Characteristics and Subgenres of the Novel and Lyric Poetry

Posted on Sep 11, 2024 in Music

Gender Characteristics of the Novel

The term “novel” comes from the Italian “novella”, meaning news story or short story, which in turn comes from the Latin “Novellus”. It is an extensive narrative in prose, typically describing human events with characters and situations that are real or fictional, inspired by reality but belonging to the realm of fiction in order to entertain the reader. The novel is the latest of all literary genres. Although there were precedents in ancient times, it couldn’t be fully developed until the Middle Ages. The novel is the result of the evolution of epic poetry and the changes imposed by modern life, which lost interest in heroic tales in verse and instead wanted to explore aspects of real life presented in a simpler way. An example of this realism in the novel is “Lazarillo de Tormes” by an anonymous author (currently believed to be Diego Hurtado de Mendoza), which recounts Lazarillo’s life with its ups and downs.

Other notable works include “La Celestina” by Fernando de Rojas, a prototype of the sentimental novel. In the 17th century, we must refer to Miguel de Cervantes and his novel “Don Quixote”, considered the world’s first modern novel, blending adventure and reality. We can also highlight his “Exemplary Novels”. However, it was in the 19th century that the novel reached maturity, becoming the most important literary form of expression, considered the major narrative genre.

Features of the Novel:

  • Creates its own narrative world. This world, created by the novelist, must be credible.
  • Every novel is fiction and the product of the individual creation of a novelist who feeds their imagination with fantasy and the surrounding reality.
  • The novel is opposed to history.
  • The novel has a significant cognitive burden.
  • Manages multiple simultaneous stories. The novel has many characters and situations.
  • The novel combines narrative, description, and dialogue.

Types of Novels or Subgenres:

A) Depending on the subject matter: adventure, detective, romance, horror, science fiction, picaresque, Moorish, pastoral, Byzantine (also called books of travels – 17th century), chivalric novels or romances (16th century).

B) Depending on the target audience: trivial novel, melodramatic or serial novel, best-seller.

C) Based on the tone: satire, humor, didactic.

D) By the narrative form: autobiographical, epistolary, through dialogue, etc.

E) By the style of the work: realistic, naturalistic, existential, etc.

Elements of Narrative:

In every narrative, we can distinguish the following elements:

3.1 – Action or Plot

By action, we mean the story that unfolds before our eyes as we read the novel. The action often has the following structure:

  • Exposition: is the presentation of the characters, describing also the place and time in which the story takes place.
  • Rising Action or Knot: the conflict or action described in the exposition begins to evolve, the story becomes more complex. In the novel, there is usually a major conflict and other secondary ones.
  • Resolution: is the resolution of the conflict and the end of the events raised. The ending can be happy, positive, neutral, negative, unhappy, and may even be open.

Although we can find other structures:

  • In media res: Consists of starting the action when it is already underway, without having previously introduced the characters.
  • Reverse Structure: The author advances the outcome or end of the novel to the first pages and then recounts the events that led to that end.
  • Open Ending: The story is not fully resolved, either positively or negatively, giving the reader the impression that the action goes beyond the limits of the novel.

3.2 – Time

It is the duration of the action. An event can last as long as in real life or be summarized in a few pages, or conversely, a short event can span multiple pages. We highlight two commonly used techniques:

  • Flashback: This is a step back in time within the story.
  • Flashforward: A leap forward in time.

3.3 – Space

It is the place where the action of a novel takes place and where its characters move. It can develop in one place or several, outdoors or indoors, in rural or urban spaces, and in real or fictional settings.

3.4 – Characters

These are the real or fictitious beings created by the author, through whom they express their ideas. They carry out the actions that the narrator recounts. In a novel, there are several types of characters:

  • Primary Characters:
  • Secondary Characters:

Sometimes we find characters called “environmental”, who are not important and usually appear once or twice. And the so-called “spokesperson” is a character that conveys the author’s ideology, which can be the protagonist or a secondary character. All these characters can be presented to the reader in different ways.

3.5 – Narrator

We can distinguish various types of narrators:

Omniscient Narrator:

As the name suggests, it is a narrator who sees and knows everything, is everywhere. The omniscient narrator observes the development of events but does not participate in them. The main features of the omniscient narrator are:

  • Usually written in the 3rd person singular.
  • Comments on the characters and the actions of the events that are developing in the story.
  • Tells the readers the innermost thoughts that cross the characters’ minds.
  • Dominates the whole story, knows what happened in the past and what will happen in the future.
  • Knows the characters’ thoughts, feelings, and moods.
  • Tries to be objective and has the gift of ubiquity.

Protagonist Narrator:

The protagonist narrates the story and recounts the events from their point of view, which prevents them from being impartial when interpreting the thoughts and actions of the other characters in the narrative. This type of narrator is often used in autobiographical genres.

Witness Narrator:

Does not include subjectivity in the narrative, is a mere witness to the events, only tells what they witnessed and observed, and is most often used in narrative journalism.


