THE CLASSICAL TRADITION IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

THE RECEPTION OF LITERARY GENRES

Part I : GREEK LITERATURE

Summary of Contents

LESSON 1 ANCIENT GENRES AND THEIR RECEPTION: PERSPECTIVES, MEANS,

AND USES OF LITERARY TYPOLOGIES

• A genre is a group of (literary) texts that we distinguish from others by their

sharing of a number of recognisable features or points of resemblance.
• The first question we should ask about the genres is what their study is for.
There are two main answers to this question according to the point of view we
adopt. Genres are used
o in order to communicate effectively in a literary context or
o in order to study literature in an orderly and systematic way.
• We assume that genre theory is concerned with communication and
interpretation. In literary communication, genres are functional: they actively
form the experience of each work of literature. It follows that genre theory is
properly concerned, in the main, with interpretation. It deals with principles
of reconstruction and (to some extent) evaluation of meaning. It does not deal
much with classification.
• As a taxonomic device, genres are types, not classes. Types can be entirely
represented in a single instance, while classes are usually thought as an array
of instances. The instances of a type are related by resemblances. Definition is
ultimately not a strategy appropriate to the nature of genres.
• The basis of resemblances can be described as traditions: sequences of
influence and imitation and inherited codes connecting works. As part of a
code, they belong to the literary competence of writers and readers.
• Genres are culturally and historically variable.
• Each genre can be analysed as a set or cluster of features or points of
resemblance that make up its GENERIC REPERTOIRE. When we assign a work to
a generic type we do not suppose that all its characteristics need to be shared.
• There are different generic categories. The main categories are KINDS and
MODES. The genres defined by a generic repertoire are “kinds” or “historical
genres”. We should be careful in distinguishing kinds and modes, because the
same term can be used to mean both. There is an important difference
between kind and mode. A kind is said about a whole work, while a mode is a
qualification of this work. For instance, when we say that the Eneid is an epic
poem we are speaking of its kind, but if we say that a movie is epic, we are
using the term as a mode. Modal terms never imply a complete external form.
• List of features frequently used to construct genres according to Fowler 1982
1. Representational aspect or modes (dramatic, narrative,…)
 2. External structure: linear sequence of parts
3. Metrical structure : kind of verse, stanzas
4. Size
5. Scale : proportion between the size of the parts and the whole
6. Subject and decorum
7. Values
8. Mood or emotional coloration
9. Occasion
10. Attitude and interpersonal relations
11. Settings - Mise en scène
12. Characterization and moral analysis
13. Action structure
14. Style
15. Readers task

LESSON 2. GREEK REFLECTIONS AND INQUIRIES ABOUT LITERARY GENRES

• There are two main sources for the study of the function and nature of
literary genres in Ancient literature:
o The statements of the autors themselves ( Text 2)
o The inquiries of people interested in literary texts for whatever reason,
among them
 PHILOSOPHERS. Since PLATO, philosophy has paid much
attention to the varieties of poetry and their function in the
society of the city (polis). Plato criticizes on the one hand the
traditional issues and themes of poetry; on the other, he
distinguishes for the first time different representational
aspects or modes: narrative, mimetic and mixed. ( Text 1). In
order to control the effects of poetry, Plato examines in detail
the ways and modalities of poetic performances, in the idea that
by means of these performances people were educated
mimetically according to wicked models of behaviour.
ARISTOTLE, who was Plato’s disciple, took up the distinction in
his Poetics, but he made of mimesis the encompassing concept
for all arts. At the same time, he considered mimesis not as a
dangerous activity, but as a way of acquiring knowledge. The
main part of Aristole’s Poetics is devoted to the study of
tragedy as the main poetic genre. Aristotle’s theory of tragedy
has had an impressive reception since the Renaissance to our
days ( Activity 1).
 RHETORICIANS. Rhetoric is the art of persuasive discourse and
intends to teach people to speak in public. Rhetoric regulates
mainly prose discourse, but since its origins poetry was the
most important model to be emulated and provided plenty of
stilistic resources. Some rhetoricians aimed even at competing
with poetry, as Gorgias from Leontinos. One of the basic
 rhetorical issues was the classification of discourses in three
genres according to the destination of them: deliberation in the
assembly (symbouleutikon, deliberativum), disputation in
tribunals (dikanikon, forense) or celebration in festive occasions
(epideiktikon, demonstrativum). In Hellenistic times (III-I
centuries B.C.) there was an impressive development of
rhetorical theory and practice. Rhetoric took an interest not
only in public discourse, but also in in the genres of poetry. In
the imperial epoch (I-VI centuries A.D.), rhetoric became a
fundamental part of high education, and a systematic course of
rhetorical learning was created for the improvement of the
oratorial competences of the students. A progressive series of
exercises of increasing complexity was devised to strengthen
the acquired habilities. At the same time, oratory was a
proffesional career that could be extraordinarly profitable and
acclaimed.
 LIBRARIANS AND SCHOLARS. Since the end of the Vth century
we have information about the existence of private libraries,
but it is only in Alexandria, at the end of IVth century when an
institution dedicated to assemble books of famous authors was
founded. The task of assemblage and classification was first
assigned to poets, who developed not only the first systematic
way of ordering books effectively, but a huge amount of
scholarship in the form of commentaries to clarify the nature,
origins and history of the genres, together with the first
attempt to edit reliable texts.

