirnc" in Aug'ustan georgic or locodescriptive poems (periphrasis);although there was never a tidy system distributing the figures amongkinds exhaustive1y.:n Such conventions allowed for countless special ef.fects, when the expected rhetorical preferences were carried unusually far,perhaps, or mixed with .th?se of another kind, or dropped altOgether.The intimate effect of Astrophil and Stella, for example, partly comes fromirs diction, which falls below the level its psychomachic personificationslead us to expect, as the antilover sinks to epigram. Such mixture becameincreasingly common in the early seventeenth century and again in theninereenth-a matter we will return to in Chapter 10.During the nineteenth century, radical and exciting innovations in

style unhappily coincided with a decline in rhetoric reaching. The ideabecame sertled that generic rules oppress free creativity. Simultaneously,the rise of the novelistic kinds further obscured style'S relation to genre.For in several kinds of novel, words have relatively litrle formal value.38This does not mean that style has lost its generic function. (To ~seethat,

Highepictragedyhymnetc.

l>!~ddlegeorgicromantic comedyeleilYetc.

Lowpastoral ecloguesatiric comedyverse epistleetc.

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72 KINDS OF LITERATURE HISTORICAL KINDS

onc has only ro review the violent imagery and nervous anaphora of theconcemporary protest poem: the asyndeton and anacoluthon of the canfessional lyric; or the rhetorical bravura of the work-tn-progress novel.)Only it is less well undersrood. This miscomprehension shows in bookson srylistics thar contrive to ignore genre altogether. It also appears inmany false generic identifications-reviewers treated John Fuller's Epistlesto Several Persons as liglH verse, for example, missing the satiric episde'suse of informal seyle for serious matter.

Consrrtls(s of the generic and the actual Style are stili" among the mostprominent of poetic effects. To take a famous instance, much of the eclatof John Ashbery's Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror has ro do with his be-ginning with the epigram-derived style and matter of the poem-about-a-painting-its suave easiness of connoisseurship" -authoritatively laconic,endlessly knowing ("As Parmigianino did it, the right hand / Biggerthan the head"), exhaustively descriptive-but then cutting in with"sawroothed fragments" of life itself, the uncharted, whose explorationcalls tor a more temative, so ro speak elegiac approach (and is in fact ac-corded it in suitably abstract or hesiram passages, as in "supposition ofpromises"), but which meld imperceptibly with renewed art-historicalmannerisms, so thar the reader may easily have the illusion of authorita-tive statement extending to the larger questions of the longer poem.

15. Besides the traditional genre-linked constituents, there are Qchersmore recently distinguished, such as the reader's task. Frank Kermode hasdeveloped the idea of a hermeneutic task in the reading of a detectivestory. Requiring as it does the elucidation of a problem---often posed atthe outset-it involves "interplay between narrative and hermeneuticprocesses." This peculiar double task makes the detective story excep-tional among (he novelistic kinds: "although all have hermeneutic con-tent, only the detective story makes it preeminent."'? But in another waythe concept can be generalized. Many kinds (and by no means all ofthem narrative ones) entail characteristic tasks. Indeed, one of the plea-sures of reading is that hermeneutic activity differs with kind. This kindwill entice the reader into labyrinchs of moral analysis; mar kind will re-quire exquisite discriminations between 'events which actually "oc-curred" in the author's fiction and those thar ace merely fictions of a narrator. Often the reader will be called on to discover an arcane structuralscheme: no easy task with numerologically patterned medieval and Re-naissance poems. Interlaced romance, again, involves the task of correlat-ing widely separate episodes.

In every case, communication depends on the task's completion. Chil-dren who cannot apply prove,rbs co their own experience will not appreci-ate them.

The above are some initial letters of a kind's typical reperroire. Butwhat I want to insist on here is that almost any feature, however minor,however elusive, may become genre-linked. Thus, parcicular SOrts of ex-ordium, closure, inset (digression; play within a play), symmetry, andother structural forms may be characteristic; and so may represencationalmanners (naturalistic; surrealistic), besides qualities harder to categorize,such as the encyclopedic comprehensiveness of epic or anatomy. Any rel-atively infrequent or noticeable feature may be regarded for a time asgeneric.

