What are the main genres of literature. What is a literary genre - what genres of works are

All literary genres are unique, each of which has a complex of qualities and characteristics inherent exclusively to it. Their first known classification was proposed by Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher and naturalist. In accordance with it, the basic literary genres can be compiled into a small list that is not subject to any changes. The author working on any work should simply find similarities between his creation and the parameters of the indicated genres. Over the next two millennia, any changes in the classifier developed by Aristotle were taken with hostility and considered a shift from the norm.

In the 18th century, a large-scale literary restructuring began. The ingrained types of the genre and their system began to undergo major modifications. The current conditions have become the main prerequisite for the fact that some genres of literature have sunk into oblivion, others have gained crazy popularity, and others have just begun to form. We can observe the results of this transformation, which continues even now, with our own eyes - types of genres that are dissimilar in meaning, in kind and in many other criteria. Let's try to figure out what genres are in literature and what are their features.

A genre in literature is a historically established set of literary creations, united by a set of similar parameters and formal characteristics.

All existing types and genres of literature can be visually represented in a table in which large groups will appear in one part, and its typical representatives in the other. There are 4 main groups of genres by gender:

• epic (mostly prose);
• lyrical (mainly poetics);
• dramatic (plays);
• lyroepic (something between lyrics and epic).

Also, types of literary works can be classified according to content:

• comedy;
• tragedy;
• drama.

But to understand what types of literature are, it will become much easier if you understand their forms. The form of a work is a method of presenting the author's ideas underlying the work. There are external and internal forms. The first, in fact, is the language of the work, the second is the system of artistic methods, images and means with which it was created.

What are the genres of books in form: essay, vision, short story, epic, ode, play, epic, essay, sketch, opus, novel, story. Let's consider each in detail.

Essay

An essay is a short piece of prose with a free composition. Its main purpose is to show the personal opinion and concepts of the author on a particular occasion. In this case, the essay is not required to fully disclose the problem of presentation or clearly answer questions. Basic properties:

• figurativeness;
• proximity to the reader;
• aphorism;
• associativity.

There is an opinion according to which an essay is a separate type of works of art. This genre dominated in the XVIII-XIX centuries in British and Western European journalism. Famous representatives of that time: J. Addison, O. Goldsmith, J. Wharton, W. Godwin.

epic

The epic is at the same time a genus, type and genre of literature. It is a heroic tale about the past, showing the then life of people and the reality of the characters from the epic side. Often the epic talks in detail about a person, about an adventure with his participation, about his feelings and experiences. It also tells about the attitude of the hero to what is happening around him. Representatives of the genre:

• "Iliad", "Odyssey" by Homer;
• "Song of Roland" Turold;
• The Nibelungenlied, author unknown.

The progenitors of the epic are the traditional poems-songs of the ancient Greeks.

epic

Epic - large works with heroic overtones and those that are similar to them. What is the literature of this genre:

• narration of important historical moments in verse or prose;
• a story about something, including several descriptions of different significant events.

There is also a moral epic. This is a special kind of narrative in literature, distinguished by its prosaic nature and ridicule of the comic state of society. Rabelais' "Gargantua and Pantagruel" is referred to him.

Sketch

A sketch is a short play in which there are only two (rarely three) main characters. Today, the sketch is used on the stage in the form of a comedy show with miniatures lasting no more than 10 minutes. Such shows regularly appear on television in Britain, the USA and Russia. Well-known example programs on TV are “Unreal Story”, “6 Frames”, “Our Russia”.

Novel

The novel is a separate literary genre. It presents a detailed account of the development and life of key characters (or one hero) in the most critical and difficult periods. The main types of novel in literature are those belonging to a specific era or country, psychological, chivalrous, classical, moral, and many others. Notable examples:

• "Eugene Onegin" Pushkin;
• "Doctor Zhivago" Pasternak;
• "Master and Margarita" Bulgakov.

Novella

The novella or short story is a key genre of fiction, having a smaller volume than the short story or novel. The main properties of the work include:

• the presence of a small number of heroes;
• the plot has only one line;
• cyclicity.

The creator of the stories is a novelist, and the collection of stories is a novelist.

Play

The play is a dramaturgy. It is designed to be shown on the stage of the theater and in other performances. The play consists of:

• speeches of the main characters;
• copyright notes;
• descriptions of places where the main actions take place;
• characteristics of the appearance of the persons involved, their demeanor and character.

The play includes several acts, which consist of episodes, actions, pictures.

