Genre studies

Genre studies is an academic subject which studies genre theory as a branch of general critical theory in several different fields, including the literary or artistic, linguistic, or rhetorical.

Literary genre studies is a structuralist approach to the study of genre and genre theory in literary theory, film theory, and other cultural theories. The study of a genre in this way examines the structural elements that combine in the telling of a story and finds patterns in collections of stories. When these elements (or semiotic codes) begin to carry inherent information, a genre emerges. In art history, genre theory considers the visual arts in a similar way.