Literary Genres and Common Themes
Literary Genres
Item 2: Literary genres are structural models that we use to create, sort, and group different literary texts.
Lyric Genre
The author expresses their ideas and feelings subjectively.
Features:
- Use of poetic figures of style
- Expressive, evocative, and suggestive value
- Concentration and brevity
- Low presence of narrative elements; often no plot
- Rhythm and musicality
- Variety of themes and forms
Poetic Forms:
- Elegy: The author expresses grief over the death of a loved one.
- Eclogue: Expresses loving feelings through the voices of shepherds and nature.
- Ode: A poem of varying length and high pitch, addressing feelings, people, religious events, or philosophical ideas.
- Anthem: A poem to honor an outstanding person or celebrate something.
- Satire: Censures or ridicules defects or behaviors.
- Songs: Associated with music.
- Haiku: Japanese poems that speak of nature.
- Sonnet: Two stanzas of four verses presenting an idea or theme, followed by two triplets of an argumentative nature, concluding the poem.
Narrative Genre
A narrator tells a story.
Components:
- Narrator: Omniscient, character, or witness.
- Plot: May be real or fictitious, plausible or implausible.
- Structure: Introduction, conflict, action, and outcome.
- Characters:
- Presence: Protagonist, antagonist, or secondary.
- Characterization: Flat or round.
- Function: Actants or fleeting.
- Style: Direct, indirect, or free indirect.
- Time: External or internal.
- Space: Depending on location or relationship to reality.
Narrative Subgenres: Epic, story, fable, legend, travel books, biography, novel.
Novel Types: Noir or police, science fiction, horror or suspense, historical, adventure, character-driven, and romance.
Dramatic Genre
Theatrical Elements: Written text or script, director, actors, scenery.
Main Features:
- Junction between the written text and representation.
- Dual communicative situation: several transmitters and receivers.
- The character sets aside a relationship with the public.
- Verisimilitude.
- Dialogue and monologue are the forms of communication.
- Use of verbal and nonverbal codes.
Theater Subgenres:
- Tragedy, comedy, tragicomedy or drama.
- Morality play: based on episodes from the Bible.
- Melodrama: exaggerated and sentimental, with pathetic aspects.
- Farce: a comical piece intended to make people laugh, with characters and improbable situations.
- Entremés: a comic play in a single act with a humorous plot.
Literary Themes
- Religio Amoris: The woman is of divine root, and superior; man must profess faith and begin a path of improvement in her service.
- Amor Post Mortem (Love After Death): Expression of the maximum power of love. Many Baroque authors treat this theme.
- Complaints of Love: Typical of love poems. Jealousy is a variation of this theme.
- Lovesick: Love is understood as a disease.
- Odi et Amo (I Hate and Love): Love is often tied to hatred.
- Crazy in Love: Often, the lover seems to lose their mind in an attempt to win the favor of the beloved.
- Beloved as an Enemy: Images seen in the dual role of a loving relationship.
- Prison of Love: Love is presented as a desired prison.
- Locus Amoenus (Pleasant Place): Idyllic frame for many literary scenes.
- Beatus Ille (Happy is He): Seeks to depart from the madding crowd. Represents the ideal of purity, retreat, and dealing with corruption in the city.
- Aetas Aurea (Golden Age): Nostalgia for lost paradises; a search of the past.
- Equalizing Power of Death: Death treats everyone the same.
- Transience of Life: Its symbol is the rose that wilts.
- La Vida es Sueño (Life is a Dream): Life is illusory, a confusion between the conscious and the unconscious.
- Carpe Diem (Seize the Moment): A call to the enjoyment of life caused by concerns over time.
- Cotidie Morimur (We Die Each Day): Living is dying slowly.
- Ubi Sunt? (Where Are They?): Biblical theme.
- Et in Arcadia Ego (And I in Arcadia): Happiness is fleeting, and its loss causes nostalgia.