Outdated genres of literature. Literary genres and genera: characteristics and classification

All literary genres are unique, each of which has a set of qualities and characteristics unique to it. The first known classification of them was proposed by Aristotle, an ancient Greek philosopher and naturalist. In accordance with it, basic literary genres can be compiled into a small list that is not subject to any changes. An author working on any work must simply find similarities between his creation and the parameters of the specified genres. Over the next two millennia, any changes in the classifier developed by Aristotle were met with hostility and were considered a deviation from the norm.

In the 18th century, a large-scale literary restructuring began. The established types of the genre and their system began to undergo major modifications. The current conditions became the main prerequisite for the fact that some genres of literature have sunk into oblivion, others have gained incredible popularity, and others have only just begun to take shape. We can see the results of this transformation, which continues even now, with our own eyes - types of genres that are dissimilar in meaning, gender and many other criteria. Let's try to figure out what genres there are in literature and what their features are.

A genre in literature is a historically established set of literary creations, united by a set of similar parameters and formal characteristics.

All existing types and genres of literature can be visually represented in a table, in which large groups will appear in one part, and its typical representatives in the other. There are 4 main groups of genres by genre:

• epic (mostly prose);
• lyrical (mostly poetry);
• dramatic (plays);
• lyroepic (something between lyric and epic).

Also, types of literary works can be classified according to content:

• comedy;
• tragedy;
• drama.

But it will become much easier to understand what types of literature there are if you understand their forms. The form of a work is the method of presenting the author’s ideas that form the basis of the work. There are external and internal forms. The first is essentially the language of the work, the second is the system artistic methods, images and means with which it was created.

What are the genres of books by form: essay, vision, short story, epic, ode, play, epic, essay, sketch, opus, novel, story. Let's look at each in detail.

Essay

An essay is a short prose composition with a free composition. His the main objective– show the author’s personal opinion and concepts on a specific issue. In this case, the essay does not have to fully disclose the problem of presentation or clearly answer the questions. Basic properties:

• figurativeness;
• closeness to the reader;
• aphorism;
• associativity.

There is an opinion that essays are a separate type of artistic work. This genre dominated XVIII-XIX centuries in British and Western European journalism. Famous representatives of that time: J. Addison, O. Goldsmith, J. Wharton, W. Godwin.

Epic

Epic is simultaneously a genus, type and genre of literature. It is a heroic tale of the past, showing the life of people at that time and the reality of the characters from an epic perspective. Often the epic talks in detail about a certain person, about an adventure with his participation, about his feelings and experiences. It also talks about the hero's attitude towards what is happening around him. Representatives of the genre:

• "Iliad", "Odyssey" Homer;
• "The Song of Roland" Turold;
• "The Song of the Nibelungs", author unknown.

The ancestors of the epic are the traditional poem-songs of the ancient Greeks.

Epic

Epic - large works with heroic overtones and those that are similar to them. What kind of literature is there in this genre?

• narration of important historical moments in poetry or prose;
• a story about something, including several descriptions of various significant events.

There is also a moral epic. This is a special type of storytelling in literature, distinguished by its prosaic nature and ridicule of the comical state of society. It includes “Gargantua and Pantagruel” by Rabelais.

Sketch

A sketch is a short play in which there are only two (rarely three) main characters. Today the sketch is used on the stage in the form comedy show with miniatures lasting no more than 10 minutes. Such shows regularly appear on television in Britain, the USA and Russia. Well-known example programs on TV are “Unreal Story”, “6 Frames”, “Our Russia”.

Novel

The novel is a separate literary genre. It presents a detailed account of the development and life of key characters (or one hero) in the most crisis and difficult periods. The main types of novels in literature are those belonging to a specific era or country, psychological, chivalric, classical, moral and many others. Known examples:

• "Eugene Onegin" Pushkin;
• "Doctor Zhivago" Pasternak;
• "The Master and Margarita" Bulgakov."

Novella

A short story or short story is a key genre of fiction, which has a smaller volume than a story or novel. The main properties of the work include:

• the presence of a small number of heroes;
• the plot has only one line;
• cyclicality.

The creator of the stories is a short story writer, and the collection of stories is a short story.

