The Origin of Genres

Abstract

TO PERSIST in discussing genres today might seem like an idle if not obviously anachronistic pastime. Everyone knows they existed in the good old days of the classics-ballads, odes, sonnets, tragedies, and comedies-but today? Even the genres of the nineteenth century (though not altogether genres to our way of thinking)-poetry, the novelseem to be disintegrating in our era, at least in the literature that counts. As Maurice Blanchot wrote of one modem writer, Hermann Broch: Like many other authors of our era, he experienced impetuous impulse of literature no longer tolerates the distinction of genres and wants to shatter the limits.