The Architext: An Introduction (Quantum Books) - Hardcover

Genette, Gérard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0520044983 ISBN 13: 9780520044982

Publisher: University of California Press, 1992

Synopsis

In this essential theoretical essay, Gérard Genette asserts that the object of poetics is not the text, but the architext—the transcendent categories (literary genres, modes of enunciation, and types of discourse, among others) to which each individual text belongs. In seeking to link these categories in a system embracing the entire field of literature, Western poetics has divided literature into three kinds: dramatic, epic, and lyric. This division, generally accepted since the eighteenth century, has been wrongly attributed to Aristotle with great detriment to the development of poetics. Here Genette disassembles this burdensome triad by retracing its gradual construction and distinguishes among the architextual categories that this division has long obscured. In so doing, Genette lays a firm foundation for future theorists of literary forms.

About this title

About the Author

Gérard Genette is Professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. Jane E. Lewin received her Ph.D. in English from Brown University and has translated Genette's Narrative Discourse and Narrative Discourse Revisited.

From the Back Cover

"Genette's erudite and witty book challenges radical historicism in literary studies. . . . A marvel of precision and argumentative rigour." (Thomas Pavel, Princeton University)

From the Inside Flap

"Genette's erudite and witty book challenges radical historicism in literary studies. . . . A marvel of precision and argumentative rigour."—Thomas Pavel, Princeton University

Edition details

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0520044983
• ISBN 13: 9780520044982
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 95