Since Aristotle, genre has been one of the fundamental concepts of literary theory, and much of the world's literature and criticism has been shaped by ideas about the nature, function and value of literary genres.

Modern developments in critical theory and the emergence of new media such as film and television, have put in question traditional categories, and challenged the assumptions on which earlier genre theory was based. This anthology, the first of its kind in English, charts these new developments and contains judicious selections from major twentieth-century theorists including Vladimir Propp, Mikhail Bakhtin, Hans Robert Jauss, Fredric Jameson, Tzvetan Todorov, Genette and Jacques Derrida. It demonstrates the central role that notions of genre have played in Russian Formalism, structuralism and post-structuralism, reception theory, and various modes of historical criticism.