In this first volume of the NEL-Studies in Literature series, ten researchers from American, German and Portuguese universities discuss the question of norm and transgression in the concept of genre, basing their analyses on the study of particular vectors within the scholarly debate, and using as a starting point some of the more recent positions in the current critical discussion. These articles, which take account of the different ontological, epistemological, aesthetic and methodological viewpoints of the question of genre, focus on the debate in the area of literary theory and also on the problems surrounding different literary genres - from the 12th to the 21st centuries - in English, French, German and Portuguese literature. These papers, which were originally given at an international conference held in Porto in 2005, are published in either English or Portuguese.
