Classification of literature by genres. Genre of literary work

Each literary genre is divided into genres, which are characterized by features common to a group of works. There are epic, lyrical, lyrical epic genres, genres of dramaturgy.

epic genres

Story(literary) - a work in prose or poetry, based on the folklore traditions of a folk tale (one storyline, fiction, depiction of the struggle between good and evil, antithesis and repetition as the leading principles of composition). For example, satirical tales by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin.
Parable(from the Greek parabole - "located (placed) behind") - a small epic genre, a small narrative work of an instructive nature, containing moral or religious teaching, based on a broad generalization and use of allegories. Russian writers often used the parable as an interstitial episode in their works in order to fill the narrative with deep meaning. Let us recall the Kalmyk fairy tale told by Pugachev to Pyotr Grinev (A. Pushkin "The Captain's Daughter") - in fact, this is the culmination in the disclosure of the image of Emelyan Pugachev: "Than eating carrion for three hundred years, it is better to drink living blood once, and then what God will give!". The plot of the parable about the resurrection of Lazarus, which Sonechka Marmeladova read to Rodion Raskolnikov, suggests to the reader the idea of ​​​​a possible spiritual revival of the protagonist of the novel, F.M. Dostoevsky "Crime and Punishment". In M. Gorky's play "At the Bottom", the wanderer Luka tells a parable "about the righteous land" to show how dangerous the truth can be for weak and desperate people.
Fable- a small genre of epic; plot-complete, having an allegorical meaning, the fable is an illustration of a well-known worldly or moral rule. A fable differs from a parable in the completeness of the plot; a fable is characterized by unity of action, brevity of presentation, the absence of detailed characteristics and other elements of a non-narrative nature that hinder the development of the plot. Usually a fable consists of 2 parts: 1) a story about an event that is specific, but easily generalizable, 2) a moral that follows or precedes the story.
Feature article- a genre, the hallmark of which is "writing from nature." In the essay, the role of the plot is weakened, because fiction is irrelevant here. The author of the essay, as a rule, narrates in the first person, which allows him to include his thoughts in the text, draw comparisons and analogies - i.e. use the means of journalism and science. An example of the use of the essay genre in literature is “Notes of a Hunter” by I.S. Turgenev.
Novella(Italian novella - news) is a kind of story, an epic action-packed work with an unexpected denouement, characterized by brevity, a neutral style of presentation, and a lack of psychologism. Big role in the development of the action of the novel, chance plays, the intervention of fate. A typical example of a Russian short story is the cycle of stories by I.A. Bunin "Dark Alleys": the author does not psychologically draw the characters of his heroes; a whim of fate, blind chance brings them together for a while and separates them forever.
Story- an epic genre of a small volume with a small number of heroes and the short duration of the events depicted. In the center of the narrative is an image of an event or life phenomenon. In Russian classical literature, the recognized masters of the story were A.S. Pushkin, N.V. Gogol, I.S. Turgenev, L.N. Tolstoy, A.P. Chekhov, I.A. Bunin, M. Gorky, A.I. Kuprin and others.
Tale- a prose genre that does not have a stable volume and occupies an intermediate position between the novel, on the one hand, and the short story and short story, on the other, gravitating towards a chronicle plot that reproduces the natural course of life. The story differs from the story and the novel in the volume of text, the number of characters and issues raised, the complexity of the conflict, etc. In the story, it is not so much the movement of the plot that is important, but the descriptions: the characters, the place of action, the psychological state of a person. For example: "The Enchanted Wanderer" by N.S. Leskov, "Steppe" by A.P. Chekhov, "Village" by I.A. Bunin. In the story, the episodes often follow one after the other according to the principle of a chronicle, intercom there is no between them, or it is weakened, so the story is often built as a biography or autobiography: “Childhood”, “Boyhood”, “Youth” by L.N. Tolstoy, "The Life of Arseniev" by I.A. Bunin, etc. (Literature and language. Modern illustrated encyclopedia / edited by Prof. A.P. Gorkin. - M.: Rosmen, 2006.)
Novel(French roman - a work written in one of the "living" Romance languages, and not in "dead" Latin) - an epic genre, the subject of which is a certain period or a person's whole life; Roman what is it? - the novel is characterized by the duration of the events described, the presence of several storylines and a system of actors, which includes groups of equivalent characters (for example: main characters, secondary, episodic); a work of this genre covers a wide range of life phenomena and a wide range of socially significant problems. There are different approaches to the classification of novels: 1) according to structural features (novel-parable, novel-myth, novel-dystopia, novel-journey, novel in verse, etc.); 2) on issues (family, social, social, psychological, psychological, philosophical, historical, adventurous, fantastic, sentimental, satirical, etc.); 3) according to the era in which this or that type of novel dominated (knightly, enlightenment, Victorian, Gothic, modernist, etc.). It should be noted that the exact classification of genre varieties of the novel has not yet been established. There are works whose ideological and artistic originality does not fit into the framework of any one method of classification. For example, the work of M.A. Bulgakov's "Master and Margarita" contains both acute social and philosophical problems, in it the events of biblical history (in the author's interpretation) and contemporary Moscow life of the 20-30s of the 20th century develop in parallel, scenes full of drama are interspersed satirical. Based on these features of the work, it can be classified as a socio-philosophical satirical novel-myth.
epic novel- this is a work in which the subject of the image is not the history of private life, but the fate of the whole people or the whole social group; the plot is built on the basis of nodes - key, turning point historical events. At the same time, the fate of the people is reflected in the fate of the heroes, as in a drop of water, and, on the other hand, the picture of people's life is made up of individual destinies, private life stories. An integral part of the epic are mass scenes, thanks to which the author creates a generalized picture of the flow of people's life, the movement of history. When creating an epic, the artist requires the highest skill in linking episodes (scenes of private life and mass scenes), psychological authenticity in drawing characters, historicism of artistic thinking - all this makes the epic the pinnacle of literary creativity, which not every writer can climb. That is why in Russian literature only two works created in the epic genre are known: “War and Peace” by L.N. Tolstoy, "Quiet Flows the Don" by M.A. Sholokhov.

Lyric genres

Song- a small poetic lyrical genre, characterized by the simplicity of musical and verbal construction.
Elegy(Greek elegeia, elegos - a mournful song) - a poem of meditative or emotional content, dedicated to philosophical reflections caused by the contemplation of nature or deeply personal feelings about life and death, about unrequited (usually) love; the prevailing moods of the elegy are sadness, light sadness. Elegy is a favorite genre of V.A. Zhukovsky ("Sea", "Evening", "Singer", etc.).
Sonnet(Italian sonetto, from Italian sonare - to sound) - a lyrical poem of 14 lines in the form of a complex stanza. The lines of a sonnet can be arranged in two ways: two quatrains and two tercetes, or three quatrains and distich. In quatrains there can be only two rhymes, and in terzets - two or three.
The Italian (Petrarchian) sonnet consists of two quatrains with the rhyme abba abba or abab abab and two tercetes with the rhyme cdc dcd or cde cde, less often cde edc. French sonnet form: abba abba ccd eed. English (Shakespearean) - with rhyming scheme abab cdcd efef gg.
The classical sonnet presupposes a certain sequence of thought development: thesis - antithesis - synthesis - denouement. Judging by the name of this genre, particular importance is attached to the sonnet's musicality, which is achieved by alternating male and female rhymes.
European poets developed many original types of sonnets, as well as the wreath of sonnets, one of the most difficult literary forms.
Russian poets turned to the sonnet genre: A.S. Pushkin (“Sonnet”, “To the Poet”, “Madonna”, etc.), A.A. Fet (“Sonnet”, “Date in the Forest”), poets of the Silver Age (V.Ya. Bryusov, K.D. Balmont, A.A. Blok, I.A. Bunin).
Message(Greek epistole - epistole) - a poetic letter, in the time of Horace - philosophical and didactic content, later - of any nature: narrative, satirical, love, friendship, etc. A mandatory feature of the message is the presence of an appeal to a specific addressee, motives for wishes, requests. For example: “My Penates” by K.N. Batyushkov, "Pushchin", "Message to the Censor" by A.S. Pushkin and others.
Epigram(Greek epgramma - inscription) - a short satirical poem, which is a lesson, as well as a direct response to topical events, often political. For example: epigrams of A.S. Pushkin on A.A. Arakcheeva, F.V. Bulgarin, Sasha Cherny's epigram "To Bryusov's album", etc.
Oh yeah(from Greek ōdḗ, Latin ode, oda - song) - a solemn, pathetic, glorifying lyrical work dedicated to the depiction of major historical events or persons, talking about significant topics of religious and philosophical content. The ode genre was widespread in Russian literature of the 18th - early 19th centuries. in the work of M.V. Lomonosov, G.R. Derzhavin, in the early works of V.A. Zhukovsky, A.S. Pushkin, F.I. Tyutchev, but in the late 20s of the XIX century. other genres have come to replace the ode. Separate attempts by some authors to create an ode do not correspond to the canons of this genre (“Ode to the Revolution” by V.V. Mayakovsky and others).
lyric poem- a small poetic work in which there is no plot; the author focuses on the inner world, intimate experiences, reflections, moods of the lyrical hero (the author of a lyric poem and the lyrical hero are not the same person).

