Genre Criticism, Narrativity and Memory Strategies

Abstract

This paper aims to scope the generic transfigurations throughout the history of genres, and the way genre criticism has underlined the problem of narrativity. Since Plato and his determination of literary imitation as mimetic (dramatic), mixed (epic), and narrative (dithyramb), undoubtedly these generic formulations were related to the aesthetic vision – imitation was founded in the whole concept of beauty, marked as a mixture of the good and the truthful. Throughout the 20th century, the emergence of Russian formalism, Czech structuralism, etc. as essentially “Eastern” movements, notably in the essays of Shklovsky, Jakobson, Tynyanov as well as their successors, brought about the change of dominant perspective. 1950s are highlighted by Mikhail Bakhtin’s investigation of speech genres, re-examined by French literary theorist and narratologist Tzvetan Todorov in 1970s. Our intention is to re-investigate the contemporary narrative practices in order to explain why narration is overall the most effective tool for memorisation.