Over the millennia of cultural development, humanity has created countless literary works, among which we can distinguish some basic types that are similar in the way and form of reflecting human ideas about the world around us. These are three types (or types) of literature: epic, drama, lyric.

What is different about each type of literature?

Epic as a type of literature

Epic(epos - Greek, narrative, story) is a depiction of events, phenomena, processes external to the author. Epic works reflect the objective course of life, human existence as a whole. Using various artistic means, the authors of epic works express their understanding of historical, socio-political, moral, psychological and many other problems that live with human society in general and each of its representatives in particular. Epic works have significant visual potential, thereby helping the reader to understand the world, to comprehend the deep problems of human existence.

Drama as a genre of literature

Drama(drama - Greek, action, performance) is a type of literature, main feature which is the scenic quality of the works. Plays, i.e. dramatic works are created specifically for the theater, for production on stage, which, of course, does not exclude their existence in the form of independent literary texts intended for reading. Like the epic, drama reproduces the relationships between people, their actions, and the conflicts that arise between them. But unlike epic, which is narrative in nature, drama has a dialogical form.

Related to this features of dramatic works :

2) the text of the play consists of conversations between the characters: their monologues (the speech of one character), dialogues (a conversation between two characters), polylogues (simultaneous exchange of remarks by several participants in the action). That is why speech characterization turns out to be one of the most important means of creating a memorable character of a hero;

3) the action of the play, as a rule, develops quite dynamically, intensively, as a rule, it is allocated 2-3 hours of stage time.

Lyrics as a type of literature

Lyrics(lyra - Greek, musical instrument, to the accompaniment of which poetic works and songs were performed) is distinguished by a special type of construction of an artistic image - this is an image-experience in which the individual emotional and spiritual experience of the author is embodied. Lyrics can be called the most mysterious type of literature, because it is addressed to the inner world of a person, his subjective feelings, ideas, and ideas. In other words, a lyrical work serves primarily the individual self-expression of the author. The question arises: why do readers, i.e. other people turn to such works? The whole point is that the lyricist, speaking on his own behalf and about himself, amazingly embodies universal human emotions, ideas, hopes, and the more significant the author’s personality, the more important his individual experience is for the reader.

Each type of literature also has its own system of genres.

Genre(genre - French genus, type) is a historically established type of literary work that has similar typological features. Genre names help the reader navigate the vast sea of ​​literature: some people love detective stories, others prefer fantasy, and still others are a fan of memoirs.

How to determine What genre does a particular work belong to? Most often, the authors themselves help us in this, calling their creation a novel, story, poem, etc. However, some author’s definitions seem unexpected to us: let us remember that A.P. Chekhov emphasized that “The Cherry Orchard” is a comedy, and not a drama at all, but A.I. Solzhenitsyn considered One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich to be a story, not a novella. Some literary scholars call Russian literature a collection of genre paradoxes: the novel in verse “Eugene Onegin”, the prose poem “Dead Souls”, the satirical chronicle “The History of a City”. There was a lot of controversy regarding “War and Peace” by L.N. Tolstoy. The writer himself said only about what his book is not: “What is War and Peace? This is not a novel, still less a poem, still less a historical chronicle. “War and Peace” is what the author wanted and could express in the form in which it was expressed.” And only in the 20th century did literary scholars agree to call the brilliant creation of L.N. Tolstoy's epic novel.

Each literary genre has a number of stable characteristics, knowledge of which allows us to classify a specific work into one group or another. Genres develop, change, die out and are born, for example, literally before our eyes, a new genre of blog (web loq) - a personal online diary - has emerged.

However, for several centuries there have been stable (also called canonical) genres.

Literature of literary works - see table 1).

Table 1.

Genres of literary works

Epic genres of literature

Epic genres are primarily distinguished by their volume; on this basis they are divided into small ones ( essay, story, short story, fairy tale, parable ), average ( story ), large ( novel, epic novel ).

Feature article- a small sketch from life, the genre is both descriptive and narrative. Many essays are created on documentary, life basis, they are often combined into cycles: a classic example is “A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy” (1768) English writer Laurence Stern, in Russian literature - this is “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow” (1790) by A. Radishchev, “Frigate Pallada” (1858) by I. Goncharov” “Italy” (1922) by B. Zaitsev and others.

Story- small narrative genre, which usually depicts one episode, incident, human character, or an important incident in the hero’s life that influenced his future fate (“After the Ball” by L. Tolstoy). Stories are created both on a documentary, often autobiographical basis (“Matryonin’s Dvor” by A. Solzhenitsyn) and through pure fiction (“The Gentleman from San Francisco” by I. Bunin).

The intonation and content of the stories can be very different - from comic, curious (early stories of A.P. Chekhov) to deeply tragic (Kolyma Stories by V. Shalamov). Stories, like essays, are often combined into cycles (“Notes of a Hunter” by I. Turgenev).

Novella(novella Italian news) is in many ways akin to a short story and is considered its variety, but is distinguished by the special dynamism of the narrative, sharp and often unexpected turns in the development of events. Often the narrative in a short story begins with the ending and is built according to the law of inversion, i.e. reverse order, when the denouement precedes the main events (“Terrible Revenge” by N. Gogol). This feature of the construction of the novella will later be borrowed by the detective genre.

The word “novella” has another meaning that future lawyers need to know. In Ancient Rome, the phrase “novellae leges” (new laws) referred to laws introduced after the official codification of law (after the Code of Theodosius II in 438). The novellas of Justinian and his successors, published after the second edition of the Justinian Code, later formed part of the code of Roman laws (Corpus iuris civillis). IN modern era a novel is a law submitted to parliament (in other words, a draft law).

Fairy tale- the most ancient of the small epic genres, one of the main ones in the oral creativity of any people. This is a small work of a magical, adventurous or everyday nature, where fiction is clearly emphasized. Another important feature of a folk tale is its edifying nature: “A fairy tale is a lie, but there is a hint in it, a lesson for good fellows.” Folk tales are usually divided into fairy tales (“The Tale of the Frog Princess”), everyday ones (“Porridge from an Ax”) and tales about animals (“Zayushkina’s Hut”).

With the development of written literature, literary fairy tales arise that use traditional motifs and symbolic possibilities of folk tales. The Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) is rightfully considered a classic of the literary fairy tale genre; his wonderful “The Little Mermaid”, “The Princess and the Pea”, “The Snow Queen”, “The Steadfast Tin Soldier”, “The Shadow”, “Thumbelina” are loved by many generations of readers, both very young and quite mature. And this is far from accidental, because Andersen’s fairy tales are not only extraordinary and sometimes strange adventures of heroes, they contain a deep philosophical and moral meaning contained in beautiful symbolic images.

Of the European literary fairy tales of the 20th century, “ A little prince"(1942) by the French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. And the famous “Chronicles of Narnia” (1950 - 1956) by the English writer Cl. Lewis and “The Lord of the Rings” (1954-1955), also by the Englishman J.R. Tolkien, are written in the fantasy genre, which can be called a modern transformation of an ancient folk tale.

In Russian literature, of course, the fairy tales of A.S. remain unsurpassed. Pushkin: “Oh dead princess and seven heroes”, “About the fisherman and the fish”, “About Tsar Saltan...”, “About the golden cockerel”, “About the priest and his worker Balda”. An excellent storyteller was P. Ershov, the author of “The Little Humpbacked Horse.” E. Schwartz in the 20th century creates the form of fairy tale plays, one of them “The Bear” (another name is “An Ordinary Miracle”) is well known to many thanks to the wonderful film directed by M. Zakharov.