LESSON 3. TRAGEDY ( Activity 3 and 4)

• Tragedy is the genre that has attracted the attention of serious literary
theorists and philosophers for the longest period in Western culture. In
Antiquity, no other genre was theorized so early and so intensely. In the
classical period, tragedy was a recent invention that integrated all earlier and
contemporary poetic genres, and hence was itself visibly obsessed, already
from earliest evidence to which we have access, by the question of its own
status. Some important role has been played by Plato (the direct or indirect
starting point for all later discussions of tragedy), and the overpowering
emotional upheaval with wich he reacted to the tragic spectacles that he
attended.
• Tragedy is a specific genre that has flourished in a few cultures in specific
periods; yet in the modern world, there is a widespread tendency to speak of
certain kinds of real-life events as “tragedies” or to call them “tragic”, in a
way that seems to pick out permanent and universal features of human
experience. When we think of “tragedy” nowadays, it seems difficult to keep
entirely separate two categories that are in fact distinct: the largely formal
criteria of the literary kind “tragedy”, and issues of content and meaning that
we tend to associate rather with the idea of “tragic”, that is, tragedy as a
mode. Now, the usual meaning of “tragedy” or “tragic” is connected in a very
indirect way with the strict use of tragedy to mean a literary kind. The
 modern meaning of the term is an effect of the reception of Greek tragedy
over the last two centuries.
• In the reception of tragedy, philosophy has played a very important role.
Among philosophers and philosophically minded scholars the idea of tragedy
has become a complex set of conceptions involving most of the following
features: a semblance of meaningfulness that conceals the fundamental
arbitrariness of things; an over whelming personal responsibility that goes far
beyond the limits of freedom of action and is no lessened by the evident
constraints of blind necessity; and indestructible nobility in the human spirit,
revealed especially in suffering, insurgency, renunciation, and understanding;
an inextricable knot of fate, blindness, guilt, and atonement; a final wisdom
concerning the individual’s grandeur and inconsenquentiality on the universe,
attained at length, through the purification afford by deep suffering at leas
partly unmerited, and sometimes at the cost of total annihilation.
• The definition of tragedy has been traditionally made up from the following
features:
o Representational mode : dramatic
o Size : the action should cover a day
o External structure : sequence of song (stasima) and spoken parts
o Verse structure : lyric stanzas in the parts sung and recitative verses in
the spoken parts
o Characterization and moral analysis : qualities of the hero and
judgments about if he/she deserves his/her fate
o Subject and decorum: heroism and suffering
o Style : high
o Action structure : change of fortunes, recognition

• Canonic authors and plays:

o Aeschylus : Agamennon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides, Persae, Seven
against Thebes, Suppliants, Prometheus Bound (disputed)
o Sophocles : Oedipus Tyrannus, Antigona, Electra, Oedipus in Colonus,
Philoctetes, Aias, Women from Trachis
o Euripides : Medea, Hyppolitus, Heracles, Ion, Trojan Women, Electra,
Orestes, Bacchae

LESSON 4. EPIC ( Activity 5)

• Epic and tragedy have opposite patterns of reception. Contrary to the cultural
and historical specificity of tragedy, epic has a transcultural scope and an
amazing temporal range. On the other hand, tragedy enjoys an extraordinary
cultural prestige and topicality that epic do not seems to deserve. To modern
ears, epic appears old-fashioned and associated with ideas of heroism already
superseded by new models for human action.
• The definition of epic has been traditionally made up from the following
features:
o Representational mode : narrative
o Size : long narrative
o External structure : episodes
o Verse structure : heroic verse
o Subject and decorum : an important major action, heroism and identity
o Style : high, sublime
 o Action structure : heroic actions
• The canonical referents in classical literature have been Homer and Vergil.
Each of them has a radically different pattern of reception. The idea of Homer
as a poetic figure has changed radically since the discovery of oral poetry as
specific kind of production, with its own laws and requirements. Since this
discovery, Homer has been connected not only with his heirs as the first poet
of Occidental literary culture, but also with a wide array of poetry all over the
world.
• Canonic authors and works
o Homer : Iliad, Odyssey, Homeric Hymns
o Hesiod : Theogony, Works and Days
o Apolonius of Rhodes : Argonautics

LESSON 5. LYRIC

• Lyric cannot be considered in the same way as the former literary genres.
Lyric has not been in Antiquity a genre like tragedy, comedy or epic,
notwithstanding with the internal diversity of these forms. Lyric is an erudite
construction for classificatory use only, whereby all kinds of poetry that were
not epic nor dramatic can be reunited in one class. The name “lyric” would be
appropriated only for one kind of poetry, to name the poetry sung on the lyre
(a four stringed instrument), whereas other instruments could be used to
accompany the song. In this strict sense, the Ancients instituted a canon of
nine lyric poets, among which Pyndar and Sappho are the best-known.
Besides, there was a kind of non dramatic nor epic poetry that was not sung,
but that is usually studied as lyric. Much more important than modes of
accompaniment were the different settings and occasions of the song,
according to which several genres were distinguished:
o CHORAL poetry to be sung and danced by a chorus / MONODY to be
performed by a soloist;
o Poetry to be sung in PUBLIC venues / poetry for a RESTRICTED public
(symposium, thiasos);
o Poetry for specific OCCASIONS as weddings (epithalamia), mournings
(threnoi), ritual activities in honour of the gods, etc.…
• Lyric, as we usually understand it, is a modern invention. The term is
commonly used to describe any short poem, especially one expressing the
poet’s personal sentiments. A wide range of topics is covered by the lyrical
mode, among which love experiences are of paramount importance, as well as
the celebration of natural beauty and the feelings aroused by the passage of
time. The main generic features from the repertoire, then, are size, mood and
subject.
• Canonic authors and works
o Pindar : Olimpics Odes, Pythian Odes, Nemean Odes, Isthmian Odes
o Sappho : the poems of Sappho are lost and can be read only by means
of citations by other authors. There have been recent discoveries of
fragments of papyri from some sapphic poems.
o Bacchilides : Odes recovered thanks to papyracean discoveries.