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Generic Groupings
Studying World Literature enriches one’s sense of the possibilities
of genre. Although familiar distinctions among narrative,
lyric, and dramatic form remain useful, each term requires
redefinition in the global perspective, and to these categories,
many others must be added. Thinking about the traditional
native American repertoire of stories, for example, alerts
us to the ways in which writers of all backgrounds have long
played with patterns of orality within the written text.
Thomas Beebee, The Ideology of Genre: A Comparative Study
of Generic Instability (1994), offers a useful
account of the shifting boundaries of genre and concludes
with
a comprehensive bibliography to aid you in further investigations.
Here are a number of sometimes unorthodox generic categories
devised to suggest patterns for combining a broad range
of the readings available in The Norton Anthology of World
Literature, second edition. Needless to say, most
selections in the anthology are mentioned more than once,
under a
variety of generic and thematic headings, given the many
elements
that any single work embraces. For the most part, within
each category selections have been noted in the order
of their appearance in the table of contents.
- Wisdom Literature
This biblical classification could
be the organizing idea for a comparative study of philosophy,
fable, and works of
moral contemplation from different cultural perspectives.
The Bible: The Old Testament: Psalms, Job
Plato, The Apology of Socrates
Confucius, Analects
Chuang Chou, Chuang Tzu
The Jātaka Tales
The Bhagavad-Gītā
Ovid, Metamorphoses
The Bible: The New Testament: Matthew 5–7,
Luke 15
Augustine, Confessions
Visnuśarman, Pañcatantra
The Koran
Attar, The Conference of the Birds
Dante, Paradiso
Guido Guinizzelli, Love and Nobility
Chaucer, The Pardoner’s Tale
Everyman
Yoshida Kenko, Essays in Idleness
Erasmus, The Praise of Folly
Machiavelli, The Prince
Montaigne, Essays
The Florentine Codex
Wu Ch‘eng-en, Monkey
Sor Juana, Reply to Sor Filotea de la Cruz
Pope, An Essay on Man
Voltaire, Candide
Bashō, The Narrow Road of the Interior
Rousseau, Confessions
Blake, Songs of Innocence; Songs of Experience
Baudelaire, The Flowers of Evil
Freud, Dora
Kafka, The Metamorphosis
Cèsaire, Notebook of a Return to the Native Land
Borges, The Garden of Forking Paths
Diop, The Bone
Senghor, poems
Mahfouz, Zaabalawi
Uvlunuaq, Song of a Mother
Dadiè, The Mirror of Dearth, The Black Cloth,
and The Hunter and the Boa
Borowski, Ladies and Gentlemen, to the Gas Chamber
- Myths and Creation Stories: Explaining Origins
A generic grouping that looks not only at traditional stories
of the creation of the world but also at explanations for
the growth and development of institutions, which could launch
a full-scale investigation of the nature and development
of causal thinking.
Volumes A–C, Foundational Stories
Gilgamesh
Ancient Egyptian Poetry, The Leiden Hymns
The Bible: The Old Testament: Genesis
Aeschylus, The Oresteia
The Rāmāyana of Vālmīki
The Mahābhārata
Virgil, The Aeneid
Ovid, Metamorphoses
The Bible: The New Testament
The Koran
Ibn Ishaq, The Biography of the Prophet
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
The Epic of Son-Jara
Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel
Milton, Paradise Lost
Popol Vuh
Volumes D–F, Personal Origins
A new sense of time and chronology reinforces interest in
personal origins, a trend already clear in the literature
of the early modern era, emphasizing the formative influence
of different educational systems as well as a continuing
interest in stories that try to explain how things got to
be the way they are, now often in terms of individual personality
development.
Wu Ch‘eng-en, Monkey
Pope, The Rape of the Lock
Goethe, Faust
Wordsworth, "Ode: Intimations of Immortality"
Douglass, Narrative of the Life
Whitman, Song of Myself
Tennyson, Tithonus
Browning, "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came"
The Night Chant
Yeats, "Easter 1916"; "The Second Coming"; "Leda and
the Swan"
Eliot, The Waste Land
Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
Césaire, Notebook of a Return to the Native Land
Dadié, The Hunter and the Boa
Borowski, Ladies and Gentlemen, to the Gas Chamber
Achebe, Things Fall Apart
- Dialogue and Drama: Uses of Impersonation in Different
Times and Places
A grouping that encourages the discovery of essentially
dramatic forms of representation within all other generic
formats.