Parable- also a very ancient folklore genre, but, unlike fairy tales, parables contained written monuments: Talmud, Bible, Koran, monument of Syriac literature “Teachings of Akahara”. A parable is a work of instructive, symbolic nature, distinguished by sublimity and seriousness of content. Ancient parables, as a rule, are small in volume; they do not contain a detailed account of events or psychological characteristics of the character of the hero.

The purpose of the parable is edification or, as they once said, teaching wisdom. In European culture, the most famous parables are from the Gospels: about the prodigal son, about the rich man and Lazarus, about the unrighteous judge, about the crazy rich man and others. Christ often spoke to his disciples allegorically, and if they did not understand the meaning of the parable, he explained it.

Many writers turned to the genre of parables, not always, of course, investing in it a high religious meaning, but rather trying to express in an allegorical form some kind of moralistic edification, such as, for example, L. Tolstoy in his late work. Carry it. V. Rasputin - Farewell to Matera" can also be called a detailed parable, in which the writer speaks with anxiety and sorrow about the destruction of the "ecology of conscience" of man. Many critics also consider the story “The Old Man and the Sea” by E. Hemingway to be part of the tradition of literary parables. The famous contemporary Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho also uses the parable form in his novels and stories (the novel “The Alchemist”).

Tale- a medium literary genre, widely represented in world literature. The story depicts several important episodes from the hero's life, usually one storyline and a small number of characters. The stories are characterized by great psychological intensity; the author focuses on the experiences and changes in mood of the characters. Often main theme The love of the protagonist becomes the story, for example, “White Nights” by F. Dostoevsky, “Asya” by I. Turgenev, “Mitya’s Love” by I. Bunin. Stories can also be combined into cycles, especially those written on autobiographical material: “Childhood”, “Adolescence”, “Youth” by L. Tolstoy, “Childhood”, “In People”, “My Universities” by A. Gorky. The intonations and themes of the stories are extremely diverse: tragic, addressing acute social and moral issues (“Everything Flows” by V. Grossman, “House on the Embankment” by Yu. Trifonov), romantic, heroic (“Taras Bulba” by N. Gogol), philosophical , parables (“The Pit” by A. Platonov), mischievous, comic (“Three in a Boat, Not Counting the Dog” by the English writer Jerome K. Jerome).

Novel(gotap French originally, in the late Middle Ages, any work written in a Romance language, as opposed to those written in Latin) is a major epic work in which the narrative is focused on the fate of an individual. The novel is the most complex epic genre, which is distinguished by an incredible number of themes and plots: love, historical, detective, psychological, fantasy, historical, autobiographical, social, philosophical, satirical, etc. All these forms and types of the novel are united by its central idea - the idea of ​​personality, human individuality.

The novel is called the epic of private life because it depicts the diverse connections between the world and man, society and the individual. The reality surrounding a person is presented in the novel in different contexts: historical, political, social, cultural, national, etc. The author of the novel is interested in how the environment influences a person’s character, how he is formed, how his life develops, whether he managed to find his purpose and realize himself.

Many people attribute the origin of the genre to antiquity, such as Long's Daphnis and Chloe, Apuleius's The Golden Ass, and the knightly romance Tristan and Isolde.

In the works of classics of world literature, the novel is represented by numerous masterpieces:

Table 2. Examples of classic novels by foreign and Russian writers (XIX, XX centuries)

Famous Russian novels writers of the 19th century V .:

In the 20th century, Russian writers develop and enhance the traditions of their great predecessors and create no less wonderful novels:

Of course, none of such listings can claim completeness and exhaustive objectivity, especially when it comes to modern prose. IN in this case the most famous works that glorified both the country's literature and the name of the writer are named.

Epic novel. In ancient times, there were forms of heroic epic: folklore sagas, runes, epics, songs. These are the Indian “Ramayana” and “Mahabharata”, the Anglo-Saxon “Beowulf”, the French “Song of Roland”, the German “Song of the Nibelungs”, etc. In these works, the hero’s exploits were exalted in an idealized, often hyperbolic form. Later epic poems “Iliad” and “Odyssey” by Homer, “Shah-name” by Ferdowsi, while retaining their mythological character early epic, however, had a pronounced connection with real story, and the theme of weaving human destiny and the life of the people becomes one of the main things in them. The experience of the ancients will be in demand in the 19th-20th centuries, when writers will try to comprehend the dramatic relationship between the era and the individual personality, and talk about the tests to which morality, and sometimes the human psyche, is subjected at the time of the greatest historical upheavals. Let us remember the lines of F. Tyutchev: “Blessed is he who visited this world in its fatal moments.” The poet's romantic formula in reality meant the destruction of all familiar forms of life, tragic losses and unfulfilled dreams.

The complex form of the epic novel allows writers to artistically explore these problems in all their completeness and inconsistency.

When we talk about the genre of the epic novel, of course, we immediately remember “War and Peace” by L. Tolstoy. Other examples can be mentioned: “ Quiet Don"M. Sholokhov, "Life and Fate" by V. Grossman, "The Forsyte Saga" by the English writer Galsworthy; the book of the American writer Margaret Mitchell “Gone with the Wind” can also with good reason be classified as this genre.

The very name of the genre indicates a synthesis, a combination of two main principles in it: novel and epic, i.e. related to the theme of the life of an individual and the theme of the history of the people. In other words, the epic novel tells about the destinies of the heroes (as a rule, the heroes themselves and their destinies are fictitious, invented by the author) against the backdrop of and in close connection with epoch-making historical events. So, in “War and Peace” - these are the fates of individual families (Rostov, Bolkonsky), beloved heroes (Prince Andrei, Pierre Bezukhov, Natasha and Princess Marya) at a turning point for Russia and all of Europe historical period the beginning of the 19th century, the Patriotic War of 1812. In Sholokhov's book, the events of the First World War, two revolutions and a bloody civil war tragically invade the life of the Cossack farm, the Melekhov family, and the fate of the main characters: Grigory, Aksinya, Natalya. V. Grossman talks about the Great Patriotic War and its main event - the Battle of Stalingrad, about the tragedy of the Holocaust. “Life and Fate” also intertwines historical and family themes: the author traces the history of the Shaposhnikovs, trying to understand why the destinies of the members of this family turned out so differently. Galsworthy describes the life of the Forsyte family during the legendary Victorian era in England. Margaret Mitchell is a central event in US history, the Civil War between North and South, which dramatically changed the lives of many families and the fate of the most famous heroine of American literature - Scarlett O'Hara.

Dramatic genres of literature

Tragedy(tragodia Greek goat song) is a dramatic genre that originated in Ancient Greece. Emergence ancient theater and tragedies are associated with the worship of the cult of the god of fertility and wine Dionysus. A number of holidays were dedicated to him, during which ritual magical games were played with mummers and satyrs, whom the ancient Greeks imagined as two-legged goat-like creatures. It is assumed that it was precisely this appearance of the satyrs singing hymns to the glory of Dionysus that gave such a strange name in translation to this serious genre. Theatrical performance in Ancient Greece was given magical religious significance, and theaters built in the form of large arenas under open air, have always been located in the very center of cities and were one of the main public places. Spectators sometimes spent the whole day here: eating, drinking, loudly expressing their approval or censure of the spectacle being presented. Heyday ancient Greek tragedy associated with the names of three great tragedians: this is Aeschylus (525-456 BC) - the author of the tragedies “Chained Prometheus”, “Oresteia”, etc.; Sophocles (496-406 BC) - author of “Oedipus the King”, “Antigone”, etc.; and Euripides (480-406 BC) - the creator of “Medea”, “Troyanok”, etc. Their creations will remain examples of the genre for centuries; people will try to imitate them, but they will remain unsurpassed. Some of them (“Antigone”, “Medea”) are still staged today.

