Literary Genres, Devices, and Poetic Forms Explained
Literary Genres, Devices, and Poetic Forms
Demonstrations, “Essay: variable extension work in which we develop a topical issue giving judgments and opinions personales.
Epistle: poetry or prose, with a letter approach, which develops themes related to society or politics, so instruct, moralize, or satirize.
Fable: a short story or little anecdote with didactic purposes. It usually takes the form of a moral teaching or maximum sentence called moraleja. Its characters are almost always animals and can be written in prose or verse.
Drama
A literary genre which includes works that develop the conflict or clash of ideas by being represented before the spectator. Principal types:
- Tragedy: a play, often of high consequence, whose action is governed by a target that leads characters to a fatal and unfortunate issue.
- Comedy: an essentially funny drama almost always resolved in a happy ending, and whose essential characteristic is comic relief.
- Drama: a play that shares features of both tragedy and comedy in its actions and ending.
Other short forms are the auto sacramental (religious theme and allegorical characters), paso (comedy theme), the appetizer (comic character), the farce (popular environment and characters), opera (confluence of music, dance, scenery, art, and literature), the zarzuela (popular character, alternating recitation, music, and singing), operetta (a kind of opera that alternates dialogue with the sung parts), and vaudeville (light and carefree frame).
Epic
A literary genre which includes works that tell of the exploits of a people or its heroes. Principal manifestations:
- Epic: a long poem of collective creation, for singing, which recounts acts of war of a people or culture.
- Epic poem: a narrative in verse for singing, which celebrates the exploits of national heroes to enlarge a town or nation.
- Cantar de Gesta: a medieval epic poem, for singing or recitation, which celebrates the exploits of local heroes.
- Romance: a short poem, in oral and collective authorship, typical of the Hispanic tradition, encompassed in the old ballads.
Lyric
A literary genre bringing together works that develop a subjective reality. These creations express the feelings, thoughts, or emotions of the creator. Main events:
- Ode: a high-tone poem on various issues, which includes the reflection of the poet.
- Eclogue: a poem which includes love affairs within the framework of an idealized pastoral nature.
- Elegy: a poem which expresses the sadness and grief for the death of a person.
Narrative Genre
Literary works comprising reflect a reality outside the literary creator. Main events:
- Novel: an extensive narrative, in prose, usually fictional, that has facts about behavior and analyzes characters’ attitudes.
- Tale: a short story, condensed matter action imagery.
Poem
A literary composition consisting of an undetermined number of verses of one or more stanzas that constitute a unitary whole. Can be of two types: strophic (composed of one or more stanzas) and non-strophic. Principal types: carol, zejel, sonnet, ballad, silva.
Phonic Resources
Signs that play with sound. Classification: alliteration, onomatopoeia, paranomasia, diaphora, pun.
Lexical-Semantic Resources
Signs that play with the meaning of the words. Classification: hyperbole, tautology, antithesis, oxymoron, paradox, litotes, irony, personification, apostrophe, metaphor, allegory, comparison, periphrasis, metonymy, synesthesia.
Literary resources: Some signs that cause surprise in the recipient and reveal the poetic function. Are set at three levels of language: phonetic, morphosyntactic-semantic, and lexical.
Morphosyntactic Resources
Signs that play with the morphological categories, with the order of words, or syntactic structures. Classification: anaphora, epiphora, anadiplosis, epanadiplosis, polysyndeton, polyptoton, enumeration, parallelism, correlation, hyperbaton, chiasmus, asyndeton, ellipses, zeugma.