The genre of a literary work. Types (genres) of literature What is a genre in what its symptoms

Hello dear readers of the blog site. The question of a genre as a variety of one or another is rather complicated. This term is found in music, painting, architecture, theater, cinema, literature.

Determining the genre of the work is a task that not every student can cope with. Why is genre division necessary at all? Where are the boundaries that separate the novel from the poem, and the story from the story? Let's try to figure it out together.

Genre in literature - what is it

The word "genre" comes from the Latin genus ( species, genus). Literary reference books report that:

a genre is a historically developed variety, united by a certain set of formal and substantial features.

The definition shows that in the process of genre evolution, it is important to highlight three points:

1. each genre of literature has been formed over a long time (each of them has its own history);
2. the main reason for its appearance is the need to express new ideas in an original way (meaningful criterion);
3. distinguish one kind of work from another help outward signs: volume, plot, structure, (formal criterion).

All genres of literature can be represented as follows:

These are three types of typology that help classify a work to a particular genre.

The history of the emergence of genres of literature in Russia

The literature of European countries was formed according to the principle of movement from the general to the particular, from the anonymous to the author's. Artistic creativity both abroad and in Russia was fed by two sources:

1. spiritual culture, the center of which was monasteries;
2. folk speech,.

If you look closely at the history of literature in Ancient Rus, you can see how new ones gradually come to the patericons, the lives of saints and patristic writings.

At the turn of the XIV-XV centuries such genres of Old Russian literature, as a word, walking (the ancestor of a travel novel), (a household “fragment” of a moral parable), a heroic poem, a spiritual verse. Based on oral legends, which stood out separately during the disintegration of the ancient myth into a fairy-tale epic and a realistic military story.

Interacting with foreign written traditions, Russian literature is enriched new genre forms: a novel, a secular philosophical story, an author's tale, and -, a lyric poem, a ballad.

The realistic canon brings to life a problem novel, novella, story. At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, genres with blurred boundaries are again becoming popular: essay (), essay, small poem, symbolist. Old forms are filled with original meaning, transform into each other, and destroy the set standards.

Dramatic art has a powerful influence on the formation of the genre system. Setting for theatricality changes the appearance of such genres familiar to the ordinary reader as a poem, a story, a short story and even a small lyric poem (in the era of poets of the "sixties").

It remains open in modern literature. The prospect of interaction is outlined not only within certain genres, but also within different types art. Every year a new genre appears in literature.

Literature on genera and species

The most popular classification breaks down works "by gender" (all of its components are shown in the third column in the figure at the beginning of this publication).

To understand this genre classification, it is necessary to remember that literature, like music, is worth on the "three whales"... These whales, called genera, are in turn divided into species. For clarity, we present this structure in the form of a diagram:

1. The most ancient "whale" is considered. His progenitor, who fell apart into legend and legend.
2. appeared when humanity crossed the stage of collective thinking and turned to the individual experiences of each member of the community. The nature of the lyrics personal experience the author.
3. older than the epic and lyrics. Its appearance is associated with the era of antiquity and the emergence of religious cults - the mysteries. Drama has become an art of the street, a means of releasing collective energy and influencing the masses.

Epic genres and examples of such works

The largest epic forms known to modern times are epic and epic novel. The ancestors of the epic can be considered a saga, widespread in the past among the peoples of Scandinavia, and a legend (for example, the Indian "Legend of Gilgamesh").

Epic Is a multivolume story about the fate of several generations of heroes in historical circumstances and fixed by cultural tradition.

A rich socio-historical background is required, against which the events of the private life of the heroes unfold. For an epic, such characteristics as the multicomponent plot, the connection between generations, the presence of heroes and antiheroes are important.

Since it depicts large-scale events over the centuries, it rarely contains a thorough psychological portrayal, but the epics created in the last few centuries combine these attitudes with the achievements of contemporary art. In "The Forsyte Saga" by J. Galsworthy, not only is the history of several generations of the Forsyte family described, but also subtle vivid images of individual characters are given.