Lyric epic genres

Ballad(Provencal ballada, from ballar - to dance; Italian - ballata) - a plot poem, that is, a story of a historical, mythical or heroic nature, set out in poetic form. Usually a ballad is built on the basis of the dialogue of characters, while the plot does not have independent meaning - it is a means of creating a certain mood, subtext. So, “The Song of the Prophetic Oleg” by A.S. Pushkin has philosophical overtones, "Borodino" by M.Yu. Lermontov - socio-psychological.
Poem(Greek poiein - "to create", "creation") - a large or medium-sized poetic work with a narrative or lyrical plot (for example, "The Bronze Horseman" by A.S. Pushkin, "Mtsyri" by M.Yu. Lermontov, "The Twelve" A .A. Blok, etc.), the system of images of the poem may include a lyrical hero (for example, "Requiem" by A.A. Akhmatova).
Poem in prose- a small lyrical work in prose form, characterized by increased emotionality, expressing subjective experiences, impressions. For example: "Russian language" I.S. Turgenev.

Drama genres

Tragedy- a dramatic work, the main conflict of which is caused by exceptional circumstances and insoluble contradictions that lead the hero to death.
Drama- a play, the content of which is connected with the image of everyday life; despite the depth and seriousness, the conflict, as a rule, concerns private life and can be resolved without a tragic outcome.
Comedy- a dramatic work in which the action and characters are presented in funny forms; comedy is distinguished by the rapid development of action, the presence of complex, intricate plot moves, a happy ending and simplicity of style. There are sitcoms based on cunning intrigue, a special set of circumstances, and comedies of manners (characters), based on the ridicule of human vices and shortcomings, high comedy, everyday, satirical, etc. For example, "Woe from Wit" by A.S. Griboyedov - high comedy, "Undergrowth" by D.I. Fonvizina is satirical.

Literary genres- 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).

If at the folklore stage the genre was determined from an extra-literary (cult) situation, then in literature the genre receives a characteristic of its essence from its own literary norms, codified by rhetoric. The entire nomenclature of ancient genres that had developed before this turn was then vigorously rethought under its influence.

Since the time of Aristotle, who gave the first systematization of literary genres in his Poetics, the idea has been strengthened that literary genres are a regular, once and for all fixed system, and the author’s task is only to achieve the most complete correspondence of his work to the essential properties of the chosen genre. Such an understanding of the genre - as a ready-made structure offered to the author - led to the emergence of a whole series of normative poetics containing instructions for authors on how exactly an ode or tragedy should be written; the pinnacle of this type of writing is Boileau's treatise The Poetic Art (1674). This does not mean, of course, that the system of genres as a whole and the features of individual genres really remained unchanged for two thousand years - however, the changes (and very significant ones) were either not noticed by theorists, or they were interpreted by them as damage, deviation from the necessary patterns. And only by the end of the 18th century, the decomposition of the traditional genre system, connected, in accordance with the general principles of literary evolution, both with internal literary processes and with the influence of completely new social and cultural circumstances, went so far that normative poetics could no longer describe and curb literary reality.

Under these conditions, some traditional genres began to rapidly die off or become marginalized, while others, on the contrary, moved from the literary periphery to the very center of the literary process. And if, for example, the rise of the ballad at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries, associated in Russia with the name of Zhukovsky, turned out to be rather short-lived (although it then gave an unexpected new surge in Russian poetry in the first half of the 20th century - for example, in Bagritsky and Nikolai Tikhonov) , then the hegemony of the novel - a genre that normative poetics for centuries did not want to notice as something low and insignificant - dragged on in European literature for at least a century. Works of a hybrid or indefinite genre nature began to develop especially actively: plays about which it is difficult to say whether this is a comedy or a tragedy, poems that cannot be given any genre definition, except that it is a lyrical poem. The fall of clear genre identifications was also manifested in deliberate authorial gestures aimed at destroying genre expectations: from Lawrence Stern’s novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, which breaks off in mid-sentence, to N. V. Gogol’s Dead Souls, where the subtitle is paradoxical for a prose text the poem can hardly fully prepare the reader for the fact that he will be knocked out of the rather familiar rut of a picaresque novel every now and then with lyrical (and sometimes epic) digressions.

In the 20th century, literary genres were especially strongly influenced by the separation of mass literature from literature oriented towards artistic search. Mass literature again felt an urgent need for clear genre prescriptions that significantly increase the predictability of the text for the reader, making it easy to navigate it. Of course, the old genres were not suitable for mass literature, and it rather quickly formed a new system, which was based on the very plastic genre of the novel that had accumulated a lot of diverse experience. At the end of the 19th century and in the first half of the 20th, a detective story and a police novel, science fiction and a ladies' ("pink") novel are being drawn up. It is not surprising that contemporary literature, aimed at artistic search, strove to deviate as far as possible from mass literature and therefore moved as far as possible from genre specificity. But since the extremes converge, the desire to be further from genre predestination sometimes led to a new genre formation: for example, the French anti-novel did not want to be a novel so much that the main works of this literary movement, presented by such original authors as Michel Butor and Nathalie Sarraute, there are clearly signs of a new genre. Thus, modern literary genres (and we already meet such an assumption in the reflections of M. M. Bakhtin) are not elements of any predetermined system: on the contrary, they arise as points of concentration of tension in one place or another of the literary space, in accordance with artistic tasks set here and now by this circle of authors. A special study of such new genres remains a matter for tomorrow.

List of literary genres:

• By shape
  • visions
  • Novella
  • Tale
  • Story
  • joke
  • novel
  • epic
  • play
  • sketch
• content
  • comedy
    • farce
    • vaudeville
    • sideshow
    • sketch
    • parody
    • sitcom
    • comedy of characters
  • tragedy
  • Drama
• By birth
  • epic
    • Fable
    • Bylina
    • Ballad
    • Novella
    • Tale
    • Story
    • Novel
    • epic novel
    • Story
    • fantasy
    • epic
  • Lyric
    • Oh yeah
    • Message
    • stanzas
    • Elegy
    • Epigram
  • Lyro epic
    • Ballad
    • Poem
  • dramatic
    • Drama
    • Comedy
    • Tragedy

Poem- (Greek póiema), a large poetic work with a narrative or lyrical plot. A poem is also called an ancient and medieval epic (see also Epos), nameless and author's, which was composed either through the cyclization of lyrical-epic songs and legends (the point of view of A. N. Veselovsky), or by "swelling" (A. Heusler) of one or several folk legends, or with the help of complex modifications of the most ancient plots in the process of the historical existence of folklore (A. Lord, M. Parry). The poem developed from an epic depicting an event of national historical significance (the Iliad, the Mahabharata, the Song of Roland, the Elder Edda, etc.).