Play

The play is a representative of dramaturgy. It is intended for display on the theater stage and in other performances. The play consists of:

• speeches of the main characters;
• author's notes;
• descriptions of the places where the main actions take place;
• characteristics of the appearance of the persons involved, their behavior and character.

The play includes several acts, which consist of episodes, actions, and pictures.

Tale

The story is a work of prosaic nature. It has no special limitations in terms of volume, but is located between a short story and a novel. Usually the plot of a story has a clear chronology and shows the natural course of the character’s life without intrigue. All attention belongs to the main person and the specifics of his nature. It is worth noting that there is only one plot line. Famous representatives of the genre:

• “The Hound of the Baskervilles” by A. Conan Doyle;
• “Poor Liza” by N. M. Karamzin;
• “The Steppe” by A.P. Chekhov.

In foreign literature, the concept of “story” is equal to the concept of “short novel”.

Feature article

Essay – concise, truthful artistic tale about several events and phenomena thought out by the author. The basis of the essay is an accurate understanding of the subject of observation directly by the writer. Types of such descriptions:

• portraits;
• problematic;
• travel;
• historical.

Opus

An opus in the general sense is a play accompanied by music. Main characteristics:

• internal completeness;
• individuality of form;
• thoroughness.

In the literary sense, an opus is any scientific work or creation of an author.

Oh yeah

Ode is a poem (usually solemn) dedicated to a specific event or person. At the same time the ode may be a separate work with a similar theme. In Ancient Greece, all poetic lyrics, even the singing of the choir, were considered odes. Since the Renaissance, this name began to be given to exclusively high-flown lyrical poems, focusing on the images of antiquity.

Vision

Vision is a genre of literature of the Middle Ages, which is based on a “clairvoyant” who talks about the afterlife and unreal images that appear to him. Many modern researchers attribute visions to narrative didactics and journalism, since in the Middle Ages a person could convey his thoughts about the unknown in this way.

These are the main types of literature in form and what their variations are. Unfortunately, it is difficult to fit all genres of literature and their definitions into a short article - there are really a lot of them. In any case, everyone understands the need and importance of reading a wide variety of works, because they are real vitamins for the brain. With the help of books, you can increase your level of intelligence, expand your vocabulary, improve memory and attentiveness. BrainApps is a resource that will help you develop in this direction. The service offers more than 100 effective exercise machines that will easily pump up your gray matter.

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, 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 to end of the XVIII 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 a hybrid or undefined genre nature began to develop especially actively: plays about which it is difficult to say whether they are a comedy or a tragedy, poems for which it is impossible to give any genre definition, except that it is a 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 ends mid-sentence, to N. V. Gogol’s “Dead Souls,” where the subtitle is paradoxical for a prose text the poem can hardly fully prepare the reader for the fact that he will now and then be knocked out of the fairly familiar rut of a picaresque novel by lyrical (and sometimes epic) digressions.

In the 20th century, literary genres were particularly strongly influenced by the separation of mass literature from literature focused on 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. No wonder that current literature, aimed at artistic search, sought to deviate as far as possible from the mass one 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 this 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 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 various countries turn to creating a poem. The “peak” works in the evolution of the romantic poem genre acquire a socio-philosophical or symbolic-philosophical character (“Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” by J. Byron, “The Bronze Horseman” by A. S. Pushkin, “Dziady” by A. Mickiewicz, “The Demon” by M. Y. Lermontov, “Germany, a winter's tale” by G. Heine).

In the 2nd half of the 19th century. the decline of the genre is obvious, which does not exclude the emergence 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) are manifested.

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, Homeric epic, medieval epic, animal epic.

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

The origin 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 size as 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, this name did not from the very beginning refer to any work in the vernacular ( heroic songs or the lyrics of the troubadours were never called novels), but to one that could be contrasted with the 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, where in European languages ​​the adjective “romantic” came from, until the end of the 18th century it meant “inherent in novels”, “such as in novels”, and only later the meaning on the one hand was simplified to “love”, but on the other hand 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 is retained later, in XVII-XVIII 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 the poetic genre, which was also destined Long story, - to romance.

