Generic Competence in Literature

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that generic competence refers to the ability of the reader to understand the implied language, the setting and the period of time of a specific genre that has its own system of codes, called generic repertoire with which the reader has to be familiar to fully understand the meaning of the story. The author points out that every mystery story, such as Agatha Christie's "Witness for the Prosecution", contains an enigma that must be solved by the protagonist; the reader must have the generic competence to understand all the information that is given by the narrator. The paper relates that the reader's generic competence of the fairy tales includes the knowledge of its origin, characters, moral role and related primary fairy tales; Angela Carter's "The Tiger's Bride" contains a moral role; therefore, the implied reader must look for a message inside the story.

From the Paper:

""The Tiger's Bride" has a strong connection to other fairy tales such as "Cupid and Psyche", "Beauty and The Beast" and "The Courtship of Mr. Lyon". The importance of generic competence here is the primary readings of the related fairy tales, in order to be able to see the similarity and difference between them all. In all four stories the most important similarity is that they all involved the sacrificing of a daughter by her father. In "The Tiger's Bride" the father had lost his daughter in a card game and she therefore must go with the beast. There is also the mention of a lamb- " ...where the lion lies down with the lamb" (51), "The tiger will never lie down with the lamb" (64). The implied reader's generic competence relates the lamb with the sacrificing of Isaac in the Bible. Isaac's father, Abraham, was about to sacrifice him to god but in the end he didn't and instead a lamb was sacrificed."

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