Literary Genres and Subgenres
Literary Genres
Introduction
Literary works are classified into groups according to their characteristics. These groups are known as literary genres. The three major genres are:
- Lyric: The writer expresses their feelings. Verse is the most common form of expression.
- Narrative: The writer tells a story. Prose is the most common form of expression.
- Drama: Reality is represented through characters who engage in dialogue.
Lyric
Expresses the feelings, imagination, and thoughts of the author. This is the most subjective and personal genre.
Lyric Subgenres
- Ode and Anthem: Express feelings of admiration and enthusiasm, usually in a solemn tone.
- Song and Epithalamion: Express feelings of love, both happy and sad, often set to music. The epithalamion is specifically for weddings.
- Elegy: Expresses mourning for various reasons, including love, religion, patriotism, and funerals.
- Epitaph: A short poem for a tombstone.
- Eclogue: Expresses feelings of love, often through the perspective of shepherds, idealizing the countryside.
- Satire: Ridicules the vices or defects of others, sometimes with a burlesque tone.
- Epigram: A short poem expressing a single thought, often lively and satirical.
- Letrilla: A lively and satirical poem with a refrain, often about love.
- Serrana: A poem about a traveler meeting a mountain girl who helps them find their way.
- Epistle: A poem addressed to a specific recipient, real or imagined.
- Jitanjáfora: A poem focused on sound and rhythm rather than meaning.
- Cantiga: A love song, either popular or cultured.
- Lirico Romance: An octosyllabic verse with rhyme and assonance in pairs.
Narrative
Characterized by the objectification of reality and the presence of a narrator.
Narrative Subgenres in Verse
- Epic Romance: Popular, orally transmitted, octosyllabic verse with assonance rhyme in pairs.
- Epic Poetry: High style, often celebrating nature and narrating important events.
- Cantar de Gesta: Medieval epic poem celebrating the exploits of heroes.
- Cult Epic Poem: Includes myths, legends, and traditions, often with religious or allegorical themes.
- Fable: Features animals or humanized beings and contains a moral lesson.
Narrative Subgenres in Prose
- Story: Short and intense fictional narrative focused on a single event or character.
- Fairy Tale: Emphasizes fantasy and imagination.
- Modern Tale: Offers structural and content freedom.
- Fable: Short story with a moral lesson, often featuring animals.
- Apologue: Short story of Eastern origin with a final lesson, often symbolic and featuring human characters.
Drama
Characterized by the total objectification of reality and the direct presentation of dialogue.
Drama Subgenres
- Tragedy: Features noble characters and high action.
- Comedy: Features common characters and a happy ending, aiming to provoke laughter.
- Spanish Baroque Comedy: Developed in Spain during the 16th and 17th centuries.
- Farce: Short comic piece with ridiculous characters and situations.
- Step: Comic episodes inserted between dramatic situations.
- Appetizer: Short comic piece at the beginning, middle, or end of a serious work.
- Auto Sacramental: Allegorical play focused on the Eucharist.
- Tragicomedy: Combines tragic and comic elements.
- Bourgeois and Romantic Drama: Realistic genre focused on contemporary issues.
- Miracle and Mystery Plays: Religious dramas.