Bishop Yue at the end of the 17th century, in search of the predecessors of the novel, first applied this term to a number of phenomena of ancient narrative prose, which have since also come 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 told on behalf of the person to whom it was allegedly revealed in a dream, hallucination or lethargic sleep. The core mostly consists of actual dreams or hallucinations, but already in ancient times fictional stories appeared, 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 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 propagate 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 Plowman,” which played a propaganda role in the English peasant revolution of the 14th century. But unlike Jean de Meun, a representative of the urban part of the “third estate,” Langland, the ideologist of the peasantry, turns his gaze to the idealized past, dreaming of the destruction of capitalist usurers.

As a complete independent genre, visions are characteristic of medieval literature. But as a motif, the form of visions continues to exist in the 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, Byron’s “Darkness”).

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 Allan Poe, novella, or short story (eng. short story), has special significance as one of the most characteristic genres.

In the second half XIX-XX centuries the traditions of the novella 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 action of the novel takes place in the author's contemporary 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 an unexpected turn (pointe, “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”) - genre of folklore - short funny story. Most often, a joke has an unexpected semantic resolution at the very end, which gives rise to laughter. This could be a play on words, different meanings of 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 simply 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) - a dramatic work, usually in a classical style, created to stage some 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 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 literary essay(with which an essay is often confused), on the other hand, 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, lyric and drama, genre. fiction.

Michel Montaigne introduced it as a special genre form, based on the experience of his predecessors, in his “Essays” (1580). Francis Bacon published his works in book form in 1597, 1612 and 1625 for the first time English literature gave the name to English. 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 “Antakalnios 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 have begun to appear recently on Russian television(“Our Russia”, “Six Frames”, “Give You Youth!”, “Dear Program”, “Gentleman Show”, “Town”, etc.) A striking example The sketch show is the television series Monty Python's Flying Circus.

A famous creator of sketches 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, acquiring the meaning of an 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 refers to 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 prosaic 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 French poet J. Lafontaine (XVII 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 time 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 popular name epics - " 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 are isolated from mythology public consciousness like art, literature, science, religion, political ideology etc., they hold 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 had a comprehensive influence on its early development. Naturally, literature does not part with mythological foundations even later, which applies not only to works with mythological 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. Does not have a complex, intense and complete plot point.

Story- a small form of epic prose, correlated with the story as a more developed form of storytelling. Goes back to folklore genres(fairy tale, parable); 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" It meant: list, list, exact description. Modern meaning acquired 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 a worthy attitude towards 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 fairy tales

Fantasy(from English fantasy- “fantasy”) - view fantastic literature, based on the use of mythological and fairy tale motifs. It was formed in its modern form 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. 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. A complex, long history of something, including a number 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 Latin language, a collection of these works in Latin is called Carmina - songs, they began to be called odes later.

Since the Renaissance and in the Baroque era (XVI-XVII centuries), odes began to be called lyrical works in a pathetically high style, focusing on ancient examples; in classicism, 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; classical genre 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 letters has greatly increased. Famous Roman authors of love stories 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 started new era, which has finally gone beyond rhetoric and turned to sincerity, intimacy and depth. This internal change was 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 your 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 Matisson belongs to elegies (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 told in poetic form, of a historical, mythical or heroic nature. The plot of a ballad is usually borrowed from folklore. Ballads are often set to music.

Historically, three types of literature have developed in literature: epic, dramatic and lyrical. These are groups of genres that have similar structural features. If the epic in the story fixes the external reality (events, facts, etc.), then the drama does the same in the format of a conversation, not on behalf of the author, and the lyrics describe the inner reality of a person. Of course, the division is arbitrary and to a certain extent artificial, but, nevertheless, our acquaintance with the book begins with the fact that we see the genre, gender or combination thereof on the cover and draw the first conclusions. For example, a person only likes to watch plays in the theater, which means that he does not need a volume of Moliere and will pass by it without wasting time. Knowledge of the basic principles of literary criticism also helps during reading, when you want to understand the author, penetrate into his creative laboratory, and unravel why his plan was embodied this way and not otherwise.

Each genre has an example and theoretical justification, the most concise and simple.

The novel is a large form of the epic genre, a work with expanded themes and many themes. As a rule, a classic novel depicts people participating in various life processes that give rise to external and internal conflicts. Events in the novel are not always described sequentially, for example, Lermontov in the novel “A Hero of Our Time” deliberately breaks the sequence.

