1. Genre Criticism
When is a eulogy not a eulogy? When is an inaugural not an inaugural?
December 6, 2001

2. The Agenda For Tonite!! Evaluations A musical interlude
Some thoughts about genre criticism
A break for refreshments
Reports on final paper topics
Concluding thoughts and tearful good-byes

3. A Musical Interlude
How do you evaluate or understand a piece of music you have never heard before?
What does this piece of music sound like?
What influences can you hear?
What are the defining features, the unmistakable elements, that define a particular musical genre?

4. Film Genres The coming of age movie (Summer of ‘42)
The horror movie (Nightmare on Elm St., Part n)
The romantic comedy (just about anything with Meg Ryan)
The action/adventure movie (call me Ahhnald!)
The musical (My Fair Lady and The Music Man)
The buddy flick (Rush Hour 1 + 2)

5. Why generic criticism?
Dissatisfaction with Aristotelian criticism--one speech at a time
Looking for similarities between pieces of discourse
Harold Zyskind--analysis of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address--is it epideictic or deliberative
Aristotle--forensic, deliberative, epideictic

6. Rhetorical Genres and Rhetorical Criticism
Types of genre or generic rhetorical criticism
studies which establish rhetorical genres
studies which attempt to place an artifact within a genre
Deductive generic criticism--problematic, circular reasoning
Inductive generic criticism

7. Established Rhetorical Genres
Apologia
Inaugurals
Eulogies
State of the Union Addresses
War rhetoric
Concession speeches (?)
The situation comedy on TV

8. Defining Genre Criticism
A genre is a group of acts unified by a constellation of forms that recurs in each of its members. These forms, in isolation, appear in other discourses. What is distinctive about the acts in a genre is the recurrence of the forms together in constellation.
A genre is a complex of elements--a constellation of substantive, stylistic, and situational characteristics
Both quotes from Karlyn Kohrs Campbell and Kathleen Hall Jamieson

9. Doing Generic Criticism
Inductive criticism
do you have enough examples?
do you have important examples?
can you determine recurring lines of arguments, strategies, system of beliefs, stylistic choices, and the perception of the situation that are fused into an indivisible whole

10. What do genres do for critics?
“The significance of this fusion of forms for the critic is that it provides an angle of vision, a window that reveals the tension among these elements”