Only for a time, perhaps. Always the features distinguished are liableto change with the interests of writers and critics. So literary form under-goes continual recategorization, as new parts of literature, and new waysof dividing the old, are introduced. Add to these the possibilities openedup through obsolescence of generic rules, and the kinds may well seeminexhaustible.

However, generic repertoires are not endlessly renewable. Every charac-teristic feature, as a means of communiction, must be recognizable, andthis limits the relevant possibilities at any particular {ime. Even the fig-ures of rhetoric do not exceed a hundred or two---and some of these aretOO common to have much generic potential. Far from dealing with aninfinite set of features, then, we may find that a few striking traits effec-tively characterize a genre.

There is a view that the kinds have undergone so many variations andhistorical changes as to be indeterminate. Or; if they have any consis-tency, they fail to include most works of any great literary interest. Thisview is wrong. The kinds, however elusive, objectively exist. Theirboundaries may not be hard-edged, but they can non'echeless exclude.This is shown by the facc that features are often characteristic throughtheir absence. Thus, Renaissance pastoral eclogue excludes plot and phil-osophical content; the Regency novel of manners excludes politics andviolent acrion. And in identifying genre, we can often be sure (hac atleast the work does nO{ belong to this or that particular kind. The skep-tical view reflects the obvious need for a revised genre theory applicableto modern literature. Bur with older literatute, too, there are many prob-lems of identification. A work may noc resemble any previously labeledkind, or it may seem to realize more than one. These are problems we

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74 KINDS OF LITERATURE

shall return to, in connection with nomenclature and generic mixture.In principle, however, the normal case remains membership of a deter-minate though temporary kind. The kinds are subject to change; butthat does not destroy their coherence, any more than that of otherinstitutions.

Are the kinds organizations, or only assemblages of features? This is aquestion we shall not be in a position to approach until we know moreabout how they are recognized, and how they interact in generic systems.We can only say that a kind is a type of literary work of a definite size,marked by a complex of substantive and formal features that always in-clude a distinctive (though not usually unique) external structure. Somekinds are recognizable by every competent reader. But the means of rec-ognition remain obscure.

5. Generic Names

Of all the generic repertoire, single words seem to be the simplest featurero study. Anq of all sores of word, it is almost inevitably names that wechoose for separate treatmenc. Not only have names great evocativepower nnd hence a special place in literature, but they seem to have a spe-cifically generic function.

Characteristic Names

of

Many kinds and groups of kinds have characteristic personal names, orforms of name, that are recognizable by a competent reader. (Others,such as 1600 elegy, tend to exclude personal names altogether.) This wasnoticed in early treatmen ts of genre, such as John of Garland's Poetria)where the Wheel of Virgil sets out Hector and Ajax as heroic or high-style names; Triptolemus and Coelius as georgic; and Tityrus and Me1i-boeus as pastoral.l

The names of satire' are particularly conspicuous and have received agood deal of attentio.n.2 Highet, who examines the use of denigracorynames by Marier, G6g~I,"and others, goes so far as JO say that "distOrtedor ridiculous names are always a sure sign of satire. ,,3 As we shall see, thisis slightly overstated. Nevertheless, it is easy to think of other examplesto put beside Gogol's Hlopov ("Bedbug") and LyapkinTyapkin ("Bungle-Steal"). Joseph Heller's satirical novel Catch-22) for example, hasmany such ridiculous names or non names: Mudd ("his name wasMudd"), Major Major Major Major. Scheisskopf, and Chief Halfoat.Just as there are several types of satire, so there are several types of sa

dric name. In the satiric comedy of the RestOration, names are often explicitly meaningful, communicating moral estimates of their owners, asPetulant and Fainal1. Distinctive though they are in period flavor, such

'.