Due by the class period on Thursday, February 22th
Generic criticism is one of the methods you may choose to use in your second major critical essay. Based on your reading and our class discussions of generic criticism, practice generic criticism on selected artifacts of interest you (that you could potentially use for your second essay), by doing one of the following:
1) Find at least two artifacts that you feel might comprise of a genre (generic description);
2) Or one particular artifact to assess whether it fits in an existing genre (generic participation);
3) Or one artifact that appears to be part of a genre but might digress from it in interesting ways, etc (generic application).
In other words, the artifacts should be linked in such a way that you can make a case for an “emerging” genre OR whether the artifact participates in an “existing” genre or not. Whether you decide to perform a short generic criticism of your artifact(s) generic description, generic participation, or generic application, don’t forget to name the genre you’ve identified/established for your artifact/s. An example in terms of “generic description could be “wedding-themed comedies”; but, you should produce a name of your own that may be fitting. For other/existing genres, you can do some research to find out their accurate names.
Once you know your answers to the prompts above, create a posting that briefly clarifies that you have chosen to criticize [insert your artifacts] through [your selected type of generic criticism]. Next, briefly explain the selected type of generic criticism (for example, define what generic description/application/participation is). Finally, follow the rest of the procedures to conduct a preliminary analysis of your artifact(s).
This will just be a preliminary analysis and the resulting posting can be 300-500 words. This preliminary analysis doesn’t have present all findings or discuss their implications, although you are encouraged to do that to some extent. You may just use the observation sheet delivered in class to analyze each artifact and then identify the commonalities between the artifacts OR identify the qualities that make an artifact participate in a genre OR qualities that make it digress from an existing genre, etc (post some of your notes here). Make sure to include a list of the “organizing principles” for your analysis (see the sample essays in the textbook to get ideas for generating possible organizing principles in a generic analysis).
