Reading Genre Fiction Otherwise: Toward New Aesthetic Frameworks for Contemporary Literature Education

• In Event: Aesthetics & Literacies across Educational Spaces

Abstract

In this conceptual paper, we argue that teaching genre fiction in secondary ELA requires focusing instruction on unique aesthetic categories.

Cast your eyes across the New York Times bestseller list and a pattern quickly emerges: genre fiction reigns. High fantasy, lurid thrillers, passionate romance, grisly mysteries, and shocking horror sit atop the commercial rankings. It seems those who (still) buy novels buy genre fiction: literature which conforms to recognizable commercial categories with identifiable names like Western, Science Fiction, and Mystery (Goldstone, 2023). Keep scrolling until you reach the Young Adult (YA) bestsellers and you will find the same but more: games of hunger, thieves of lightning, and faults in stars. English Language Arts teachers have begun to tap into this trend, and professional bodies and teacher educators now promote the teaching of genre fiction in place of the conventional middlebrown high school canon (Buehler, 2016; Gallagher, 2023; NCTE, 2019; see also, Smith & Nichols, 2023). Educators and scholars alike argue that not only is genre fiction more engaging and relevant for contemporary youth (Allred & Cena, 2020), genre fiction’s various forms—including fantasy (Toliver, 2022), dystopia (Thomas, 2019), romance (Loh, et al, 2024), and horror (Corbitt, 2023)—are equally valuable for their critical and emancipatory potential.

In this conceptual paper, we outline the disciplinary what and how of reading genre fiction, drawing from contemporary narrative theory and literary sociology (Guillory, 2023; McGurl, 2021) to trace genre fiction’s unique aesthetic properties and their impact on readerly action. We focus on four aesthetic features of contemporary genre fiction that place unique demands on readers and have important pedagogical implications: (1) iterability, (2) interest, (3) serialization, and (4) spectacle. Conventional literature instruction of the modernist or middlebrow novel–staples of the secondary canon, like The Great Gatsby, The Sound and the Fury, To Kill a Mockingbird, among many others–tends to focus on familiar 20th Century aesthetic categories like character development and character interiority, irony, ambiguity, and theme. In this paper, we argue that contemporary genre fiction demands alternative aesthetic categories which require unique instructional attention and readerly skills for interpretation. In doing so, this paper contributes with other scholars in a “the return of the aesthetic” (Edelman, 2019) in offering different aesthetic categories–for example, “zany, cute, interesting” (Ngai, 2012), “immediacy” (Kornbluh, 2024), and others–which better address our current hypermediated, hypercapitalist textual moment. These renewed aesthetic categories more accurately capture what “we do, say and use” with texts in the 21st century (Wark, 2017).

We situate this discussion within broader trends in literary theory and publishing, noting genre fiction’s rising respectability and its capacity to address contemporary societal issues through its expansive, plot-driven narratives (Lanzendörfer, 2021; Rampell, 2022). Ultimately, we advocate for a shift in secondary literary education that acknowledges the cultural relevance of genre fiction and utilizes its formal properties to enhance students' interpretive skills and engagement with literature.

Author

• Robert Jean LeBlanc, University of Lethbridge