Literary genres: a double approach –a unique vision

Abstract

In this paper we emphasize the importance that in the current scope of the theory of literary genres the theoretical-cognitive and empirical approach by some of the members of the LUMIS Institute brings to the problem of literary genres in particular and to the problem of types of communication media in general within the framework of the so called “Empirical Science of Literature”. Beginning with an epistemological basis which is concretely constructivist and which views genres as cognitive concepts, Siegfried J. Schmidt, Helmut Hauptmeier and Gebhard Rusch, among others, take as their starting point the idea of ‘schema’, which is related closely to those of ‘frame’, ‘script’ and ‘plan’, and they define them epistemologically as elements which belong to the class of the cognitive schemata for the construction and the intersubjective establishment of reality. The social domain of acting in which genres, within this point of view, fulfill their role is the domain of interactive behavior responsible for constructing and intersubjectively establishing realities through the different existing communication media. For this reason, they too may be considered as schemata of communicative behavior (“media-action-schemata”), comprising all the necessary cognitive instruments for the construction of constants or invariants on the part of those who intervene in the processes of communication.