Genre Practice in Literary Historiography: A Romanian Case

Premised on the pervasiveness of generic categories within literary historiography, the present analysis attempts to delineate the generic idioms present within three histories of Romanian literature (authored by G. Călinescu, Nicolae Manolescu and Mihai Iovănel, respectively). Engaging a descriptively historical, rather than theoretical, approach to genre and its metadiscourses, the paper begins with an abridged version of the cardinal disputes of genre criticism. Subsequently, it comparatively addresses the presence of genre within the three volumes, aiming to locate them within recognizable frameworks of genericity and to establish the overlapping territories of their generic landscapes. Thus, it distinguishes G. Călinescu as a practitioner of post-Romantic genre theory, further showcasing how some of his central aestheticist positions survive in Nicolae Manolescu’s moderately formalist account of the issue. Against the backdrop of their more conservative, teleological historiographical projects, Mihai Iovănel’s 2021 Istoria Literaturii Române Contemporane 1990-2020 [The History of Contemporary Romanian Literature 1990-2020] displays a distinct methodological apparatus, predicated on the author’s rejection of the paradigmatic autonomy of the aesthetic. His employment of materialist theories of art is corelative to a conception of genre as a contingent, empirically determined instrument of analysis, which, far from being a rhetorically stable, abstract category, actively mediates the relationship between social and aesthetic history. This shift engenders substantial amendments to the physiognomy of literary history as genre, enabling it to encompass extra-literary (and noncanonical) phenomena. Keywords: literary genres, literary history, Romanian literature, Mihai Iovănel.

“Youtuber Movies” From New Media to the Cinema

In our day, the new media has become an inseparable part of the daily life. Since the internet and the social media have been widespread, the new media has been effective in socio-cultural changes and transformations. On the other hand, this process, which is also called as digitalization, is not only effective in the new media. The relation between the traditional media and the new media has also been under transformation. In this study, based on the relation between the mainstream cinema and the new media, “YouTuber movies” are investigated. In this context, the selected “YouTuber movies” were examined via genre criticism method, and the data was interpreted in the conclusions part.

The Formats of Pre-Election Television Debates in Poland and the Czech Republic – A Rhetorical Look at the Genre

The article compares the formats of the final presidential debates in the latest elections in Poland between Andrzej Duda and Bronisław Komorowski (2015) and in the Czech Republic between Jiří Drahoš and Miloš Zeman (2018). The purpose of this comparison based on rhetorical genre criticism was to check whether and how the analyzed media events fit into the genre pattern of the debate. The Polish and the Czech formats were compared with respect to the interaction rules, elements of time and space, as well as the way of moderating and asking questions during the debate. The result of this comparison was the indication of the direction of genre hybridization of pre-election television debates in the last elections in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Contradicting the Golden Age Reading Agatha Christie in the Twenty-First Century

This chapter argues that it is precisely because Agatha Christie is synonymous with the Golden Age of detective fiction that her novels have long been neglected by literary criticism. A critical shift, in the form of “millennial criticism”, is described, which is now breaking down this monolithic view of Christie’s work and challenging the limitations of “genre criticism”, whose focus was typically on antecedents, influences and developments. Crime fiction is in turn opened up to a multiplicity of readings. Christie’s work is shown to be far more than the sum of its plots, however ingenious; instead, it offers the literary range and textual pleasures of Modernism and genuine social interventionism, including a surprising focus on world politics.

A DYSTOPIAN READING OF THE PRESENT TIME IN DAVID MITCHELL'S NUMBER 9 DREAM

With the intention to study the implications and their affinity with and deviation from reality, the present study will analyze Number9Dream (2001) in terms of its narrative style, ontological qualities, and certain conventions which lead to the particular genre of dystopian science fiction. It tends to settle the following questions: are the implications and contributions of categorizing Number9Dream as a dystopian science fiction significant in any way? What is the role and ontological significance of setting in the novel? Narratological approach and genre criticism are applied to the novel to analyze it from the perspective of its critical engagement with dystopia. It traces science fictional elements and then continues to examine their utopian or dystopian nature and the different functions of those elements. It also refers to the connection between the given ontologies and reality. The present article shows that the novel provides a range of multiple possible worlds through two layers of internal and external ontology which are the representations of the real world. Dystopian narrative and science fiction conventions are exploited to address today's world issues. Through a detached view toward the present societies, Mitchell gives the opportunity to criticize what is not otherwise visible. The novel warns about human's isolation, alienation, and dehumanization and calls people to action accordingly. It briefly refers to the reconciliation of past/ present and nature/ science as a solution.

The Future of Epic in Cinema

This chapter explores the ways in which the generic label of ‘epic’ might be deemed relevant for Ridley Scott’s film Prometheus (2012), and more broadly for the ways in which a discussion about the meanings of epic in early twenty-first-century cinema might be undertaken outside the genre of ‘historical epic’. It argues for the need to explore how ‘epic science fiction’ operates in Scott’s Prometheus in ways that both relate and transcend common definitions of the term ‘epic’ in contemporary popular culture. It also focuses on the unorthodox models of biological evolution of the film’s narrative, suggesting ways in which they can help with genre criticism. When it comes to cinematic intertextuality, a discussion about generic taxonomies and transformations cannot be conducted at the beginning of the twenty-first century without reflecting on the tropes that cinema animates and the fears it enacts at the heart of our genetic imaginary.

Mysteries of Cinema

The major essays of the distinguished and prolific Australian-born film critic Adrian Martin have long been difficult to access, so this anthology, which collects highlights of his work in one volume, will be welcomed throughout film studies. Martin offers indepth analysis of many genres of films while providing a broad understanding of the history of cinema and the history of film criticism and culture. These vibrant, highly personal essays, written between 1982 and 2016, balance breadth across cinema theory with almost encyclopedic detail, ranging between aesthetics, cinephilia, film genre, criticism, philosophy, and cultural politics. Mysteries of Cinema circumscribes a special cultural period that began with the dream of critique as a form of poetic writing, and today arrives at collaborative experiments in audiovisual essays. Throughout these essays, Martin pursues a particular vision of what cinema has been, what it is, and what it still could be.