Tale

The story is a work of prose. It has no special restrictions on volume, but is located between the short story and the novel. Usually the plot of the story has a clear chronology, shows the natural course of the character's life without intrigue. All attention belongs to the main person and the specifics of his nature. It is worth noting that the plot line is only one. Famous representatives of the genre:

• "The Hound of the Baskervilles" by A. Conan Doyle;
• "Poor Lisa" by N. M. Karamzin;
• "Steppe" by A.P. Chekhov.

In foreign literature, the concept of "story" is equal to the concept of "short novel".

Feature article

An essay is a concise, truthful artistic tale about several events and phenomena thought out by the author. The basis of the essay is an accurate understanding of the subject of observation directly by the writer. Types of such descriptions:

• portrait;
• problematic;
• travel;
• historical.

Opus

In the general sense, an opus is a play accompanied by music. Main characteristics:

• internal completeness;
• individuality of form;
• thoroughness.

In the literary sense, an opus is any scientific work or creation of the author.

Oh yeah

Ode - a poem (usually solemn), dedicated to a specific event or person. At the same time, an ode can be a separate work with a similar theme. In ancient Greece, all poetic lyrics, even the singing of the choir, were considered odes. From the time of the Renaissance, only high-flown lyrical poems, focusing on the images of antiquity, began to be called this way.

Vision

Vision is a genre of literature of the Middle Ages, which is based on a “clairvoyant”, who talks about the afterlife and unreal images that appear to him. Many modern researchers attribute visions to narrative didactics and journalism, since in the Middle Ages a person could thus convey his thoughts about the unknown.

These are the main types of literature in form and what their variations are. Unfortunately, it is difficult to fit all the genres of literature and their definitions into a small article - there are really a lot of them. In any case, everyone understands the need and importance of reading a wide variety of works, because they are real vitamins for the brain. With the help of books, you can increase your level of intelligence, expand your vocabulary, improve memory and attentiveness. BrainApps is a resource that will help you develop in this direction. The service features more than 100 effective simulators that can easily pump gray matter.

Literary genera and literary genres are the most powerful means to ensure the unity and continuity of the literary process. They relate to the characteristic features of the narration, the plot, the author's position and the relationship of the narrator with the reader.

V. G. Belinsky is considered the founder of Russian literary criticism, but even in antiquity, Aristotle made a serious contribution to the concept of literary gender, which Belinsky later scientifically substantiated.

So, the types of literature are called numerous sets of works of art (texts), which differ in the type of relation of the speaker to the artistic whole. There are 3 genera:

• epic;
• Lyrics;
• Drama.

The epic as a kind of literature aims to tell in as much detail as possible about an object, phenomenon or event, about the circumstances associated with them, the conditions of existence. The author, as it were, is removed from what is happening and acts as a narrator-narrator. The main thing in the text is the story itself.

The lyrics aim to tell not so much about the events, but about the impressions and feelings that the author has experienced and is experiencing. The main image will be the image of the inner world and the human soul. Impression and experience are the main events of the lyrics. This kind of literature is dominated by poetry..

Drama tries to depict the object in action and show it on the stage, to present what is described in the environment of other phenomena. The author's text is visible here only in remarks - brief explanations of the actions and remarks of the characters. Sometimes the author's position is reflected by a special reasoning hero.

Each type of literature includes several genres.

Literary genres

A genre is a group of works united by historically characteristic common features of form and content. Genres include novel, poem, short story, epigram and many others.

However, between the concept of "genre" and "genus" there is an intermediate - type. This is a less broad concept than a genus, but wider than a genre. Although sometimes the term "kind" is identified with the term "genre". If these concepts are distinguished, then the novel will be considered a type of fiction, and its varieties (dystopian novel, adventure novel, fantasy novel) - genres.

Example: genus - epic, type - story, genre - Christmas story.

Types of literature and their genres, table.

Modern literary critics single out 4 kinds of literature - lyroepic (lyroepos). A poem is attributed to him. On the one hand, the poem tells about the feelings and experiences of the protagonist, and on the other hand, it describes the history, events, circumstances in which the hero lives.

The poem has a plot-narrative organization, it describes many experiences of the protagonist. The main feature is the presence, along with a clearly structured storyline, of multiple lyrical digressions or paying attention to the inner world of the character.

The lyric-epic genres include the ballad. It has an unusual, dynamic and extremely tense plot. It is characterized by a poetic form, it is a story in verse. May be historical, heroic, or mythical. The plot is often borrowed from folklore.

