Three genres of literature. Epic genres of literature

A genre in literature is a selection of texts that have a similar structure and are similar in content. There are quite a lot of them, but there is a division by gender, by form and content.

Classification of genres in literature.

Division by birth

With such a classification, one should consider the attitude of the author himself to the text of interest to the reader. He was the first to try to divide literary works into four genres, each with its own internal divisions:

• epic (novels, stories, epics, short stories, stories, fairy tales, epics),
• lyrical (odes, elegies, messages, epigrams),
• dramatic (dramas, comedies, tragedies),
• lyrical-epic (ballads, poems).

Division by content

According to this principle of separation, three groups emerged:

• Comedy
• tragedy
• Drama.

The last two groups speak of a tragic fate, a conflict in the work. And comedies should be divided into smaller subgroups: parody, farce, vaudeville, sitcom, interlude.

Separation by shape

The group is diverse and numerous. There are thirteen genres in this group:

• epic,
• epic,
• novel,
• story,
• short story
• story,
• sketch,
• play,
• feature article,
• essay,
• opus,
• visions.

There is no such clear division in prose.

It is not easy to immediately determine what genre this or that work is. How does the read work affect the reader? What feelings does it evoke? Whether the author is present, whether he introduces his personal experiences, whether a simple narrative is being conducted without adding an analysis of the events described. All these questions require specific answers in order to make a final verdict on whether the text belongs to a certain type of literary genre.

Genres speak for themselves

To begin to understand the genre diversity of literature, you should know the characteristics of each of them.

1. Form groups are perhaps the most interesting. A play is a work written specifically for the stage. The story is a prosaic narrative work of small volume. The novel is distinguished by its scale. The story is an intermediate genre, standing between the story and the novel, which tells about the fate of one hero.
2. Content groups are small, so it is very easy to remember them. Comedy is humorous and satirical. Tragedy always ends as expected. The drama is based on the conflict between human life and society.
3. The genus typology contains only three structures:
   1. The epic tells about the past without expressing one's personal opinion about what is happening.
   2. The lyrics always contain the feelings and experiences of the lyrical hero, that is, the author himself.
   3. The drama reveals its plot through the communication of the characters among themselves.

Literature is an amoebic concept (in equal terms, as well as types of literature): throughout the centuries-old development of human civilization, it inevitably changed both in form and in content. One can confidently speak about the evolution of this type of art on a global scale or be strictly limited to certain periods of time or a specific region (ancient literature, the Middle Ages, Russian literature of the 19th century and others), nevertheless, one must perceive it as a true art of the word and an integral part of the global cultural process.

word art

Traditionally, when talking about literature, the individual means fiction. This concept (often used as a synonym - "the art of the word") arose on the fertile soil of oral folk art. However, unlike him, literature currently exists not in oral form, but in written form (from Latin lit(t)eratura - literally “written”, from lit(t)era - literally “letter”). Fiction uses words and constructions of written (natural human) language as a single material. Literature and other art forms are similar to each other. But its specificity is determined in comparison with the types of art that use other material instead of linguistic-verbal (fine arts, music) or together with it (songs, theater, cinema), on the other hand - with other types of verbal text: scientific, philosophical, journalistic, etc. In addition, fiction combines any author's (including anonymous) works, in contrast to folklore creations that clearly do not have a specific author.

Three main genera

Types and types of literature are significant associations according to the category of the relationship of the "speech carrier" (speaking) to the artistic whole. There are three main genera:

Types and genres of literature

In the most common classification, all types of fiction are divided into frames. They can be epic, which includes a story, a novel, and a short story; lyrical poems include; ballads and poems are lyrical; dramaturgy can be divided into drama, tragedy and comedy. Literary types can be distinguished from each other by the number of characters and storylines, volume, functions and content. In different periods of the history of literature, one species can be represented in different genres. For example: philosophical and psychological novels, detective novels, social and picaresque novels. Theoretically, Aristotle began to divide works into types of literature in his treatise called Poetics. His work was continued in modern times by the French poet-critic Boileau and Lessing.

