Literary Genres: A Comprehensive Exploration

Posted on Mar 26, 2025 in Modern Philology. English

Literary Genres: An Overview

Lyric Genre

Lyric: Expresses feelings and thoughts, where the writer’s subjectivity prevails. Usually written in verse, but can also be in prose.

Epic Genre

Epic: Tells real or imagined events that have happened to the poet or someone else. It is highly objective in nature and traditionally expressed in verse.

Drama Genre

Drama: This genre is used in the theater, where the author outlines various conflicts through dialogue and characters. It can be written in verse or prose, and its essential purpose is representation to the public.

Poetic Forms

  • Poetic Ode: A lyrical verse composition of some length with a noble and lofty theme.
  • Elegy: A lyrical composition.
  • Eclogue: A poetic composition of the bucolic genre.
  • Satire: A composition in verse or lyric prose that censors individual or collective services.
  • The Song: A verse poem with a theme of love, but can also exalt other subjects.

Epic Subgenres

  • The Epic: Tells of a memorable action of great importance for humanity or a village.
  • Epic Poem: Recounts heroic deeds in order to glorify the country.
  • Romance: A series of assonance rhyming eight-syllable verses in pairs, which describes actions of chivalrous warriors.

Narrative Subgenres

  • The Story: Popular and anonymous, or literary. It is a short story of an invented skill, which occurred to one or more characters, with a very simple argument, sometimes with a moral purpose, also known as a fable.
  • The Novel: A long story, but of variable length, with a much more developed argument than the story. Unlike the story, the reader not only cares about what happens to the characters, but also what they think and feel, how they evolve spiritually, and how they influence the society they live in.

Drama Subgenres

  • The Tragedy: The representation of terrible conflicts between superiors and very passionate characters, who are victims of passions they cannot master, usually leading to the death of the protagonist.
  • The Comedy: The representation, through a conflict, of the happy and fun aspects of human life, with a happy outcome.
  • The Drama: The representation of serious problems, involving, at times, comic elements, and its end is often bleak.
  • Opera: A dramatic composition in which the characters sing all their parts instead of reciting them. It is a dramatic poem composed with music.
  • Zarzuela: A literary-musical work, genuinely Spanish, which combines spoken and sung scenes. Live pictures often reflect customs, popular prejudices, and political satires.

There are other genres such as public speaking and teaching. The speech is intended to dissuade, while teaching is intended to instruct.

Teaching Subgenres

  • Fable: A tale in prose or verse of a story from which you can express a moral or moral consequence; their characters are usually animals.
  • Epistle: Also possible in verse or prose, exposes a general problem from a censorious or satirical viewpoint.
  • The Essay: The most important teaching subgenre today, always written in prose, is the original and acute exposure of a scientific, philosophical, artistic, political, literary, religious, etc. subject. It is generally accessible, without requiring the reader to have special knowledge to understand it.