"A literary genre, by its very nature, reflects the most stable, 'eternal'
tendencies in literature's development. Always preserved in a genre are
undying elements of the archaic (italics original). True, these archaic
elements are preserved in it only thanks to their constant renewal (italics
original), which is to say, their contemporization. A genre is always the
same and yet not the same, always old and new simultaneously. Genre is
reborn and renewed at every new stage in the development of literature and
the genre. Therefore even the archaic elements preserved in a genre are not
dead but eternally alive; that is, archaic elements are capable of renewing
themselves. A genre lives in the present but remembers (italics original)
its past, its beginning. Genre is representative of creative memory in the
process of literary development. Precisely for this reason genre is capable
of guaranteeing the unity and uninterrupted continuity of this development."
I also went to a Catholic school but not such a draconian (inner city??) one
as Bill Barowy described. Nevertheless, certainly the nuns instilled the
same notions. "It was accepted wisdom that boys were bad and girls were
good in their nature. " Of course we could be altar boys and the girls
couldn't, which was something of an uncommented upon contradiction, like the
food fights that would occasionally explode during lunch with both boys' and
girls' food flying all over the place. I really think that entire bad
boy/good girl ideology was aimed at the girls, preparing them for the day
when boys did want to play with them. And it's funny because most of the
message was communicated non-verbally, as Bill points out, in separate
spaces to stand and to play.
Paul H. Dillon