Genre Canon and Interior Measure of the Genre in the Popular Literature

Abstract

The article offers one possible option for distinguishing between mass and high literature namely by relying on the specific features of the genre poetics. The definition of the genre by Mikhail Bakhtin is used as a methodological basis. Having regard to the historical poetics and evolution of the genre category that has been described in the works of Sergey Averintsev, Samson Broitman and others, the article substantiates the following hypothesis: in European literature, starting from the second half of the 18th century, we can see two main genre-forming principles that are existing in parallel: the genre canon and the interior measure of the genre. The interior measure of a genre that is the direction (vector) of its possible development, and it can be used as a characteristic feature of the high literature. The interior measure determines the artistic possibilities of a particular genre. The genre canon becomes a genreforming principle for mass literature. It forms, consolidates and replicates stable (repeating) genre features. As an example, the article considers genres of the novel in verse, the Gothic novel and the historical novel. On their basis, various possible ways of correlating the genre canon and the interior measure of the genre are shown