SOURCE: Somacarrera, Pilar. “Genre Transgressions and Auto/Biography in Mavis Gallant's ‘When We Were Nearly Young.’” Journal of the Short Story in English/Les Cahiers de la Nouvelle, no. 35 (autumn 2000): 69-84.

In the following essay, Somacarrera asserts that “When We Were Nearly Young” transgresses the genre of short fiction, contending that the piece blends “narrative, essay, journalistic piece, memoir and autobiography.”

As Claire Obaldia points out, the intensive concern with generic studies in recent times has clearly shown that despite—or perhaps because of—the striking progress in this field, the question of “genre” remains one of the most difficult in literary theory (1). Aristotle made taxonomy the very praxis of poetics, aiming to find the “essential quality” of each genre. Recent critical directions, however, argue that literary texts are composed of heterogeneous and often contradictory generic strands and discourses.¹ This breaking of the boundaries of genre is a...