Genre

Genre refers to any style or form of communication used in written, spoken, digital, or artistic modes. It relies on socially agreed-upon conventions that develop over time. These conventions are sets of stylistic or thematic criteria that help people categorize works. For example, we use genres to group literature, music, film, and comics. While a single work might have its own unique style, a genre is an amalgam of many texts. This means a genre is built from shared patterns found across many different pieces. Some genres follow rigid, strict guidelines. Other genres allow for great flexibility and change. Using the proper genre is essential for media-adequacy, which ensures information is transferred successfully to an audience.

In the history of visual art, the term genre carries specific and sometimes confusing meanings. A genre painting focuses on human figures without a specific identity. These figures are not portraits, characters from a story, or allegorical personifications. Instead, they depict scenes from everyday life. This is different from staffage, which refers to incidental figures in a landscape or architectural painting.

Additionally, artists use genre to classify specialized types of art. These include still-life, landscapes, marine paintings, animal paintings, and cityscapes. These categories are defined by their subject matter, style, or iconography.

Between the 17th and 19th centuries, art theory was shaped by a powerful hierarchy of genres. This system was strongest in France and was closely linked to academic art. The hierarchy ranked painting subjects in a specific order. At the top was history painting, which included religious, mythological, and allegorical subjects. This was followed by portrait painting. Below that were genre paintings of everyday life. Landscape and cityscape paintings were lower in rank. The Dutch theorist Samuel van Hoogstraten even called landscapists the "common footmen in the Army of Art." The bottom of the hierarchy included animal paintings and still life. This ranking was based on a distinction between two concepts. One was imitare, or the intellectual effort to render the universal essence of things. The other was ritrarre, or the mechanical copying of particular appearances. Idealism was privileged over realism due to Renaissance Neo-Platonist philosophy.

Literary genre is a category of composition determined by technique, tone, content, or length. It is important not to confuse genre with age categories like adult or children's literature. It should also not be confused with format, such as a picture book or graphic novel. The most general literary genres include epic, tragedy, comedy, novel, and short story. These can appear in either prose or poetry. Some genres, like satire, can even exist as a mixture of other genres. The earliest recorded systems in Western history come from Plato and Aristotle. Plato identified three imitational genres: dramatic dialogue, pure narrative, and epic. He excluded lyric poetry because he saw it as a non-mimetic mode. Aristotle later revised this by removing pure narrative as a viable mode. He added criteria for the medium of presentation, such as words or gestures, and the object being imitated. Later, during the Romantic period, lyric poetry was integrated back into the system. It was redefined as a mode that imitates feelings. This created a new tripartite system of lyrical, epical, and dramatic dialogue.

Film relies on basic genres like drama and documentary. Most dramatic feature films, particularly from Hollywood, fit into specific categories. These include the Western, horror, musical, crime, and science fiction films. Many of these have subgenres based on setting or subject. An example is the Indian Bollywood musical, which represents a distinctive national style. In the digital age, genre is used heavily in popular culture to classify products. This helps consumers navigate the massive output of electronic media. The Internet has only intensified this need for classification.

Music genres identify pieces that belong to a shared tradition or set of conventions. It is distinct from musical form, though people often use the terms interchangeably. For example, two pieces might share the same form but belong to different genres. In the Renaissance, Douglass M. Green identified genres like the madrigal, motet, canzona, ricercar, and dance. Music scholars also debate the relationship between genre and style. Some, like Peter van der Merwe, argue they are the same. Others, like Allan F. Moore, believe they are separate, with genre defined by subject matter. Music genres can also be identified by geographical origin, though these categories often contain many subgenres. People often move between different musical environments, so genres are rarely isolated communities.

Finally, genre is a significant concept in linguistics and the philosophy of language. Mikhail Bakhtin observed the existence of "speech genres." These are modes of speaking or writing that people learn to mimic and manipulate. Examples include a formal letter, a grocery list, a university lecture, or a personal anecdote. These genres are socially specified by a particular culture or community. Similarly, Norman Fairclough emphasized that genres are different ways of interacting through discourse. A text's genre can be determined by its linguistic function, its formal traits, or its textual organization. This shows that genre is not just about art, but about how we function within society.