Many genre varieties of the poem are known: heroic, didactic, satirical, burlesque, including heroic-comic, a poem with a romantic plot, lyrical-dramatic. For a long time, the leading branch of the genre was considered a poem on a national historical or world historical (religious) theme (Virgil's Aeneid, Dante's Divine Comedy, L. di Camões' Lusiades, T. Tasso's Jerusalem Liberated, Paradise Lost ” by J. Milton, “Henriad” by Voltaire, “Messiad” by F. G. Klopstock, “Rossiyada” by M. M. Kheraskov, etc.). At the same time, a very influential branch in the history of the genre was a poem with romantic features of the plot (“The Knight in a Leopard’s Skin” by Shota Rustaveli, “Shahnameh” by Ferdowsi, to a certain extent, “Furious Roland” by L. Ariosto), connected to one degree or another with the tradition of medieval , predominantly chivalric, novel. Gradually, personal, moral and philosophical problems come to the fore in the poems, lyrical and dramatic elements are strengthened, the folklore tradition is discovered and mastered - features already characteristic of pre-romantic poems (“Faust” by I. V. Goethe, poems by J. MacPherson, V. Scott). The heyday of the genre occurs in the era of romanticism, when the greatest poets of various countries turn to the creation of a poem. The “peak” works in the evolution of the romantic poem genre acquire a socio-philosophical or symbolic-philosophical character (“Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” by J. Byron, “The Bronze Horseman” by A. S. Pushkin, “Dzyady” by A. Mickiewicz, “The Demon” by M. Yu. Lermontov, "Germany, a winter fairy tale" by G. Heine).

In the 2nd half of the XIX century. the decline of the genre is obvious, which does not exclude the appearance of individual outstanding works (“The Song of Hiawatha” by G. Longfellow). In the poems of N. A. Nekrasov (“Frost, Red Nose”, “Who Lives Well in Russia”), genre tendencies are manifested that are characteristic of the development of the poem in realistic literature (a synthesis of moralistic and heroic principles).

In a 20th century poem the most intimate experiences are correlated with great historical upheavals, imbued with them as if from the inside (“Cloud in Pants” by V. V. Mayakovsky, “The Twelve (poem)” by A. A. Blok, “First Date” by A. Bely).

In Soviet poetry, there are various genre varieties of the poem: reviving the heroic principle (“Vladimir Ilyich Lenin” and “Good!” Mayakovsky, “Nine Hundred and Fifth Year” by B. L. Pasternak, “Vasily Terkin” by A. T. Tvardovsky); lyric-psychological poems (“About this” by V. V. Mayakovsky, “Anna Snegina” by S. A. Yesenin), philosophical (N. A. Zabolotsky, E. Mezhelaitis), historical (“Tobolsk chronicler” L. Martynov) or combining moral and socio-historical issues ("Middle of the Century" by V. Lugovsky).

The poem as a synthetic, lyrical epic and monumental genre that allows you to combine the epic of the heart and “music”, the “element” of world upheavals, innermost feelings and historical concept, remains a productive genre of world poetry: “Repairing the Wall” and “Into the Storm” by R. Frost, “ Landmarks" by Saint-John Perse, "Hollow Men" by T. Eliot, "Universal Song" by P. Neruda, "Niobe" by K. I. Galchinsky, "Continuous Poetry" by P. Eluard, "Zoya" by Nazim Hikmet.

epic(other Greek έπος - “word”, “narration”) - a set of works of a mostly epic kind, united common theme, era, nationality, etc. For example, the Homeric epic, the medieval epic, the animal epic.

The emergence of the epic is stadial in nature, but due to historical circumstances.

The origin of the epic is usually accompanied by the addition of panegyrics and laments, close to the heroic worldview. The great deeds immortalized in them often turn out to be the material that heroic poets use as the basis of their narrative. Panegyrics and laments are usually composed in the same style and size as the heroic epic: in Russian and Turkic literature, both types have almost the same manner of expression and lexical composition. Lamentations and panegyrics are preserved in the composition of epic poems as decoration.

The epic claims not only for objectivity, but also for the veracity of its story, while its claims, as a rule, are accepted by listeners. In his Prologue to The Circle of the Earth, Snorri Sturluson explained that among his sources are “ancient poems and songs that were sung to people for fun,” and added: “Although we ourselves do not know whether these stories are true, we know for sure that the wise men of old held them to be true."

Novel- a literary genre, as a rule, prosaic, which involves a detailed narrative about the life and development of the personality of the protagonist (heroes) in a crisis / non-standard period of his life.

The name "Roman" arose in the middle of the 12th century along with the genre of chivalric romance (Old French. romanz from Late Latin romance"in the (folk) Romance language"), as opposed to historiography in Latin. Contrary to popular belief, this name from the very beginning did not refer to any work in the vernacular (heroic songs or lyrics of troubadours were never called novels), but to one that could be opposed to the Latin model, even if very remote: historiography, fable ( "The Romance of Renard"), vision ("The Romance of the Rose"). However, in the XII-XIII centuries, if not later, the words roman and estoire(the latter also means "image", "illustration") are interchangeable. In a reverse translation into Latin, the novel was called (liber) romanticus, from where the adjective “romantic” came from in European languages, until the end of the 18th century it meant “inherent in novels”, “such as in novels”, and only later the meaning, on the one hand, was simplified to “love”, but on the other hand gave rise to the name of romanticism as a literary movement.

The name "novel" was preserved when, in the 13th century, the verse novel being performed was replaced by a prose novel for reading (with the complete preservation of the knightly topic and plot), and for all subsequent transformations of the knightly novel, up to the works of Ariosto and Edmund Spenser, which we called poems, and contemporaries considered novels. It persists even later, in the 17th-18th centuries, when the "adventure" novel is replaced by the "realistic" and "psychological" novels (which in itself problematizes the supposed break in continuity).

However, in England the name of the genre is also changing: the name remains behind the “old” novels. romance, and for the "new" novels from the middle of the XVII century the name novel(from Italian novella - "short story"). Dichotomy novel/romance means a lot to English-language criticism, but rather introduces additional uncertainty into their actual historical relationship than clarifies. Generally romance is considered rather a kind of structural-plot variety of the genre novel.

In Spain, by contrast, all varieties of the novel are called novela, and descended from the same romance word romance from the very beginning belonged to the poetic genre, which was also destined to have a long history - to the romance.

Bishop Yue at the end of the 17th century, in search of the predecessors of the novel, first applied this term to a number of phenomena of ancient narrative prose, which since then have also come to be called novels.

visions

Fabliau dou dieu d'Amour"(The Tale of the God of Love)," Venus la deesse d'amors

visions- narrative and didactic genre.

The plot is presented on behalf of the person to whom he allegedly revealed himself in a dream, hallucination or lethargic dream. The core is mostly made up of real dreams or hallucinations, but already in ancient times, fictional stories appeared, dressed in the form of visions (Plato, Plutarch, Cicero). The genre gets a special development in the Middle Ages and reaches its apogee in " Divine Comedy» Dante, representing the most expanded vision in form. An authoritative sanction and a strong impetus to the development of the genre were given by the Dialogues of Miracles by Pope Gregory the Great (VI century), after which visions began to appear en masse in the church literature of all European countries.

Until the 12th century, all visions (except Scandinavian ones) were written in Latin, translations appeared from the 12th century, and original visions in vernacular languages ​​from the 13th century. The most complete form of visions is presented in the Latin poetry of the clergy: this genre, in its origins, is closely connected with canonical and apocryphal religious literature and is close to church preaching.

The editors of visions (they are always from the clergy and must be distinguished from the “clairvoyant” himself) used the opportunity on behalf of the “higher power” that sent the vision to propagate their political views or fall upon personal enemies. There are also purely fictitious visions - topical pamphlets (for example, the vision of Charlemagne, Charles III, etc.).

