theoryofliteratu00inwell

CHAPTER XVII
Literary Genres
Is literature a collection o£ individual poems and plays and
novels which share a common name? Such nominalistic answers
have been given in our time, especially by Croce. 1 But his an-
swer, though intelligible as reaction against extremes of classical
authoritarianism, has not commended itself as doing justice to
the facts of literary life and history.
The literary kind is not a mere name, for the aesthetic con-
vention in which a work participates shapes its character. Literary
kinds "may be regarded as institutional imperatives which
both coerce and are in turn coerced by the writer." 2 Milton, so
libertarian in politics and religion, was a traditionalist in poetry,
haunted, as W. P. Ker admirably says, by the "abstract idea of
he knew himself "what the laws are of a true epic
the epic" j
poem, what of a dramatic, what of a lyric." 3 But he also knew
how to adjust, stretch, alter the classical forms—knew how to
Christianize and Miltonize the Aeneid, as in Samson he knew
how to tell his personal story through a Hebrew folk tale
treated as a Greek tragedy.
The literary kind is an "institution"—as Church, University,
or State is an institution. It exists, not as an animal exists or even
as a building, chapel, library, or capitol, but as an institution
exists. One can work through, express himself through, existing
institutions, create new ones, or get on, so far as possible, without
sharing in polities or rituals ; one can also join, but then reshape,
institutions. 4
Theory of genres is a principle of order: it classifies literature
and literary history not by time or place (period or national language)
but by specifically literary types of organization or struc-
ture. 5 Any critical and evaluative—as distinct from historical
study involves, in some form, the appeal to such structures. The
judgment of a poem, for example, involves appeal to one's total
235
—