Literary genre

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A literary genre is one of the divisions of literature into genres according to particular criteria such as literary technique, tone, or content.

The most important genres in literature are (in chronological order) epic, tragedy, comedy, novel, and short story. They can all be in the types of literature like prose or poetry, though genres are generally difficult to define. Additionally, a kind of genre like satire, allegory or pastoral might appear in any of the above. Finally, they are defined by the general cultural movement of the historical period in which they were composed.

[edit] Subgenres

Genres are often divided into sub-genres. Literature can be organized according to the "poetic genres" and the "prose genres". Poetry might be subdivided into epic poetry, lyric poetry, and dramatic poetry, while prose might be subdivided into fiction and non-fiction. Further subdivisions of dramatic poetry, for instance, might include comedy, tragedy, melodrama, and so forth. This parsing into subgenres can continue: "comedy" has its own genres, for example, including comedy of manners, sentimental comedy, burlesque comedy, and satirical comedy.

Many times, the criteria used to divide up works into genres are not consistent, leading to works that belong to more than one genre. Romance and mystery are marked out by their plots, and Western by its setting, which means that a work can easily be a Western romance or Western mystery.

Literary genre

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[edit] Subgenres

[edit] List of literary genres

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