Literary genres of works and their definitions. What is a genre in literature, list and examples

literary genre This is the model by which the text of any literary work is built. A genre is a set of certain features that make it possible to classify a literary work as an epic, lyric or drama.

The main types of literary genres

Literary genres are divided into: epic, lyrical and dramatic. Epic genres: fairy tale, epic, epic, epic novel, story, novel, essay, short story, anecdote. Lyrical genres: ode, ballad, elegy, epigram, message, madrigal. Dramatic genres: tragedy, drama, comedy, melodrama, farce and vaudeville.

Genres in literature have a number of specific features, divided into: genre-forming and additional. Genre-forming features serve to determine the specifics of a particular genre. For example, the genre-forming feature of a fairy tale is an orientation towards fiction. Events occurring in a fairy tale, the listener perceives as magical, fictional, without direct relationship to reality. The genre-forming feature of the novel is its connection with objective reality, the coverage of events that took place in reality or those that could happen, a large number of acting characters, diversion special attention inner world heroes.

Development of literary genres

Literary genres do not tend to stand still. They are constantly evolving and never stop changing. When forming or changing literary genres, attention is paid to real historical reality, in the aura of which the creation takes place. literary works.

What is a literary genre?

We figured out what a genre in literature is, but it would not be superfluous to consider why a literary genre is needed - what function does it perform?

The genre is able to give the reader a fairly holistic view of the work. That is, if the word “novel” is present in the title of the work, then the reader immediately begins to tune in to a significant amount of text, in contrast, for example, to a small “story”, which causes a corresponding association with the approximate number of pages in the book.

Also, the genre can give the reader an idea about the content of the work. For example, if it is defined as “drama”, then we can imagine in advance that the person in the work will be shown in dramatic relations with society and, most likely, we will observe tragic events at the end of the book.

Together with the article "What is a genre in literature?" read:

Literary genres (French genre - genus, type) are the types of works that have developed in the process of development of artistic literature. The genre problem in itself general form can be formulated as a problem of classifying works, identifying common - genre - features in them. The main classification difficulties are related to historical change literature, with the evolution of its genres.

The number and nature of genre features (the volume of a genre) is a variable in the history of literature, which is reflected in the variety of genre theories that replace each other, as well as ideas about genres that dominate writers' and readers' practice. So, for the tragedy in the realistic drama of the XIX-XX centuries. many features of a classic tragedy are not obligatory: the “noble” origin of the hero, the “bloody” denouement, the observance of the rules of the three unities, the Alexandrian verse, etc. In the era of realism, any dramatic work that reveals a tragic conflict and expresses the corresponding pathos is considered a tragedy. Thus, we can talk about a decrease in the genre volume of the tragedy from classicism to realism.

Most genres originated in ancient times. Evolving in the literary process, they nevertheless retain some stable content and formal features that make it possible to speak of a genre tradition. According to M. M. Bakhtin, “a genre is a representative of creative memory in the process of literary development” (21, 179). This metaphor emphasizes the enormous role of genres in ensuring literary continuity. The genre designations themselves (tragedy, fable, ballad, etc.), often included in the text of the work, are in its title (“The Government Inspector. Comedy in five acts”;

"Eugene Onegin. Roman in verse"), are signs of literary tradition; they evoke a certain genre expectation in the reader.

When studying genres, one should distinguish between their most stable and transient features. As part of the theoretical and literary course, the main attention is paid to the characterization of the most stable genre features. However, it is important to remember that in the literary process, the genre always appears as an element of a certain genre system, the principles of which depend on the specific historical features of artistic thinking. Therefore, as Yu. N. Tynyanov emphasized, “the study of isolated genres outside the signs of the genre system with which they correlate is impossible” (95, 276).

The evolution of genres and the change in their systems reflect the general tendencies of the literary process and its pace. Thus, in ancient literatures, the development of the author's self-awareness was slow, determined by the stability of traditions and the general pace of national life. Therefore, the genre systems of ancient literatures, differing in complexity and branching, are characterized by greater stability in comparison with the literatures of modern times.

With the advent literary trends the system of genres became the subject of active theoretical reflection and substantiation. Thus, the poetics of classicism distinguished between high, medium and low genres, and each of them was assigned a certain hero: for example, a "noble" origin in tragedy and a "low" one in comedy. The genre was understood as a kind of regulated content-formal unity, as a norm that a writer must follow; mixing different genres was not allowed.

