This paper explores the generic system of New Fiction by treating it as a new genre.It is argued that New Fiction should be viewed as being a new form of writing, distinguished from the traditional xiaoshuo in terms of its purpose, features and expected audience. Tzvetan Todorov's genre theory is employed to address the formation of the generic system of New fiction. Todorov argues that a genre can be categorised by its generic context, norms and features; for example,tragedy and comedy have their own generic features classified by different sets of contents, structures and verbal features, which are perceived in relation to the generic norms constituted by their enunciatory context. Generic norms refer to the writing principle in a genre, which governs the generic features. Both generic norms and features must obey the generic context (the enunciatory context in Todorov's terminology).An enunciatory context is a process of an utterance called a discourse.
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