The New Critical Idiom

This second edition of John Frow’s Genre offers a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the area. Genre is a key means by which we categorize the many forms of literature and culture, but it is also much more than that: in talk and writing, in music and images, in film and television, genres actively generate and shape our knowledge of the world. Understanding genre as a dynamic process rather than a set of stable rules, this book explores: • the relation of simple to complex genres • the history of literary genre in theory • the generic organisation of implied meanings • the structuring of interpretation by genre • the uses of genre in teaching. John Frow’s lucid exploration of this fascinating concept has become essential reading for students of literary and cultural studies, and the second edition expands on the original to take account of recent debates in genre theory and the emergence of digital genres.