Hypothetical Genres and the Advice of the Chicago Critics.
By foregrounding genre as an analytic for a sociology of post-1945 publishing, recent scholars seem to be playing catch-up with the industry; we are coming late to a party in which publishers and content distributors have already named the genres we study. Our scholarly lag allows us to research how...
| Published in: | American Literary History Vol. 38; no. 2; pp. 240 - 257 |
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| Format: | Literary Criticism |
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Oxford University Press / USA
Summer2026
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=195377663&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 195377663 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 08967148 7IY jtl: American Literary History issn: 08967148 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Summer2026 vid: 38 iid: 2 pid: 622 pub: Oxford University Press / USA artinfo: ui: 195377663 10.1093/alh/ajag046 ppf: 240 ppct: 17 formats: tig: atl: Hypothetical Genres and the Advice of the Chicago Critics. aug: au: Dango, Michael affil: Rice University, United States su: Genre studies Critics Literary theory University of Chicago Cultural industries Publishing sug: subj: Genre studies Critics Literary theory University of Chicago Cultural industries Publishing ab: By foregrounding genre as an analytic for a sociology of post-1945 publishing, recent scholars seem to be playing catch-up with the industry; we are coming late to a party in which publishers and content distributors have already named the genres we study. Our scholarly lag allows us to research how capitalism shapes creative production, but it makes it harder for our study to disrupt the categories of creative production that markets have systematized for us. As an alternative, this essay recovers an approach to genre modeled by the midcentury neo-Aristotelian critics associated with the University of Chicago. The Chicago Critics were once the main rival of the New Critics, but it was the latter who won that struggle, and today it is only the latter we typically remember. This is a shame because, I argue, the skill of close reading we associate with the New Critics is logically incoherent without the skill of taxonomy presented by the Chicago Critics and their focus on genre. In particular, they bring out the importance of "hypothetical genres": categories we have not yet named but are prompted to explore by the logic of the taxonomy we have begun. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Literary Criticism src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y dt: @attributes: year: 2026 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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