Literary Genre– A Powerful Tool

What is Literary Genre

Genre is a category of art that can be identified by form, content, and style. In literature, genre is the classification of a work of writing by the type of writing and/or content.

Literary Genre

A literary genre is a category that authors use to describe the primary content and tone of their writing. The genre an author chooses can help them determine what type of plot, characters and setting to create. Literary genres typically describe writing styles such as poetry, essays, novels, short stories and plays. Some literary works comprise more than one type of genre, but most have a primary category they fall into. For example, a novel could be a historical fiction piece with aspects of the romance genre.

Genre in literature is the classification of a literary work by its form, content, and style into categories such as poetry, drama, Prose, fiction, and non-fiction. From there, literature can be further classified into subgenres. Each genre varies in its features and functions.

Types of Literary Genre

Poetry—This genre consists of writing that follows meter and rhythm for every line written. Another feature of the poetry genre is that writing is organized into schemes such as stanzas, meter, and/or rhyme. Subgenres of poetry include epic poetry, narrative poetry, romantic poetry, dramatic poetry, and lyric poetry.

• Paradise Lost by John Milton is an epic poem

Drama—This is a type of literature that is meant to be performed in front of an audience. Subgenres of drama include comedy, tragedy, and tragicomedy.

• Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare is a drama. Specifically, it is a tragedy.

Prose—The prose genre of literature consists of complete sentences organized into paragraphs. Prose writing is focused around telling a story consisting of characters and a plot. Prose subgenres include fiction and non-fiction.

• Essays of Elia is a collection of essays written by Charles Lamb

Fiction—This literary genre consists of writing that is not real. Rather it the creation of imagination reflecting reality. Often, fiction writers employ figurative language in order to create completely untrue events, characters, and settings which inspire readers’ imaginations.

• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is a fictional novel with a narrative plot structure.

Nonfiction—The nonfiction category is a genre in which writing ranges from academic papers to creative works. Nonfiction can be used to inform and it can also be used to tell a narrative story, like in an autobiography or memoir.

• The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Franke is nonfiction, given that it is nothing more than a historical figure’s preserved diary.

The Purpose of Genre

Genres are important because they give structure to what types of writing can be worked with. Ultimately, what genres do for readers is to classify literature into categories. This can be for the purpose of study, work, or pleasure.

Summary: What is Genre in Literature?

Genres allow forms of literature to be classified according to form, content, and style. Major genres include poetry, drama, prose, fiction, and nonfiction and each of these categories can be further broken down into subgenres. Classifying literature by genre helps foster the study and understanding of literature as a whole.

A literary genre is a category that authors use to describe the primary content and tone of their writing. The genre an author chooses can help them determine what type of plot, characters and setting to create. Literary genres typically describe writing styles such as poetry, essays, novels, short stories and plays.

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