Homer, dialogues in The Iliad and The Odyssey
The Bible: The Old Testament: Genesis, the voice
of God, dialogue in the opening chapters; The Book of
Job
The Evolution of Greek Drama
Tragedy: Aeschylus; Sophocles; Euripides
Comedy: Aristophanes
Aristotle, Poetics
Dialogue as a Lyric Device
Ancient Egyptian poetry, Love Songs
The Song of Songs
Classic of Poetry
The Tamil Anthologies
Catullus
Kālidāsa, Śākuntala, Sanskrit
heroic romance
The Koran, recitation
Attar, The Conference of the Birds
The Man’yōshū, Dialog of the Destitute
Walther von der Vogelweide, Dancing Girl
Nō drama
Poems of the Vīraśaiva
Saints, conversational techniques
The Epic of Son-Jara, call-and-response techniques,
griot as dramatic performer
Renaissance Self-Fashioning: Calculated
Histrionics
Erasmus, In Praise of Folly
Ariosto, Orlando Furioso
Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier
Cervantes, Don Quixote
Lope de Vega, Fuente Ovejuna
Shakespeare, Hamlet; Othello
Cantares Mexicanos
American Traditions: Oratory and Self-Dramatization
Douglass, Narrative of the Life
Whitman, Song of Myself
Dickinson, use of dashes
The Night Chant
Zuni Ritual Poetry
- Performance Traditions
Oratory, Chant, and Storytelling
The Koran
The Epic of Son-Jara
Florentine Codex
Cantares Mexicanos
The Night Chant
Zuni Ritual Poetry
Inuit Songs
Peynetsa, The Boy and the Deer
Walcott, Omeros
Theatrical Song, Dance, and Performance
Greek Choruses
Kālidāsa, Sākuntala
Kanze, Dōjōji
Shakespeare, Hamlet, Othello, songs
K‘ung Shang-Jen, The Peach Blossom Fan
Goethe, Faust, songs
Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard, music
Brecht, The Good Woman of Setzuan, songs
The Evolution of Greek Drama
Tragedy: Aeschylus; Sophocles; Euripides
Comedy: Aristophanes
Aristotle, Poetics
Conversation as an Art Form
Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier
Marguerite de Navarre, The Heptameron
Drama and Dialogue in the Court of Louis XIV,
Molière, Tartuffe
Racine, Phaedra
The Birth of Modern Drama
Ibsen, Hedda Gabler
Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard
Ichiyō, Child’s Play
Al-Hakim, The Sultan’s Dilemma
Drama Exploded
Nō Drama
K‘ung Shang-Jen, The Peach Blossom Fan
Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author
Brecht, The Good Woman of Setzuan
Beckett, Endgame
Soyinka, Death and the King’s Horseman
Term project for drama students: Transpose a text from
one culture into the dramatic style of another—Hamlet or Paradise
Lost in the style of a nō play (exploring intertextual
techniques and the demonic), say, or Agamemnon in
the style of Kālidāsa (episodes from the past dramatized
in song and choreography to see the impact of prior "lives" on
characters). If time permits, encourage your students to
work in groups and produce their work for the entire class.
- Narrative Traditions
From Oral to Written: Embedded Formulaic
Gilgamesh
The Bible: The Old Testament, Genesis
Homer, The Iliad; The Odyssey
Confucius, Analects
The Rāmāyana of
Vālmīki
The Mahābhārata
The Bible: The New Testament
The Koran
Ferdowsi, Shâhnâme
Beowulf
The Song of Roland
The Epic of Son-Jara
Popol Vuh
Wu Ch‘eng-en, Monkey
Peynetsa, The Boy and the Deer
Frame Tales and Storytelling
The Jātaka Tales
Ovid, Metamorphoses
Visnuśarman, Pañcatantra
Somadeva, Kathasaritsagara
The Thousand and One Nights
Marie de France, Lanval; Laustic
Dante, The Divine Comedy
Boccaccio, The Decameron
Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales
Marguerite de Navarre, The Heptameron
Diop, The Bone and Mother Crocodile
Dadié, The Mirror of Dearth, The Black Cloth, The
Hunter and the Boa
The Writing of Letters and Epistolary Narrative
Ssu-ma Ch’ien, Letter in Reply to Jen An
T‘ao, Ch‘ien, A Reply to Secretary Kuo
Wang Wei, Answering Magistrate Chang
Han-shan, 99 ("So Han Shan writes you these words")
Tu Fu, Writing of My Feelings Traveling by Night
Petrarch, Letter to Dionisio da Borgo San Sepolcro
Machiavelli, Letter to Francesco Vettori
Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel
Shakespeare, Hamlet, Hamlet’s lifesaving
forged letter, etc.
Sor Juana, Reply to Sor Filotea de la Cruz
Pope, An Essay on Man
Douglass, Narrative of the Life, writing letters
Senghor, Letter to a Poet; Letter to a Prisoner
Realism: The Rise of the Short Story and the Novella
Ihara Saikaku, The Barrelmaker Brimful of Love
Melville, Billy Budd, Sailor
Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground
Tolstoy, The Death of Iván Ilyich
Chekhov, The Lady with a Dog
Tagore, Punishment
Premchand, The Road to Salvation
Lu Xun, Upstairs in a Wineshop
Higuchi, Child’s Play
Mann, Death in Venice
Kafka, The Metamorphosis
Faulkner, Go Down Moses: "The Bear"
Wright, The Man Who Was Almost a Man
Camus, The Guest
Kojima, The American School
Solzhenitsyn, Matryona’s Home
Lessing, The Old Chief Mshlanga
Zhang, Love in a Fallen City
Munro, Walker Brothers Cowboy
Desai, The Rooftop Dwellers
The Fantastic Tale
Homer, The Odyssey, Books IX–XII
Ovid, Metamorphoses
Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel
Ueda Akinari, Bewitched
Swift, Gulliver’s Travels
Pushkin, The Queen of Spades
Mann, Death in Venice
Kafka, The Metamorphosis
Garcia Marquez, Death Constant Beyond Love
Juan Rulfo, Pedro Paramo
Self-Conscious Narratives
Petronius, The Satyricon
Cervantes, Don Quixote
Cao Xuequin, The Story of the Stone
Freud, Dora
Mahasweta, Breast-Giver
Yehoshua, Facing the Forests
Silko, Yellow Woman
Narrative Exploded: Postmodernism
Jorge Luis Borges, The Garden of Forking Paths
Robbe-Grillet, The Secret Room
Term project: Rewrite a narrative in the style of another
culture. Again, this may offer opportunities for performance;
students testify that preparing for group presentations helps
them learn, and when possible, such exercises should be a
part of their class responsibilities.
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