Transformation of Stories/Use-Value and Genre

One way of looking at the evolution of anonymous stories is to trace their transformations. Here are the four major kinds of transformation I will be looking at:

Transformation of stories when they travel from:

1.one genre to another in the same period and the same culture (e.g. history to literature);

2. one culture and language to another (e.g. Latin to vernacular, Old French to Middle English, Sanskrit to Arabic, Arabic to English);

3. one period to another (e.g. pre-literacy and literacy, pre-modern and modern, before and after copyright law);

4. one medium to another (e.g. oral to written,  literature to film.)

What can narrative transformation tell us about the function of ‘tradition’ in the ways texts, literary or otherwise are shaped?

Why are the seemingly same stories re-told in a variety of ways?

Genres are unstable because they are produced intertextually; they exist not as essences but as differences, and thus those places where genres "collide" reveal the connections between generic status, interpretive strategy, ideology and the use-value of language. 

Here are some of my questions using ideas from Genre Studies:

Which cultures and periods have been the most "genre-sensitive" or "genre demanding?"

Might use-value be a better way of defining genres than critical or popular labels? (However, to find and in particular to express the exact use-value of genres is not always such an easy matter.)

In what ways may the changes be attributed to genre ideologies, and what are the other causal factors?

Can genre ideologies explain the formations of literary or other canons and traditions?

What can these genre ideologies tell us about the culture, genre or medium that produced the story?