What are the main features of the tragedy? The main one is the presence of an insoluble global conflict: in ancient tragedy this is the confrontation between fate, fate, on the one hand, and man, his will, free choice, on the other. In tragedies more later eras this conflict acquired a moral and philosophical character, as a confrontation between good and evil, loyalty and betrayal, love and hatred. It has an absolute character; the heroes who embody the opposing forces are not ready for reconciliation or compromise, and therefore the ending of the tragedy often involves a lot of death. This is how the tragedies of the great are built English playwright William Shakespeare (1564-1616), let us remember the most famous of them: “Hamlet”, “Romeo and Juliet”, “Othello”, “King Lear”, “Macbeth”, “Julius Caesar”, etc.

In the tragedies of the 17th century French playwrights Corneille (Horace, Polyeuctus) and Racine (Andromache, Britannicus), this conflict received a different interpretation - as a conflict of duty and feelings, rational and emotional in the souls of the main characters, i.e. . acquired a psychological interpretation.

The most famous in Russian literature is the romantic tragedy “Boris Godunov” by A.S. Pushkin, created on historical material. In one of his best works, the poet acutely raised the problem of the “real trouble” of the Moscow state - a chain reaction of impostures and “terrible atrocities” that people are ready for for the sake of power. Another problem is the attitude of the people to everything that happens in the country. The image of the “silent” people in the finale of “Boris Godunov” is symbolic; discussions continue to this day about what Pushkin wanted to say by this. Based on the tragedy, the opera of the same name by M. P. Mussorgsky was written, which became a masterpiece of Russian opera classics.

Comedy(Greek komos - cheerful crowd, oda - song) - a genre that originated in Ancient Greece a little later than tragedy (5th century BC). The most famous comedian of that time was Aristophanes (“Clouds”, “Frogs”, etc.).

In comedy with the help of satire and humor, i.e. comic, moral vices are ridiculed: hypocrisy, stupidity, greed, envy, cowardice, complacency. Comedies, as a rule, are topical, i.e. addressed to social issues, exposing the shortcomings of the government. There are sitcoms and character comedies. In the first, a cunning intrigue, a chain of events (Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors) are important; in the second, the characters of the heroes, their absurdity, one-sidedness, as in the comedies “The Minor” by D. Fonvizin, “The Tradesman in the Nobility”, “Tartuffe”, written by the classic genre, French comedian of the 17th century Jean Baptiste Moliere. In Russian drama, satirical comedy with its sharp social criticism, such as, for example, “The Inspector General” by N. Gogol, “The Crimson Island” by M. Bulgakov. A. Ostrovsky created many wonderful comedies (“Wolves and Sheep”, “Forest”, “Mad Money”, etc.).

The comedy genre invariably enjoys success with the public, perhaps because it affirms the triumph of justice: in the finale, vice must certainly be punished, and virtue must triumph.

Drama- a relatively “young” genre that appeared in Germany in the 18th century as lesedrama (German) - a play for reading. The drama is addressed to Everyday life person and society, everyday life, family relationships. Drama is primarily interested in the inner world of a person; it is the most psychological of all dramatic genres. At the same time, this is also the most literary of stage genres, for example, the plays of A. Chekhov are largely perceived more as texts for reading, rather than as theatrical performances.

Lyrical genres literature

The division into genres in lyrics is not absolute, because the differences between genres in this case are conditional and not as obvious as in epic and drama. More often we distinguish lyrical works by their thematic features: landscape, love, philosophical, friendly, intimate lyrics, etc. However, we can name some genres that have pronounced individual characteristics: elegy, sonnet, epigram, epistle, epitaph.

Elegy(elegos Greek plaintive song) - a poem of medium length, usually of moral, philosophical, love, confessional content.

The genre arose in antiquity, and its main feature was considered to be the elegiac distich, i.e. dividing a poem into couplets, for example:

The longed-for moment has arrived: my long-term work is over. Why is this incomprehensible sadness secretly disturbing me?

A. Pushkin

In the poetry of the 19th-20th centuries, the division into couplets is no longer such a strict requirement; now the semantic features that are associated with the origin of the genre are more significant. In terms of content, the elegy goes back to the form of the Ancient funeral “laments”, in which, while mourning the deceased, they simultaneously remembered his extraordinary virtues. This origin predetermined the main feature of the elegy - the combination of grief with faith, regret with hope, acceptance of existence through sadness. The lyrical hero of the elegy is aware of the imperfection of the world and people, his own sinfulness and weakness, but does not reject life, but accepts it in all its tragic beauty. A striking example is “Elegy” by A.S. Pushkin:

Crazy years of faded fun

It's hard for me, like a vague hangover.

But like wine - the sadness of days gone by

In my soul, the older I get, the stronger it is.

My path is sad. Promises me work and grief

The coming troubled sea.

But I don’t want, O friends, to die;

I want to live so that I can think and suffer;

And I know I will have pleasure

Between sorrows, worries and worries:

Sometimes I’ll get drunk again with harmony,

I will shed tears over the fiction,

And maybe - at my sad sunset

Love will flash with a farewell smile.

Sonnet(sonetto Italian song) - the so-called “solid” poetic form, which has strict rules of construction. The sonnet has 14 lines, divided into two quatrains and two tercets. In quatrains only two rhymes are repeated, in terzettos two or three. The methods of rhyming also had their own requirements, which, however, varied.

The birthplace of the sonnet is Italy; this genre is also represented in English and French poetry. The 14th century Italian poet Petrarch is considered the luminary of the genre. He dedicated all his sonnets to his beloved Donna Laura.

In Russian literature, the sonnets of A.S. Pushkin remain unsurpassed; poets of the Silver Age also created beautiful sonnets.

Epigram(epigramma Greek, inscription) - a short mocking poem, usually addressed to a specific person. Many poets write epigrams, sometimes increasing the number of their ill-wishers and even enemies. The epigram on Count Vorontsov turned out to be bad for A.S. Pushkin by the hatred of this nobleman and, ultimately, expulsion from Odessa to Mikhailovskoye:

Popu, my lord, half-merchant,

Half-sage, half-ignorant,

Semi-scoundrel, but there is hope

Which will be complete at last.

Mocking poems can be dedicated not only to a specific person, but also to a general addressee, as, for example, in the epigram of A. Akhmatova:

Could Biche, like Dante, create?

Did Laura go to praise the heat of love?

I taught women to speak...

But, God, how to silence them!

There are even known cases of a kind of duel of epigrams. When the famous Russian lawyer A.F. Kony was appointed to the Senate, his ill-wishers spread an evil epigram against him:

Caligula brought his horse to the Senate,

It stands, dressed in both velvet and gold.

But I will say, we have the same arbitrariness:

I read in the newspapers that Kony is in the Senate.

To which A.F. Kony, who was distinguished by his extraordinary literary talent, replied:

(epitafia Greek, funerary) - a farewell poem to a deceased person, intended for a tombstone. Initially this word was used in a literal sense, but later it acquired a more figurative meaning. For example, I. Bunin has a lyrical miniature in prose “Epitaph”, dedicated to farewell to the Russian estate that was dear to the writer, but forever a thing of the past. Gradually, the epitaph is transformed into a dedication poem, a farewell poem (“Wreath to the Dead” by A. Akhmatova). Perhaps the most famous poem of this kind in Russian poetry is “The Death of a Poet” by M. Lermontov. Another example is “Epitaph” by M. Lermontov, dedicated to the memory of Dmitry Venevitinov, a poet and philosopher who died at the age of twenty-two.

