ABSTRACT
This chapter examines and highlights genres as the means of both: the categorization and the configuration of fictional worlds. Genre structure is vitally important to fictional world-building, representing not merely classification but the core modality of the organization of narrative systems. Genre is a symbolic narrative system that purports influence and resonates with the audience. The chapter outlines recent debates on genre in narratology and media studies, highlighting the latest in genre theories—the anthropological, which focuses on the genres' ritual roots and socio-cultural functions in the development of humanity throughout time. All genres work in concert as a cultural and meta-narrative framework, based on the historical and transnational continuity of dynamic symbolic codes. Current discussions of genres as a cultural system are especially topical because the rapid expansion of digital storytelling raises the question of how important genres are to interactive new media and fictional world-building in the context of globalization.
