I will begin this scholarly chapter in literary criticism and theory with examples of another genre, the joke, more specifically, the subgenre of “X-walks-into-a bar” jokes. Although such an opening isn’t standard practice, it isn’t shocking either: I’m far from the first to begin a scholarly chapter with a joke or two (or four), and I certainly won’t be the last. I’m confident that you are not inferring that I’ve completely misread my assignment for this volume, even as you withhold other judgment until you see me use the jokes in the service of my argument about genre. In other words, though my beginning with this meta-commentary and going on to the jokes slightly bend the generic boundaries of the scholarly chapter, you and the genre itself can readily accommodate that bending.