macrogenesis

Microgenetic analysis, which sets up and interprets the total compositional development of a short textual fragment, stands in contrast to macrogenetic research, which looks at one or several complete collections of genetic documentation, studying large-scale phenomena. The two approaches will not necessarily work with the same conception of the ‘rough draft.’ […] Macrogenetics, more sensitive to the diversity of genetic ingredients, attentive to pre-textual structuration problems, and studying objects of vast dimension (thousands of pages long, for example), will tend to privilege a tighter definition of the rough draft, conceiving of it exclusively as the compositional space, completely distinct, for example, from manuscripts concerned with the initial planning, the structuring of the scenario, or documentary research.

(Biasi 1996, 27)

Contributed by Jesse. View changelog.