By thematic basis novels are divided into autobiographical (Chudakov's "Darkness Falls on the Old Steps"), philosophical (Dostoevsky's "Demons"), adventure (Dafoe's "Robinson Crusoe"), fantastic (Glukhovsky's "Metro 2033"), satirical (Rotterdam's "In Praise of Stupidity"), historical (Pikul “I Have the Honor”), adventurous (Merezhko “Sonka the Golden Hand”), etc.

According to the structure of novels are divided into a novel in verse (Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin"), a novel-pamphlet (Swift's "Gulliver's Travels"), a novel-parable (Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea"), a novel-feuilleton ("The Countess of Salisbury" by Dumas), an epistolary novel ( Rousseau “Julia or the new Heloise”) and others.

An epic novel is a novel with a panoramic depiction of the life of the people at turning points in history (Tolstoy’s “War and Peace”).

The story is an epic work of average size (between a short story and a novel), in which the narrative of a particular event is presented in a natural sequence (Kuprin’s “The Pit”). How is a story different from a novel? At least in that the material of the story is presented chronically, and not for the sake of the action-packed composition of the novel. In addition, the story does not pose problems of a global historical nature. In the story, the author is more constrained, all his inventions are subordinated to the main action, but in the novel the writer is carried away by memories, digressions and analysis of the characters.

The story is small epic prose form. The work has a limited number of characters, one problem and one event (Turgenev “Mumu”). How is a novella different from a short story? The boundaries between these two genres are very arbitrary, but in the short story the ending most often develops unpredictably (O'Henry's "The Gift of the Magi").

Essay is small epic prose form (many classify it as a type of story). The essay usually concerns social problems and tends to be descriptive.

The parable is moral teaching in allegorical form. How is a parable different from a fable? A parable draws its material primarily from life, while a fable is based on fictitious, sometimes fantastic plots (gospel parables).

Lyrical genres are...

A lyric poem is small genre form lyrics written on behalf of the author (Pushkin “I loved you”) or on behalf of lyrical hero(Tvardovsky “I was killed near Rzhev”).

Elegy is a small lyrical form, a poem that is imbued with a mood of sadness and melancholy. Sad thoughts, sorrow, sad reflections make up the repertoire of elegies (Pushkin’s elegy “On the rocks, on the hills”).

The message is poetic letter. According to the content of the messages, they can be divided into friendly, satirical, lyrical, etc. They can be dedicated to either one person or a group of people (Voltaire’s “Message to Frederick”).

Epigram is a poem that makes fun of a specific person (from friendly ridicule to sarcasm) (Gaft “Epigram on Oleg Dahl”). Features: wit and brevity.

Ode is a poem distinguished by its solemn tone and sublime content (Lomonosov “Ode on the day of Elizabeth Petrovna’s accession to the throne, 1747”).

A sonnet is a poem of 14 verses (“Twenty Sonnets to Sasha Zapoeva” by Timur Kibirov). The sonnet is one of the strict forms. A sonnet usually consists of 14 lines, forming 2 quatrains (with 2 rhymes) and 2 tercets (with 2 or 3 rhymes).

The poem is the average lyric-epic form, in which there is a detailed plot and several experiences are embodied, that is, attention to the inner world of the lyrical hero (Lermontov’s “Mtsyri”).

Ballad is average lyric-epic form, story in verse. Often a ballad has a tense storyline (Zhukovsky’s “Lyudmila”).

Dramatic genres are...

Comedy is a type of drama in which the content is presented in a funny way, and the characters and circumstances are comical. What types of comedies are there? Lyrical (“The Cherry Orchard” by Chekhov), high (“Woe from Wit” by Griboedov), satirical (“The Inspector General” by Gogol).

Tragedy is a type of drama based on an acute life conflict that entails the suffering and death of the heroes (Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”).

Drama is a play with an acute conflict that is ordinary, not so sublime and resolvable (for example, Gorky “At the Depths”). How does it differ from tragedy or comedy? Firstly, the material used is modern, not from antiquity, and secondly, a new hero appears in the drama, rebelling against circumstances.

Tragifars - a dramatic work that combines tragic and comic elements (Ionesco, “The Bald Singer”). This is a postmodern genre that has appeared relatively recently.

A literary genre is a group of literary works that have common historical development trends and are united by a set of properties in their content and form. Sometimes this term is confused with the concepts of “type” and “form”. Today there is no single clear classification of genres. Literary works are divided according to a certain number of characteristic features.

