Literary genres are groups of literary works that are united on the basis of formal and substantive attributes. They take shape historically, experiencing the emergence, flowering, and some decline. These include novels, short stories, elegies, feuilleton, novels, comedies, etc. The concept of literary genres is narrower than literary genera. Each literary genus contains several genres. For example, a novella short story is included in the author's epic kind of literature.
Aristotle made the first attempt to systematize literary genres in his Poetics. He presented them as something natural, established 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" by N. Boileau. Of course, from the time of Aristotle, literary genera and genres did not remain absolutely unchanged, but theorists preferred either not to notice innovations or reject them. This lasted until it became impossible to overlook the processes taking place in the literature. Some genres of literary works suddenly took off and died off just as quickly, only occasionally flashing in the creative horizon (as was the case with the ballad). Others, on the contrary, emerged from an undeserved "conclusion" (for example, a novel).
In Russian literary criticism, the theory substantiating literary genres and genera belongs to V. G. Belinsky. He distinguished three kinds, depending on the author’s approach to the way the subject of the conversation is presented: epic, drama and lyrics.
The assignment of a work to a specific genre depends on which criterion to take as a basis. If the literary genus (drama, lyrics, epic) is taken into account, then all genres are divided, respectively, into dramatic, lyrical and epic ones.
The works representing the dramatic kind of literature are comedy, drama and tragedy.
Comedy is designed to reflect something inconsistent in life, to ridicule the everyday or social phenomenon, traits of a human character, sometimes absurd behavior.
A drama is a work depicting a complex conflict that has arisen between several characters, a serious opposition between them.
Tragedy is a work in which the character of the character is revealed in a 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 (story);
- small (short story, essay, story).
Also included in this genre are fairy tales, epics, ballads, fables, historical songs and myths.
The works representing the lyrical kind of literature are the epigram, the stanzas, the ode, the elegy and the message.
Elegy is a small poem completely imbued with light sadness. The most famous elegy classics of the 19th century.
A message is a work written in the form of a poetic appeal to one person or to several people.
Ode is a poem in honor of a past or forthcoming celebration, in honor of a person characterized by enthusiasm.
In addition, at the present stage, literary scholars distinguish another lyro-epic kind of literature. It combines the features of the lyrical and epic and is represented by a poem. This work really manifests itself ambiguously. On the one hand, it tells in detail about an event, a character (like an epic), and on the other, it conveys the feelings, moods, feelings of a hero or the narrator himself, the inner world, thereby approaching the lyrics.
Recently, new genres in literature have not appeared.