Literary genres- groups of literary works united by a set of formal and substantive properties (in contrast to literary forms, the identification of which is based only on formal characteristics).

If at the folklore stage the genre was determined from an extra-literary (cult) situation, then in literature the genre receives a description 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 energetically rethought under its influence.

Since the time of Aristotle, who gave the first systematization of literary genres in his “Poetics,” the idea has become stronger that literary genres represent a natural, once and for all fixed system, and the author’s task is only to achieve the most complete compliance of his work with the essential properties of the chosen genre. This understanding of the genre - as a ready-made structure presented to the author - led to the emergence of a whole series of normative poetics containing instructions for authors regarding exactly how 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 characteristics of individual genres really remained unchanged for two thousand years - however, the changes (and very significant ones) were either not noticed by theorists, or were interpreted by them as damage, a deviation from the necessary models. And only towards the end of the 18th century the decomposition of the traditional genre system, associated, in accordance with general principles literary evolution, both with intraliterary 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 out 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 quite short-lived (although in Russian poetry it then gave an unexpected new surge 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 poets for centuries did not want to notice as something low and insignificant - lasted in European literature for at least a century. Works of hybrid or indefinite nature began to develop especially actively. genre nature: plays about which it is difficult to say whether it is a comedy or a tragedy, poems for which it is impossible to give any genre definition other than that it is lyric poem. The decline of clear genre identifications was also manifested in deliberate authorial gestures aimed at destroying genre expectations: from Laurence Sterne's novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, which ended mid-sentence to Dead souls"N.V. Gogol, where the poem's subtitle, paradoxical for a prose text, can hardly fully prepare the reader for the fact that he will now and then be knocked out of the rather familiar rut of a picaresque novel by lyrical (and sometimes epic) digressions.

In the 20th century, literary genres were particularly strongly influenced by isolation mass literature from literature oriented towards artistic exploration. Mass literature has once 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 through it. Of course, the previous genres were not suitable for mass literature, and it quite quickly formed a new system, which was based on the genre of the novel, which was very flexible and had accumulated a lot of varied experience. At the end of the 19th century and in the first half of the 20th, the detective and police novels, science fiction and the ladies' (“pink”) novel took shape. It is not surprising that contemporary literature, aimed at artistic search, sought to deviate as far as possible from the mass literature and therefore moved away from genre definition as far as possible. But since the extremes converge, the desire to be further from the genre predetermination 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, represented by such original authors as Michel Butor and Nathalie Sarraute, are clearly observed signs of a new genre. Thus, modern literary genres (and we already encounter such an assumption in the thoughts 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 literary space, in accordance with artistic tasks, here and now staged by this circle of authors. 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
• by content
  • comedy
    • farce
    • vaudeville
    • interlude
    • sketch
    • parody
    • sitcom
    • comedy of characters
  • tragedy
  • Drama
• By birth
  • Epic
    • Fable
    • Bylina
    • Ballad
    • Novella
    • Tale
    • Story
    • Novel
    • Epic novel
    • Fairy tale
    • Fantasy
    • Epic
  • Lyrical
    • Oh yeah
    • Message
    • Stanzas
    • Elegy
    • Epigram
  • Lyric-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 Epic), nameless and authored, which was composed either through the cyclization of lyric-epic songs and tales (the point of view of A. N. Veselovsky), or through the “swelling” (A. Heusler) of one or several folk legends, or with the help of complex modifications of 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 (“Iliad”, “Mahabharata”, “Song of Roland”, “Elder Edda”, etc.).

There are many genre varieties of the poem: heroic, didactic, satirical, burlesque, including heroic-comic, poem with a romantic plot, lyrical-dramatic. The leading branch of the genre has long been considered a poem on a national historical or world historical (religious) theme (“The Aeneid” by Virgil, “The Divine Comedy” by Dante, “The Lusiads” by L. di Camoens, “Jerusalem Liberated” by T. Tasso, “Paradise Lost” "J. Milton, "Henriad" by Voltaire, "Messiad" by F. G. Klopstock, "Rossiyad" by M. M. Kheraskov, etc.). At the same time, a very influential branch in the history of the genre was the poem with romantic plot features (“The Knight in the Leopard’s Skin” by Shota Rustaveli, “Shahname” by Ferdowsi, to a certain extent, “Furious Roland” by L. Ariosto), connected to one degree or another with the tradition of the medieval , predominantly a chivalric novel. Gradually, personal, moral and philosophical issues come to the fore in the poems, lyrical-dramatic elements are strengthened, the folklore tradition is opened and mastered - features already characteristic of pre-romantic poems (Faust by J. V. Goethe, poems by J. Macpherson, V. Scott). The genre flourished in the era of romanticism, when the greatest poets of various countries turned to creating poems. 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, “Dziady” by A. Mickiewicz, “The Demon” by M. Y. Lermontov, “Germany, winter's tale"G. Heine).

In the 2nd half of the 19th 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 Rus'”), genre tendencies characteristic of the development of the poem in realistic literature(synthesis of moral descriptive and heroic principles).

In a poem of the 20th century. the most intimate experiences are correlated with great historical upheavals, imbued with them as if from within (“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!” by Mayakovsky, “Nine Hundred and Fifth” by B. L. Pasternak, “Vasily Terkin” by A. T. Tvardovsky); lyrical-psychological poems (“About this” by V.V. Mayakovsky, “Anna Snegina” by S.A. Yesenin), philosophical (N.A. Zabolotsky, E. Mezhelaitis), historical (“Tobolsk Chronicler” by L. Martynov) or combining moral and socio-historical issues (“Mid-Century” by V. Lugovsky).

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

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

The emergence of the epic is gradual in nature, but is conditioned by historical circumstances.

The birth of the epic is usually accompanied by the composition 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 base their narratives on. Panegyrics and laments are usually composed in the same style and meter 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 as part of epic poems as decoration.

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

Novel- a literary genre, usually prose, which involves a detailed narrative about the life and development of the personality of the main character (heroes) during 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 dialect romanice"in the (vernacular) Romance language"), as opposed to historiography in Latin. Contrary to popular belief, from the very beginning this name did not refer to any work in the vernacular (heroic songs or troubadour lyrics were never called novels), but to one that could be contrasted with a Latin model, even if very distant: 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 reverse translation into Latin, the novel was called (liber) romanticus, from where to European languages and the adjective “romantic” was born, which until the end of the 18th century meant “inherent in novels,” “the same as in novels,” and only later the meaning, on the one hand, was simplified to “love,” but on the other hand, it gave rise to the name of romanticism as a literary movement .

The name “novel” was preserved when, in the 13th century, the performed poetic novel was replaced by a prose novel for reading (with full preservation of the knightly topic and plot), and for all subsequent transformations of the knightly novel, right up to the works of Ariosto and Edmund Spenser, which we we call them poems, but contemporaries considered them novels. It persists even later, in the 17th-18th centuries, when the “adventurous” novel is replaced by the “realistic” and “psychological” novel (which in itself problematizes the supposed gap in continuity).

However, in England the name of the genre is also changing: the “old” novels retain the name romance, and the name “new” novels from the middle of the 17th century was assigned novel(from Italian novella - “short story”). Dichotomy novel/romance means a lot for English-language criticism, but adds additional uncertainty to their actual historical relationships rather than clarifies them. Generally romance is considered rather a kind of structural-plot type of genre novel.

