50 literature ideas you really need to know, 21

Style
So, this chapter tells, a while back Professor Don Foster identified the anonymous author of Primary Colours as Joe Klein, by his style.

Foster himself is an interesting chap, "a specialist in Shakespeare (also employed on occasion by the FBI)".

50 literature ideas you really need to know, 16

Genre

There are, currently, five popular fictional genres in full production: romance, science fiction and fantasy, horror, thriller and crime. But, Sutherland adds, Genres bend. Jacques Derrida's word for the melting of boundaries is "degenerescence."

Try fitting Jasper Fforde into just one of the above.

50 literature ideas you really need to know, 13

Milieu

Is one of those tricky-to-define things.

Extracting a neat milieu for all these circumstances is as hard as bottling fog.

But F. Scott Fitzgerald has a go, with: "I am a part of all that I have met"

the condensed idea
Not where the author, but the author's work comes from.

50 literature ideas you really need to know, 11

Here's a Curiosity: the publication date on the Publisher's website is 6th January 2011. I bought mine before Christmas, 2010. So, what am I reading?

Whatever it is it's good.

The Translation Paradox. It's impossible - but what option do we have? See If on a winter's night a traveller.

50 Literature Ideas You Really Need to Know, 7

Narrative / Story

This book packs a lot into its 4-page chapters.

Story is what, narrative is how. So, Cinderella is a story but Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine, and Ashputtle: or, The Mother's Ghost by Angela Carter are narratives--it's how they tell it.

50 Literature Ideas You Really Need to Know, 2

Ambiguity (and English).

Picture a Frenchman leaning towards an open train window, unaware that a tunnel is coming up. 'Look out!' warns the Englishman alongside him. The Frenchman duly looks out and gets his head knocked off.

the condensed idea
Literature speaks with a forked tongue