Literature typification

Editorial and publishing preparation, i.e., the selection of written essays for subsequent editions, is usually carried out by the publishing editor. But it is quite difficult for an ordinary user to accurately navigate in the boundless sea. It is more expedient to use a systematic approach, namely, you need to clearly distinguish between the types of literature and their purpose.

• The novel is an impressive form of work, having a huge number of characters with a fairly developed and closely connected system of relationships between them. A novel can be historical, family, philosophical, adventure and social.
• An epic is a series of works, less often a single one, invariably covering a significant historical era or a significant large-scale event.

• Novela - the primary genre of narrative prose, much shorter than a novel or short story. The collection of stories is usually called short stories, and the writer is called a short story writer.

Not the last of the significant

• Comedy is a creation that ridicules individual or social shortcomings, focusing on especially awkward and ridiculous situations.

• The song is the oldest type of poetry, without which the category "types of fiction" would not be complete. The work is a poetic form with many verses and refrains. There are: folk, lyrical, heroic and historical.

• A fable is a prose, but more often a poetic, work of a moralistic, moralistic and satirical nature.

• A story is a literary work of a certain, often small, size, which tells about a separate event in the life of a character.

• Myth - narration is also included in the section "types of literature" and carries to future generations the idea of ​​​​ancestors about the universe, heroes and gods.

• A lyric poem is an expression of the author's emotional experiences in a poetic form convenient for him.

• Essay - a narrative, a subspecies of the epic, which reliably tells about real events, facts.

• A story is a work similar in structure to a story, but differing in volume. The story can tell about several events from the life of the main characters at once.

• Melodrama - deservedly continues the list of the category "types of literature", this is a narrative dramatic work, distinguished by a categorical division of heroes into positive and negative.

Literature and modernity

Life itself every day more and more insistently convinces everyone that the level of consistency and unity of book publications, newspaper and magazine materials is one of the main criteria for the effectiveness of society education. Naturally, the initial stage of acquaintance with literature (not counting children's literature) starts at school. Therefore, any literature for teachers contains a variety of literature, which help to convey the necessary knowledge in an accessible form for the perception of the child.

individual choice

It is difficult to overestimate the role of literature in the life of a modern person, because books have brought up more than one generation. It was they who helped people comprehend both the world around them and themselves, stimulated the desire for truth, moral principles and knowledge, taught them to respect the past. Unfortunately, literature and other art forms are often underestimated in modern society. There is a certain category of individuals who declare that literature has already outlived its usefulness, it has been fully replaced by television and cinema. But whether to take advantage of the opportunity that books provide or not is an individual choice for everyone.

A literary genre is a group of literary works that has common historical development trends and is united by a set of properties in terms of its content and form. Sometimes this term is confused with the concepts of "view" "form". To date, there is no single clear classification of genres. Literary works are subdivided according to a certain number of characteristic features.

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The history of the formation of genres

The first systematization of literary genres was presented by Aristotle in his Poetics. Thanks to this work, the impression began to emerge that the literary genre is a natural stable system that requires the author to fully comply with the principles and canons a certain genre. Over time, this led to the formation of a number of poetics, strictly prescribing to the authors exactly how they should write a tragedy, ode or comedy. For many years these requirements remained unshakable.

Decisive changes in the system of literary genres began only towards the end of the 18th century.

At the same time, literary works aimed at artistic search, in their attempts to move as far as possible from genre divisions, gradually came to the emergence of new phenomena unique to literature.

What literary genres exist

To understand how to determine the genre of a work, you need to familiarize yourself with the existing classifications and the characteristic features of each of them.

Below is a sample table to determine the type of existing literary genres

Separation of genres by content

Classification of literary movements based on content includes comedy, tragedy and drama.

Comedy is a kind of literature which provides for a humorous approach. Varieties of the comic direction are:

There is also a comedy of characters and a comedy of situations. In the first case, the source of humorous content is the internal features of the characters, their vices or shortcomings. In the second case, comedy is manifested in the circumstances and situations.

Tragedy - drama genre with the obligatory catastrophic denouement, the opposite of the comedy genre. Tragedy usually reflects the deepest conflicts and contradictions. The plot is extremely intense. In some cases, tragedies are written in verse form.