Unlike the epic, epic novel covers a shorter period of time (no more than a hundred years) and tells about 2-3 generations of heroes.

In Russia, this genre is represented by the novels "War and Peace" by L.N. Tolstoy, "Quiet Don" by M.A. Sholokhov, "Walking through the agony" by A.N. Tolstoy.

To medium forms epics include a novel and a story.

The term " novel"Comes from the word" Roman "(Roman) and reminds of the antique, which gave birth to this genre.

The example of an antique novel is Petronius' Satyricon. In medieval Europe, a rogue novel is spreading. gives the world a romance journey. Realists develop the genre and fill it with classical content.

At the turn of the XIX-XX centuries, the following appear types of novels:

1. philosophical;
2. psychological;
3. social;
4. intellectual;
5. historical;
6. love;
7. detective;
8. adventure novel.

There are many novels in the school curriculum. Citing examples, name the books of I.A. Goncharov's "An Ordinary History", "Oblomov", "Break", works by I.S. Turgenev "Fathers and Sons", "Noble Nest", "On the Eve", "Smoke", "Nov". The genre "Crime and Punishment", "The Idiot", "The Brothers Karamazov" by FM Dostoevsky is also a novel.

The story does not affect the fate of generations, but has several storylines developing against the background of one historical event.

"The Captain's Daughter" A.S. Pushkin and "The Overcoat" N.V. Gogol. V.G. Belinsky spoke about the primacy of narrative literature in the culture of the 19th century.

Small epic forms(story, essay, short story, essay) have one storyline, a limited number of characters and are characterized by a short volume.

For example, the stories by A. Gaidar or Yu. Kazakov, the short stories by E. Po, essays by V.G. Korolenko or an essay by V. Wolf. Let's make a reservation, sometimes it "works" as a genre of scientific style or journalism, but has artistic imagery.

Lyric genres

Large lyrical forms represented by a poem and a wreath of sonnets. The first is more story-driven, which makes it akin to an epic. The second is static. In a wreath of sonnets, consisting of 15 14 lines, a topic and the author's impressions of it are described.

In Russia, poems are of a socio-historical nature. "The Bronze Horseman" and "Poltava" by A.S. Pushkin, "Mtsyri" M.Yu. Lermontov, "Who Lives Well in Russia" by N.A. Nekrasov, "Requiem" by A.A. Akhmatova - all these poems lyrically describe Russian life and national characters.

Small forms of lyrics are numerous. This is a poem, canzona, sonnet, epitaph, fable, madrigal, rondo, triolet. Some forms originated in medieval Europe (the lyric poetry in Russia especially fell in love with the sonnet genre), some (for example, the ballad) became the legacy of the German romantics.

Traditionally small poetic works are usually divided into 3 types:

1. philosophical lyrics;
2. love lyrics;
3. landscape lyrics.

V Lately urban lyrics also stood out as a separate subspecies.

Dramatic genres

Drama gives us three classic genres:

1. comedy;
2. tragedy;
3. the drama itself.

All three forms of performing arts originated in Ancient Greece.

Comedy was originally associated with religious cults of purification, mysteries, during which a carnival performance unfolded on the streets. The sacrificial goat "comos" walking along the streets with the artists, later called the "scapegoat", symbolized all human vices. They should, according to the canon, be ridiculed by comedy.

Comedy is the genre "Woe from Wit" by A.S. Griboyedov and "The Minor" by D.I. Fonvizin.

There are 2 types of comedy: comedy provisions and comedy characters... The first played with circumstances, passed off one hero for another, had an unexpected outcome. The second pushed the characters against an idea or task, creating a theatrical conflict on which the intrigue was held.

If during a comedy the playwright was expecting the healing laughter of the crowd, then tragedy made it her task to cause tears. She was obliged to end with the death of the hero. Empathizing with the heroes, spectator or cleansing.

"Romeo and Juliet" and "Hamlet" by W. Shakespeare were written in the genre of tragedy.

Actually drama- This is a later invention of drama, removing therapeutic tasks and making the installation for subtle psychologism, objectivity, play.

