What does genre "remember"? Cover Image

О чем "помнит" жанр"?
What does genre "remember"?

Author(s): Naum Leiderman
Subject(s): Literary Texts
Published by: Łódzkie Towarzystwo Naukowe

Summary/Abstract: The goal of this article is to establish the meaning of the genre as a mechanism intended for the artistic completion. For this purpose, we discuss the genetic aspect of the genre; starting with mythological foundations of art, the article revisits main parameters of mythological archetypes. After a critical analusis of theoretical approaches to the transition from the mythological to literary world-modeling (Olga Freidenberg and Northrop Frye) we move to the discussion of Mikhail Bakhtin's famous idea of "the undying archaic nature of the genre". Our research suggests that the "genre's memory" is not a theoretical fiction, but a basic category crucial for the understanding of the genre's structure and functions it acquires in the creative act. "The genre memory" is a system of signals that connects the reader's mind with the model of the world that had petrified in the generic archetype. Thanks to "the genre memory", the genre can fulfill its main function - to serve as the mechanism that translates a limited continuum of a literary text into the cosmos, a "condensed Universe",

  • Issue Year: 54/2011
  • Issue No: 1
  • Page Range: 135-173
  • Page Count: 39
  • Language: Russian
Toggle Accessibility Mode