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Todorov said that to deal with any text in literature we must be conscious that it reveals "properties that it shares with all literary texts, or with texts belonging to sub-groups of literature- and second, we must conceive that a text is "not only a product of pre-existing combinatorial system; it is also a transformation of that system."".
He summarizes his study on genre as follows:.
(1) Every theory is based on a hypothesis concerning the nature of literary works (2) A preliminary choice must be made as to the level on which to locate literary structures (3) The concept of genre must be qualified. .
I think that the issue of literary genres, in a sense, has not exactly been resolved. The genre "poem- is an example. Students tend to write what they think is a poem, for instance, a free verse poem. But they do not know that the free verse poem, a sub-genre, is not exactly free. There are still some conventions to attend to, for it to be classified as part of the sub-genre, free verse poem, which are set by the academe.
Moreover, I still question if what students write, or any personal article, are considered "poems, novels, or short stories."" This is because there is no precise definition of what literature and/or literary is, even more so, accurate qualifications to be included in a literary genre.
Literature in itself is a genre and the ambiguity of it makes the concept of literary genres even more ambiguous.
Literature, by definition, is a body of written (or oral) works that use words to stimulate the imagination and confront the reader with a unique vision of life. A work of literature is a creative universal form of expression that addresses the emotional, spiritual, or intellectual concerns of humanity. .
Most definitions of literature have been criterial definitions, definitions based on a list of criteria which all literary works must meet. However, more current theories of meaning take the view that definitions are based on prototypes .