Thanks so much, Irrelevance! We hope you enjoy the other videos in our series as well!

Thanks so much for your thoughtful comment, Kate! We're so happy to hear you enjoyed the lesson--Professor Pflugfelder is such a great teacher--and we'll keep the music down in future videos. We went a little wild with the noise early on in our recording history...

Thanks so much for your kind words, ane. We're delighted to hear that you found the video clarifying (and that our videos have made it to Brazil--wow!) Good luck with your studies.

Thanks, Zaynab! We hope you enjoy the other videos in our series as well.

Thanks so much, Adrian. We hope you enjoy the other videos in our series as well. Good luck with your writing!

Thanks so much for the comment, @gilbertopereira7624 ! We agree that there is certainly much more to say about genre than we were able to cover in this short video. The medium, as McLuhan writes, is the message, and a given medium certainly shapes our understanding of what genres are and how they might be understood. Thanks for keeping the conversation going!

Excellent paraphrase, Khatoon! We're so thankful for all of your thoughtful comments!

Thanks so much for supporting the series, Zuljann! Stay healthy!

Wow! Thanks so much, Hema!

Ha! We wanted something to demonstrate the rule-breaking that Dr. Pflugfelder was discussing at that precise moment. Or we screwed up. Good catch!

Many thanks, Autumn. Genres often extert a great deal of pressure on what a character can and cannot do in a given text. In a tragedy, a "great" person must be brought low or die. In a comedy (in the classic sense), a couple must get married at the end. In a Western, the hero must resolve a conflict violently. These generic structures enable some amount of wiggle room for characters, but certainly steer their actions (and therefore their roles( in a book or film.

Thank you for your explanation and also the video. This was really helpful.

Thanks for the comment, Glenna! We'll keep the music down in future video lessons...

Ha! Welcome to Beaver Nation, Adex!

Thanks so much for supporting the series, Nakayla!

Thanks so much, Kendra! We hope you enjoy the other videos in our series as well!

Thanks so much, Cynx YT! We hope you enjoy the other videos in our series as well (and we'll try to get Prof. Pflugfelder to record another video when the quarantine lifts).

Thanks so much, J.A.! If you want more info on the term, check out the dedicated page on our website: liberalarts.oregonstate.edu/wlf/what-genre

Wow, thanks so much Zakir! We are delighted to hear that the videos are reaching a wide audience, and we are certainly interested in expanding this project to include different kinds of lessons when the COVID-19 pandemic subsides. In the meantime, we'll continue to try to put out as many short literary terms videos as we can to help everyone who is learning (or teaching) remotely during this challenging time. You can also check out Oregon State's E-Campus opportunities in English Literature here: ecampus.oregonstate.edu/soc/ecatalog/ecourselist.htm?termcode=202003&subject=ENG

Hmm, we certainly hope the videos aren't used as an opportunity to cheat on school assignments, Juliette. They should serve as a supplement to what you're doing in class, not a substitute.

Me Bc I forget ALOTTT

Me

Here😂

Thanks for the comment, Eric. Genre theory can be a confusing but fascinating rabbit hole to fall through. Good luck to you in your reading!

@@SWLF Do you have a book recommendation for a 16 year old guy who is homeschooled ? I realize that may be an impossible request, because you know nothing about my grandson. He is partial to history and biography and he's listened to many hours of audio books, and reads only occasionally (even though he is an excellent high school level reader). I'd be interested in any of your recommendations.

Thanks so much, Jecely! We hope you enjoy the other videos in our series as well!

Thanks so much, Sir Gareth (and great name)! We hope you enjoy the other videos in our series as well.

Thanks so much for your kind words, Devon. We hope your students like the video!

Thanks so much, Jasman! An easy way to find out the genre it to look up in the book in a library database. They usually sort books by genre types (so do bookstores). If in the process of reading, you can identify a few elements of a genre, you can then start to anticipate what will happen next. It gets easier the more books of a given genre you read--trust us. Thanks for the comment and the question!

Thanks so much, Bing! We hope you enjoy the other videos in our series as well!

