Introduction to Literary Genres: Poetry, Narrative, and Drama
Literature and Literary Language
1.1 Creating a Fictional World
Literary fiction creates a world through a mimetic process. Literature is the realm of fiction, as the referents of the communicative process are within the work itself. Characters and situations may or may not have existed. In literature, creating a fictional world is achieved through literary language, often using expressive resources. Literary language revitalizes the expressive potential of language. The accumulation of resources tends to cause ambiguity and polysemy, allowing for different interpretations depending on the time and place.
1.2 Literature and Culture
Literature is a manifestation of a people’s culture and shapes their view of reality. Consider the natural language used, poetic standards specific to the period and genre, and ideological, religious, and political codes that provide diverse worldviews. Different contexts influencing interpretation should be addressed.
1.3 The Literary Message
Literature is a communication phenomenon where a sender transmits a message to a receiver. In the literary message, a communication process is established. The sender (author) sends a message to a receiver (reader), creating two communication processes. To create the message, the author combines words according to language code rules, resulting in a message dominated by the poetic function. To understand the message, the reader should know other codes (cultural, historical). It presents a delayed reception and supports unidirectional character reactions. The message doesn’t primarily aim to inform or persuade but can do so indirectly.
1.4 Literary Genre
A literary genre is a model for the author, which they can use as a base or even deconstruct to create a new horizon of expectation for the reader. Literary genres include poetry, fiction, and drama.
2. The Lyric
The lyric aims to imitate moods.
Features:
- Offers a subjective discourse, a product of internalization.
- Emotional and poetic functions predominate.
- Expresses feelings, emotions, and ideas in a poetic voice.
- Focuses on one aspect, is short, and allows for the accumulation of expressive resources.
- Presented in verse (although lyrical prose exists).
The Metric
The metric deals with the structure of verses, their classes, and combinations. A verse is a word or set of words subject to a rhythmic pattern with an accent on the penultimate syllable and a final pause. Three types of verses exist: simple, minor art, and compound. Verses are grouped into stanzas. If all verses have the same syllables, it’s an isometric stanza; otherwise, it’s heterometric. The poem can be strophic or not. If strophic, it can be monoestrofico or poliestrofico. Rhyme is the total or partial similarity of sounds. If vowels and consonants match, it’s consonant rhyme; otherwise, it’s assonance.
Narrative
Narrative includes texts that tell stories through a narrator.
Features:
- Develops a history (sequence of actions).
- Referential and poetic functions dominate.
- The story is told by a narrator belonging to the fictional world.
- Uses prose but can also use verse.
3.3 Analysis of the Story
Characterization involves four elements: actions, people, time, and space. Characters can be protagonists or secondary and have goals, involving other characters as allies or adversaries. The space, whether unique or diverse, always affects the characters’ actions. Time can range from minutes to years.
3.4 Analysis of Discourse
Discourse can be altered by three types of distortions: beginning in medias res, prolepsis, or analepsis.
Story and Discourse Time
The story’s time can differ from the time it takes to tell it, resulting in changes in pace.
Narrator and Perspective
Narration can be in the first or third person.
Types of Speech:
- Reference: Employed in descriptions, pausing to tell objectively or subjectively.
- Description: Pauses to tell objectively or subjectively.
- Poetic: Strong presence of the poetic function.
- Evaluative: Performs an assessment of another character.
- Universal: Expresses a generalization.
The Drama
Features:
- Develops a story through the characters’ words or actions.
- Appellate and expressive functions are prominent.
- Dialogue is important and can be in prose or verse.
- Transmission and reception are collective.
Drama Subgenres
Major Subgenres:
- Tragedy: Conflict involving heroism connected to ethical or religious values. The hero always succumbs to fate.
- Comedy: Comic vision where human imperfections are natural. Characters are ordinary people or even worse than real people.
- Tragicomedy: Mixes elements of tragedy and comedy. Characters are from both nobility and common people, and the story doesn’t end in catastrophe.
- Drama: Conflict less intense than tragedy. Realistic, bourgeois characters focused on contemporary problems.
- Auto Sacramental: Related to the Eucharist, linked to religious festivities, scriptures, and lives of saints.
Minor Subgenres:
- Entremés: Short, humorous work with popular characters, performed during intermissions of longer pieces.
- Farce: Comic piece outside of main performances.
- Sainete: Also known as an appetizer from the 18th century onwards.
Dramatic Representation Text
- Dialogue: Exchange of words between characters.
- Monologue: Considerable extension. The character’s speech isn’t directed at anyone but themselves.
- Aside: Not heard by other characters but by the audience.
Stage directions are instructions on nonverbal aspects of staging. The representation involves dual communication: the fiction represented on stage and the communication between actors and the audience.
Address of the Characters
It is always direct or dramatic. Speech representation includes nonverbal elements of representation.