History of genre formation

The first systematization of literary genres was presented by Aristotle in his Poetics. Thanks to this work, the impression began to emerge that the literary genre is a natural, stable system that requires the author to fully comply with the principles and canons a certain genre. Over time, this led to the formation of a number of poetics that strictly prescribed to authors exactly how they should write a tragedy, ode or comedy. For many years these requirements remained unshakable.

Decisive changes in the system of literary genres began only towards the end of the 18th century.

At the same time literary works aimed at artistic exploration, in their attempts to distance themselves as much as possible from genre divisions, gradually came to the emergence of new phenomena unique to literature.

What literary genres exist

To understand how to determine the genre of a work, you need to familiarize yourself with the existing classifications and the characteristic features of each of them.

Below is an approximate table for determining the type of existing literary genres

Division of genres by content

Classification literary trends based on content includes comedy, tragedy and drama.

Comedy is a type of literature, which provides a humorous approach. Varieties of comic direction are:

There are also comedy of characters and sitcoms. In the first case, the source of humorous content is the internal traits of the characters, their vices or shortcomings. In the second case, comedy is manifested in current circumstances and situations.

Tragedy - dramatic genre with an obligatory catastrophic outcome, the opposite of the comedy genre. Typically, tragedy reflects the deepest conflicts and contradictions. The plot is of the most intense nature. In some cases, tragedies are written in poetic form.

Drama is a special type of fiction, where the events taking place are conveyed not through their direct description, but through monologues or dialogues of the characters. Drama like literary phenomenon existed among many peoples even at the level of works of folklore. Originally in Greek, this term meant a sad event that affects one specific person. Subsequently, drama began to represent a wider range of works.

The most famous prose genres

The category of prose genres includes literary works of various lengths, written in prose.

Novel

A novel is a prose literary genre that involves a detailed narrative about the fate of the heroes and certain critical periods of their lives. The name of this genre originates in the 12th century, when knightly stories arose “in the folk Romance language” as the opposite of Latin historiography. The short story began to be considered a plot variety of the novel. At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, concepts such as detective novel, women's novel, and fantasy novel appeared in literature.

Novella

A short story is a type of prose genre. Her birth was caused by the famous collection "The Decameron" by Giovanni Boccaccio. Subsequently, several collections based on the model of the Decameron were published.

The era of romanticism introduced elements of mysticism and phantasmagorism into the short story genre - examples include the works of Hoffmann and Edgar Allan Poe. On the other hand, the works of Prosper Merimee bore the features of realistic stories.

Novella as short story with a sharp plot has become a characteristic genre for American literature.

The characteristic features of the novel are:

1. Maximum brevity of presentation.
2. The poignancy and even paradoxical nature of the plot.
3. Neutrality of style.
4. Lack of descriptiveness and psychologism in the presentation.
5. An unexpected ending, always containing an extraordinary turn of events.

Tale

A story is prose of a relatively small volume. The plot of the story, as a rule, is in the nature of reproducing natural life events. Usually the story reveals the fate and personality of the hero against the backdrop of current events. A classic example is “Tales of the late Ivan Petrovich Belkin” by A.S. Pushkin.

Story

A short story is a small form of prose work, which originates from folklore genres - parables and fairy tales. Some literary experts as a type of genre review essays, essays and short stories. Usually the story is characterized by a small volume, one plot line and a small number of characters. Stories are characteristic of literary works of the 20th century.

Play

A play is a dramatic work that is created for the purpose of subsequent theatrical production.

The structure of the play usually includes phrases from the characters and the author's remarks describing the environment or the actions of the characters. At the beginning of the play there is always a list of characters with a brief description of their appearance, age, character, etc.

The whole play is divided into large parts - acts or actions. Each action, in turn, is divided into smaller elements - scenes, episodes, pictures.

The plays of J.B. have won great fame in world art. Moliere (“Tartuffe”, “The Imaginary Invalid”) B. Shaw (“Wait and see”), B. Brecht (“The Good Man from Szechwan”, “The Threepenny Opera”).

Description and examples of individual genres

Let's look at the most common and significant examples of literary genres for world culture.

