Literary Genres: What Are They and How Are They Classified?

Publicado porFlora BoschPublicado en ReadingEtiquetas:

They say that literature cannot be studied, only read. However, there are plenty of studies on the subject. Aristotle was the first one to venture a classification of literary works, which still stands today: the distinction between tragedy and comedy in theater, and the epic, which combined lyrical poetry and narrative. Other authors such as Horace, Schlegel, Bakhtin, and Frye continued his work and contributed to the development of what we now know as literary genres, including all their varieties and subgenres.

Today, we will discuss what literary genres are and how they are classified. We will also include some examples of books from each genre. Let’s get started!

Literary Genres: What Are They?

Literary genres are a way of classifying literary works. But what exactly is a work of literature? There are many definitions: according to the U.S. Copyright Office, literary works explain, describe, or narrate «a particular subject, theme, or idea through the use of narrative, descriptive, or explanatory text, rather than dialog or dramatic action.»

Literary works as such have certain shared characteristics:

  • An aesthetic component that seeks beauty through written expression.
  • A creative component originating from the author’s imagination, knowledge, and experience.
  • A stylistic component that includes rhetorical and literary figures that enrich the text.
  • A subjective component that responds to the author’s personal perspectives and worldview.
  • A plurisignification component that makes the works open to different readings and interpretations.

These characteristics are common to literary works as a whole, regardless of the literary genre they belong to. But there are other traits distinctive of certain types of works, for example, prose as opposed to verse.

Before moving on, it’s important to highlight that literary works of a certain genre may have features of other genres. Genres usually have a main trait but, to a greater or lesser extent, they also include traits of other genres. For example, the epic lyric is written in verse, and yet it belongs to the narrative genre.

The classification is, strictly speaking, arbitrary, but they have become genres precisely because of the strength of the criteria used. And, while some criteria respond to formal aspects of the works, such as the distinction between prose and verse, other criteria are based on the content, theme, or uses of the language. Based on these features, the classical classification divides literary works into four main genres: fiction, poetry, drama, and non-fiction.

What Types of Literary Genres Are There?

We’ve already mentioned the best-known literary genres:

  • Fiction
  • Poetry
  • Drama
  • Non-fiction

Each of these literary genres has its own subgenres, organized based on other criteria such as themes, communicative intentions, or resources used. Let’s take a look at these types of literary genres and some of their subgenres.

Fiction

This is the best-known genre, and it includes all those literary works that tell a story in prose—consecutive paragraphs separated by a full stop. They narrate and describe a succession of events in a universe that is presented to the reader. The events can be narrated in the first or third person, and they include characters who go through events and coexist in a certain space-time.

Fiction is characterized by presenting one or more types of narrators who can be protagonists, witnesses, or omniscient narrators (they see and know everything), among others. Each of them offers different points of view through different styles of narration: direct speech, indirect speech, or free indirect speech. Fictional works typically include dialogues, regressions, and other devices to get to know the perspectives of the characters going through the narrative.

Within the fiction genre, we can find the following subgenres:

  • Novel
  • Novella
  • Short story
  • Legend
  • Myth
  • Fable

Examples of Fiction Books

Novel

Due to their ability to create engaging worlds and include a large repertoire of resources, novels are among the most important works of narrative. Thus, the novel has become a cultural event of the first order and the quintessential literary genre since the 19th century. Here are some of the most famous novels from different countries and cultures:

  1. Norwegian Wood, by Haruki Murakami
  2. In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote
  3. Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf
  4. Sóniechka, by Lyudmila Ulítskaya
  5. Burnt Money, by Ricardo Piglia
  6. The Years, by Annie Ernaux
  7. Gather Together in My Name, by Maya Angelou
  8. The Perfect Nanny, by Leïla Slimani
  9. The Seamstress, by María Dueñas
  10. A Nearby Country Called Love, by Salar Abdoh
Novella

The short novel has become a subgenre on its own. Its specific characteristics and traits match those of both the novel and the short story, and it tells compelling stories focusing on the development of a main plot. Among the most recommended are:

  1. Los adioses, by Juan Carlos Onetti
  2. Animal Farm, by George Orwell
  3. Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street, by Herman Melville
  4. No One Writes to the Colonel, by Gabriel García Márquez
  5. The Hunting Gun, by Yasushi Inoue
  6. The Lover, by Marguerite Duras
  7. The Little Virtues, by Natalia Ginzburg
  8. Le Bal, by Irène Némirovsky
  9. Sula, by Toni Morrison
  10. The Tunnel, by Ernesto Sábato
Short Story

The short story is characterized by being a brief tale that develops relevant facts revolving around the actions of the characters, with a concrete perspective of reality and without delving into the psychology of the protagonists.