However, since the 10th century, the form and content of visions have caused protest, often coming from the declassed layers of the clergy themselves (poor clerics and goliard schoolchildren). This protest results in parodic visions. On the other hand, courtly chivalrous poetry in folk languages ​​takes over the form of visions: visions acquire new content here, becoming a frame for a love-didactic allegory, such as, for example, “ Fabliau dou dieu d'Amour"(The Tale of the God of Love)," Venus la deesse d'amors"(Venus - the goddess of love) and finally - the encyclopedia of courtly love - the famous "Roman de la Rose" (Roman of the Rose) by Guillaume de Lorris.

The new content puts the “third estate” into the form of visions. Thus, the successor to the unfinished novel by Guillaume de Lorris, Jean de Meun, turns the exquisite allegory of his predecessor into a ponderous combination of didactics and satire, the edge of which is directed against the lack of "equality", against the unjust privileges of the aristocracy and against the "robber" royal power). Such are the "Hopes of the common people" by Jean Molinet. No less pronounced are the moods of the “third estate” in Langland’s famous “Vision of Peter the Ploughman,” which played an agitational role in the English peasant revolution of the 14th century. But unlike Jean de Meun, a representative of the urban part of the "third estate", Langland - the ideologist of the peasantry - turns his gaze to the idealized past, dreaming of the destruction of capitalist usurers.

As a complete independent genre, visions are characteristic of medieval literature. But as a motif, the form of visions continues to exist in the literatures of modern times, being especially favorable for the introduction of satire and didactics, on the one hand, and fantasy, on the other (for example, Byron's "Darkness").

Novella

The sources of the novel are primarily Latin exempla, as well as fablios, stories interspersed in the "Dialogue about Pope Gregory", apologists from the "Biographies of the Church Fathers", fables, folk tales. In 13th-century Occitan, the term nova.Hence - Italian novella(in the most popular collection of the end of the 13th century, Novellino, also known as the Hundred Ancient Novels), which has been distributed throughout Europe since the 15th century.

The genre was established after the appearance of the book by Giovanni Boccaccio "The Decameron" (c. 1353), the plot of which was that several people, fleeing the plague outside the city, tell each other short stories. Boccaccio in his book created the classic type of Italian short story, which was developed by his many followers in Italy itself and in other countries. In France, under the influence of the translation of the Decameron, around 1462, the collection One Hundred New Novels appeared (however, the material was more indebted to the facets of Poggio Bracciolini), and Margarita Navarskaya, modeled on the Decameron, wrote the book Heptameron (1559).

In the era of romanticism, under the influence of Hoffmann, Novalis, Edgar Allan Poe, a short story with elements of mysticism, fantasy, fabulousness spread. Later, in the works of Prosper Mérimée and Guy de Maupassant, this term began to be used to refer to realistic stories.

For American literature, beginning with Washington Irving and Edgar Allan Poe, the novella or short story (eng. short story), is of particular importance - as one of the most characteristic genres.

In the second half of the 19th-20th centuries, the traditions of the short story were continued by such different writers as Ambrose Bierce, O. Henry, H. G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, Gilbert Chesterton, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Karel Capek, Jorge Luis Borges.

The short story is characterized by several important features: extreme brevity, a sharp, even paradoxical plot, a neutral style of presentation, a lack of psychologism and descriptiveness, and an unexpected denouement. The action of the novel takes place in the author's modern world. The plot structure of the novel is similar to the dramatic one, but usually simpler.

Goethe spoke about the action-packed nature of the short story, giving it the following definition: "an unheard-of event that has taken place."

The story emphasizes the significance of the denouement, which contains an unexpected turn (pointe, “falcon turn”). According to the French researcher, "ultimately, one can even say that the whole novella is conceived as a denouement." Viktor Shklovsky wrote that the description of a happy mutual love does not create a short story; a short story needs love with obstacles: “A loves B, B does not love A; when B loves A, then A no longer loves B. He singled out a special type of denouement, which he called "false ending": it is usually made from a description of nature or weather.

Among the predecessors of Boccaccio, the short story had a moralizing attitude. Boccaccio retained this motif, but his morality followed from the short story not logically, but psychologically, and often was only a pretext and a device. The later short story convinces the reader of the relativity of moral criteria.

Tale

Story

Joke(fr. anecdote- tale, fiction; from the Greek τὸ ἀνέκδοτоν - unpublished, lit. "not issued") - a genre of folklore - a short funny story. Most often, an anecdote is characterized by an unexpected semantic resolution at the very end, which gives rise to laughter. It can be a play on words, different meanings of words, modern associations that require additional knowledge: social, literary, historical, geographical, etc. Anecdotes cover almost all spheres of human activity. There are jokes about family life, politics, sex, and so on. In most cases, the authors of the jokes are unknown.

AT Russia XVIII-XIX centuries (and in most languages ​​of the world still) the word "joke" had a slightly different meaning - it could just be an entertaining story about some famous person, not necessarily with the task of ridiculing him (cf. Pushkin: “Anecdotes of the past days”). Such “jokes” about Potemkin became classics of that time.

Oh yeah

epic

Play(French pièce) - a dramatic work, usually of a classical style, created to stage some kind of action in the theater. This is a general specific name for works of drama intended to be performed from the stage.

The structure of the play includes the text of the characters (dialogues and monologues) and functional author's remarks (notes indicating the location of the action, interior features, appearance of the characters, their behavior, etc.). As a rule, the play is preceded by a list of actors, sometimes with an indication of their age, profession, titles, family ties, etc.

A separate complete semantic part of the play is called an act or action, which may include smaller components - phenomena, episodes, pictures.

The very concept of a play is purely formal, it does not include any emotional or stylistic meaning. Therefore, in most cases, the play is accompanied by a subtitle that defines its genre - classical, main (comedy, tragedy, drama), or author's (for example: My poor Marat, dialogues in three parts - A. Arbuzov; Let's wait and see, a pleasant play in four acts - B. Show; kind person from Cesuan, parabola play - B. Brecht, etc.). The genre designation of the play not only performs the function of a "hint" to the director and actors in the stage interpretation of the play, but helps to enter the author's style, the figurative structure of the dramaturgy.

Essay(from fr. essai"attempt, trial, essay", from lat. exagium"weighing") - a literary genre of prose writing of a small volume and free composition. The essay expresses the author's individual impressions and thoughts on a particular occasion or subject and does not pretend to be an exhaustive or defining interpretation of the topic (in the parodic Russian tradition, "a look and something"). In terms of volume and function, it borders, on the one hand, on a scientific article and a literary essay (with which essays are often confused), on the other hand, on a philosophical treatise. The essayistic style is characterized by figurativeness, mobility of associations, aphoristic, often antithetical thinking, an attitude towards intimate frankness and colloquial intonation. Some theorists consider it as the fourth, along with the epic, lyrics and drama, kind of fiction.

Based on the experience of his predecessors, Michel Montaigne introduced it as a special genre form in his "Experiments" (1580). His works, published in book form in 1597, 1612 and 1625, Francis Bacon for the first time in English literature gave the name English. essays. The English poet and playwright Ben Jonson first used the word essayist (Eng. essayist) in 1609.

In the 18th-19th centuries, the essay was one of the leading genres in English and French journalism. The development of essays was promoted in England by J. Addison, Richard Steele, Henry Fielding, in France by Diderot and Voltaire, and in Germany by Lessing and Herder. The essay was the main form of philosophical and aesthetic controversy among romantics and romantic philosophers (G. Heine, R. W. Emerson, G. D. Thoreau).

The essay genre is deeply rooted in English literature: T. Carlyle, W. Hazlitt, M. Arnold (19th century); M. Beerbom, G. K. Chesterton (XX century). In the 20th century, essay writing is flourishing: major philosophers, prose writers, and poets turned to the essay genre (R. Rolland, B. Shaw, G. Wells, J. Orwell, T. Mann, A. Maurois, J. P. Sartre).

