The Architext: An Introduction (Volume 31)

by Gérard Genette, Robert Scholes (Foreword), Jane E. Lewin (Translator)

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 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.

Genres: Nonfiction, Theory, Lit Crit

95 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Genette was largely responsible for the reintroduction of a rhetorical vocabulary into literary criticism, for example such terms as trope and metonymy. Additionally his work on narrative, best known in English through the selection Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method, has been of importance.[2] His major work is the multi-part Figures series, of which Narrative Discourse is a section. His trilogy on textual transcendence, which has also been quite influential, is composed of Introduction à l'architexte (1979), Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree (1982), and Paratexts. Thresholds of interpretation (1997).[3]
His international influence is not as great as that of some others identified with structuralism, such as Roland Barthes and Claude Lévi-Strauss; his work is more often included in selections or discussed in secondary works than studied in its own right. Terms and techniques originating in his vocabulary and systems have, however, become widespread, such as the term paratext for prefaces, introductions, illustrations or other material accompanying the text, or hypotext for the sources of the text.

Reviews

[Socrate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poetica lui Aristotel, care consi­deră că epopeea, drama şi poezia lirică („melică") sînt ge­nurile literare fundamentale..." ; Northrop Frye, mai vag sau mai prudent : „Dispunem de trei termeni care deose­besc genurile, lăsaţi moştenire de autorii greci. drama, epopeea, opera lirică" ; şi, mai circumspect sau mai eva­ziv, Philippe Lejeune presupune că punctul de plecare al acestei teorii este „împărţirea trinitară a anticilor între epic, dramatic şi liric" ; nu însă şi Robert Scholles, care precizează că sistemul lui Frye „începe cu acceptarea îm­părţirii fundamentale datorată lui Aristotel între formele lirică, epică şi dramatică"; şi încă şi mai puţin Helene Cixous, care, comentînd spusele lui Dedalus, le localizează astfel sursa : „tripartiţie destul de clasică, împrumutată din Poetica lui Aristotel ; cît despre Tzvetan Todorov, el vede originea triadei la Platon iar sistematizarea ei definitivă la Diomede : „De la Platon la Emil Staiger, trecînd prin Goethe şi Jakobson. s-a vrut să se vadă în aceste trei categorii formele funda­mentale sau chiar „naturale" ale literaturii... Diomede, în secolul al IV-lea, sistematizîndu-l pe Platon, propune ur­mătoarele definiţii : liric = operele în care vorbeşte doar autorul ; dramatic = operele în care vorbesc numai per­sonajele ; epic = operele în care autorul şi personajele au deopotrivă dreptul la cuvânt".

[Elzira Rai · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rich in irony, this work is somehow reminiscent of Lovejoy's The Great Chain of Being in its attempt to trace the absurd mutations of a Greek taxonomic schema (or rather the misunderstandings thereof) throughout the centuries. The final pages seem to undermine the book's initial aim of exposing the futility of classification, succumbing, albeit with a grain of salt, to the very pointless efforts it had ridiculed in earlier chapters by giving them a heuristic value it fails to establish.