The Microgenre: A Quick Look at Small Culture

by Anne H. Stevens, Molly C. O'Donnell

Overview

Everybody knows, and maybe even loves, a microgenre. Plague romances and mommy memoirs. Nudie-cutie movies, Nazi zombies, and dinosaur erotica. Baby burlesks, Minecraft fiction, grindcore, premature ejaculation poetry...microgenres come in all varieties and turn up in every form of media under the sun, tailor-made for enthusiasts of all walks of life.

Coming into use in the last decade or so, the term "microgenre" classifies increasingly niche-marketed worlds in popular music, fiction, television, and the Internet. Netflix has recently highlighted our fascination with the ultra-niche genre with hilariously specific classifications -- "independent supernatural dramedy featuring a strong female lead" - that can sometimes hit a little too close to home. Each contribution in this collection introduces readers to a different microgenre, drawn from a range of historical periods and from a variety of media. The Microgenre presents a previously untreated point of cultural curiosity, revealing the profound truth that humanity's desire to classify is often only matched by the unsustainability of the obscure and hyper-specific. It also affirms, in colorful detail, what most people suspect but have trouble fathoming in an increasingly homogenized and commercial West: that imaginative projects are just that, imaginative, diverse, and sometimes completely and hilariously inexplicable.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501345807
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	01/23/2020
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.46(d)

About the Author

Molly C. O'Donnell is an instructor in the Department of English at James Madison University, USA. She was the recipient of the Gaskell Journal Joan Leach Memorial Prize (2016), and her work has appeared in publications like Victoriographies and The Norton Introduction to Literature, 11th ed. (2013).

Anne H. Stevens is the author of British Historical Fiction before Scott (2010) and Literary Theory and Criticism: An Introduction (2015). She is chair of Interdisciplinary, Gender, and Ethnic Studies and Professor of English at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA.

Table of Contents

List of Figures vi

Contributors x

Acknowledgments xiv

1 Introduction Molly C. O'Donnell Anne H. Stevens 1

2 The Myron's Cow Epigram Paul Hay 9

3 The Premature Ejaculation Poem Christopher Vilmar 15

4 Prostitute Narratives of Ancien Régime France Alistaire Tallent 25

5 The Neoclassical Plague Romance Matthew Duques 31

6 Anesthesia Fiction Jennifer Diann Jones 39

7 Magic-Portrait Fiction Diana Bellonby 47

8 Topographical Reports of the American Frontier John Hay 61

9 Grangerism Megan Becker-Leckrone 71

10 Shirley Temple's "Baby Burlesks" Nora Gilbert 81

11 Nudie-Cuties Cynthia J. Miller Thomas M. Shaker 93

12 Giallo Gavin F. Hurley 103

13 Nuclear Realism John Carl Baker 113

14 Anti-Sitcom Video Art Susanna Newbury 121

15 Home Depot Art Danielle Kelly 133

16 The Mommy Memoir Mary Thompson 147

17 Minecraft Fiction Michael T. Wilson 155

18 Heavy Metal Microgenres Heather Lusty 163

19 Mexican Neo-Surf Microgenres Aurelio Meza 171

20 Fanfiction Microgenres Elyse Graham Michelle Alexis Taylor 181

21 Machine-Classified Microgenres Jonathan Goodwin 189

Index 196

Editorial Reviews

Microgenresfascinate because of their startling specificity. But this book is much more than a fascinating bestiary. In surveying the oddly precise niches occupied by "plague romances" and "baby burlesks," The Microgenre also advances a macroscopic argument. The editors explain why this hyper-specific mode of description has become one of the central critical innovations of our own century, and demonstrate that it can help us understand the rough-edged and provisional character of genres long past.
Ted Underwood, Professor of English and Information Sciences, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA

The essays collected in O'Donnell's and Stevens's The Microgenreaddress a timely topic: groups of texts previously considered unworthy of critical attention because of their ephemerality, faddishness, or shared eccentricity have now become objects of serious historical interest because those qualities link them to the "microgenres" generated by algorithmic targeting of consumers of digital media. The wide range of examples makes this recommended reading for literary historians, genre theorists, and students of popular culture alike.
John Rieder, Professor of English, University of Hawai'i at Manoa, USA

From the Publisher