There are authors who, although they have works of various genres, are considered mainly storytellers; this is the case of Jorge Luis Borges and Washington Irving, for example. Short stories are usually published in newspapers and magazines and then in anthologies or complete works. So, instead of naming specific works, it makes more sense to give some of the most celebrated and interesting storytellers:

  1. Virginia Woolf
  2. Antón Chéjov
  3. Edgar Allan Poe
  4. Adolfo Bioy Casares
  5. Horacio Quiroga
  6. Lucia Berlin
  7. Joy Williams
  8. Lydia Davis
  9. Katherine Mansfield
  10. Raymond Carver

Poetry

Poetry includes all those works in which feelings, emotions, and reflections of a poetic self are exposed. This poetic self is similar to the narrator in the fiction genre because it’s a subject artificially constructed to express the feelings and emotions the author wants to convey. In this sense, subjectivity prevails over other elements. Furthermore, poetry is usually written in verse—lines of text that have meter, rhythm, and rhyme to produce a melodic effect.

Within the poetic genre, there are historical subgenres from the classical tradition that had an important development during the Renaissance, Baroque, and Neoclassicism—16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, respectively. The epic, the ode, and the satire are some of them, but they have fallen into disuse.

Poetry Books

Within the lyrical genre we can mention great referents such as William Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, and Alfonsina Storni. These are some of the most recognized books of poetry of all time:

  1. The Odyssey, by Homer
  2. Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman
  3. The Wild Iris, by Louise Glück
  4. The Waste Land, by T. S. Eliot
  5. 35 Sonnets, by Fernando Pessoa
  6. Diario de una persona inventada, by Cecilia Pavón
  7. Gypsy Ballads, by Federico García Lorca
  8. Trilce, by César Vallejo
  9. Milk and Honey, by Rupi Kaur
  10. The Flowers of Evil, by Charles Baudelaire

Dramatic Genre (Drama)

The dramatic genre was one of the first genres to be conceived as such, and it includes all those works intended to be performed in front of an audience. For this reason, this type of text includes elements that have to do with staging and interpretation, and they usually respond to the conditions of production of a play. Likewise, they usually present fictitious or real facts in a material and objective world.

Texts of this genre usually use direct speech and dialogue to develop the story. And, although there’s a voice that narrates the staging and the context in which the events take place, this voice doesn’t correspond to that of a narrator, since it disappears when the work is represented on stage.

Within the dramatic genre, there are three established subgenres: tragedy, comedy, and drama, each of them related to a well-defined theme:

  • Tragedy focuses on serious and painful events.
  • Comedy has to do with simple and everyday problems.
  • Drama is a combination of the previous two.

Playbooks

Playbooks are not usually the most popular or best-selling books. However, dramatic literature is more alive than ever, and there are many examples of works that have gained recognition thanks to their quality and style. Here are some classic and contemporary examples:

  1. The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde
  2. A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams
  3. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, by Edward Albee
  4. 4.48 Psychosis, by Sarah Kane
  5. Look Back in Anger, by John Osborne
  6. Septology, by Jon Fosse
  7. The Monster, by Josep Maria Miró
  8. Family Council, by Cristina Clemente
  9. Infàmia, by Pere Riera
  10. A Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry

Non-Fiction

Also called didactic, it’s a type of literary construction that doesn’t belong to any of the previous genres. However, it’s certainly literary because it uses rhetorical figures and sensory images to produce an impact on the discourse and appeal to the reader’s sensitivity, as opposed to what happens with formal and objective speech. Therefore, the essay is the use of language to defend a personal and subjective thesis on a given topic, inviting the reader to reflect on it.

In essays, the imprint of the author’s style with a high level of subjectivity can be seen. The use of rhetorical figures and sensory images shows a connotative intention in which language is used in a symbolic, figurative, or metaphorical way. Among the essay subgenres we can include a wide variety of texts: opinion columns and editorials in newspapers, political and artistic manifestos, open letters, and speeches, among others.

Non-Fiction Books

Essay books offer us the possibility to expand our knowledge and learn about different perspectives on all kinds of topics: literature, culture, science, history, and much more. Below, there’s a list of essay books addressing various topics:

  1. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, by David Foster Wallace
  2. Black Music, by Leroi Jones (Amiri Baraka)
  3. Gender Trouble, by Judith Butler
  4. The Politics of Modernism, by Raymond Williams
  5. The Crack-Up, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  6. Dialectic of Enlightenment, by Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno
  7. Forms and Meanings, by Roger Chartier
  8. The Myth of Sisyphus, by Albert Camus
  9. The Death of the Moth, by Virginia Woolf
  10. Slouching Towards Bethlehem, by Joan Didion

Conclusion

Literary genres are an invisible force that operates on the production of books from a historical, social, and linguistic point of view. However, the boundaries and features of genres are not fixed and are constantly fusing, which contributes to the development of written productions and the evolution of literature. We hope that this article helps you better understand them and that the works mentioned provide a pleasant reading.

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