Rethinking Authorial Categorization By Literary School From Genre Division

As a Nobel laureate and best-selling author, Steinbeck naturally become the research subject of many literary critics and is considered as one of the most controversial writer of 20^th century, his literary reputation undergoing ups and downs rarely seen in the American literary history. Some critics regarded Steinbeck as a proletarian writer or writer of social protests in 1930s and should be classified to realism, thus his artistic career and influence ended with that historical period. Others grouped him into naturalism and the animalization of human beings in his works threw him into the type of worst naturalists, and his literary prestige fell into the lowest point. Still others divided him into romanticism, symbolism or regionalism, etc. Such simplified categorization puts Steinbeck in an extremely awkward situation in the contemporary literary context. Steinbeck was in fact a writer who stood at the crossroad of tradition and modernity, thus he not only stuck to the basic techniques of traditional realism but also boldly borrows the new forms from modernism, devoting to novel experiment centered on the mixture of the skills of diversified literary schools.Therefore, a question came into my mind: does the theory and practice of literary school involve the presupposition that every author belongs to a school? If the answer is yes, then which literary school should the authors with multi-component characteristics like Steinbeck be put into? If the answer is no, then is the literary school as a classificatory method still necessary in literary research?With this question in mind, I find my theoretical framework in the critical thoughts of genre theory. Genre and school are actually two kinds of literary classification schemes with a lot of theoretical commonness, especially in that they based on the same logic that all literary phenomenon of a certain kind have a great deal in common and are therefore grouped together under some broad headings. An orderly classification of the whole literary world can provide us a clearer view of the overall picture of the literary history as well as its future direction. Besides, the norms and modes of different genres and literary schools, to some extent, can help readers and literary critics decode the meanings of the correspondent texts and works. It is generally agreed that genre and literary school hold indelible significance for the research of the literary history and literary individual.The classical genre studies dedicated to the rigid practice of dividing types of literature into categories and establishing the rules for each. It insists on the doctrine of "purity of genre", that is, genre differs from genre and they must not mix but be kept apart. This is true with the logic of literary school classification: a writer's literary identity is used to being rigidly determined by literary school. However, in the contemporary pluralistic literary context, it is inappropriate to continuously take genre and literary school as absolute artistic canons and rigid categorization labels, for it will prevent us from getting a comprehensive interpretation of the individual works and a clear view of the whole literary history. First of all, literary schools and writers, like generic regulations and the practice of writers, share a dialectical relationship. A writer enjoys the freedom of choice: he can inherit the conventions of the old literary school, or create and develop a new school, or even incorporate various features of diversified literary schools and thus become a classic writer with multiple artistic characteristics. Secondly, literary school, resembling genre, is in constant evolution. The seemingly identical literary schools will take on different artistic characteristics in different historical stages, and the writers and the works that seems to be of the same literary school will also present different artistic qualities. Lastly, the works that mix various genres of particular period, like postmodernist novels, break the traditional boundaries of different genres and thus can better convey the literary spirits of the age. Likewise, the miscellaneous artistic features will eventually keep the writer from being simply classified into any single literary school, and his works, as an all-embracing microcosm of that particular literary area, hold more value and appeal for literary research.Since Aristotle established the three generic categorizations, the western genre study has been making considerable progress. However, while genre theory is heading for maturity, the research on literary school division has been a barren field. Based on the existing theories of genre research, with Steinbeck Problem as its case study, this paper intends to trace the historical reasons, significance, evolution and problems of school division, in the hope that it will help us reevaluate the writer's literary identity in contemporary cultural context and reread the classic works from a more thorough and objective perspective.Admittedly, for the traditional writers with clear-cut literary attributes, it's worthwhile to study them under a particular literary school. For those who learn from various literary schools and exhibits diversified literary identities, it is unwise to evaluate them under a specific literary school. It is therefore proposed that we should comprehensively examine the historical, cultural and ideological factors that influence the writers' creation in terms of various literary schools, and work out how the various factors are organized to convey the author's thoughts.