Commentary: Good of Their Kind

THE EIGHT ESSAYS before us approach the topic of genre by considering specific examples of genderizing ² practices. They are less concerned with theory than with the uses and misuses to which the notion of genre can be put, the procedures or operations by which things are genderized, and the social value attached to the notion of genre-propriety. They recognize that cultural and social genres belong to culture and not to nature, that cultural genres do not represented genetically related classes of phenomena, that they are constructed for identifiable reasons and to serve specific purposes, and that genre systems can be used for destructive as well as for constructive purposes. So, genre is both "unnatural" and dangerous.

And so too, apparently, are discourses about genre, its nature, uses, and history. Thomas Pavel warns against dogmatic, nominalist, and skeptical approaches to the problem of genre. He advises "detailed attention to the interplay between abstract categories and the originality of their instantiation" (202) as the best way of proceeding in the study of genres. Everyone recognizes, he tells us, that while genres are unstable and potentially constraining, they are also unavoidable and indispensable for both creation and criticism. "Genre is a crucial interpretive tool because it is a crucial artistic tool in the first place" (202). He goes on, however, to distinguish between "strictly formal" genres (such as the sonnet) and what might be called practical genres (such as the tragedy) which are characterized more by thematic content than by form.

Practical genres, such as the tragedy, arise out of attempts to fulfill some culturally authorized task—such as answering the question, what is the meaning of suffering?—which admits of a wide range of treatments and possible solutions and consequently generates variations within the genre in question. Of course, the sonnet could also be characterized as a solution to some socially authorized task or question (a question such as, how can I express effectively the number of different ways I love thee?) and generates a number of variants, all meeting the minimal formal requirement of fourteen lines, over the course of its development. But Pavel's point is that the fourteen line requirement is a minimal definition for any poem wishing to qualify as a sonnet; the fourteen-line requirement is therefore more of a technical than a substantive challenge for any poet choosing to use it to express anything whatsoever. But a sonnet's content is not bound by genre restraints, any more than is that of the tragedy. And if a poet wrote an eighteen line poem and decided to call it a sonnet, the burden would be on her to prove that this change in genre usage was justified by the results obtained. Genre rules are conventional, Pavel tells us, but this does not mean that they can be changed easily or should be tampered with without good reason. Conventions undergo changes but slowly and in unforeseen ways. And so do genres. This is why it is best to study them historically rather than scientifically.

Pavel's approach to the problem of genre is commonsensical and descriptive-analytical rather than synthetic and theoretical. He is not coming at genre from the standpoint of a large theory of literature, but proceeds practically and historically, which is to say, by considering individual cases and telling stories about what happened to the idea of genre in different times and places. He is against both idealism and what he calls anti-idealism (by which I presume he means "materialism") because both proceed from some a priori premise and deduce what should be the case with genre rather than look at what is or has been the case in practice. Pavel does not see anything wrong with theory, as long as it is modest, applied judiciously, and does not harden into dogma. He thinks that if we could "see genre as a set of good recipes, or good habits of the trade, oriented towards the...