Epic genres of literature. Examples and features of the epic genre

In all forms of art there are historically formed internal divisions, large ones are species, and these smaller genres are these types.

Literary Views

All literature is divided into the following types - lyrics, epic and drama.

The lyrics received their name from a musical instrument - lyre. In ancient times the game was accompanied by reading poetry. A classic example is Orpheus.

The epic (from the Greek epos - narrative) is the second kind. And everything that goes into it is called epic genres.

Drama (from the Greek drama) is the third kind.

Even in ancient times, Plato and Aristotle attempted to divide literature by birth. Scientifically, this division was justified by Belinsky.

Recently, a set of certain independent works has been formed and separated into a separate (fourth) type of literature . These are lyric-epic genres. From the title it follows that the epic genre absorbed and transformed into itself the individual components of the lyric genre.

Examples of the artistic epic

The epic itself is divided into folk and author's. And the folk epic was the forerunner of the author's epic. Such examples of epic genres as novel, epic, novel, story, essay, short story, fairy tale and poem, ode and fantasy in aggregate represent the whole array of fiction.

In all epic genres the type of narration can be different. Depending on whose person is described - the author (the story is from a third person) or a personified character (the story is from the first person), or on behalf of some particular narrator. When the description is from the first person, there are also possible variants - the narrator can be one, there may be several of them or it can be a conditional narrator who did not take part in the described events.

Characteristic features of these genres

If the narration is from a third person, then some detachment, contemplation in the description of events, is assumed. If from the first or several persons, then there are several different views on the interpreted events and the personal interest of the characters (such works are called author's).

The characteristic features of the epic genre are the plot (presupposing a successive change of events), time (in the epic genre it assumes the existence of a certain distance between the described events and the time of description) and space. The three-dimensionality of space is confirmed by the description of portraits of heroes, interiors and landscapes.

Features of the epic genre characterize the latter's ability to include elements like lyricism (lyrical digressions) and drama (monologues, dialogues). Epic genres seem to echo each other.

Forms of epic genres

In addition, there are three structural forms of the epic - large, medium and small. Some literary scholars omit the average form, relating the story to a large one, which includes a novel and an epic. There is a notion of a novel-epic. They differ from each other in the form of narration and plot. Depending on the questions put on consideration in the novel, it can concern historical, fantastic, adventurous, psychological, utopian and social. And this is also the features of the epic genre. The number and globality of topics and questions, answers to which this literary form can give, enabled Belinsky to compare the novel with the epos of private life.

The story belongs to the middle form, and the story, short story, sketch, fairy tale, parable and even anecdote form a small epic form. That is, the main epic genres are a novel, a story and a story that literary criticism characterizes as, respectively, "a chapter, a leaflet and a line from the book of life."

Representatives of a large form of genres

Along with the above, such epic genres as poem, novella, fairy tale, essay, have their own characteristics, giving the reader an idea of a certain content. All epic genres of literature are born, reach a peak of perfection and die. Now there are rumors about the death of the novel.

Such representatives of epic genres of large forms, like a novel, epic or novel-epic, talk about the scale of the displayed events, representing both the national interest and the life of an individual against the background of these events.

The epic is a monumental work, the theme of which is always problems and phenomena of national importance. A vivid representative of this genre is the novel "War and Peace" by L. Tolstoy.

Components of epic genres

Epic poem is a poetic (and sometimes prosaic - "Dead Souls") genre, the plot of which, as a rule, is dedicated to chanting the national spirit and traditions of the people.

The very term "novel" originated from the name of the language on which the first printed works were published - Romance (Rome or Roma, where the works were published in Latin). Features of the novel can be very much - genre, compositional, artistic-stylistic, linguistic and subject. And each of them gives the right to refer the work to a particular group. There is a social novel, moralizing, cultural-historical, psychological, adventure, experimental. There is an adventure novel, there is English, French, Russian. In general, the novel - this is a large, artistic, often prose work, written according to certain canons and rules.

The average form of an artistic epic

Features of the ethical genre "story" are not only in the volume of the work, although it is called a "small romance." In the story, there are far fewer incidents. Most often it is devoted to one central event.

The story is a prosaic little work of a narrative character, describing a particular case from life. From the fairy tale he differs realism of color. According to some literary critics, the story can be called a work in which there is a unity of time, action, event, place and character. This all suggests that the story, as a rule, describes one episode that occurs with one hero at a particular time. There are no clearly defined definitions of this genre. Therefore, many believe that the story - this is the Russian name of the novel, which was first mentioned in Western literature in the XIII century and represented a small genre sketch.

As a literary genre, the novel was approved by Boccaccio in the 14th century. This suggests that the novel is much older than the story by age. Even A. Pushkin and N. Gogol, some stories were attributed to the stories. That is, a more or less clear concept that determines what a "story" is, arose in Russian literature in the XVIII century. But there are no clear boundaries between the story and the novel, except that the latter, at its very beginning, was more like an anecdote, that is, a short funny life sketch. Some of the features inherent in it in the Middle Ages, the novel preserved to this day.

Representatives of a small form of artistic epic

The story is often confused with an essay for the same reasons - the lack of a clear formulation that presupposes the existence of rules for writing. Moreover, they appeared almost simultaneously. Essay - a short description of a single phenomenon. In our time it is more a documentary story about a real event. In the name itself there is an indication of brevity - outline. Most often, essays are published in periodicals - newspapers and magazines.

Because of the mass nature of the phenomenon, it is worth noting a genre such as "fantasy", gaining popularity recently. He appeared in the 20-ies of the last century in America. The ancestor of it is Lovecraft. Fantasy is a kind of fantasy genre that does not have any scientific binding and is entirely made of fiction.

Representatives of "lyrical prose"

As noted above, in our time, a fourth literary genre of literature, such as a poem, a ballad, a song, has been added to the three literary clans . Features of this literary genus consist in combining the story line with a description of the narrator's experiences (the so-called lyric "I"). In the title of this kind is its essence - the unification of the elements of the lyric and epos into one. Such combinations have been encountered in the literature since antiquity, but these works were separated into an independent group at a time when interest in the personality of the narrator - in the epoch of sentimentalism and romanticism - began to manifest itself sharply. Lyrical epic genres are sometimes called "lyrical prose."

All kinds, genres and other literary units, complementing each other, ensure the existence and continuity of the literary process.