Literary genre and current

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When a prospective physician studies the human body, he does not study it as a whole, but in sections: he studies the anatomy. This is no different for literature. How to analyze a "block" of 5000 years of works as different as the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Modification ? To study the literature, it is necessary to create subdivisions. This makes it possible, among other things, to classify texts and to approach them in a different way according to the analysis that their shape or period calls. This is what the notions of literary genre and current allow: these are classifications that have been created in order to study literature. The notions of literary genre and current are theoretical aspects that help to understand the literature,

If the genre corresponds roughly to the form of the text, the current , on the other hand, is a more or less artificial division created for the needs of literary history. This amounts to saying that an author can very well decide to write a poem today, but he will not say: "Ah! I will mix the epic and the courteous. " These divisions were often named years or centuries later by historians and critics of literature, who saw similarities and differences in the texts of certain epochs.

Kind

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The notion of literary genre did not exist in the Middle Ages, but it was formed at about this time. It is a division related to the author's way of writing , to the formal aspect of his writing.

Thus, the literary genre corresponds roughly to the form of the text, the rules or the prescriptions that govern its writing. It is said today, for example, that poetry, even if it does not rhyme, presents a different form of the novel (unequal lines, more or less full pages, specific disposition, etc.) and that the novel is written in prose (Which was not the case in the Middle Ages), has a certain length, is separated into chapters, etc.

Gender is therefore a set of conventions that authors can respect to varying degrees, but they can not transgress too much under pain of becoming incomprehensible - and therefore not read. Conventions exist in literature only: the cinema is full of them. For example, a black and white episode in a color film represents a "flashback"; When a character looks in binoculars, black encircles the screen; the ominous music announces a dramatic event 1  ; etc. This is also true of literature: in the theater, an actor who faces the audience and who tells him a secret is only heard by the spectators and not by other characters on stage. Similarly, in poetry until the end of XIX th century The characters express themselves in verse, which no one seems to realize. To neglect these conventions, not to take them into account in reading, is necessarily not to understand the text.

Gender serves as a point of reference in literature. It is he who gives guidance to reading, which guides the reader in his apprehension of the literary text. Indeed, the reader has expectations when he reads: when one opens a novel, one expects to read a novel - it is as simple as that. The mechanics of the text lead to a particular reading: one does not read a newspaper article like a novel or a poem like a fishing magazine.

The most common literary genres today are poetry, theater, novel, essay (which is often a catch-all category) and the new.

Current

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In a broad sense, the literary movement or movement refers to a tendency in literature, which makes it possible to group works around constants emerging from them: themes addressed, the style of the author, the literary genre, and so on. In a narrower sense, it sometimes happens that we call, under the name of the current, a grouping of authors driven by a common aesthetic ideal or a common ideology, a group of writers having relations between them. It would however rather then talk about school or group current 2 .

The writer is, like every human being, the product of his time (it is not for nothing that the literary currents are inscribed in the history of literature). He lives in a historical, social and ideological context: he shares with his contemporaries a way of seeing the world, a sensitivity, a language, a religion, an art and a music, an architecture ... Whether in his time Or in reaction against his time, the writer is inscribed in the society that surrounds him. Whether he likes it or not, he is influenced by the taste of the public, the aesthetic canons, the philosophical thought of the moment, the political, social, ethical and religious problems of his time, the state of science and civilization In progress, etc. In his works, he translates (sometimes without knowing) the preoccupations of his contemporaries.

Thus the literary current can be either the reflection or the "  catalyst  " of a given society and time. Either the young artists, by looking at the legacy of their predecessors as an ideal to pursue, will follow in the footsteps of those who have come before them by trying to do better, to push further the ideas and aesthetics of the Art and literature; Or they will refuse the legacy of the "elders" and their protest will give birth to another current in reaction to the previous one. It is therefore necessary to perceive a current as a new response given by a young generation to an earlier literary practice .

The interest of the literary current is not to classify a work definitively, but to give a starting point for analysis. For example, if a work is known to be romantic or realistic, or if it is called courteous or epic, one can start reading through it, even if it means changing later. In the same way, the division by centuries makes it possible to avoid anachronisms: one can not read Perceval as one reads the Lord of the Rings neither Tristan and Iseult as one reads Romeo and Juliet . This historical and literary knowledge must be used to interpret the texts in order to understand them better.

It must, however, be borne in mind that, despite the division of literary history, like history, into centuries, a literary current does not necessarily begin in the first year of a century and does not necessarily end with him. The currents overlap, as they overlap themselves (it can probably be said without error that there is never a single literary current, but that there are often one or two dominant - , from the XX th century, it is increasingly difficult to distinguish the different currents, probably because we still have too little critical step back from that time is still ours 3 ). It must never be forgotten that the categorization of literature into different currents is sometimes arbitrary:

1. Moreover, we know that the soundtrack, in the cinema, is more than important. If a film is analyzed, it must be taken into account; Not doing so would be like omitting to consider the versification of a classic poem or play.
2. It was used until the beginning of XX th century the word coterie to designate the narrow groups of writers - we think of young painters and romantic writers grouped around Victor Hugo and men of letters and artists naturalists Have followed Courbet.

3. Besides, if it happens sometimes that several authors, having the same ideals, sharing the same aesthetic project, come together and claim a certain current,