In Lithuanian criticism, the term essay (lit. esė) was first used by Balis Sruoga in 1923. The book Smiles of God (lit. Dievo šypsenos, 1929) by Juozapas Albinas Gerbachiauskas and Gods and Troublemakers (lit. Dievai ir smūtkeliai", 1935) by Jonas Kossu-Aleksandravičius. Examples of essays include “poetic anti-commentaries” “Lyrical Etudes” (lit. “Lyriniai etiudai”, 1964) and “Antakalnis Baroque” (lit. “Antakalnio barokas”, 1971) by Eduardas Mezhelaitis, “Diary without dates” (lit. “Dienoraštis be datų", 1981) by Justinas Marcinkevičius, "Poetry and the Word" (lit. "Poezija ir žodis", 1977) and Papyri from the Graves of the Dead (lit. "Papirusai iš mirusiųjų kapų", 1991) by Marcelijus Martinaitis. An anti-conformist moral position, conceptuality, accuracy and polemic characterize the essay of Thomas Venclova

For Russian literature, the essay genre was not typical. Samples of the essayistic style are found in A. S. Pushkin (“Journey from Moscow to St. Petersburg”), A. I. Herzen (“From the Other Shore”), F. M. Dostoevsky (“A Writer's Diary”). At the beginning of the 20th century, V. I. Ivanov, D. S. Merezhkovsky, Andrey Bely, Lev Shestov, V. V. Rozanov turned to the essay genre, later - Ilya Erenburg, Yuri Olesha, Viktor Shklovsky, Konstantin Paustovsky. Literary and critical assessments of modern critics, as a rule, are embodied in a variety of the essay genre.

In the art of music, the term piece, as a rule, is used as a specific name for works of instrumental music.

Sketch(English) sketch, literally - a sketch, sketch, sketch), in the XIX - early XX centuries. a short play with two, rarely three characters. The sketch has received the greatest distribution on the stage.

In the UK, sketch comedy television shows are very popular. Similar programs have recently begun to appear on Russian television (“Our Russia”, “Six Frames”, “Give Youth!”, “Dear Program”, “Gentleman Show”, “Gorodok”, etc.) A vivid example sketch show is the television series Monty Python's Flying Circus.

A.P. Chekhov was a famous creator of sketches.

Comedy(Greek κωliμωδία, from Greek κῶμος, kỗmos, "feast in honor of Dionysus" and Greek. ἀοιδή / Greek ᾠδή, aoidḗ / ōidḗ, "song") - genre artwork, characterized by a humorous or satirical approach, as well as a type of drama in which the moment of effective conflict or struggle of antagonistic characters is specifically resolved.

Aristotle defined comedy as "the imitation the worst people, but not in all their depravity, but in a ridiculous way” (“Poetics”, ch. V).

The types of comedy include such genres as farce, vaudeville, sideshow, sketch, operetta, parody. Today, many comedy films are a model of such a primitive, built solely on external comedy, the comedy of situations into which the characters find themselves in the course of the development of the action.

Distinguish situation comedy and comedy of characters.

Sitcom (situation comedy, situation comedy) is a comedy in which events and circumstances are the source of the funny.

Comedy of characters (comedy of manners) is a comedy in which the source of the funny is the inner essence of characters (mores), funny and ugly one-sidedness, an exaggerated trait or passion (vice, flaw). Very often a comedy of manners is a satirical comedy that makes fun of all these human qualities.

Tragedy(Greek τραγωδία, tragōdía, literally - goat song, from tragos - goat and öde - song), a dramatic genre based on the development of events, which, as a rule, is inevitable and necessarily leads to a catastrophic outcome for the characters, often full of pathos; a form of drama that is the opposite of comedy.

The tragedy is marked by severe seriousness, depicts reality most pointedly, as a clot of internal contradictions, reveals the deepest conflicts of reality in an extremely intense and rich form, which acquires the meaning of an artistic symbol; It is no coincidence that most tragedies are written in verse.

Drama(Greek Δρα´μα) - one of the genres of literature (along with lyrics, epic, and lyre-epic). It differs from other types of literature in the way the plot is conveyed - not through narration or monologue, but through the dialogues of the characters. Any literary work built in a dialogical form, including comedy, tragedy, drama (as a genre), farce, vaudeville, etc., refers to drama in one way or another.

Since ancient times, it has existed in folklore or literary form among various peoples; independently of each other, the ancient Greeks, the ancient Indians, the Chinese, the Japanese, and the Indians of America created their own dramatic traditions.

In Greek, the word "drama" reflects a sad, unpleasant event or situation of one particular person.

Fable- a poetic or prose literary work of a moralizing, satirical nature. At the end of the fable there is a brief moralizing conclusion - the so-called morality. The actors are usually animals, plants, things. In the fable, the vices of people are ridiculed.

The fable is one of the oldest literary genres. In ancient Greece, Aesop (VI-V centuries BC) was famous for writing fables in prose. In Rome - Phaedrus (I century AD). In India, the Panchatantra collection of fables dates back to the 3rd century. The most prominent fabulist of modern times was the French poet J. Lafontaine (XVII century).

In Russia, the development of the fable genre dates back to the middle of the 18th - early 19th centuries and is associated with the names of A.P. Sumarokov, I.I. Khemnitser, A.E. Izmailov, I.I. century by Simeon of Polotsk and in the 1st half. XVIII century by A. D. Kantemir, V. K. Trediakovsky. In Russian poetry, a fable free verse is developed, conveying the intonations of a laid-back and crafty tale.

The fables of I. A. Krylov, with their realistic liveliness, sensible humor and excellent language, marked the heyday of this genre in Russia. In Soviet times, the fables of Demyan Bedny, S. Mikhalkov and others gained popularity.

There are two theories about the origin of the fable. The first is represented by the German school of Otto Crusius, A. Hausrath, and others, the second by the American scientist B. E. Perry. According to the first concept, the story is primary in the fable, and morality is secondary; the fable comes from the animal tale, and the animal tale comes from the myth. According to the second concept, morality is primary in a fable; the fable is close to comparisons, proverbs and sayings; like them, the fable emerges as an aid to argumentation. The first point of view goes back to the romantic theory of Jacob Grimm, the second one revives Lessing's rationalistic concept.

Philologists of the 19th century were long occupied with the controversy about the priority of the Greek or Indian fable. Now it can be considered almost certain that the common source of the material of the Greek and Indian fables was the Sumero-Babylonian fable.

epics- Russian folk epic songs about the exploits of heroes. The basis of the epic plot is some heroic event, or a remarkable episode of Russian history (hence the popular name of the epic - “ antiquity”, “old lady”, implying that the action in question took place in the past).

Epics are usually written in tonic verse with two to four stresses.

The term "epics" was first introduced by Ivan Sakharov in the collection "Songs of the Russian People" in 1839, he proposed it based on the expression "according to epics" in "The Tale of Igor's Campaign", which meant "according to the facts".

Ballad

Myth(ancient Greek μῦθος) in literature - a legend that conveys people's ideas about the world, man's place in it, about the origin of all things, about gods and heroes; certain idea of ​​the world.

The specificity of myths appears most clearly in primitive culture, where myths are the equivalent of science, an integral system in terms of which the whole world is perceived and described. Later, when such forms of social consciousness as art, literature, science, religion, political ideology, etc., are singled out from mythology, they retain a number of mythological models that are uniquely rethought when included in new structures; myth is experiencing its second life. Of particular interest is their transformation in literary work.

Since mythology masters reality in the forms of figurative narration, it is close in its essence to fiction; historically, it anticipated many possibilities of literature and had a comprehensive influence on its early development. Naturally, literature does not part with mythological foundations even later, which applies not only to works with mythological foundations of the plot, but also to realistic and naturalistic everyday writing of the 19th and 20th centuries (it is enough to name Oliver Twist by C. Dickens, Nana by E. Zola, "The Magic Mountain" by T. Mann).

Novella(Italian novella - news) - a narrative prose genre, which is characterized by brevity, a sharp plot, a neutral style of presentation, a lack of psychologism, and an unexpected denouement. Sometimes it is used as a synonym for a story, sometimes it is called a kind of story.