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

Bishop of Yue late XVII century, in search of the predecessors of the novel, he first applied this term to a number of phenomena of ancient narrative prose, which since then also began to be called novels.

Visions

Fabliau dou dieu d'Amour"(The Tale of the God of Love), " Venus la déesse 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 sleep. The core for the most part consists of actual dreams or hallucinations, but already in ancient times fictional stories appear, clothed in the form of visions (Plato, Plutarch, Cicero). The genre received special development in the Middle Ages and reached its apogee in Dante's Divine Comedy, which represents the most developed vision in form. The authoritative sanction and the strongest impetus for the development of the genre were given by the “Dialogues of Miracles” of Pope Gregory the Great (VI century), after which visions began to appear en masse in church literature in all European countries.

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

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

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

The “third estate” puts new content 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 unfair privileges of the aristocracy and against the “robber” royal power). The same is true of Jean Molyneux’s “The Hopes of the Common People.” The sentiments of the “third estate” are no less clearly expressed in Langland’s famous “Vision of Peter the Ploughman,” which played a propaganda role in the English peasant revolution XIV 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.

How a complete independent genre of visions is characteristic of medieval literature. But as a motif, the form of visions continues to exist in the literature of modern times, being especially favorable for the introduction of satire and didactics, on the one hand, and fantasy, on the other (for example, “Darkness” by Byron).

Novella

The sources of the novella are primarily Latin example, as well as fabliaux, stories interspersed in the “Dialogue about Pope Gregory”, apologists from the “Lives of the Church Fathers”, fables, folk tales. In the 13th century Occitan language, the word appeared to denote a story created on some newly processed traditional material nova.Hence - Italian novella(in the most popular collection of the late 13th century, Novellino, also known as One Hundred Ancient Novels), which, starting in the 15th century, spread throughout Europe.

The genre became established after the book appeared. 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, a collection of One Hundred New Novels appeared around 1462 (however, the material owed more to the facets of Poggio Bracciolini), and Margarita Navarskaya, based on the Decameron, wrote the book Heptameron (1559).

In the era of romanticism, under the influence of Hoffmann, Novalis, Edgar Allan Poe, short stories with elements of mysticism, fantasy, and 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, starting with Washington Irving and Edgar Poe, the novella, or short story (English. short story), has special significance 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 novella is characterized by several important features: extreme brevity, a sharp, even paradoxical plot, a neutral style of presentation, lack of psychologism and descriptiveness, and an unexpected denouement. The novella takes place in modern author world. The plot structure of a novella is similar to a dramatic one, but usually simpler.

Goethe spoke about the action-packed nature of the novella, giving it the following definition: “an unheard-of event that has happened.”

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

Among Boccaccio's predecessors, the novella had a moralizing attitude. Boccaccio retained this motif, but for him the morality flowed from the story not logically, but psychologically, and was often only a pretext and device. The later novella convinces the reader of the relativity of moral criteria.

Tale

Story

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

In Russia XVIII-XIX centuries. (and in most languages ​​of the world to this day) the word “anecdote” had a slightly different meaning - it could just be an entertaining story about some famous person, not necessarily with the goal of ridiculing him (cf. Pushkin: “Anecdotes of days gone by”). Such “anecdotes” about Potemkin became classics of that time.

Oh yeah

Epic

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

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

A separate, complete semantic part of a 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 - classic, main (comedy, tragedy, drama), or author's (for example: My poor Marat, dialogues in three parts - A. Arbuzov; We'll wait and see, a pleasant play in four acts - B. Shaw; The Good Man from Szechwan, parabolic play - B. Brecht, etc.). The genre designation of the play not only serves as a “hint” to the director and actors during the stage interpretation of the play, but helps to enter into the author’s style and the figurative structure of the dramaturgy.

Essay(from fr. essai“attempt, trial, sketch”, from Lat. exagium“weighing”) is a literary genre of prose composition of small volume and free composition. The essay expresses the author’s individual impressions and considerations on a specific occasion or subject and does not pretend to be an exhaustive or definitive interpretation of the topic (in the parodic Russian tradition of “a look and something”). In terms of volume and function, it borders, on the one hand, with a scientific article and a literary essay (with which an essay is often confused), and on the other, with a philosophical treatise. The essayistic style is characterized by imagery, fluidity of associations, aphoristic, often antithetical thinking, an emphasis on intimate frankness and conversational intonation. Some theorists consider it as the fourth, along with epic, lyricism and drama, type of fiction.

Michel Montaigne introduced it as a special genre form, based on the experience of his predecessors, in his “Essays” (1580). Francis Bacon, for the first time in English literature, gave the title English to his works, published in book form in 1597, 1612 and 1625. essays. The English poet and playwright Ben Jonson first used the word essayist. essayist) in 1609.

In the 18th-19th centuries, the essay was one of the leading genres of English and French journalism. The development of essayism was promoted in England by J. Addison, Richard Steele, and Henry Fielding, in France by Diderot and Voltaire, and in Germany by Lessing and Herder. The essay was the main form of philosophical-aesthetic polemic among the 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. Beerbohm, G. K. Chesterton (XX century). In the 20th century, essayism experienced its heyday: 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. Characteristic features of essays are noted in the books “Smiles of God” (lit. “Dievo šypsenos”, 1929) by Juozapas Albinas Gerbachiauskas and “Gods and Smutkyalis” (lit. “Dievai”) ir smūtkeliai", 1935) by Jonas Kossu-Alexandravičius. Examples of essays include “poetic anti-commentaries” “Lyrical Etudes” (lit. “Lyriniai etiudai”, 1964) and “Antakalnis Baroque” (lit. “Antakalnio barokas”, 1971) by Eduardas Meželaitis, “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 Marcelius Martinaitis. An anti-conformist moral position, conceptuality, precision and polemic characterizes the essay by Tomas Venclova

The essay genre was not typical for Russian literature. Examples 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, Andrei Bely, Lev Shestov, V. V. Rozanov turned to the essay genre, and later - Ilya Erenburg, Yuri Olesha, Viktor Shklovsky, Konstantin Paustovsky. Literary critical assessments of modern critics, as a rule, are embodied in a variation of the essay genre.

IN musical art The term piece is usually used as a specific name for works of instrumental music.

Sketch(English) sketch, literally - sketch, draft, sketch), in the 19th - early 20th centuries. a short play with two, rarely three characters. The sketch became most widespread on the stage.

In the UK, television sketch shows are very popular. Similar programs began to appear in Lately and on Russian television(“Our Russia”, “Six Frames”, “Give You Youth!”, “Dear Program”, “Gentleman Show”, “Town”, etc.) A striking example of a sketch show is the television series “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” .

A famous sketch creator was A.P. Chekhov.

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

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

Types of comedy include genres such as farce, vaudeville, sideshow, sketch, operetta, and parody. Nowadays, examples of such primitiveness are many comedy films, built solely on external comedy, the comedy of situations in which the characters find themselves in the process of developing the action.

Distinguish sitcom And comedy of characters.

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

Comedy of characters (comedy of manners) - a comedy in which the source of the funny is the inner essence of the characters (morals), 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 trаgos - 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 filled with pathos; a type of drama that is the opposite of comedy.

