Works of different genres examples. What are the literary genres? Literary genres and their definitions

A literary genre is a group of literary works that have common historical trends development and united by a set of properties in 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 classified according to a certain amount characteristic features.

The history of the formation of genres

First systematization literary genres introduced 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. Long years these requirements remained unshakable.

Decisive changes in the system of literary genres began only to late XVIII 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 existing classifications and characteristics of each of them.

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

Separation of genres by content

Classification literary trends 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 internal features actors, 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 - special kind fiction , where the events that take place are transmitted not through their direct description, but through the monologues or dialogues of the characters. drama like literary phenomenon existed among many peoples even at the level of folklore. Originally in Greek, this term meant a sad event that affects one specific 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 chivalrous stories were born "in the folk Romance» as opposed to Latin historiography. A short story was considered a plot version of the novel. IN late XIX- at the beginning of the 20th century, such concepts as a detective novel appeared in literature, female romance, fantasy novel.

Novella

Novella - variety prose genre. Her birth was served by the famous collection "Decameron" 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 sharp plot became characteristic genre For American Literature.

characteristic features novels 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 about 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 consider essay, essay and short story. Usually the story is characterized by a small volume, one storyline and few characters. The stories are characteristic of literary works of the 20th century.

Play

The play is called dramatic work, which 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 environment or the actions of the characters. There is always a list of characters at the beginning of a play. With brief description 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, " Lost heaven» J. Milton, Voltaire's Henriad, etc.

At the same time, it developed romantic poem- "The Knight in the Panther's Skin" by Shota Rustaveli, " Furious Roland» 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 XIX-XX centuries the poem begins more and more become realistic(“Frost, Red Nose”, “Who Lives Well in Rus'” by N.A. Nekrasov, “Vasily Terkin” by A.T. Tvardovsky).

epic

An epic is usually understood as a set of works that are united common epoch, nationality, subject.

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 peculiar 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 unfolded vision.
3. For a while, visions were an integral part of church literature 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 contemporary literature the genre of visions began to be used to introduce elements of fantasy.

Literary work- a form of existence of literature as the art of the word. What makes it artistic?

Reading room of the Russian State Library.

We always feel the special vital concreteness of a literary work. It is always connected with reality and at the same time is not identical to it, it is its image, transformation, artistic reflection. But a reflection "in the form of life", a reflection that not only tells about life, but itself appears as a special life.

“Art is a reproduction of reality, repeated, as if a newly created world,” wrote V. G. Belinsky. Here, the dynamics of the content of a work of art is perfectly captured. In order to “repeat” the world, unique in its development and constant self-renewal, it is necessary to “recreate it, as it were”, to reproduce such an individual phenomenon that, not being identical to reality, at the same time will fully express it. deep essence and the value of life.

Life is not only material reality, but also the life of the human spirit, it is not only what is, what was realized in reality, but also what was and will be, and what is “possible due to probability or necessity” (Aristotle ). “To master the whole world and find expression for it” - such is the artist’s super-task, according to the excellent definition of J. V. Goethe. Therefore, reflections on the nature of a work of art are inextricably linked with the deepest philosophical question of what the “whole world” is, whether it represents unity and integrity, and whether it is possible to “find expression for it”, recreate it in a specific individual phenomenon.

A work, in order to really exist, must be created by the author and perceived by the reader. And again, these are not just different, outwardly justified, isolated, internally interconnected processes. In a truly artistic work, “the perceiver merges with the artist to such an extent that it seems to him that the object he perceives was made not by anyone else, but by himself” (L. N. Tolstoy). The author acts here, as M. M. Prishvin wrote, in the role of “a persuader, forcing both the sea and the moon to look with his own personal eye, which is why everyone, being a unique person, being in the world only once, would bring human consciousness, into a culture of something of oneself. The life of a work is carried out only on the basis of the harmony of the author and the reader - such harmony, which directly convinces that "every person can feel equal to everyone else and everyone else" (M. Gorky).

The work is an internal, interpenetrating unity of content and form. “The poems themselves speak. And they are not talking about something, but something, ”wrote S. Ya. Marshak. Indeed, it is very important to be aware of this difference and not to reduce the content of a literary work to what it tells. Content is an organic unity of displaying, comprehending and evaluating reality, and thoughts and evaluations in works of art do not exist separately, but permeate the depicted events, experiences, actions and live only in artistic word- the only possible form of embodiment of this life content.

The subject of reality, its comprehension and evaluation turn into the content of a literary work, only internally uniting and embodied in an artistic form. Likewise, any word, any speech medium turns out to be artistically significant only when it ceases to be just information, when life phenomena external to it become its internal content, when the word about life is transformed into life, imprinted in a literary work as a verbal and artistic whole.

From what has been said, it is clear that art form literary work is not just a "technique". "What is trimming lyric poem... to bring the form to its possible elegance? - wrote Ya. I. Polonsky. - This, believe me, is nothing more than to finish and bring to the possible in human nature finesse of one’s own, this or that feeling ... To work on a verse for a poet is the same as to work on one’s soul. Work on understanding the environment and one's own own life, over "his soul", and work on the construction of a literary work - for a real writer, these are not three different types of activity, but a single creative process.