Poem

A poem is a large work of poetry that has a lyrical plot or describes a sequence of events. Historically, the poem was “born” from the epic

In turn, a poem can have many genre varieties:

1. Didactic.
2. Heroic.
3. Burlesque,
4. Satirical.
5. Ironic.
6. Romantic.
7. Lyrical-dramatic.

Initially, the leading themes for the creation of poems were world historical or important religious events and themes. An example of such a poem would be Virgil's Aeneid., “The Divine Comedy” by Dante, “Jerusalem Liberated” by T. Tasso, “Paradise Lost” by J. Milton, “Henriad” by Voltaire, etc.

At the same time, it developed romantic poem- “The Knight in Leopard’s Skin” by Shota Rustaveli, “Furious Roland” by L. Ariosto. This type of poem to a certain extent echoes the tradition of medieval chivalric romances.

Over time, moral, philosophical and social themes began to take center stage (“Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” by J. Byron, “The Demon” by M. Yu. Lermontov).

In the 19th-20th centuries the poem increasingly began become realistic(“Frost, Red Nose”, “Who Lives Well in Rus'” by N.A. Nekrasov, “Vasily Terkin” by A.T. Tvardovsky).

Epic

An epic is usually understood as a set of works that are united by a common era, nationality, and theme.

The emergence of each epic is conditioned by certain historical circumstances. As a rule, an epic claims to be an objective and authentic account of events.

Visions

This unique narrative genre, when the story is told from a person's point of view ostensibly experiencing a dream, lethargy, or hallucination.

1. Already in the era of antiquity, under the guise of real visions, fictitious events began to be described in the form of visions. The authors of the first visions were Cicero, Plutarch, Plato.
2. In the Middle Ages, the genre began to gain momentum in popularity, reaching its peak with Dante in his “Divine Comedy,” which in its form represents an expanded vision.
3. For some time, visions were an integral part of church literature in most European countries. The editors of such visions were always representatives of the clergy, thus gaining the opportunity to express their personal views, supposedly on behalf of higher powers.
4. Over time, new acute social satirical content was put into the form of visions (“Visions of Peter the Plowman” by Langland).

In more modern literature, the genre of visions has come to be used to introduce elements of fantasy.

The short story genre is one of the most popular in literature. Many writers turned to him and continue to turn to him. After reading this article, you will learn what the features of the short story genre are, examples of the most famous works, as well as popular mistakes that authors make.

A short story is one of the small literary forms. It is a short narrative work with a small number of characters. In this case, short-term events are depicted.

A Brief History of the Short Story Genre

V. G. Belinsky (his portrait is presented above) back in the 1840s distinguished the essay and story as small prose genres from the story and novel as larger ones. Already at this time, the predominance of prose over poetry was fully evident in Russian literature.

A little later, in the 2nd half of the 19th century, the essay received the widest development in the democratic literature of our country. At this time, there was an opinion that it was documentary that distinguished this genre. The story, as it was believed then, is created using creative imagination. According to another opinion, the genre we are interested in differs from the essay in the conflicting nature of the plot. After all, an essay is characterized by the fact that it is mainly a descriptive work.

Unity of time

In order to more fully characterize the short story genre, it is necessary to highlight the patterns inherent in it. The first of them is the unity of time. In a story, the time of action is always limited. However, not necessarily only one day, as in the works of classicists. Although this rule is not always followed, it is rare to find stories in which the plot covers the entire life of the main character. Even less often are works created in this genre, the action of which lasts for centuries. Usually the author depicts some episode from the life of his hero. Among the stories in which the entire fate of a character is revealed, one can note “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” (author - Lev Tolstoy) and It also happens that not the whole life is presented, but a long period of it. For example, in Chekhov's "The Jumper" a series of significant events in the fate of the heroes, their environment, the difficult development of relationships between them. However, this is given in an extremely condensed and condensed manner. It is the conciseness of the content, greater than in the story, that is common feature story and, perhaps, the only one.

Unity of action and place

There are other features of the short story genre that need to be noted. The unity of time is closely connected and conditioned by another unity - action. A short story is a genre of literature that should be limited to describing a single event. Sometimes one or two events become the main, meaning-forming, culminating events in it. This is where the unity of the place comes from. Usually the action takes place in one place. There may be not one, but several, but their number is strictly limited. For example, there may be 2-3 places, but 5 are already rare (they can only be mentioned).