Drama is a special kind of fiction, where the events that take place are transmitted not through their direct description, but through the monologues or dialogues of the characters. Drama as a literary phenomenon existed among many peoples even at the level of folklore. Originally in Greek, this term meant a sad event that affects one particular person. Subsequently, the drama began to represent a wider range of works.

The most famous prose genres

The category of prose genres includes literary works of various sizes, made in prose.

Novel

The novel is a prose literary genre that implies a detailed narrative about the fate of the heroes and certain critical periods of their lives. The name of this genre originates in the XII century, when chivalric stories were born "in the folk Romance language" as opposed to Latin historiography. A short story was considered a plot version of the novel. At the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century, such concepts as a detective novel, a women's novel, and a fantasy novel appeared in literature.

Novella

Novella is a kind of prose genre. Her birth was served by the famous The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio. Subsequently, several collections based on the Decameron model were released.

The era of romanticism introduced elements of mysticism and phantasmagorism into the genre of the short story - examples are the works of Hoffmann, Edgar Allan Poe. On the other hand, the works of Prosper Mérimée bore the features of realistic stories.

novella like short story with a twist became a defining genre in American literature.

The salient features of the novel are:

1. Maximum brevity.
2. Sharpness and even paradoxicality of the plot.
3. Neutrality of style.
4. Lack of descriptiveness and psychologism in the presentation.
5. An unexpected denouement, always containing an extraordinary turn of events.

Tale

The story is called prose of a relatively small volume. The plot of the story, as a rule, is in the nature of reproducing the natural events of life. Usually the story reveals the fate and personality of the hero against the backdrop of ongoing events. A classic example is “The Tales of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin” by A.S. Pushkin.

Story

A story is a small form of prose work, which originates from folklore genres - parables and fairy tales. Some Literary Specialists as a Kind of Genre review essay, essay and novel. Usually the story is characterized by a small volume, one storyline and a small number of characters. The stories are characteristic of literary works of the 20th century.

Play

A play is a dramatic work that is created for the purpose of subsequent theatrical production.

The structure of the play usually includes the phrases of the characters and the author's remarks describing the environment or the actions of the characters. There is always a list of characters at the beginning of a play. with a brief description of their appearance, age, character, etc.

The whole play is divided into large parts - acts or actions. Each action, in turn, is divided into smaller elements - scenes, episodes, pictures.

The plays of J.B. Molière ("Tartuffe", "Imaginary Sick") B. Shaw ("Wait and see"), B. Brecht. ("The Good Man from Cesuan", "The Threepenny Opera").

Description and examples of individual genres

Consider the most common and significant examples of literary genres for world culture.

Poem

A poem is a large poetic work that has a lyrical plot or describes a sequence of events. Historically, the poem was "born" from the epic

In turn, a poem can have many genre varieties:

1. Didactic.
2. Heroic.
3. Burlesque,
4. satirical.
5. Ironic.
6. Romantic.
7. Lyric-dramatic.

Initially, the leading themes for creating poems were world-historical or important religious events and themes. Virgil's Aeneid is an example of such a poem., "The Divine Comedy" by Dante, "The Liberated Jerusalem" by T. Tasso, "Paradise Lost" by J. Milton, "Henriad" by Voltaire, etc.

At the same time, a romantic poem also developed - “The Knight in a Panther's Skin” by Shota Rustaveli, “Furious Roland” by L. Ariosto. This kind of poem to a certain extent echoes the tradition of medieval chivalric romances.

Over time, moral, philosophical and social topics began to come to the fore (“Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” by J. Byron, “The Demon” by M. Yu. Lermontov).

In the 19th-20th centuries, the poem began to become realistic(“Frost, Red Nose”, “Who Lives Well in Russia” by N.A. Nekrasov, “Vasily Terkin” by A.T. Tvardovsky).

epic

Under the epic it is customary to understand the totality of works that are united by a common era, national identity, theme.

The emergence of each epic is due to certain historical circumstances. As a rule, the epic claims to be objective and reliable presentation of events.

visions

This kind of narrative genre, when the story is told from the perspective of, allegedly experiencing a dream, lethargy or hallucination.