L. N. Tolstoy praised the poems of A. A. Fet for being “born”. And V. V. Mayakovsky called his article “How to make poetry?”. We understand both the opposite and the partial validity of these characteristics. If works of art are “born”, it is still not quite the way a person is born. And from the article by V. V. Mayakovsky, even with all its polemical exaggerations, it is still quite clear that poems “do” in a completely different way than things are done on a conveyor, in-line production. In a literary work there always exists this contradiction between being organized ("made") and organic ("being born"), and the highest artistic achievements are characterized by its especially harmonic resolution. Let us recall, for example, A. S. Pushkin’s poem “I loved you: love still, perhaps ...”, the clear construction of which becomes a completely natural expression of high human feeling- selfless love.

An artificially created verbal and artistic statement is transformed into an organically vital whole, each element of which is necessary, irreplaceable and vitally significant. And understand what's in front of us piece of art, - this, first of all, means to understand and feel that it can only be the way it is: both in general and in each of its particles.

The life contained within the work, as small universe, reflects and manifests in itself the universe, the fullness of human life, the whole integrity of being. And the meeting of the author and the reader in the art world literary work therefore becomes an indispensable form of sharing in this big world, upbringing of true humanity, the formation of a holistic, comprehensively developed personality.

A genre in literature is a selection of texts that have a similar structure and are close 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.

Two recent groups talking about tragic fate, about the 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. Lyrics always contain feelings and experiences lyrical hero i.e. the author himself.
   3. The drama reveals its plot through the communication of the characters among themselves.

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 ultimate general concept"genus", the most dynamic and changeable - a 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 traditionally referred to as 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 ancient 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 features: 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- kind of drama characters 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- most ancient view lyric poetry; a poem consisting of several verses and a chorus. Songs are divided into folk, heroic, historical, lyrical, etc.

Tale - middle 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 - big shape; 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- genre of fiction, close to science fiction describing the 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 major 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.

Literary genres- groups of works collected on a formal and substantive basis. Literary works are divided into separate categories according to the form of the narration, according to the content and according to the type of belonging to a particular style. Literary genres make it possible to systematize everything that has been written since the time of Aristotle and his "Poetics", first on "birch bark", dressed skins, stone walls, then on parchment paper and scrolls.

Literary genres and their definitions

Definition of genres by form:

A novel is an extensive narrative in prose, reflecting the events of a certain period of time, with detailed description the lives of the main characters and all other characters who, to one degree or another, participate in the indicated events.

A story is a form of narration that does not have a definite volume. The work usually describes episodes from real life, and the characters are presented to the reader as an integral part of the ongoing events.

Short story (novella) - a widespread genre short prose, bears the definition of "short story". Since the short story format is limited in scope, the writer usually manages to unfold the narrative within a single event involving two or three characters. The exception to this rule was the great Russian writer Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, who could describe events on several pages. whole era with many characters.

The essay is a literary quintessence that combines art style storytelling and journalism. Always presented in a concise manner with a high content of specifics. The subject of the essay, as a rule, is connected with social and social problems and is of an abstract nature, i.e. does not affect specific individuals.

A play is a special literary genre designed for a wide audience. Plays are written for the theatrical stage, television and radio performances. In their structural pattern, plays are more like a story, since the duration theatrical performances fits perfectly with the story of the average volume. The genre of the play differs from other literary genres in that the narration is conducted on behalf of each character. Dialogues and monologues are marked in the text.

Ode is a lyrical literary genre, in all cases of positive or laudatory content. Dedicated to something or someone, it is often a verbal monument to heroic events or the exploits of patriotic citizens.

Epic - a narrative of an extensive nature, which includes several stages state development having historical meaning. The main features of this literary genre are global events of an epic nature. The epic can be written both in prose and in verse, an example of this is Homer's poems "Odyssey" and "Iliad".

Essay - short essay in prose, in which the author expresses his own thoughts and views in an absolutely free form. An essay is to some extent an abstract work that does not claim to be completely authentic. In some cases, essays are written with a share of philosophy, sometimes the work has a scientific connotation. But in any case, this literary genre deserves attention.

Detectives and fantasy

Detectives are a literary genre based on the eternal confrontation between policemen and criminals, novels and stories of this genre are action-packed in nature, in almost every detective work there are murders, after which experienced detectives begin an investigation.

Fantasy is a special literary genre with fictional characters, events and an unpredictable ending. In most cases, the action takes place either in space or in the underwater depths. But at the same time, the heroes of the work are equipped with ultra-modern machines and devices of fantastic power and efficiency.

Is it possible to combine genres in literature

All listed species literary genres have unique features of difference. However, often there is a mixture of several genres in one work. If this is done professionally, interesting enough is born, unusual creation. So the genres literary creativity contain significant potential for updating the literature. But these opportunities should be used carefully and thoughtfully, since literature does not tolerate profanity.

Genres of literary works by content

Each literary work is classified according to its belonging to a certain type: drama, tragedy, comedy.

What are comedies

comedies happen different types and styles:

1. Farce - light comedy, built on elementary comic tricks. It occurs both in the literature and theater stage. Farce as a special comedy style is used in circus clowning.
2. Vaudeville is a comedy play with many dance numbers and songs. In the USA, vaudeville became the prototype of the musical; in Russia, small comic operas were called vaudeville.
3. An interlude is a small comic scene that was played between the actions of the main performance, performance or opera.
4. Parody is a comedy technique based on the repetition of recognizable signs of famous literary characters, texts or music in a deliberately modified form.

Modern genres in literature

Types of literary genres:

1. Epic - fable, myth, ballad, epic, fairy tale.
2. Lyrical - stanzas, elegy, epigram, message, poem.

Modern literary genres are periodically updated, for recent decades several new trends in literature have appeared, such as political detective story, the psychology of war, as well as paperback literature, which includes all literary genres.