The Formation of Genres in the Renaissance and After

Updating the concept of genres as associational complexes, this paper analyzes the key role in formation played by metaphors and other figures. These work to evoke the genre’s associational domain. The figures may be deployed by the writer even before the genre has become an explicit convention recognizable by name. Some such figures (like the reed of pastoral) are well known. But the paper shows that the main genres all have their characteristic tropes.