Abstract
Cohen notes here that the bibliographical history and the literary history are distinct. He indicates some of the numerous transformations the genres undergo for which this plot is a part, a plot that shows remarkable persistence. Three mythic components are responsible for this persistence: the uncontrollable desire of sexuality, the narrative of the power of one person over another, and the story of crime and punishment, murder and redemption. It became necessary in his seeking to understand the processes of transformation to confront the issue of genre as an open system. His generic thinking is clarified, historicized, and elaborated as he spells out his understanding of combinatory texts, his understanding of narrative, his analysis of genre and its kinds, and the social structure of genre.
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Notes
- 1.
Note the spelling of “Barnwel”: after The London Merchant, “Barnwell” becomes the standard spelling and I have followed that spelling throughout unless citing the exact title.
- 2.
Nina Baym, “Melville’s Quarrel with Fiction,” PMLA 94 (1979): 918.
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Cohen, R., Rowlett, J.L. (2021). Bibliographical History of a Genre. In: Rowlett, J.L. (eds) Transformations of a Genre. Palgrave Studies in the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Cultures of Print. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89668-3_2
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