Tale- a prose genre of unstable volume (mainly an average between a novel and a short story), gravitating towards a chronicle plot that reproduces the natural course of life. The plot, devoid of intrigue, is centered around the protagonist, whose personality and fate are revealed within a few events.

The story is an epic prose genre. The plot of the story tends to be more epic and chronicle plot and composition. Possible verse form. The story depicts a series of events. It is amorphous, events often simply join each other, and extra-fabule elements play a large independent role. It does not have a complex, tense and complete plot knot.

Story- a small form of epic prose, correlated with the story as a more detailed form of narration. It goes back to folklore genres (fairy tale, parable); how the genre became isolated in written literature; often indistinguishable from the novel, and from the 18th century. - and an essay. Sometimes the short story and the essay are considered as polar varieties of the story.

A story is a work of small volume, containing a small number of characters, and also, most often, having one storyline.

Story: 1) a kind of narrative, mostly prose folklore ( fabulous prose), which includes works of different genres, in the content of which, from the point of view of folklore carriers, there is no strict reliability. Fairy-tale folklore is opposed to "rigorous" folklore narrative ( fairy tale prose) (see myth, epic, historical song, spiritual poems, legend, demonological stories, tale, blasphemer, tradition, bylichka).

2) genre of literary narration. A literary fairy tale either imitates a folklore one ( a literary tale written in folk poetic style), or creates a didactic work (see didactic literature) based on non-folklore stories. The folk tale historically precedes the literary one.

Word " story” is attested in written sources no earlier than the 16th century. From the word " say". It mattered: a list, a list, an exact description. It acquires modern significance from the 17th-19th centuries. Previously, the word fable was used, until the 11th century - blasphemer.

The word "fairy tale" suggests that they learn about it, "what it is" and find out "what" it, a fairy tale, is needed for. A fairy tale with a purpose is needed for the subconscious or conscious teaching of a child in the family the rules and purpose of life, the need to protect their "area" and a worthy attitude towards other communities. It is noteworthy that both the saga and the fairy tale carry a colossal informational component, passed down from generation to generation, faith in which is based on respect for one's ancestors.

There are different types of fairy tales.

fantasy(from English. fantasy- "fantasy") - a type of fantastic literature based on the use of mythological and fairy tale motifs. AT modern form formed at the beginning of the 20th century.

Fantasy works most often resemble a historical adventure novel, the action of which takes place in a fictional world close to the real Middle Ages, whose characters encounter supernatural phenomena and creatures. Often fantasy is built on the basis of archetypal plots.

Unlike science fiction, fantasy does not seek to explain the world in which the work takes place in terms of science. This world itself exists in the form of some kind of assumption (most often its location relative to our reality is not specified at all: whether it is a parallel world, or another planet), and its physical laws may differ from the realities of our world. In such a world, the existence of gods, witchcraft, mythical creatures (dragons, gnomes, trolls), ghosts and any other fantastic creatures can be real. At the same time, the fundamental difference between the "miracles" of fantasy and their fairy-tale counterparts is that they are the norm of the described world and act systematically, like the laws of nature.

Nowadays, fantasy is also a genre in cinema, painting, computer and board games. Such genre versatility is especially characteristic of Chinese fantasy with elements of martial arts.

epic(from epic and Greek poieo - I create)

1. An extensive narrative in verse or prose about outstanding national historical events ("Iliad", "Mahabharata"). The roots of the epic in mythology and folklore. In the 19th century an epic novel appears (“War and Peace” by L.N. Tolstoy)
2. A complex, long history of something, including a number of major events.

Oh yeah- poetic, as well as musical and poetic work, distinguished by solemnity and sublimity.

Originally in ancient Greece, any form of lyric poetry intended to accompany music was called an ode, including choral singing. Since the time of Pindar, an ode has been a choral epinic song in honor of the winner in the sports competitions of the sacred games with a three-part composition and underlined solemnity and grandiloquence.

In Roman literature, the most famous are the odes of Horace, who used the dimensions of the Aeolian lyric poetry, primarily the Alcaean stanza, adapting them to the Latin language, the collection of these works in Latin is called Carmina - songs, they began to be called odes later.

Since the Renaissance and in the Baroque era (XVI-XVII centuries), odes began to be called lyric works in a pathetically high style, focusing on antique samples, in classicism the ode became the canonical genre of high lyrics.

Elegy(Greek ελεγεια) - a genre of lyric poetry; in early ancient poetry, a poem written in elegiac distich, regardless of content; later (Callimach, Ovid) - a poem of sad content. In the new European poetry, the elegy retains stable features: intimacy, motives of disappointment, unhappy love, loneliness, the frailty of earthly existence, determines the rhetoric in the depiction of emotions; the classical genre of sentimentalism and romanticism (“Recognition” by E. Baratynsky).

A poem with the character of thoughtful sadness. In this sense, it can be said that most of Russian poetry is tuned to an elegiac mood, at least up to the poetry of modern times. This, of course, does not deny that in Russian poetry there are excellent poems of a different, non-elegiac mood. Initially, in ancient Greek poetry, e. meant a poem written in a stanza of a certain size, namely, a couplet - a hexameter-pentameter. Having the general character of lyrical reflection, E. among the ancient Greeks was very diverse in content, for example, sad and accusatory in Archilochus and Simonides, philosophical in Solon or Theognis, militant in Callinus and Tyrtheus, political in Mimnerm. One of the best Greek authors E. - Callimachus. Among the Romans, E. became more definite in character, but also freer in form. The significance of amorous E. has greatly increased. The famous Roman authors of E. - Propertius, Tibull, Ovid, Catullus (they were translated by Fet, Batyushkov, and others). Subsequently, there was, perhaps, only one period in the development of European literature, when the word E. began to mean poems with a more or less stable form. And it began under the influence of the famous elegy of the English poet Thomas Gray, written in 1750 and caused numerous imitations and translations in almost all European languages. The revolution produced by this E. is defined as the onset in literature of the period of sentimentalism, which replaced false classicism. In essence, this was the inclination of poetry from rational mastery in once established forms to the true sources of inner artistic experiences. In Russian poetry, Zhukovsky's translation of Gray's elegy ("Rural Cemetery"; 1802) definitely marked the beginning of a new era that finally went beyond rhetoric and turned to sincerity, intimacy and depth. This inner change was also reflected in the new methods of versification introduced by Zhukovsky, who is thus the founder of the new Russian sentimental poetry and one of its great representatives. In the general spirit and form of Gray's elegy, i.e. in the form of large poems filled with mournful reflection, such poems by Zhukovsky were written, which he himself called elegies, such as “Evening”, “Slavyanka”, “On the death of Kor. Wirtembergskaya". His “Theon and Aeschylus” are also considered elegies (more precisely, this is an elegy-ballad). Zhukovsky called his poem "The Sea" an elegy. In the first half of the XIX century. it was common to give their poems the names of elegies, especially often their works were called elegies by Batyushkov, Boratynsky, Yazykov, etc. ; subsequently, however, it fell out of fashion. Nevertheless, many poems of Russian poets are imbued with an elegiac tone. And in world poetry there is hardly an author who does not have elegiac poems. Goethe's Roman Elegies are famous in German poetry. Elegies are Schiller's poems: "Ideals" (translated by Zhukovsky's "Dreams"), "Resignation", "Walk". Much belongs to elegies in Mathisson (Batyushkov translated it "On the ruins of castles in Sweden"), Heine, Lenau, Herweg, Platen, Freiligrath, Schlegel and many others. others. The French wrote elegies: Milvois, Debord-Valmor, Kaz. Delavigne, A. Chenier (M. Chenier, the brother of the previous one, translated Gray's elegy), Lamartine, A. Musset, Hugo, and others. In English poetry, apart from Gray, there are Spencer, Jung, Sydney, later Shelley and Byron. In Italy, the main representatives of elegiac poetry are Alamanni, Castaldi, Filican, Guarini, Pindemonte. In Spain: Boscan Almogaver, Gars de les Vega. In Portugal - Camões, Ferreira, Rodrigue Lobo, de Miranda.