1. Already in the era of antiquity, under the guise of real visions, fictional events began to be described in the form of visions. The authors of the first visions were Cicero, Plutarch, Plato.
2. In the Middle Ages, the genre began to gain momentum in popularity, reaching its heights with Dante in his Divine Comedy, which in its form represents an expanded vision.
3. For some time, visions were an integral part of the church literature of most European countries. The editors of such visions have always been representatives of the clergy, thus obtaining the opportunity to express their personal views, allegedly on behalf of higher powers.
4. Over time, a new sharply social satirical content was invested in the form of visions (“Visions of Peter the Ploughman” by Langland).

In more modern literature, the genre of visions has come to be used to introduce elements of fantasy.

Genres of literature

Literary genres- historically emerging groups of literary works, united by a set of formal and content properties (in contrast to literary forms, the selection of which is based only on formal features). The term is often incorrectly identified with the term "type of literature".

The genera, types and genres of literature do not exist as something immutable, given from the ages and eternally existing. They are born, theoretically realized, historically developed, modified, dominated, faded away or retreated to the periphery, depending on the evolution of artistic thinking as such. The most stable, fundamental is, of course, the extremely general concept of “genus”, the most dynamic and changeable is the much more specific concept of “genre”.

The first attempts at a theoretical substantiation of the genus make themselves felt in the ancient doctrine of mimesis (imitation). Plato in The Republic, and then Aristotle in Poetics, came to the conclusion that poetry is of three kinds, depending on what, how and by what means it imitates. In other words, the generic division of fiction is based on the subject, means and methods of imitation.

Separate remarks about the ways of organizing artistic time and space (chronotope), scattered in the Poetics, form the prerequisites for further division into types and genres of literature.

Aristotle's idea of ​​generic characteristics is traditionally called formal. His successors are representatives of German aesthetics of the 18th-19th centuries. Goethe, Schiller, Aug. Schlegel, Schelling. Approximately at the same time, the principles of the opposite - a meaningful approach to the generic division of fiction were laid. It was initiated by Hegel, who proceeded from the epistemological principle: the object of artistic knowledge in the epic is the object, in the lyrics - the subject, in the drama - their synthesis. Accordingly, the content of the epic work is being in its entirety, dominating the will of people, therefore the event plan prevails in it; the content of the lyrical work is the state of mind, the mood of the lyrical hero, therefore the eventfulness in it recedes into the background; the content of a dramatic work is striving for a goal, a person's volitional activity, manifested in action.

Derived from the category of the genus, or rather, clarifying, concretizing its concepts are the concepts of "species" and "genre". By tradition, we call species stable structural formations within a literary genus, grouping even smaller genre modifications. For example, the epic consists of small, medium and large types, such as a story, an essay, a short story, a story, a novel, a poem, an epic. However, they are often called genres that, in a strict terminological sense, specify species either in a historical, or in a thematic, or in a structural aspect: an antique novel, a Renaissance short story, a psychological or production essay or novel, a lyrical story, an epic story (“Fate Man" by M. Sholokhov). Some structural forms combine specific and genre features, i.e. types of genre varieties do not have (such, for example, are the types and at the same time the genres of the medieval theater soti and moralite). However, along with the synonymous word usage, the hierarchical differentiation of both terms is relevant. Accordingly, the types are divided into genres according to a number of different characteristics: thematic, stylistic, structural, volume, in relation to the aesthetic ideal, reality or fiction, the main aesthetic categories, etc.

Genres of literature

Comedy- type of dramatic work. Displays everything ugly and ridiculous, funny and awkward, ridicules the vices of society.

Lyric poem (in prose)- a type of fiction, emotionally and poetically expressing the feelings of the author.

Melodrama- a type of drama, the characters of which are sharply divided into positive and negative.

fantasy subgenre of fantasy literature. The works of this subgenre are written in an epic fairy-tale manner, using the motifs of ancient myths and legends. The plot is usually based on magic, heroic adventures and travel; the plot usually contains magical creatures; The action takes place in a fairy tale world reminiscent of the Middle Ages.

Feature article- the most reliable type of narrative, epic literature, displaying facts from real life.

Song or song- the most ancient type of lyric poetry; a poem consisting of several verses and a chorus. Songs are divided into folk, heroic, historical, lyrical, etc.

Tale- medium form; a work that highlights a series of events in the life of the protagonist.