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

Drama(Greek Δρα´μα) - one of the types of literature (along with lyric poetry, epic, and lyric epic). It differs from other types of literature in the way it conveys the plot - not through narration or monologue, but through character dialogues. Drama in one way or another includes any literary work constructed in a dialogical form, including comedy, tragedy, drama (as a genre), farce, vaudeville, etc.

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

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

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

Fable is one of the oldest literary genres. In Ancient Greece, Aesop (VI-V centuries BC) was famous, who wrote fables in prose. In Rome - Phaedrus (1st century AD). In India, the collection of fables “Panchatantra” dates back to the 3rd century. The most prominent fabulist of modern times was the French poet J. Lafontaine (17th century).

In Russia, the development of the fable genre dates back to the mid-18th - early 19th centuries and is associated with the names of A.P. Sumarokov, I.I. Khemnitser, A.E. Izmailov, I.I. Dmitriev, although the first experiments in poetic fables were back in the 17th century with Simeon of Polotsk and in the 1st half. XVIII century by A.D. Kantemir, V.K. Trediakovsky. In Russian poetry, fable free verse is developed, conveying the intonations of a relaxed and crafty tale.

I. A. Krylov's fables, 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 concepts of 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, in a fable the narrative is primary, and the moral is secondary; The fable comes from an animal tale, and the animal tale comes from a myth. According to the second concept, morality is primary in the fable; the fable is close to comparisons, proverbs and sayings; like them, the fable arises as an auxiliary means of argumentation. The first point of view goes back to the romantic theory of Jacob Grimm, the second revives the rationalistic concept of Lessing.

Philologists of the 19th century were long occupied with the debate about the priority of the Greek or Indian fable. It can now be considered almost certain that the common source of the material of the Greek and Indian fables was the Sumerian-Babylonian fable.

Epics- Russian folk epic songs about the exploits of heroes. The basis of the plot of the epic is some heroic event, or a remarkable episode of Russian history (hence the popular name of the epic - “ old man", "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, the origin of all things, about gods and heroes; a 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 isolated from mythology, they retain a number of mythological models, which are peculiarly rethought when included in new structures; the myth is experiencing its second life. Of particular interest is their transformation in literary creativity.

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

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

Tale- a prose genre of unstable volume (mostly intermediate between a novel and a story), gravitating towards a chronicle plot that reproduces the natural course of life. The plot, devoid of intrigue, is centered around the main character, whose identity and fate are revealed within a few events.

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

Story - small form epic prose, correlated with the story as a more developed form of storytelling. Goes back to folklore genres (fairy tales, parables); how the genre became isolated in written literature; often indistinguishable from a short story, and since the 18th century. - and an essay. Sometimes a short story and an essay are considered as polar varieties of a story.

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

Fairy tale: 1) a type of narrative, mostly prosaic folklore ( fairy tale prose), which includes works of different genres, the content of which, from the point of view of folklore bearers, lacks strict authenticity. Fairy-tale folklore is opposed to the “strictly reliable” folklore narrative ( non-fairy prose) (see myth, epic, historical song, spiritual poems, legend, demonological stories, tale, blasphemy, legend, epic).

2) genre of literary storytelling. A literary fairy tale either imitates a folklore one ( literary fairy 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 " fairy tale"attested in written sources no earlier than the 16th century. From the word " say" What mattered was: 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 - blasphemy.

The word “fairy tale” suggests that people will learn about it, “what it is” and find out “what” it, a fairy tale, is needed for. The purpose of a fairy tale is to subconsciously or consciously teach a child in the family the rules and purpose of life, the need to protect one’s “area” and decent treatment to other communities. It is noteworthy that both the saga and the fairy tale carry a colossal information component, passed on from generation to generation, the belief in which is based on respect for one’s ancestors.

There are different types of fairy tales.

Fantasy(from English fantasy- “fantasy”) is a type of fantastic literature based on the use of mythological and fairy-tale motifs. IN 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, the heroes of which encounter supernatural phenomena and creatures. Fantasy is often built on archetypal plots.

Unlike science fiction, fantasy does not seek to explain the world in which the work takes place from a scientific point of view. This world itself exists in the form of a certain assumption (most often its location relative to our reality is not specified at all: either 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 entities may 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 especially distinguishes 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 are in mythology and folklore. In the 19th century an epic novel arises (“War and Peace” by L.N. Tolstoy)
2. Complex, long history something that includes a series of major events.

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

Initially, in Ancient Greece, any form of poetic lyric intended to accompany music was called an ode, including choral singing. Since the time of Pindar, an ode has been a choral epinikic song in honor of the winner in sports competitions of sacred games with a three-part composition and emphasized solemnity and pomp.

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

Since the Renaissance and in the Baroque era (XVI-XVII centuries), lyrical works in pathetically high style, guided by ancient examples, in classicism the ode became the canonical genre of high lyricism.

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

A poem with the character of thoughtful sadness. In this sense, we can say that most of Russian poetry is in 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. denoted a poem written in a stanza of a certain size, namely a couplet - 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, warlike in Callinus and Tyrtaeus, political in Mimnermus. One of the best Greek authors E. is Callimachus. Among the Romans, E. became more defined in character, but also freer in form. The importance of love stories has greatly increased. Famous Roman authors of romance include Propertius, Tibullus, Ovid, Catullus (they were translated by Fet, Batyushkov, etc.). 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 causing numerous imitations and translations in almost all European languages. The revolution brought about by this era is defined as the onset of a period of sentimentalism in literature, which replaced false classicism. In essence, this was the decline of poetry from rational mastery in once established forms to the true sources of internal artistic experiences. In Russian poetry, Zhukovsky's translation of Gray's elegy (Rural Cemetery; 1802) definitely marked the beginning of a new era, which finally went beyond rhetoric and turned to sincerity, intimacy and depth. This internal change was also reflected in the new methods of versification introduced by Zhukovsky, who is thus the founder of 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 Cor. Wirtembergskaya". His “Theon and Aeschylus” is also considered an elegy (more precisely, it is an elegy-ballad). Zhukovsky called his poem “The Sea” an elegy. In the first half of the 19th century. It was common to give their poems the title of elegies; Batyushkov, Boratynsky, Yazykov and others especially often called their works elegies. ; subsequently, however, it went out of fashion. Nevertheless, many poems by 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” (in Zhukovsky’s translation of “Dreams”), “Resignation”, “Walk”. Much of the elegies belong to Matisson (Batyushkov translated it “On the ruins of castles in Sweden”), Heine, Lenau, Herwegh, Platen, Freiligrath, Schlegel and many others. etc. The French wrote elegies: Millvois, Debord-Valmore, Kaz. Delavigne, A. Chenier (M. Chenier, the brother of the previous one, translated Gray's elegy), Lamartine, A. Musset, Hugo, etc. In English poetry, besides Gray, there are Spencer, Jung, Sidney, and later Shelley and Byron. In Italy, the main representatives of elegiac poetry are Alamanni, Castaldi, Filicana, Guarini, Pindemonte. In Spain: Boscan Almogaver, Gars de le Vega. In Portugal - Camoes, Ferreira, Rodrigue Lobo, de Miranda.

Attempts to write elegies in Russia before Zhukovsky 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 lyric epic work, that is, a story presented in poetic form, historical, mythical or heroic character. The plot of a ballad is usually borrowed from folklore. Ballads are often set to music.

Which are combined on the basis of formal and substantive characteristics. They develop historically, experiencing emergence, flourishing, and some, decline. These include novels, stories, elegies, feuilletons, stories, comedies, etc. The concept of literary genres is narrower than literary genera. Each contains several genres. For example, a story, a short story, a novel are included in the author's epic genre of literature.