Before Zhukovsky, attempts to write elegies in Russia were made by such authors as Pavel Fonvizin, the author of Darling Bogdanovich, Ablesimov, Naryshkin, Nartov and others.

Epigram(Greek επίγραμμα "inscription") - a small satirical poem ridiculing a person or social phenomenon.

Ballad- a lyrical epic work, that is, a story presented in poetic form, of a historical, mythical or heroic nature. The plot of the ballad is usually borrowed from folklore. Ballads are often set to music.

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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.

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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 characteristic features 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 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 sharp plot 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.

Depending on the tasks, which the journalist decides, the researchers single out "problematic" and "address" feuilletons.

In the center of the first typical problem or unwanted event. For example, bureaucracy, general stupidity, bribery, rudeness, charlatanism. Along with the problem, they can depict a specific place of action, a specific person. However, the author replaces the true names and titles for various, including ethical, reasons.

In the center of the "addressed" feuilleton is a negative image, a specific hero with the exact name, address, reliable facts and deeds. He is, as they say, recognizable, like the character of a portrait sketch. The difference is that in the feuilleton there is never a positive hero.

Pamphlet as a kind of feuilleton

A pamphlet (from the Greek pamm - “everything”, fhlego - “burn”, “ignite”) is a type of feuilleton, the task of which is to destroy a hostile ideology, the political system as a whole or its individual aspects through criticism. This or that social group, a party (as a rule, an opposition party), the government becomes the object of merciless criticism. Often exposure occurs through criticism of their individual representatives.

The history of the development of the pamphlet

One of the prerequisites for the appearance of the pamphlet is a sarcastic ancient fable (a special form of expressing social protest). The word "pamphlet" itself appeared in the 14th century and originally meant an unbound pamphlet without a cover.

The classic pamphlet, as a genre, appeared in the era of the Reformation. It was used by representatives of the bourgeoisie to fight feudalism (for example, the pamphlet of Erasmus of Rotterdam "Praise of stupidity" - the object of criticism are princes, priests and scholastics). AT tsarist Russia the pamphlet was not widely developed, as preliminary censorship worked effectively. But the pamphlet was in demand during the period of Soviet power as:

1) effective remedy the destruction of the political enemy - the tsarist regime (V.I. Lenin's political pamphlet "The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky", M. Gorky's pamphlets "The Russian Tsar", "The City of the Yellow Devil");

2) as a means of propaganda and information warfare during the Great Patriotic War;

3) as a means of combating the hostile ideology of imperialism (the era of the Cold War).

After 1991, the main object of criticism of the pamphlet is the socio-political events taking place in Russia. Pamphlets are an instrument of the struggle for political power, in which communists (the newspapers Zavtra, Sovetskaya Rossiya) and democrats (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Novaya Gazeta) participate.

Since the beginning of the 21st century, the Western countries (the United States and other NATO members) have been the object of criticism of the pamphlet. Today, in the field of pamphleteering, the visualization technique (the creation of satirical posters) is widely used, for example, "New Political Pamphlets" (www.reddem.ru).

Characteristics of the pamphlet

The most significant features characterizing the pamphlet:

Identification of a logical connection between facts and their assessment;

Accusatory criticism, which is purely personal, personified in nature (sarcastic denunciation, containing in its basis invective - rude swear words);

Fundamental polemic (the author either refutes a certain system of opinions, criticizes it based on the statements of the opponent, or expresses his point of view, confirming its correctness in the process of dialogue with the interlocutor and / or reader);

The presence in the structure of the work of direct political argumentation and propaganda;

Synthesis of satirical, artistic and journalistic figurative means (allegory, buffoonery, hyperbole, grotesque, allegory, parody, sarcasm and other means of creating a socio-comic).

Feuilleton	Pamphlet
Target
Formation of a negative attitude towards various social vices	Exposure, formation of hatred, resentment
The main way to influence the mind of the reader
Reliance on facts (logical impact)	Exploitation of emotions (emotional contagion)
The main means of criticism
Irony	Sarcasm, grotesque
Characteristic of the description object
Specific fact, event, phenomenon (criticism of morals)	Large-scale event, chain of events, belief system, ideology (criticism of social phenomena)
Way of expressing the author's point of view
Through the interpretation of facts	Through author's emotions and assessments

Genre features.

Unlike a sketch, an essay includes conflicting, dynamic, vividly inscribed episodes of people's lives, reproduces situations saturated with replicas, expressed dialogues, philosophical reasoning, conspicuous details, and portraits. A characteristic feature of the essay is the figurative reflection of fragments of the life of the characters. Publicistic tone is observed in the presentation of phenomena and situations. Generalizing, collective images are not uncommon in the essay. The specific features of essay works include not only a documentary reflection of reality, but also its artistic modeling, which allows for creative conjecture. The composition is determined not by the development of the event, but by the logic of reasoning.

It is generally accepted that The essay combines the features of two styles: artistic and journalistic. This means that both journalistic and artistic elements should be indicated as genre-forming features of the essay.

The stylistic features of the essay include:

1. Author's "I". The journalistic element is created by the author's direct thoughts, the author's direct intervention in the narrative, and often the author acts as a character, one way or another connected with the depicted hero.

2. Optimization- this is a set of stylistic devices by which the author comes into contact with his reader, making him a participant in his message, his feelings, bringing him as close as possible to what he wants to have him a participant in, straining his interest and in his own way gracefully playing with this interest.

3. Sketchiness first of all, it is expressed in a certain "liberty" of presentation, a certain, as it were, deliberate roughness of form. In the very nature of the essay there is a tendency to single out the most typical, main, bright, the desire to outline the main contours of the event, to sketch a portrait of the hero.

4. Documentation. The publicist deals with different people, problems that can be expressed in specific data-calculations, specific terms, scientific formulas, specific names of names, localities, etc. As a rule, in 99 cases out of 100 the essay in the newspaper is documentary. When creating an essay, the author relies on facts to fully reveal the topic.

5. Topicality. The essay appears in the newspaper almost daily. Hence its essential sign - topicality, "momentary" response to an important event, problem.

6. Hero typing first of all, it manifests itself in the selection of the most essential that exists in life, reality. The essay is always based on concrete life facts, but the fact in its singularity and uniqueness interests the essayist as a manifestation of the general, typical. A real life fact can be replenished with additional information, details in the depiction of the essayist - in this way, elements of artistic generalization are manifested.

Choosing to depict a person with all manifestations of human activity, a problem, a journey, a conflict, the author takes into account two plans for a newspaper essay: 1) typical and 2) unique, while narrating, preserving the individuality of the person, her activities, her social relationships, he seeks to reveal the typical, socially conditioned.

7. Imagery. To show a hero, an event is possible only if the means of artistic representation are used, creating an image. The author of the essay creates a generalized collective image, reflecting typical features in it. The facts in the essay are comprehended through images.

8. Associativity. Describing a phenomenon, the essayist often compares it with another that happened at a completely different time, in a different mass. Communication of events - in author's associations.

9. Share of conjecture. The factual reliability, targeting of the essay is the basis of the fact, therefore the right of the essayist to conjecture is limited by the factual basis of the essay. Still, there is a certain amount of conjecture in the essay. The author can shift events in time, transfer them from one place to another. The author "guesses" about the thoughts and experiences of his characters. The author includes inserted short stories in the text of the essay - stories with fictional characters. The author introduces a fictional character into the environment of real people, most often his "lyrical hero". The author can openly declare various versions of what is happening in the text.

Hello, dear readers of the blog site. The question of a genre as a variety of one or another is rather complicated. This term is found in music, painting, architecture, theater, cinema, and literature.

Determining the genre of a work is a task that not every student can handle. Why is genre division necessary? Where are the boundaries that separate the novel from the poem, and the story from the short story? Let's try to figure it out together.

