Characteristics of Literary Genres: A Comprehensive Guide

Posted on May 12, 2024 in Music

Characteristics of Literary Genres

Communicative Process as Literature

The text comes from a need for communication and becomes the product of a historical communication between transmitter and receiver located in time and space. The process will be determined by the situation in which communication occurs.

Besides the situation, there are other relevant elements of the literary communication process:

  • Issuer or author: It is advisable to know the vital and historical circumstances of the author to better interpret their work.
  • Recipient: The reader is the fundamental element; today, it is estimated that the receiver plays a decisive role in creating the text.

As for the message:

  • Literature requires an effort of interpretation.
  • Do not write or read like a machine. Consider the importance of literary genres and emotions.
  • Poetic language moves away from the referential and denotative and approaches the connotative, metaphoric, and symbolic.

Comparative Literature and Intertextuality

When we notice the presence of formal or thematic elements belonging to other works by the same author or different authors, we say that an intertextual relationship is produced.

When an author is inspired by a previous work of theirs or works of others, it is called intertextuality, and to study this, we rely on comparative literature.

The texts that serve as inspiration are called hypotexts, and the texts inspired by them are called hypertexts.

Literary Genres

Lyric Genre

This genre constitutes works in which the author expresses their most intimate thoughts and feelings subjectively.

Features:

  • Intensive use of the poetic function because it uses a high number of stylistic figures.
  • It is also characterized by the strong presence of the expressive function because poetry is characterized by how it uses words with evocative and suggestive value.

Other common features:

  • Concentration and brevity
  • Low presence of narrative elements
  • There is often no plot
  • Rhythm and musicality
  • Variety of themes and forms

The Verse

It consists of a set of words with a rhythmic unit that are written in a single line in the form of:

  • Stanzas (all verses)
  • In series, no verse (poems of varying numbers of verses, one scheme of rhyme)

Main Poetic Forms:

  • Elegia: Pain over the death of a loved one.
  • Eclogue: Feelings of love expressed through the mouths of shepherds.
  • Ode: Variable length poem that praises high ideals, people, feelings…
  • Hymn: Poem created to honor an outstanding person.
  • Satire: Burlesque poem that censures or ridicules vices, defects…
  • Songs: Folk songs, troubadour.
  • Haiku: Brief Japanese poetry composition that develops a theme rooted in nature.
  • Sonnet: Two quatrains (stanzas of 4 verses) that have a theme or idea followed by two tercets (stanzas of 3 verses).

Narrative Genre

A narrator tells a story and includes characters. The work takes place in a given space and time.

Components:

  • Narrated: The narrative voice that tells the story and communicates the facts to the reader.
Types:
  • Omniscient narrator: Knows what happens in the story, both internally and externally, and knows all the characters.
  • Witness narrator: Describes objectively what happens without opinion or rating.
  • Person narrator: A character constitutes the narrator.
The narrative structure:
  • Real
  • Plausible
Parties:
  • Introduction
  • Conflict
  • Action
  • Outcome (may be closed or open)
Narrative structures:
  • Linear (events sorted chronologically)
  • Nonlinear
Characters:
  • Protagonist
  • Secondary
According to characterization:
  • Flat
  • Round
According to function:
  • Highlights: (internal argument)
  • Fleeting companions of low-relief

In the dialogues between characters introduced by the narrator, types:


Direct style (the words are paropiadas character by the narrator)
Indirect speech: the words of the character is reproduced indirectly
Freestyle, the narrator takes over the character’s speech
Weather
External: real time dela objective history
Internal: narrative paces
Space
Depending on its location (close or abuierto)
According to his relationship with reality
SUBGENUS MAIN NARRATIVE
Story
Fabula
Legend
Travel Books
Biographies
Novel:
Police
Science-fiction
Horror thriller
Historical
Adventurous
Character (the action is subject to psychological analysis of character)
Romance (love)
Drama
It is an act to publoco (theater)
THEATRICAL ELEMENTS
It consists of written text and k contains dialogues usually dimensions (Eltra appear in parentheses and italics)
Director (in charge of assembling and staging)
Actors
Stage
GENDER CONSIDERATIONS OF THEATER
Double communicative situation
Work requires more issuers
Stand asides
The work is to convey the feeling of verisimilitude
The dialogue and monologue are the forms of communication
Using verbal and nonverbal codes
SUBNGENEROS MAIN THEATER
Tragedy
Comedy
Drama
Auto sacramental
Melodrama
Farce
Let
farce