Definition of the genre of a literary work

How was the poem "Eugene Onegin" called a novel? Why did Gogol define the novel Dead Souls as a poem? And why is Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard" a comedy? Genre notations are clues that remind you that there are good directions in the art world, but, fortunately, there are no beaten paths forever.

Above is a video that helps to determine the genre of a particular literary work.

Good luck to you! See you soon on the pages of the blog site

You may be interested

What is a story What is epic and what genres of epic works exist What is prose What is a novel What is lyrics What is satire in general and in literature in particular What is folklore and what genres does it include What is fiction What is a libretto

Comparative analysis of various definitions of the genre (dictionary definitions, definitions of E.I. Pronin, L.E. Kroichik, A.A. Tertychny). The concept of "genre features" ("genre-forming factors"). Signs of genres in the concepts of various researchers (traditional concept, concepts of E.I. Pronin, A.A. Tertychny, L.E. Kroichik, S.M. Gurevich, M.N. Kim). Groups of journalistic genres (texts): traditional approach, “intergroup” genres by A.A. Tertychny, the approach of L.E. Kroichik. Journalistic genres as a system. Diffusion of genres as an important modern trend in the development of the system of journalistic genres.

Social practice and journalistic text. - M., 1990.

In literary studies by genres they mean "the types of works that have developed in the development of literary literature."

E. I. Pronin: genres are historically formed, integral, relatively stable types of a single type of text, differing in the way of mastering life material.

A.A. Tertychny: genres are stable groups of publications united by similar content-formal features.

L.E. Crochet:

Genre - special form of organization of life material, which is a specific set of structural and compositional features.

Genre - category epistemological. The appearance on the newspaper page (on the air of radio and TV) of a particular genre is always determined by the tasks that the publicist solves - what is learned, at what level, for what purpose and by what means.

Genre - category axiological, that is, containing a certain assessment of reality by a publicist: any text either affirms or denies something. Genre - category creative and constructive. The interpretation of facts, situations, problems by a publicist creates the text as a certain model of the world. Since this interpretation is different for different authors, the publicistic text each time creates a new idea of ​​reality in the form of a conceptual-figurative model of it.

So, journalistic genre- This is a relatively stable structural and content organization of the text, due to a kind of reflection of reality and the nature of the attitude of the creator to it.

As noted above, journalistic genres mean stable types of publications, united by similar content-formal features. These kinds of signs are called genre-forming factors: 1) the subject of display ("what?"). There are texts, which are based on the primary reality, and texts, which are based on the so-called. "Secondary" reality, i.e. something already created by someone; 2) target setting / function ("for what?"), Which is determined by different goals of the publication; 3) display method ("how?", "How?", "With the help of what?").

A.A. Tertychny highlights:

· Information genres They are distinguished by special methods and techniques for transmitting information, consisting in the narration, in the so-called "telegraph style" of real facts in the context of real time. Information genres include: newsreels, extended information, notes, remarks, reports, epistolary genres, interviews and reportage.

· Analytical genres- this is a wide canvas of facts that are interpreted, generalized, serve as material for posing a specific problem and its comprehensive consideration and interpretation. Analytical genres include: correspondence, article, review review.

· Artistic and journalistic genres differ from others in that they have artistry and journalism. Sketch, portrait, political portrait, essay.

L.E. Crochet: Sometimes texts are grouped according to the methods of collecting and processing information: "reporter journalism", "figurative journalism", "commentary journalism". Meanwhile, whatever classification is proposed, a publicistic text certainly includes three essential components: a) message about news or an arisen problem; b) fragmentary or thorough understanding of the situation; c) techniques of emotional impact on the audience (at the logical-conceptual or conceptual-figurative level). In this regard, the texts appearing in the press can be divided into five groups:

1) operational news - a note in all its varieties;

2) operational research - interviews, reports, reports;

3) research news - correspondence, comment (column), review;

4) research - article, letter, review;

5) research-figurative (artistic and journalistic) - essay, essay, feuilleton, pamphlet. Diffusion / interpenetration(graphic elements of another genre are added to the text-forming genre; not mixing of genres, but enrichment) is an important modern trend in the development of the system of journalistic genres.