Genre in literature - what is it

The word "genre" comes from the Latin genus ( kind, genus). Literary reference books report that:

a genre is a historically developed variety, united by a set of formal and meaningful features.

It can be seen from the definition that in the process of genre evolution it is important to highlight three points:

1. each genre of literature is formed over a long period of time (each of them has its own history);
2. the main reason for its appearance is the need to express new ideas in an original way (substantive criterion);
3. distinguish one type of work from another is helped by external signs: volume, plot, structure, (formal criterion).

All genres of literature can be represented like this:

These are three typology options that help to attribute the work to a particular genre.

The history of the emergence of genres of literature in Russia

The literature of European countries was formed according to the principle of moving from the general to the particular, from the anonymous to the author's. Artistic creativity both abroad and in Russia was fed by two sources:

1. spiritual culture, the center of which was monasteries;
2. folk speech.

If you look closely at the history of literature in Ancient Russia, you can notice how new ones gradually come to pateriks, the lives of saints and patristic writings.

At the turn of the XIV-XV centuries, such genres of ancient Russian literature, as a word, walking (the ancestor of the travel novel), (everyday "splinter" of a moral parable), heroic poem, spiritual verse. On the material of oral traditions, which stood out separately during the period of the collapse of the ancient myth into a fairy tale epic and a realistic military story.

Interacting with foreign written traditions, Russian literature is enriched new genre forms: a novel, a secular philosophical story, an author's fairy tale, a -, a lyric poem, a ballad.

The realistic canon brings to life a problematic novel, story, short story. At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, genres with blurred boundaries again become popular: essay (), essay, short poem, symbolist. Old forms are filled with original meaning, they pass into each other, destroy the set standards.

Dramatic art has a powerful influence on the formation of the genre system. Set to theatricality changes the appearance of such genres familiar to the average reader as a poem, a story, a short story and even a small lyric poem (in the era of the “sixties” poets).

remains open in modern literature. There is a prospect of interaction not only within individual genres, but also within various types of art. Every year a new genre appears in literature.

Literature on genera and species

The most popular classification breaks down works “by gender” (all of its components are shown in the third column in the figure at the beginning of this publication).

To understand this genre classification, it is necessary to remember that literature, like music, is worth on the "three whales". These whales, called genera, are in turn divided into species. For clarity, we present this structure in the form of a diagram:

1. The most ancient "whale" is considered. Its progenitor, which broke up into legend and legend.
2. appeared when humanity stepped over the stage of collective thinking and turned to the individual experiences of each member of the community. The nature of the lyrics is the personal experience of the author.
3. older than epic and lyric. Its appearance is associated with the era of antiquity and the emergence of religious cults - mysteries. Drama has become the art of the streets, a means of releasing collective energy and influencing masses of people.

Epic genres and examples of such works

The largest the epic forms known to modern times are the epic and the epic novel. The ancestors of the epic can be considered a saga, common in the past among the peoples of Scandinavia, and a legend (for example, the Indian "Tale of Gilgamesh").

epic is a multi-volume narrative about the fate of several generations of heroes in historically established circumstances and enshrined in cultural tradition.

A rich socio-historical background is required, against which the events of the characters' private lives unfold. For the epic, such features as the multicomponent plot, the connection between generations, the presence of heroes and anti-heroes are important.

Since it depicts large-scale events over the centuries, it rarely has a thorough psychological portrayal, but the epics created in the last few centuries combine these installations with the achievements of modern art. The Forsyte Saga by J. Galsworthy not only describes the history of several generations of the Forsyte family, but also gives subtle vivid images of individual characters.

Unlike the epic epic novel covers a shorter period of time (no more than a hundred years) and tells about 2-3 generations of heroes.

In Russia, this genre is represented by the novels "War and Peace" by L.N. Tolstoy, "Quiet Flows the Don" by M.A. Sholokhov, "Walking through the torments" by A.N. Tolstoy.

to medium forms epic include novel and short story.

The term " novel" comes from the word "Roman" (Roman) and is reminiscent of the antique that gave birth to this genre.

The Satyricon by Petronius is considered an example of an ancient novel. In medieval Europe, the picaresque novel becomes widespread. gives the world a novel-journey. Realists develop the genre and fill it with classical content.

At the turn of the XIX-XX centuries, the following types of novels:

1. philosophical;
2. psychological;
3. social;
4. intellectual;
5. historical;
6. love;
7. detective;
8. adventure novel.

AT school curriculum many novels. Giving examples, name the books of I.A. Goncharov "Ordinary History", "Oblomov", "Cliff", works by I.S. Turgenev "Fathers and Sons", "Nest of Nobles", "On the Eve", "Smoke", "Nov". The genre of "Crime and Punishment", "The Idiot", "The Brothers Karamazov" by F. M. Dostoevsky is also a novel.

Tale does not affect the fate of generations, but has several storylines that develop against the backdrop of one historical event.

"The Captain's Daughter" A. S. Pushkin and "Overcoat" N.V. Gogol. V.G. Belinsky spoke about the primacy of narrative literature in the culture of the 19th century.

Small epic forms(story, essay, short story, essay) have one storyline, a limited number of characters and are distinguished by a compressed volume.

For example, stories by A. Gaidar or Yu. Kazakov, short stories by E. Poe, essays by V.G. Korolenko or an essay by V. Wolf. Let's make a reservation, sometimes it "works" as a genre of scientific style or journalism, but it has artistic imagery.

Lyric genres

Large lyric forms represented by a poem and a wreath of sonnets. The first is more plot-driven, which makes it related to the epic. The second is static. In a wreath of sonnets, consisting of 15 14-verses, a theme is described and the author's impressions of it.

In Russia, poems have a socio-historical character. "The Bronze Horseman" and "Poltava" A.S. Pushkin, "Mtsyri" M.Yu. Lermontov, “Who is it good to live in Russia” N.A. Nekrasov, "Requiem" by A.A. Akhmatova - all these poems lyrically describe Russian life and national characters.

Small forms of lyrics numerous. This is a poem, canzone, sonnet, epitaph, fable, madrigal, rondo, triolet. Some forms originated in medieval Europe (lyric poetry in Russia especially fell in love with the sonnet genre), some (for example, the ballad) became the legacy of German romantics.

Traditionally small Poetry works are usually divided into 3 types:

1. philosophical lyrics;
2. love lyrics;
3. landscape lyrics.

Recently, urban lyrics have also emerged as a separate subspecies.

Dramatic genres

Drama gives us three classic genres:

1. comedy;
2. tragedy;
3. actual drama.

All three varieties of performing arts originated in ancient Greece.

Comedy was originally associated with religious cults of purification, mysteries, during which a carnival action unfolded on the streets. The sacrificial goat "comos", later called the "scapegoat", walked along the streets along with the artists, symbolized all human vices. According to the canon, they should be ridiculed by comedy.

Comedy is the genre of "Woe from Wit" by A.S. Griboedov and "Undergrowth" D.I. Fonvizin.

There are 2 types of comedy: comedy provisions and comedy characters. The first played with circumstances, passed off one hero for another, had an unexpected denouement. The second pushed the actors in the face of an idea or task, giving rise to a theatrical conflict on which the intrigue rested.

If during a comedy the playwright expected the healing laughter of the crowd, then tragedy set out to evoke tears. It was bound to end in the death of the hero. Empathizing with the characters, the viewer or the cleansing.

Romeo and Juliet, as well as W. Shakespeare's Hamlet, were written in the tragedy genre.

Actually drama- this is the latest invention of dramaturgy, removing therapeutic tasks and making an installation for subtle psychologism, objectivity, play.

Definition of the genre of a literary work

How was the poem "Eugene Onegin" called a novel? Why did Gogol define the novel "Dead Souls" as a poem? And why is Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard a comedy? Genre designations are hints that there are right directions in the art world, but, fortunately, there are no forever beaten paths.

A little higher is a video that helps determine the genre of a literary work.

Good luck to you! See you soon on the blog pages site

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