Reading strategy in which genre(convention)s are used to illuminate aspects of literary texts

What is it about?

In this paper, I present an approach to read complex novels, called 'genrereading'. Using this approach, a literary genre and its conventions are used to guide the reader’s interpretation process. This procedure is illustrated with the example of the Dutch novel The Blessed Ones (De gelukzaligen) by Willem Brakman (1997), which is read from the perspective of the genre conventions of the 18th-century imaginary travel story and the 19th-century naturalist novel.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

- strategy to read complex novels in a structured way; - introduction to the genre of the imaginary voyage; - in-depth interpretation of one of Brakman's less studied novels.