Literary genres

Literary genres are such groups of literary works that are combined on the basis of formal and substantial features. They are formed historically, experiencing the emergence, flowering, and some of the decline. They relate to them novels, stories, elegies, satires, novels, comedies, etc. The concept of literary genres is more narrow than literary births. Each literary genus contains several genres. For example, the novel, novel novel is included in the author's epic kind of literature.

The first attempt to systematize literary genres was undertaken in his Poetics by Aristotle. He pictured them as something regular, settled once and for all. The author was obliged only to fit into the norms of the genre to which he addressed. This understanding led to the emergence of a kind of textbooks on normative poetics. The most famous among them was the treatise "Poetic art" N. Boileau. Of course, from the time of Aristotle, literary genera and genres did not remain completely unchanged, but theorists preferred either to ignore innovations or to reject them. This lasted until you did not notice the processes taking place in the literature, it was not impossible. Some genres of literary works suddenly flew up and died away just as quickly, only occasionally flaring up on the creative horizon (as it was with a ballad). Others, on the contrary, came from an undeserved "conclusion" (for example, a novel).

In domestic literary criticism, the theory that justifies literary genres and births belongs to VG Belinsky. He singled out three kinds, depending on the author's approach to the method of representing the subject of conversation: epic, drama and lyrics.

The enumeration of a work in a particular genre depends on which criterion is taken as the basis. If we take into account the literary genus (drama, lyric poetry, epic), then all genres are divided into dramatic, lyric and epic, respectively.

The works that represent the dramatic kind of literature are comedy, drama and tragedy.

The comedy is designed to reflect something incongruous in life, to mock a domestic or social phenomenon, traits of a human character, sometimes absurd behavior.

Drama is a work depicting a complex conflict that arose between several characters, a serious opposition between them.

Tragedy is a work in which the character of an actor is revealed in the struggle leading to his death, or in conditions from which he sees absolutely no way out.

Literary works, representing the epic kind of literature, are divided into three groups:

- large (novel, epic poem and epic);

- medium (the story);

- small (short story, essay, story).

Also to this genre are a fairy tale, epic, ballad, fable, historical song and myth.

The works representing the lyrical genus of literature are epigram, stanzas, ode, elegy and message.

Elegy is a small poem, completely imbued with light sadness. The most famous elegies of the classics of the 19th century.

A message is a work written in the form of a poetic appeal to one person or to several persons.

Ode is a poem in honor of a past or a forthcoming celebration, in honor of a person, characterized by enthusiasm.

In addition, at the present stage, literary scholars distinguish one more, lyric-epic kind of literature. He combines the features of the lyrical and epic and is represented by a poem. This work and the truth manifests itself ambiguously. On the one hand, it narrates in detail about some event, the character (as well as the epic), and on the other hand it conveys the feelings, moods, experiences of the hero or the narrator himself, the inner world, thus approaching the lyrics.

Recently, new genres have not appeared in the literature.