In the future, the rationalist system of genres of classicism was destroyed by sentimentalists and romantics, who defended the freedom of creativity from all sorts of "rules", including the "fetters" of the genre. Romanticism, in contrast to classicism, put forward such genres that gave greater scope for the expression of subjective experiences. Classicist ode, heroic poem, tragedy, satire gave way to elegy, ballad, lyric-epic romantic poem, historical novel; at the same time, the boundaries between genres were deliberately blurred. However, the genres of romanticism in their own way were also not free from norms.

activity. Genuine liberation from rigid genre regulations became possible only with the development of realism, it was associated with overcoming subjective one-sidedness in creativity itself. In realistic literature, which correlates the development of characters with circumstances in their historical concreteness, following the tradition of genres could be carried out much more freely, which generally led to a decrease in their volume. In all European literatures of the XIX in. there is a sharp restructuring of the genre system. Genres began to be perceived as aesthetically equivalent and open to creative search types of works. This approach to genres is characteristic of our time.

In this article, we will try to broad sense describe what a genre is, where we can meet it, and what varieties it is divided into. We will also consider the history of the origin of this term, reveal its etymological essence and understand when its use is appropriate both in everyday life and in scientific and artificial cases.

Generalized concept

Speaking simply about what a genre is, we come to the following formulation: this is one of the varieties of a work in any industry found in painting, literature, music, theater and cinema. They can also be found in speech, in relationships, in traditions and other areas of our lives. Any of the selected genres is characterized by certain stylistic or plot features, by which any work is identified. Simply put, we can say that this is an ordinary style. In each separate branch of art, a specialist can determine stylistic affiliation specific work.

Brief list of genres

To make it clearer, let's look at this concept in various art forms. Mainly, genres are found in literature, and among them the following stand out:

Comedy is a ridiculous work that is ridiculing in nature.
Drama is a story based on the conflict of the main characters.
A story is a short story that recounts a series of events.
The novel is a large form in which the fates of the characters are closely intertwined.
Tragedy is a work of a sad, often deadly nature.
A poem can have any meaning, but is characterized by the presence of rhyme.

This is far from complete list In past centuries, the division of literary forms was more strict, there were few stylistic trends. It was also characteristic that each genre could be very easily identified, since all authors strictly adhered to the established framework.

Features of modern genres

Over time, such restrictions have become more flexible, expanding, so to speak, the artistic possibilities in each individual style. Starting around the 19th century, writers and poets began to combine two or more trends in one work. Nowadays, the main literary genres are closely intertwined with cinematography, that is, with those categories that are more related to cinema. This is primarily due to the fact that in the first half of the 20th century they began to film, and in subsequent years, this trend not only became an integral part of art, but also had a reverse course of events. That is, some of the books that you can buy and read today were written according to a script created for a movie or series.

What is a genre in cinema

The basis of the styles related to this art form lies in literature and in the theater. Among the films, the vast majority are comedies and their opposite tragedies, dramas, epics, melodramas, detective stories, musicals, and so on. However, thanks to the rapid development of world cinema, there has been a significant increase in these ranks, and now it is possible to name three to four times as many genres that are related to various films. Let's list a few of them:

Anime - drawn pictures, where the movements of each drawn character are sequentially created. Among these "cartoons" there are quite meaningful works, the fullness of which can not even be understood by every adult.
Action - the protagonist's clash most often with the world of crime, where issues are resolved with fists and shooting.
Western and Eastern are two opposite genres that have a lot in common with action movies. It is characteristic that in the first one the events are based on the traditions of the Wild West, and in the second - on the "concepts" of the East.
Suspense is a kind of mixture of horror, detective and action movie that does not let the viewer go even for a second from the screen.
Fantasy is an ordinary story about heroes, which is accompanied by unrealistic events and characters.

Musical style and directions

Speaking about what a genre is, one should not lose sight of the style. Stylistics is especially pronounced in this form of art. Based on it, people determine their musical tastes, change the music in their players depending on their mood. In past centuries, works were not divided as such into different genres, but today the situation is just the opposite. All early music belongs to the classical as a main category. All those works that were recorded in the second half of the 20th century and beyond last years, are divided into main genres, among which stand out pop, rock, jazz, blues, rap, indie, chanson, folk and electro. The latter has many varieties (ambient, house, trance, EBM, synth-pop, drum and bass, techno, dubstep, etc.).

Genres in other art forms

Such a concept as a genre is found in painting, in sculpture, even in everyday speech and in human behavior. Observe yourself and what you say, and you will understand that this term have to be used literally and figuratively more than often.

Parameter name	Meaning
Article subject:	GENRE CONCEPT
Rubric (thematic category)	Radio

To the begining

Translated from french wordʼʼgenreʼʼ means ʼʼkindʼʼ, ʼʼgenreʼʼ. Each art form has its own approaches to the definition of this concept, but they are based on a common base - the practice of functioning of these art forms over a certain period of time. The specificity of the various types of arts makes its own adjustments to the interpretation of genres.

Genre is the generic memory of creative fields of activity (literature, music, theater, cinema, visual arts and journalism, among others). This is a type of reflection of reality and organization of the collected material for solving a specific problem by means provided to the author by the type of creativity, its features and capabilities.