Character unity

Another feature of the story is the unity of the character. As a rule, in the space of a work of this genre there is one main character. Occasionally there may be two of them, and very rarely - several. Concerning minor characters, there can be quite a lot of them, but they are purely functional. A short story is a genre of literature in which the task of the secondary characters is limited to creating the background. They can hinder or help the main character, but nothing more. In the story "Chelkash" by Gorky, for example, there are only two characters. And in Chekhov’s “I Want to Sleep” there is only one, which is impossible neither in a story nor in a novel.

Unity of the center

Like the genres listed above, one way or another they come down to the unity of the center. Indeed, it is impossible to imagine a story without some defining, central sign that “pulls together” all the others. It doesn’t matter at all whether this center will be some static descriptive image, a climactic event, the development of the action itself, or significant gesture character. The main character must be in any story. It is due to him that the entire composition is held together. It sets the theme of the work and determines the meaning of the story being told.

The basic principle of story construction

The conclusion from thinking about “unities” is not difficult to draw. The thought naturally suggests itself that the main principle of constructing the composition of a story is the expediency and economy of motives. Tomashevsky called the smallest element a motive. This could be an action, a character or an event. This structure can no longer be decomposed into components. This means that the author’s greatest sin is excessive detail, oversaturation of the text, a pile-up of details that can be omitted when developing this genre of work. The story should not dwell on details.

You need to describe only the most significant things to avoid a common mistake. It is very typical, oddly enough, for people who are very conscientious about their works. They have a desire to express themselves to the maximum in each text. Young directors often do the same thing when they stage their graduation films and performances. This is especially true for films, since the author’s imagination in this case is not limited to the text of the play.

Imaginative authors love to fill the story with descriptive motifs. For example, they depict how the main character of the work is being chased by a pack of cannibal wolves. However, if dawn begins, they always stop at describing long shadows, dim stars, reddened clouds. The author seemed to admire nature and only then decided to continue the chase. Genre fantastic story gives maximum scope to the imagination, so avoiding this mistake is not at all easy.

The role of motives in the story

It must be emphasized that in the genre we are interested in, all motives should reveal the theme and work towards meaning. For example, the gun described at the beginning of the work must certainly fire in the finale. Motives that lead astray should not be included in the story. Or you need to look for images that outline the situation, but do not overly detail it.

Features of the composition

It should be noted that it is not necessary to adhere to traditional methods of constructing a literary text. Breaking them can be spectacular. A story can be created almost on descriptions alone. But it’s still impossible to do without action. The hero simply must at least raise his hand, take a step (in other words, make a significant gesture). Otherwise, the result will not be a story, but a miniature, a sketch, a poem in prose. Another important feature of the genre that interests us is a meaningful ending. For example, a novel can last forever, but a story is constructed differently.

Very often its ending is paradoxical and unexpected. This is precisely what connected the appearance of catharsis in the reader. Modern researchers (in particular, Patrice Pavy) consider catharsis as an emotional pulsation that appears as one reads. However, the significance of the ending remains the same. The ending can radically change the meaning of the story and prompt a rethinking of what is stated in it. This must be remembered.

The place of the story in world literature

The story - which takes important place in world literature. Gorky and Tolstoy turned to him both in their early and mature periods of creativity. Chekhov's short story is his main and favorite genre. Many stories have become classics and, along with major epic works (stories and novels), are included in the treasury of literature. Such are, for example, Tolstoy’s stories “Three Deaths” and “The Death of Ivan Ilyich”, Turgenev’s “Notes of a Hunter”, Chekhov’s works “Darling” and “Man in a Case”, Gorky’s stories “Old Woman Izergil”, “Chelkash”, etc.

Advantages of the short story over other genres

The genre that interests us allows us to highlight particularly clearly this or that typical case, this or that aspect of our life. It makes it possible to depict them so that the reader's attention is completely focused on them. For example, Chekhov, describing Vanka Zhukov with a letter “to his grandfather in the village,” full of childish despair, dwells in detail on the contents of this letter. It will not reach its destination and because of this it becomes especially strong from the point of view of exposure. In the story “The Birth of Man” by M. Gorky, the episode with the birth of a child, which occurs on the road, helps the author in revealing the main idea - the affirmation of the value of life.