The first attempt to systematize literary genres was made in his work. He presented them as something natural, established once and for all. The author only had to fit into the norms of the genre to which he turned. This understanding led to the emergence of a kind of textbooks on normative poetics. The most famous among them was the treatise “Poetic Art” by N. Boileau. Of course, since the time of Aristotle, literary types and genres have not remained absolutely unchanged, but theorists have preferred either not to notice innovations or to reject them. This lasted until it became impossible not to notice the processes taking place in literature. Some genres of literary works unexpectedly took off and died out just as quickly, only occasionally flaring up on the creative horizon (as was the case with the ballad). Others, on the contrary, emerged from an undeserved “imprisonment” (for example, an affair).

IN domestic literary criticism the theory that substantiates literary genres and types belongs to V. G. Belinsky. He identified three types, depending on the author’s approach to the way of presenting the subject of conversation: epic, drama and lyric.

Assigning a work to a specific genre depends on what criterion is taken as a basis. If the literary genre (drama, lyric, epic) is taken into account, then all genres are divided, respectively, into dramatic, lyrical and epic.

Works representing the dramatic genre of literature are comedy, drama and tragedy.

Comedy is designed to reflect something incongruous in life, to ridicule everyday or social phenomenon, human character traits, sometimes absurd behavior.

Drama is a work that depicts a complex conflict that has arisen between several characters, a serious opposition between them.

Tragedy is a work in which the character of the character is revealed in a struggle leading to his death, or in conditions from which he sees absolutely no way out.

Literary works representing the epic genre of literature are divided into three groups:

Large (novel and epic);

Middle (story);

Small (short story, essay, short story).

This genre also includes fairy tale, epic, ballad, fable, historical song and myth.

Works representing lyrical gender literature - stanzas, odes, elegy and epistle.

An elegy is a short poem completely imbued with slight sadness. The most famous are the elegies of the classics of the 19th century.

An epistle is a work written in the form of a poetic appeal to one person or several persons.

An ode is a poem in honor of a past or upcoming celebration, in honor of a person, characterized by enthusiasm.

In addition, at the present stage, literary scholars identify another, lyric-epic type of literature. It combines the features of the lyrical and epic and is represented by a poem. This work really shows itself ambiguously. On the one hand, it tells in detail about some event or character (like an epic), and on the other hand, it conveys the feelings, moods, experiences of the hero or the narrator himself, the inner world, thereby approaching the lyrics.

Recently, new genres have not appeared in literature.

Hello, dear readers of the blog site. The question of genre as a variety of one or another is quite complex. 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 cope with. Why is genre division necessary at all? Where are the boundaries separating a novel from a poem, and a short story from a story? Let's try to figure it out together.

Genre in literature - what is it?

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

A genre is a historically established variety of literary works, united by a certain set of formal and substantive features.

From the definition it is clear 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 is distinguished from another by external features: volume, plot, structure, composition (formal criterion).

All genres of literature can be represented this way:

These are three typology options that help classify a work into a particular genre.

The history of the emergence of literary genres in Rus'

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

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

If you look closely at the history of literature in Ancient Rus', you will notice how chronicles, patericons, lives of saints and patristic works are gradually being replaced by new forms of storytelling.

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. Based on the material of oral traditions, it stood out separately during the period of the collapse of the ancient myth into a fairy-tale epic and a realistic military story.

By interacting with foreign written traditions, Russian literature is enriched new genre forms : novel, secular philosophical story, author's fairy tale, and in the era of romanticism - a poem, lyric poem, ballad.

The realistic canon brings to life a problematic novel, story, story. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, genres with blurred boundaries became popular again: essay (), sketch, short poem, symbolist. Old forms are filled with original meaning, transform into each other, and destroy given standards.

Dramatic art has a powerful influence on the formation of the genre system. Installation for 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).

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

Literature by genus and species

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

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

1. The oldest “whale” is considered epic. Its progenitor, who split into legend and tale.
2. appeared when humanity stepped beyond the stage of collective thinking and turned to the individual experiences of each member of the community. The nature of lyrics - personal experience author.
3. older than epic and lyric poetry. Its appearance is associated with the era of antiquity and the emergence of religious cults - mysteries. Drama became 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 epic forms known to modern times are the epic and the epic novel. The ancestors of the epic can be considered a saga, widespread in the past among the peoples of Scandinavia, and a legend (for example, the Indian “The Tale of Gilgamesh”).

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

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

Because it depicts large-scale events over the course of centuries, it rarely exhibits careful psychological detail, but the epics created in the last few centuries combine these attitudes 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 the story of 2-3 generations of heroes.

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

To medium forms Epic includes novel and story.

The term " novel" comes from the word "Roman" and is reminiscent of the ancient prose narrative that gave birth to this genre.

The Satyricon of Petronius is considered an example of an ancient novel. IN medieval Europe is spreading picaresque novel. The era of sentimentalism gives the world a travel novel. Realists develop the genre and fill it with classical content.

At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries the following appeared types of novels:

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

IN school curriculum many novels. Giving examples, name the books by I.A. Goncharov “Ordinary History”, “Oblomov”, “Cliff”, works by I.S. Turgenev "Fathers and Sons", " Noble Nest", "On the Eve", "Smoke", "New". 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, developing against the backdrop of one historical event.

"The Captain's Daughter" A. S. Pushkin and “The Overcoat” by 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 plot line, a limited number of characters and are distinguished by a compressed volume.

Examples include stories by A. Gaidar or Y. Kazakov, short stories by E. Poe, essays by V.G. Korolenko or essay by W. Wulf. Let’s make a reservation, sometimes it “works” as a genre scientific style or journalism, but has artistic imagery.

Lyrical genres

Large lyrical forms represented by a poem and a wreath of sonnets. The first is more plot-driven, which makes it similar to the epic. The second one is static. The wreath of sonnets, consisting of 15 14-verse lines, describes a topic and the author’s impressions of it.

In Russia, poems have a socio-historical character. “The Bronze Horseman” and “Poltava” by A.S. Pushkin, “Mtsyri” by M.Yu. Lermontov, “Who Lives Well in Rus'” 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, ode, canzone, sonnet, epitaph, fable, madrigal, rondo, triolet. Some forms originated in medieval Europe (the sonnet genre was especially loved by lyricists in Russia), some (for example, the ballad) became the legacy of the German romantics.

Traditionally small Poetic 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 subtype.

Dramatic genres

Drama gives us three classic genres:

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

All three types of performing arts originated in Ancient Greece.

Comedy was initially associated with religious cults of purification, mysteries, during which carnival action unfolded on the streets. The sacrificial goat “comos”, which was later called the “scapegoat”, walking through the streets along with the artists, symbolized all human vices. According to the canon, they are what comedy should make fun of.

Comedy is the genre of “Woe from Wit” by A.S. Griboyedov and “Nedoroslya” D.I. Fonvizina.

In the era of classicism, 2 types of comedy developed: comedy provisions and comedy characters. The first played with circumstances, passed off one hero as another, and had an unexpected ending. The second pitted the characters against each other in the face of an idea or task, generating a theatrical conflict on which the intrigue rested.

If during a comedy the playwright expected the healing laughter of the crowd, then tragedy I set out to bring tears to my eyes. It was bound to end with the death of the hero. Empathizing with the characters, the viewer or purification.

"Romeo and Juliet" and also "Hamlet" by W. Shakespeare were written in the tragedy genre.

Actually drama- This is a later invention of dramaturgy, removing therapeutic tasks and focusing on subtle psychologism, objectivity, and play.