Publicism is closest to literary creativity, since it deals with the word. The basis of journalistic genres is speech, and in this regard, they should be classified as speech genres, although music is also widely used in broadcasting.

In literature, a ʼʼgenre is a historically developing type of literary work; in the theoretical concept of a genre, features are generalized that are characteristic of a more or less extensive group of works of any era, a given nation or world culture in generalʼʼ.

As we can see, here in the approach to the genre there are temporal (historical), content (generalizing features of works of a certain group) and statistical signs. This is a fairly general definition. But it should be noted that within literary criticism there are different interpretations concepts of ʼʼgenreʼʼ. So, one of them considers journalism also a genre.

The musical genre is described as an ʼʼ polysemantic concept that characterizes the historically established genera and types of musical works in connection with their origin and life purpose, the method and conditions (place) of performance and perception, as well as the features of the content and form of ʼʼ . Here, more specific genre features are already visible, of which we will pay attention to the ʼʼappointmentʼʼ of the work.

In the definition of genres in journalism, especially in recent times, their functional orientation is more taken into account, since journalism is such a type of creative activity, which is associated with the tasks of open journalistic impact on society.

At the root of any activity lies the satisfaction of a person with his needs. Social needs in informing the audience, state, ideological control of the masses and brings to life journalism as a means of reflection and formation public opinion, influencing the minds and feelings of people with specific goals. The need gives rise to a task, a goal, which are realized, materialized with the help of a function, object and method.

The main thing in understanding the genre, its features is the function, but it does not exist by itself. As soon as a task appears, an object arises, which it predetermines, to which it is directed in order to be embodied. For this reason, we are talking about a functional-subject approach to the genre.

And now let's ʼʼanatomizeʼʼ the creative process of a journalist and understand how each stage of his creative work affects the nature of the genre.

So, the need of society determines the task and goal that leads to its solution and satisfaction of the need: in this case, all actions will be subject to the search necessary materials, a set of ʼʼtoolsʼʼ, ways of working, performing certain operations.

A task is a set of imagined operations that must be embodied in a creative action to satisfy certain needs, conditioned by their achievement.

A goal is a milestone that focuses a need in itself and indicates the way to achieve it.

Function, translated from Latin ʼʼperformanceʼʼ - ϶ᴛᴏ the ability of a given ʼʼmechanismʼʼ, device, device, organ, with the help of which target actions are performed, to master the necessary means to solve the task. It is a task in action, in the process of achieving a goal, it is a duty created by a need, a relationship between what needs to be done, performance and result.

Subject - specific material for study, embodied in a journalistic work, it is information base necessary to solve a journalistic problem: facts, events, phenomena, situations, relationships between them, the process of their development, this is information that generates human thoughts.

Method - a set of methods, techniques for solving a problem, mastering the subject (observation, study, comprehension, etc.), writing material.

Content and form are a creatively embodied task in a certain text, a finished result expressed in a finished journalistic work. The text is usually understood not as a ʼʼnewspaper fragmentʼʼ, but as adopted in modern science content embodied in the form (musical text, television text, etc.). Function, subject, method, content and form are in close interaction, since the creation of a work is creative process.

The genre has a set of features, which are again determined by its task and the nature of the material. Each genre has an internal vector for material implementation. It is also determined by the function vector, its fluctuations in each specific case. And these functional fluctuations depend on the tasks facing the journalist, on the editorial tradition, on the place of the work in the program.

Any task requires certain means for its solution, formative, compositional, lexical, acoustic. Each genre is designed to reflect reality with an extremely important depth, coverage of documentary material, in this regard, the genres differ from each other and the scale of reflection and generalization. Solving problems of different complexity, a journalist operates with different time and space. The volume of material is also one of the essential qualities of the genre. The larger the volume of the work, the more complex its composition, the internal connections of all its components.

In the genre, not only the reflected material is manifested, but also the author himself, his attitude to facts, events, and phenomena. For this reason, each genre has varying degrees author's self-expression.

Features of the genres of radio journalism are determined, as already emphasized, by the specifics of the radio channel and the form of embodiment speech communication. Οʜᴎ operate with a living word. Many genres of radio journalism, designed to solve the multifunctional tasks of influencing listeners, came into the air from ordinary everyday communication. Οʜᴎ changed under the influence of literary creativity, became more complex, more multifaceted, having lost direct contact with the listener, which is a powerful self-regulatory factor in verbal communication. But the focus on the audience, the appeal to the listener in radio genres remained in an indirect form and are manifested different ways: from direct appeal to the introduction of various regulatory techniques into the text. The genres of speech communication on the radio have also acquired a new quality - artistic means text organization.

We have already mentioned how important intonation manifestation is in live speech. The vectors of functional manifestation of different genres include a wide range of variation in intonation, due to the tasks of a particular material.