Poem- type of lyrical epic work; poetic storytelling.

Story- a small form, a work about one event in the life of a character.

Novel- large form; a work, in the events of which many characters usually take part, whose fates are intertwined. Novels are philosophical, adventure, historical, family and social.

Tragedy- a type of dramatic work that tells about the unfortunate fate of the protagonist, often doomed to death.

Utopia- a genre of fiction, close to science fiction, describing a model of an ideal, from the point of view of the author, society. In contrast to dystopia, it is characterized by the author's belief in the impeccability of the model.

epic- a work or a cycle of works depicting a significant historical epoch or a great historical event.

Drama- (in the narrow sense) one of the leading genres of dramaturgy; a literary work written in the form of a dialogue of characters. Designed to be performed on stage. Focused on spectacular expression. The relationship of people, the conflicts that arise between them are revealed through the actions of the characters and are embodied in a monologue-dialogical form. Unlike tragedy, drama does not end in catharsis.

At school, in literature lessons, they study stories, novels, novels, essays, elegies. In cinemas, various films are shown - action films, comedies, melodramas. And how can all these phenomena be united in one term? For this, the concept of "genre" was invented.

Let's figure out what a genre is in literature, what types of them exist and how to determine which direction a particular work belongs to.

The division of works by genre has been known since antiquity. What is a genre in ancient literature? It:

• tragedy;
• comedy.

Fiction was practically inseparable from the theater, and therefore the set was limited to what could be embodied on the stage.

In the Middle Ages, the list expanded: now it includes a short story, a novel and a story. The emergence of a romantic poem, an epic novel, as well as ballads belongs to the New Age.

The 20th century, with its tremendous changes in the life of society and the individual, gave birth to new literary forms:

• thriller;
• action movie;
• fiction;
• fantasy.

What is a genre in literature

The totality of some features of groups of literary forms (signs can be both formal and meaningful) - these are the genres of literature.

According to Wikipedia, they are divided into three large groups:

• by content;
• in form;
• by birth.

Wikipedia names at least 30 different directions. These include (of the most famous):

• story;
• story;
• novel;
• elegy,

and others.

There are also less common ones:

• sketch;
• opus;
• stanzas.

How to define a genre

How to determine the genre of a work? If we are talking about a novel or an ode, then we will not get confused, but something more complex - a sketch or stanzas - can cause difficulties.

So we have an open book. It is immediately possible to correctly name well-known literary forms, the definition of which we do not even need. For example, we see a three-dimensional creation that describes a large period of time in which many characters appear.

There are several storylines - one main and an unlimited number (at the discretion of the author) of secondary ones. If all these requirements are met, then every high school student will say with confidence that we have a novel.

If this is a short narrative, limited to a description of an event, while the author’s attitude to what he is talking about is clearly visible, then this is a story.

More difficult, for example, with opus.

The interpretation of the concept is ambiguous: most often it means something that causes ridicule, that is, an essay, story or story, the merits of which are doubtful.

In principle, many literary works can be attributed to the concept of "opus", if they do not differ in clarity of style, richness of thought, in other words, they are mediocre.

What are stanzas? This is a kind of poem-remembrance, a poem-reflection. Remember, for example, Pushkin's Stanzas, written by him on a long winter journey.

Important! In order to correctly classify this or that literary form, be sure to take into account both external signs and content.

Let's try to bring literary genres together, and for this we will collect the types of works known to us in a table. Of course, we will not be able to cover everything - the most complete literary trends are presented in serious philological works. But a small list can be made.

The table will look like this:

Types of genres by content

Before, we touched on the question of the form of writing and divided the genres of literature precisely on this basis. However, directions can be interpreted more broadly. The content, the meaning of what is written is very important. At the same time, the terms in both lists can "echo", intersect.

Let's say a story falls into two groups at once: stories can be distinguished by external features (short, with a clearly expressed attitude of the author), and by content (one bright event).

Among the areas divided by content, we note:

• comedy;
• tragedy;
• horror;
• drama.

Comedy is perhaps one of the most ancient genres. The definition of comedy is multifaceted: it can be a sitcom, a comedy of characters. There are also comedies:

• household;
• romantic;
• heroic.