Determining 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 clues that remind you that in the world of art there are right directions, but, fortunately, there are no forever beaten paths.

Just above is a video that helps determine the genre of a particular literary work.

At school, in literature classes, they study stories, novels, essays, and elegies. Cinemas show a variety of films - action films, comedies, melodramas. How can all these phenomena be combined into one term? For this purpose, the concept of “genre” was invented.

Let's figure out what a genre in literature is, what types exist, and how to determine which direction a particular work belongs to.

The division of works by gender has been known since antiquity. What is a genre in ancient literature? This:

• tragedy;
• comedy.

Fiction was practically inseparable from the theater, and therefore the range was limited to what could be realized on stage.

In the Middle Ages, the list expanded: it now included a short story, a novel and a story. The emergence of romantic poems, epic novels, and ballads dates back to the New Age.

The 20th century, with its enormous changes that continually took place in the life of society and the individual, gave birth to new literary forms:

• thriller;
• action movie;
• fantastic;
• fantasy.

What is a genre in literature

The set of some features of groups of literary forms (the features can be both formal and substantive) is the genres of literature.

According to Wikipedia they are divided into three large groups:

• by content;
• by form;
• by birth.

Wikipedia names at least 30 different directions. These include (the most famous):

• story;
• story;
• novel;
• elegy,

and others.

There are also less commonly used ones:

• sketch;
• opus;
• stanzas.

How to determine genre

How to determine the genre of a work? If we are talking about a novel or an ode, then we will not get confused, but something more complex - a sketch or stanzas - can cause difficulties.

So, before us is an open book. We can immediately correctly name well-known literary forms, the definition of which we do not even need. For example, we see a voluminous creation that describes a large period of time in which many characters appear.

There are several storylines - one main one and an unlimited number (at the author's discretion) of secondary ones. If all these requirements are met, then every high school student will say with confidence that this is a novel.

If this is a short narrative, limited to a description of an event, while the author’s attitude to what he is talking about is clearly visible, then it is a story.

It’s more difficult, for example, with an opus.

The interpretation of the concept is ambiguous: most often it means something that causes ridicule, that is, an essay, story or story whose merits are questionable.

In principle, many literary works can be classified as “opus” if they are not distinguished by clarity of style, richness of thought, or, in other words, mediocre.

What are stanzas? This is a kind of poem-memory, a poem-reflection. Remember, for example, Pushkin’s “Stanzas,” which he wrote on a long winter road.

Important! To correctly classify a particular literary form, be sure to take into account both external features and content.

Let's try to bring literary genres together, and to do this we will collect the types of works known to us in a table. Of course, we will not be able to cover everything - literary trends are most fully represented in serious philological works. But a small list can be compiled.

The table will look like this:

Types of genres by content

Previously, we touched upon the question of the form of writing and divided the types of literature precisely on this basis. However, directions can be interpreted more broadly. The content and meaning of what is written is very important. In this case, the terms in both lists may overlap or intersect.

Let's say a story falls into two groups at once: stories can be distinguished by external signs(short, with a clearly expressed attitude of the author), and in content (one bright event).

Among the areas divided by content, we note:

• comedies;
• tragedy;
• horror;
• dramas.

Comedy is perhaps one of the most ancient movements. The definition of comedy is multifaceted: it can be a sitcom, a comedy of characters. There are also comedies:

• household;
• romantic;
• heroic.

Tragedies were also known the ancient world. The definition of this genre of literature is a work whose outcome will certainly be sad and hopeless.

Genres of Literature and Their Definitions

A list of literary genres can be found in any textbook for philology students. For whom is it important to know in what directions literary forms are distinguished?

The following specialists need this information:

• writers;
• journalists;
• teachers;
• philologists.

When creating a work of art, the author subordinates his creation to certain canons, and their framework - conventional boundaries - allows him to classify what he has created into the group of “novels”, “essays” or “ode”.

This concept relates not only to works of literature, but also to other forms of art. Wikipedia explains: this term can also be used to refer to:

• painting;
• photos;
• movie;
• oratory;
• music.

Important! Even the game of chess is subject to its own genre standards.

However, these are very large separate topics. We are now interested in what genres there are in literature.

Examples

Any concept should be considered with examples, and types of literary forms are no exception. Let's look at examples in practice.

Let's start with the simplest thing - with a story. Surely everyone remembers Chekhov’s work “I Want to Sleep” from school.

This is a terrible story, written in a deliberately simple, everyday style, based on a crime committed by a thirteen-year-old girl in a state of passion, when her consciousness was clouded from fatigue and hopelessness.

We see that Chekhov complied with all the laws of the genre:

• the description practically does not go beyond one event;
• the author is “present”, we feel his attitude to what is happening;
• the story has one main character;
• The essay is short in length and can be read in a few minutes.

As an example of a story, we can take “Spring Waters” by Turgenev. The author here argues more, as if helping the reader to draw conclusions, unobtrusively pushing him to these conclusions. In the story, an important place is given to issues of morality, ethics, and the inner world of the characters - all these problems come to the fore.

– is also a fairly specific thing. This is a kind of sketch where the author expresses his own thoughts on a specific issue.

The essay is characterized by vivid imagery, originality, and frankness. If you have ever read Andre Maurois and Bernard Shaw, you will understand what we are talking about.

Novels and their characteristic features - the length of events over time, multiple storylines, a chronological chain, the author's periodic deviations from a given topic - do not allow the genre to be confused with any other.

In the novel, the author touches on many problems: from personal to acute social ones. When thinking about novels, “War and Peace” by L. Tolstoy, “Fathers and Sons”, “Gone with the Wind” by M. Mitchell, “Wuthering Heights” by E. Bronte immediately come to mind.

Species and groups

In addition to grouping by content and form, we can take advantage of the proposal of philologists and divide everything created by writers, poets and playwrights by gender. How to determine the genre of a work - what type of work can it belong to?

You can create the following list of varieties:

• epic;
• lyrical;
• dramatic.

The first ones are distinguished by a calm narrative and descriptiveness. A novel, essay, or poem can be epic. The second is everything connected with the personal experiences of the heroes, as well as with solemn events. These include ode, elegy, epigram.

Dramatic - comedy, tragedy, drama. For the most part, the theater expresses the “right” to them.

To summarize what has been said, we can apply the following classification: in literature there are three major directions, covering everything that has ever been created by prose writers, playwrights and poets. Works are divided by:

• form;
• content;
• to the birth of what is written.

Within one direction there can be many completely diverse essays. So, if we take the division by form, then here we will include stories, novels, essays, odes, sketches, and novellas.

We determine belonging to any direction by “ external structure»work: its size, the number of plot lines, the author’s attitude to what is happening.

The division by gender is lyrical, dramatic and epic works. A novel, a story, an essay can be lyrical. The epic category includes poems, fairy tales, and epics. Dramatic plays are plays: comedies, tragicomedies, tragedies.

Important! New times make adjustments to the system literary trends. In recent decades, the detective genre, which originated in the 19th century, has developed. In contrast to the utopian novel that arose during the period late Middle Ages, a dystopia was born.

Useful video

Let's sum it up

Literature continues to evolve these days. The world is changing at enormous speed, and therefore the forms of expression of thoughts, feelings, and the speed of perception are undergoing changes. Perhaps in the future new genres will be formed - so unusual that for now it is difficult for us to imagine them.

It is possible that they will be at the intersection of several types of art at once, for example, cinema, music and literature. But this is in the future, but for now our task is to learn to understand literary heritage, which we already have.