In information genres, the tone of a radio message, interview, reportage is determined by the task: to report news, to talk about an event, to be an intermediary between a person who owns up-to-date information, a competent opinion and an audience. But even within these seemingly rigid limits, variations in tone fluctuations can be significant: from a dry reading of official news to a bright, ʼʼvoluminousʼʼ performance of an informational message that concerns all listeners. An example of such reading was messages about the most important events in the life of the country, broadcast by Yuri Levitan, sports reports by Vadim Sinyavsky, Nikolai Ozerov.

Time has always determined the general tone of broadcasting, and this was reflected in news journalism. Y. Levitan recalls how this sense of time was melted into work at the microphone in the 1930s: ʼʼThe very atmosphere of those years - the tense rhythm of construction sites, mass enthusiasm, labor records - left their mark on our work. I saw the role of the announcer then not only publicistic, but also solemn: it seemed that this was the only way to convey the majestic scope of the events taking place in the country, pride in it, everyone's involvement in the cause of building socialismʼʼ. This is a purely historical quote. It is interesting in that it shows us how the role of the announcer was understood and used in reading informational materials.

The intonation spectrum is wider in analytical genres, since they are designed to openly influence listeners. From this follow the features of the tonal appeal to the audience. The impact of oratorical journalism is well known - it was one of the components of radio programs at the dawn of the formation of domestic broadcasting. It is determined not only by the meaning, the content of the text, by the methods of polemic and rhetoric, but also to a large extent by how the speech is pronounced: the temperament of the individual, artistry, knowledge of the psychology of the audience and the specific mood of those groups to which the speech is addressed.

The intonation of intimacy, on which some types of conversations and heart-to-heart conversations with listeners, are built, has no less opportunities for active influence on radio listeners.

Documentary-fiction genres, which include various elements of different texts, have a huge range of tonality. The intonations of speech fragments, which depend on many factors of a particular utterance in the context of a particular communication, are practically unlimited in their emotional and semantic manifestations.

How harder task performs the speech genre, the more voluminous its internal structure, the brighter and more diverse are the possibilities of intonational disclosure of personality in speech communication.

So, this somewhat simplified scheme helped to understand the mechanisms of the genre, its internal organization and reflect its main characteristics and features.

The whole creative process, which was described above, is one. The division into stages was made by us conditionally in order to theoretically comprehend the work of a journalist.

The peculiarity of the genres should be emphasized once again. Οʜᴎ are very mobile and often do not have clear boundaries, which sometimes makes it difficult to determine the genre of a particular material. Such dynamics and blurring of outlines are explained by the specifics of journalistic creativity, the variety of its methods and the individual approaches of journalists to creating a work.

A deeper understanding of the genre requires another significant addition: genres do not function in isolation, but in a system. Each genre in the process of its development undergoes a certain evolution in the neighborhood with other genres. And this interaction of genres leaves its mark on their development and internal structure. The diversity of tasks, which predetermines the diversity of genres, unites them into a kind of integrity - a system that regulates their interdependence, their internal and external connections.

Security questions for the section of the chapter

1. 1. What is a ʼʼgenreʼʼ?

2. 2. What is the peculiarity of speech genres?

3. 3. What is the interaction of function and subject in the process of a journalist's work?

4. 4. What is the specificity of radio journalism genres?

5. 5. List the main categories of the genre that determine the creative process of creating a work.

6. 6. Listen to various radio broadcasts. Describe their genre.

CONCEPT ABOUT GENRE - concept and types. Classification and features of the category "CONCEPT OF GENRE" 2017, 2018.

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 classified according to a certain amount characteristic features.

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 existing classifications and characteristics of each of them.

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

by birth	epic	fable, epic, ballad, myth, short story, story, story, novel, fairy tale, fantasy, epic
	lyrical	ode, message, stanzas, elegy, epigram
	lyrical-epic	ballad, poem
	dramatic	drama, comedy, tragedy
content	comedy	farce, vaudeville, sideshow, sketch, parody, sitcom, mystery comedy
	tragedy
	drama
in form	vision short story story epic story anecdote novel ode epic play essay sketch

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 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 poetic form.

Drama is a 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 as a literary phenomenon existed among many peoples even at the level of folklore. Initially in Greek this term meant a sad event affecting 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 were born chivalric stories"in the vernacular 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 Detective novel, female romance, fantasy novel.

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.

characteristic features novels are:

Maximum brevity.
Sharpness and even paradoxicality of the plot.
Neutrality of style.
Lack of descriptiveness and psychologism in the presentation.
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

The story is called small form 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 few 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:

Didactic.
Heroic.
Burlesque,
satirical.
Ironic.
Romantic.
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).

AT 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, 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.

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.
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.
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.
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.