Lyric Poetry

Lyric poetry has been defined as the expression of feelings through words, both written and orally. This genre is characterized by subjectivity, that is, the poet shares their thoughts and vision of reality from within. Lyric poetry is wrongly associated exclusively with feelings of love. While it’s true that this is the most frequent topic, it’s not the only one; any expression of the author’s emotions before the contemplation of the world or reality can be considered lyric poetry. This expression of feelings cannot be done in any way but is usually presented with refined techniques and aesthetics, which is why the formal characteristic of poetry is that it’s written in verse. Most poems are written in verse, although this is not an exclusive characteristic of poetry. The expression of the poet’s emotions can be carried out through a vehicle of expression, such as poetic prose. In these writings, the author dispenses with verse while still maintaining all the features of poetry: subjectivity, emotional expression, using a large number of literary devices, formal and aesthetic care, etc. Juan Ramón Jiménez’s prose poems are a prime example of this form.

Lyric poetry was born intimately linked to music, hence the term was applied to song compositions in verse sung by the poets. This is because the first poems were transmitted accompanied by a musical instrument, often a lyre. The most important features of this genre are:

  • The author conveys a particular mood.
  • A poem doesn’t necessarily tell a story, but the poet expresses an immediate and direct emotion.
  • Lyric poetry requires an effort of interpretation from the reader, who must be at least accustomed to this form of literary expression. There is usually a large accumulation of images and symbolic elements.
  • Most lyric poems are characterized by their brevity: it is rare for them to exceed one hundred verses.
  • A poem is the direct expression of the poet’s feeling to the reader.
  • Poems often conform to a formal structure: verses, stanzas, rhythm, rhyme, all subsumed under the term “metrics”.

Metrics

Metrics is the literary discipline that deals with the length of verses, their structure, their classes, and the different combinations that can be formed with them. It tries to establish the rules of verse, rhyme, rhythm, and stanzas.

Verse

We understand verse as a set of words subject to rhythm and cadence in relation to other verses. It often has pauses, accents, and rhyme, although these are not general characteristics. We consider a set of rules when measuring a verse:

  • If the verse ends with a paroxytone word, the resulting count does not change.
  • If the verse ends with a monosyllabic or oxytone word, we add a syllable to the resulting count.
  • If the verse ends with a proparoxytone word, we subtract a syllable from the resulting count.
  • If, within a verse, a word ends in a vowel and the next one also begins with a vowel or with an h, then we join them and count them as one. This link is called sinalefa.

According to the number of syllables in each verse, the name changes:

  • Minor Art: includes poems that run from the disyllabic to the octosyllabic.
  • Major Art: includes verses from the eneasílabo to the Alexandrine onwards.

Verses are usually grouped into stanzas, that is, sets of verses that have uniformity in consonant rhyme or assonance. We highlight:

  • Couplet: AA, aa
  • Tercet, Quartet
  • Quatrain: ABAB (Consonant), ABBA (Consonant), abba (Consonant), etc.
  • Redondilla: abba (Assonance)
  • Serventesio: ABAB (Consonant)

Verses are combined with the following conditions:

  • Have 2 different consonant rhymes.
  • No more than 2 consecutive verses can rhyme.
  • The strophe cannot end with a couplet.

In addition to these groups, there are poems that are a fixed and autonomous rhythmic grouping. A poem may consist of several stanzas, such as:

  • Sonnet: 14 verses of heroic verse (11 syllables) with 2 quartets and 2 tercets.
  • Romance: Assonant rhyme, the even verses rhyme and the odd ones are loose, and it has an indefinite number of verses.
  • Silva: The poet freely combines seven-syllable and heroic verses. There may be some loose verses.

Rhythm

The rhythm, both a musical and poetic phenomenon, is repeated regularly to produce an effect. In Spanish, poetic rhythm is due to the following factors:

  • The meter
  • Accents
  • Pauses

Rhyme

Rhyme is the repetition of sounds that mark the end of one of the verses that make up a poem. This repetition can be of two types:

  • Assonance: when only the vowel sounds are repeated from the last stressed vowel.
  • Consonance: when all sounds, both vowels and consonants, are repeated from the last stressed vowel.

Literary Resources

Related to the Phonic Level

  • Alliteration: repetition of sounds, especially consonants, along a line or verse.
  • Onomatopoeia: imitation of real sounds.
  • Paronomasia: use of words that sound similar but have different meanings.

Literary Resources at the Morphosyntactic Level

  • Epithets: are usually adjectives that highlight a quality of a noun that is sufficiently well known and accepted.
  • Ellipsis: omission of some elements in a line that are assumed. This resource gives the poem speed, brevity, and conciseness.
  • Hyperbaton: alteration of the logical order of words in a sentence.
  • Polysyndeton: use of more conjunctions than are necessary. It gives the verse slowness and solemnity.
  • Anaphora: repetition of one or more words at the beginning of several lines.
  • Parallelism: Repetition of the same grammatical structure in a verse or several verses.

Literary Resources at the Lexical-Semantic Level

  • Metaphor: is to name one thing with the name of another because of their resemblance, real or fictional. We are comparing what is called “real term”, and that with which we compare it “imaginary term”.
  • Metonymy: it is to name an object with the name of another, as in the two resources above, although in this case not because of similarity, but by physical or significant proximity.
  • Hyperbole: exaggeration, amplification.
  • Personification
  • Irony: expression of the opposite of what is actually thought.

Main Subgenres of Lyric Poetry

  • Satire: Short burlesque composition in which the author criticizes both individual and collective vices.
  • Epistle: A letter in verse that the poet addresses to a friend. The subject matter can be varied, although moral reflection dominates. Garcilaso de la Vega is the author of the Epistle to Boscán.