Reflections on "Gendre" in the Discourses of History

TLDR: For instance, Cohen as discussed by the authors describes a special case of the more general social and cultural activity of identifying, classifying, and relating the classes and species of things both natural and unnatural.

Abstract: of Ralph Cohen as "master of genres." No one has been more assiduous in the cultivation of genre consciousness; no one has been more liberal in the entertainment of different conceptions of genre. Of course, as a literary scholar, Ralph Cohen has been especially interested in the concept and history of the genres of literary expression. But he has always treated literary genres as a special case of the more general social and cultural activity of identifying, classifying, and relating the classes and species of things both natural and unnatural. Up until the end of the eighteenth century, conformity to the "law of genre" which is supposed to have held that "thou shalt not mix the kinds" was considered a matter of moral, as well as ontological and aesthetic, necessity. The domain of literary genres was only the most cultivated and sophisticated place where the law was applied, tested, and, when necessary, revised. The law of genre was also supposed to preside over the joining of forms with contents. In literary writing, it was forbidden to join a noble form (such as tragedy) with a base content (such as villainy) . But in literature, as in life, Charles Darwin destroyed all that.