Description: "Microgenres: A Quick Survey 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."--
Brief description: Anne H. Stevens is professor of English at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA. She is the author of British Historical Fiction before Scott (2010) and Literary Theory and Criticism: An Introduction (2015).
Review Quotes:
"The essays collected in O'Donnell's and Stevens's The Microgenre address 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
"Microgenres fascinate 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