Thanks so much, Johnmartin! We hope you enjoy the other videos in our series as well!

Good question, Sarah! We meant recurring actions in the plot (some might call them tropes) like the kiss at the end of rom-com movies. These actions / events clue readers and watchers in to the fact that the story they are being told operates within a decipherable genre.

Thanks so much, Praveen! As of right now, we plan to keep the videos in this series (and in our grammar series) fairly short, but we're certainly open to suggestions for longer video topics!

@@SWLF I agree. For grammar, it will be tasty only when it's tiny.

@@SWLF Here are my few topics that I find more captivating : 1) The role of Exophonic authors in English literature 2) What makes some works controversial? 3) What's your prediction about future of English literature? Do you think still there are any rules unbroken? Does it have the potential to expand from the current margins? 4) And lastly, what is literature? What is it's use, purpose and applications?

@@PraveenKumar-kj8rq Thanks so much for these thoughtful suggestions, Praveen! We'll certainly give these ideas and the prospect of longer videos some thought as we plan out the next year of our channel. And we will be rolling out a video pretty soon that directly addresses #4, so stay tuned...

@@PraveenKumar-kj8rq Ha! We agree.

Thanks so much! We hope you enjoy the other videos in our series as well!

Hmm, we're a little unclear on the question, Selviana. Are you asking what genre the video itself is? If so, we'd probably call it an educational video (that is what KZfaq would call it).

Hmm, could you give us a bit more context, Bohuslav? We're not sure we understand the question.

@@SWLF Genre in general is a codified set of rules and characteristics of individual works of art, or groups of works of art ('detective fiction'/'gothic novel'), right? In this sense, is quirk (see, for example, the works of Wes Anderson) a genre? And if not, under what conditions might it be?

@@bohuslavlojkasek4877 Interesting! We're not as familiar with this term, but we do love Wes Anderson. We would say that in order for "quirk" (or any other term) to become legible as a genre designation, other directors in other films would need to adopt or repurpose those same conventions / characteristics, and that repurposing would need to take place over a longer period than might be available at present. Culture moves much faster now than in earlier periods, of course, but even so, genres require some time to solidify enough in a reader's (or viewer's) mind to set up the expectations that a given work would either fulfill or subvert.

Thank you for the clear statement! @@SWLF

What about the romantic comedy genre? That has been established for less than 10 years. Even judged by itself - see the film ROMANTIC COMEDY 101. Wasn't this speed due to the amount of audience popularity, expressed in billions of viewers. The interest of the theorists here was initially more or less as small as the quirk I proposed...@@SWLF

Thanks for the comment, @arkman8109. We certainly don't want to make anyone feel inferior in these lessons. A major goal of this series is to demystify certain literary concepts for our viewers so that they can join the conversation! Genre is a term that has proven to be quite useful in conversations about different kinds of writing, and learning this term will, we hope, enable you to see different aspects of the literature (or music) you love.

@SWLF as a life long music lover in my late 60s and audiophile, I have never had a deficiency using the terms style or type when referring to music. On the contrary , descusions revolved around the music rather than another's catch phrases. Some of the greatest music in history was written and played by ordinary people with little to no education. So , no, I do not feel uncomfortable about the discussion. My opinions speak for themselves, as always, education should not be one sided. Just remember , life is lived n the real world, not the classroom.

That is on our list!

