Question:
Literary genres?
what is a generic convention and can you give me an example in literature?
Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:
Genre becomes genre the same way that clich㩳 become clich㩮 Because they work. Before you ever pick up a generic romance, you know the hero is going to save the heroine (or possibly she him); and that they will end up happily together--after surmounting a succession of seemingly insurmountable internal and external obstacles.
A generic mystery has its formula too; an extraordinary crime has been committed. Clues and red herrings will be revealed and the sleuth--often with a partner--will be tested by his (or her) own private ordeal. and go on to a dramatic confrontation between the sleuth and the perpetrator in which the sleuth prevails. The more ??impossible?? the odds have been, the more rewarding the climax is, at which point the sleuth begins a revelation of clues and the deductive process which led to the solution.
Any genre has elements which are "convention" and instantly recognizable. For example, take the sidekick. The side kick is not arbitrary; it is a literary device because the sleuth needs to talk to someone else about the crime; it is more interesting to talk to a companion than think to oneself. Some writers are more original than others however, and push convention to make it interesting. For example, Lilian Jackson Braun is the queen of "cat mysteries." And author Steve Lazarowitz's Jackson Locke is hysterically partnered by (or hindered by) the demonlings he's cursed with in A Cure for the Common Curse
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Generic conventions develop because they solve literary problems and let the writer get on with developing the story without having to reinvent the wheel.