The text of an epic work is strictly plot-driven, focused on events, characters and circumstances. It is based on storytelling, not on experience. The events described by the author are separated from him, as a rule, by a long period of time, which allows him to be impartial and objective. The author's position can manifest itself in lyrical digressions. However, they are absent in purely epic works.

Events are described in the past tense. The story is unhurried, unhurried, measured. The world appears complete and fully known. Many detailed details, great thoroughness.

Major epic genres

An epic novel can be called a work covering a long period in history, describing many heroes, with intertwining storylines. Has a large volume. The novel is the most popular genre these days. Most of the books on the shelves in bookstores are of the novel genre.

The story is either classified as a small or medium genre, it concentrates on one storyline, on the fate of a particular hero.

Small genres of epic

The story embodies small literary genres. This is the so-called intensive prose, in which, due to the small volume, there are no detailed descriptions, enumerations and an abundance of details. The author is trying to convey a specific idea to the reader, and the entire text is aimed at revealing this idea.

The stories are characterized by the following features:

• Small volume.
• In the center of the plot is a specific event.
• A small number of heroes - 1, a maximum of 2-3 central characters.
• It has a specific theme, which is devoted to the entire text.
• It aims to answer a specific question, the rest are secondary and, as a rule, are not disclosed.

Nowadays, it is practically impossible to determine where the story is and where the short story is, even though these genres have completely different origins. At the dawn of its appearance, the short story was a short dynamic work with an entertaining plot, accompanied by anecdotal situations. It lacked psychology.

Essay is a genre of non-fiction based on real facts. However, very often an essay can be called a story and vice versa. There won't be a big mistake here.

In a literary fairy tale, a fairy tale narrative is stylized, it often reflects the mood of the whole society, some political ideas sound.

Lyrics are subjective. Addressed to the inner world of the hero or the author himself. This kind of literature is characterized by emotional interest, psychologism. The plot fades into the background. It is not the events and phenomena that are happening themselves that are important, but the attitude of the hero towards them, how they affect him. Events often reflect the state of the character's inner world. The lyrics have a completely different attitude to time, it seems as if it does not exist, and all events take place exclusively in the present.

Lyric genres

The main genres of poems, the list of which can be continued:

• Ode is a solemn poem intended to praise and exalt
• hero (historical figure).
• Elegy is a poetic work with sadness as the dominant mood, which is a reflection on the meaning of life against the backdrop of a landscape.
• Satire is a caustic and accusatory work; epigrams are classified as poetic satirical genres.
• An epitaph is a piece of poetry written on the occasion of the death of someone. Often becomes an inscription on a tombstone.
• Madrigal - a small message to a friend, usually containing a hymn.
• Epithalama is a wedding hymn.
• The message is a verse written in the form of a letter, implying openness.
• A sonnet is a strict poetic genre that requires strict observance of the form. Consists of 14 lines: 2 quatrains, and 2 tertiary.

To understand the drama, it is important to understand the source and nature of its conflict. Drama is always aimed at a direct portrayal; dramatic works are written to be staged. The only means of revealing the character of the hero in the drama is his speech. The hero, as it were, lives in the spoken word, which reflects his entire inner world.

The action in a drama (play) develops from the present to the future. Although events take place in the present, they are not completed, they are directed to the future. Since dramatic works are aimed at staging them on the stage, each of them implies spectacle.

Dramatic works

Tragedy, comedy and farce are genres of drama.

At the center of the classical tragedy is an irreconcilable eternal conflict, which is inevitable. Often the tragedy ends with the death of the characters who failed to resolve this conflict, but death is not a genre-defining factor, since it can be present in both comedy and drama.

Comedy is characterized by a humorous or satirical depiction of reality. The conflict is specific and usually resolvable. There is a comedy of characters and a sitcom. They differ in the source of comedy: in the first case, the situations in which the characters find themselves are funny, and in the second, the characters themselves. Often these 2 types of comedy overlap with each other.

Modern dramaturgy gravitates towards genre modifications. A farce is a deliberately comical work in which attention is focused on comic elements. Vaudeville is a light comedy with a simple plot and a clear writing style.

It is not worth the path of drama as a kind of literature and drama as a literary genre. In the second case, the drama is characterized by an acute conflict, which is less global, irreconcilable and insoluble than a tragic conflict. In the center of the work - the relationship between man and society. The drama is realistic and close to life.

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? This is:

• 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;
• fantasy;
• 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,

other.

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;
• cinema;
• 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.

In contact with

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.

In contact with

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.

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.