Great question, Kirk! The answer to this one has been debated for quite some time, and one way to answer it is to begin with the observation that genres are socially constructed. Like other socially constructed things, their meaning is made, not uncovered. What this means is that authors (and to a certain extent readers and critics) actively choose to define (and therefore make) the features of a given genre based upon what they identify as central properties of a given group of texts. This is what Prof. Pflugfelder means when he says that genres are constantly changing based upon what a given culture agrees upon at a given time period. In the 1930s through the 1960s, many authors and filmmakers saw the frontier to be a powerful symbol of American identity, and therefore they might be thought to have created (rather than discovered) the genre of the Western. Many critics would say that that genre evolved in the 70s and 80s into forms of science fiction that drew heavily upon Western themes (e.g. Star Wars, with its many Western tropes). At the same time, a separate group of writers were attempting to construct a new kind of fiction based upon the ideas that Rabkin defines in your quote, which was , unfortunately, given the same name. The important thing to remember is that Rabkin (and the authors he addresses) are trying to will a new structure into being, and they are often doing so in competition with other groups of authors with other notions of what constitutes the same genre. All this means that (to our mind) we should spend less time trying to figure out a universal, absolute definition of sci-fi or any other genre and more time trying to determine why certain repeated themes or structures emerge and dissipate at certain moments in history. That is a far murkier definition of genre than one that attempts to fit a text of any period into an absolute genre category, but it is one that leads to more productive discussion and debate. That's our two cents! What does everyone else think?

@@SWLF *btw I said Rabkin was University of Chicago, he's a professor at University of Michigan. Thank you for your response. That was very helpful! Would you say there is a category "higher" than genre? Something more universal? For instance, in the horror genre there may be certain images that recur across various works of literary art, but the more universal for a horror story is "dealing with a sordid past." Obviously that's not a great definition. But I think it captures something that goes across time and across all types of horror. Most horror films, especially ones that are more literary, seem to to deal with some kind of horrific past, often one that has been forgotten or ignored: Trespassing on sacred or Indian ground, a religious transgression, slavery, spousal abuse, child abuse, murder, incense etc. So genre deals with specifics like "kitchen knives, flickering lights, creepy figures in the woods," whereas this "higher" universal category deals with something else. I just don't know what specifically. I suppose psychology would be a simple answer.

Thanks, Marwan! We hope you enjoy the other videos in our series as well!

Ha! Thanks so much, michael! We hope you like the other videos in our series as well!

Thanks so much, Lucas! We hope you enjoy the other videos in our series as well!

Interesting! Music also has a number of different genres (rock, rap, classical) and sub-genres within those genres. So it depends...

Thanks for the question, Wynne! The first Gothic novel is Horace Walpole's Castle of Otranto, but we recommend starting with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. If you don't have time for a novel, Edgar Allan Poe's short stories are chock full of Gothic conventions. If you're looking for a contemporary novel that draws heavily upon the Gothic, you can't go wrong with Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves. If you're looking for a funnier contemporary take on the Gothic, check out Karen Russell's dazzling short story collection, Vampires in the Lemon Grove. That'll get you started, we hope!

You're welcome, Anastasia! We hope you like the other videos in our series as well!

Thanks so much for supporting the series, Liticia! We're excited to have made it to Algeria!

Interesting! What genre do you think this story fits into, @user-ef5pw4fu2y @user-ef5pw4fu2y? We could see it being placed in different ways depending upon what is emphasized--amimal fable, coming-of-age-story, allegory, and so on.

Ha! Thank, bro.

Thanks for the comment, Nicholas! We'd say as a parody, it casts a pretty wide net. What elements of the heist movie do you see it parodying?

Thanks so much, Jacob! We hope you like the other videos in our series as well!

Well, we hope you found it useful, Hareeni!

Thanks, Alex! We hope you enjoy the other videos in our series as well!

We hope that means you liked it, Irmãos!

Well, we hope you know now, Daniel! Good luck with your studies.

Sorry I love it

@@Heatracers Ha! No worries, Seema! Thanks so much. We're happy to hear you enjoyed the video!

Ha! What's wrong with being a nerd?

E did a good job with this video.

I think he wrote it by mestake?

Thanks so much, itzDilly! We hope you enjoy the other videos in our series as well.

1820's Melmoth the Wanderer by a great-uncle of Oscar Wilde was in this spooky genre of the Romantic novel.

@@SWLF Dude, I don't know! I come here to learn stuff, not because I know stuff.

@@tetzlaffjo Ohhh, sorry, Jodi. That'll cost you. Let's see how much Jodi risked... $6500. That takes her score down to $12,450, and that takes us to Final Jeopardy. But first a short commercial break.

You forgot one blah.

Like me