Tragedies were also known to the ancient world. The definition of this genre of literature is a work, the outcome of which will certainly be sad, hopeless.

Genres of literature and their definitions

A list of literary genres can be found in any textbook for students of philology. Who cares to know in what directions literary forms stand out?

This information is needed by the following professionals:

• writers;
• journalists;
• teachers;
• philologists.

When creating a work of art, the author submits his creation to certain canons, and their framework - conditional boundaries - allow us to attribute the created to the group "novels", "essays" or "odes".

This concept is relevant not only to works of literature, but also to other types of art. Wikipedia explains: this term can also be used in relation to:

• painting;
• Photo;
• movie;
• oratory;
• music.

Important! Even the game of chess obeys its genre standards.

However, these are very large separate topics. We are now interested in what genres there are in literature.

Examples

Any concept should be considered with examples, and types of literary forms are no exception. Let's take a look at practical examples.

Let's start with the simplest - with a story. Surely everyone remembers Chekhov's work "I want to sleep" from school.

This is a terrible story, written in a deliberately simple, everyday style, at the heart of it is a crime committed by a thirteen-year-old girl in a state of passion, when her mind was clouded from fatigue and hopelessness.

We see that Chekhov complied with all the laws of the genre:

• description practically does not go beyond one event;
• the author is "present", we feel his attitude to what is happening;
• in the story - one main character;
• The essay is short and can be read in a few minutes.

As an example of the story, we can take Turgenev's "Spring Waters". The author here argues more, as if helping the reader to draw conclusions, gently pushing him to these conclusions. In the story, an important place is given to issues of morality, ethics, the inner world of the characters - all these problems come to the fore.

– is also quite specific. This is a kind of sketch, where the author expresses his own thoughts on a specific occasion.

The essay is characterized by vivid imagery, originality, frankness. If you have ever read André Maurois and Bernard Shaw, you will understand what we are talking about.

Novels and their characteristic features - the length of events in time, multiple storylines, a chronological chain, the author's periodic digressions from a given topic - do not allow one to confuse the genre with any other.

In the novel, the author touches on many problems: from personal to acute social. At the mention of novels, “War and Peace” by L. Tolstoy, “Fathers and Sons”, “Gone with the Wind” by M. Mitchell, “Wuthering Heights” by E. Bronte immediately come to mind.

Types and groupings

In addition to grouping by content and form, we can take advantage of the proposal of philologists and subdivide everything created by writers, poets and playwrights by gender. How to determine the genre of a work - what kind can it belong to?

You can create a list of varieties:

• epic;
• lyrical;
• dramatic.

The first are distinguished by a calm narrative, descriptiveness. Epic can be a novel, essay, poem. The second is everything that is connected with the personal experiences of the heroes, as well as with solemn events. This includes an ode, an elegy, an epigram.

Drama is comedy, tragedy, drama. For the most part, the theater expresses the “right” to them.

Summarizing what has been said, we can apply the following classification: there are three major areas in literature, covering everything that has ever been created by prose writers, playwrights and poets. Works are divided by:

• form;
• content;
• the kind of writing.

Within the framework of one direction, there can be many completely diverse works. So, if we take the division by form, then here we will include stories, novels, essays, odes, essays, novels.

We determine belonging to any direction by the “external structure” of the work: its size, the number of storylines, the author’s attitude to what is happening.

The division by birth is lyrical, dramatic and epic works. Lyrical can be a novel, a story, an essay. The genus epic includes poems, fairy tales, epics. Dramatic - these are plays: comedies, tragicomedies, tragedies.

Important! New time makes adjustments to the system of literary trends. In recent decades, the detective genre, which originated in the 19th century, has developed. In contrast to the utopian novel that arose in the late Middle Ages, dystopia was born.

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Summing up

Literature continues to evolve today. The world is changing at a tremendous speed, and therefore undergo changes in the form of expression of thoughts, feelings, the speed of perception. Perhaps in the future, new genres will form - so unusual that it is still difficult for us to imagine them.

It is possible that they will be located at the junction of several types of art at once, for example, cinema, music and literature. But this is in the future, but for now our task is to learn to understand the literary heritage that we already have.

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