16. Information genres of journalism. general characteristics and an overview of the main genres.

Information as a generic concept for a group of information genres. Socio-communicative prerequisites for the emergence of the development and differentiation of genres. The history of the development of a note, report, interview, reportage. Reporting facts, informing about them is the main function of information genres, their efficiency, topicality, relevance. Structural organization of information genres according to M.N. Kim. Disputes of scientists about the composition of the group of information genres: the views of B.V. Streltsova, L.E. Kroychik, V.V. Voroshilov, A.A. Tertychny. The main trends in the development of information genres.

Gurevich S.M. Newspaper number. - M., 2002.

Kim M.N. Genres of modern journalism. - SPb., 2004.

Fundamentals of the creative activity of a journalist. - SPb., 2000.

Streltsov B.I. Fundamentals of journalism. Genres. - Minsk, 1990.

Tertychny A.A. Genres of periodicals. - M., 2000.

Information - it is the entire set of information that journalism carries to its audience, regardless of the way it is presented. Properties of journalistic information: 1) social; 2) ideologically rich; 3) documentary reflecting reality (reliance on facts, accuracy in displaying phenomena); 4) efficiency; 5) brevity; 6) analyticity.

Genres- stable groups of publications, united by similar content-formal features.

Genre Information Group is distinguished by a general characteristic - by appointment: promptly report facts of reality. Pithy a sign of information genres is a topical fact. Information can be general (which satisfies the interests of all readers) and elective (more specialized information).

Texts related to information genres are quantitatively the bulk of mass information flows... In the periodicals, as well as in the media in general, such texts are the main carriers of operational information, allowing the audience to carry out a kind of constant monitoring of the most significant, interesting events in a particular sphere of reality. Comprehensiveness, completeness of this monitoring is facilitated by the genre variety of information messages.

There are many definitions of genre. "Genre," writes E. I. Pronin, "a type of journalistic publications, distinguished in the flow of press, television, radio broadcasting, advertising, etc., by stable methods of organizing the text: the selection of material and the nature of interpretation, which are predetermined by the interests of the audience and intentions. author ". "An ideal type or a logically constructed model of a particular literary work, which can be considered as its invariant, that is, when we not only state the fact that this work belongs to it, but also explain what its essence is," the author of the article says. Genre "in the Dictionary of Actual Terms and Concepts" by ND Tamarchenko. "Genres of journalism," emphasizes E. V. Akhmadulin, "are a kind of formal-meaningful models of texts that have developed in journalistic practice and designate the type of journalistic work."

And here is what EP Prokhorov writes about genres: “Being historically established, stable creative forms, the genres of journalism are not frozen, not dead forms, they are capable of change and development.<...>Within the framework of the genre specificity of his decision, the publicist will have to creatively process the isolated fragment of reality and express his understanding, assessment and his opinion about this fragment. Moreover, in the creative process, he equally uses figurative and emotional means, and logical-conceptual ones. "Finally, in the Russian-German reference book" Genres of Journalism in Germany and Russia "genres are considered as" more or less stable, which have become familiar and formally standardized through textbooks. storytelling in professional journalism.<...>Genres are working techniques that can be learned. "

It is easy to see that in all the definitions of the genre, researchers pay attention to the fact that the genre has some stable features, that they are the working tool of the author investigating the real reality, and that they have a number of typified features. Essential type-forming characteristics of the genre these are: subject, function, method, content, form.

Subject the basis of the genre is a concrete fragment of reality, which, from the point of view of the author, is of interest to the audience. The subject of research in the genre is the individual facts of reality, certain events, problems, characters, ideas, processes taking place in society. An essential feature of the subject of research in a publicistic work is its selection by the author for the upcoming dialogue with the audience. The selection of life material by the author is the first stage in the analysis of reality, the first step towards its comprehension.

AP Chekhov wrote: "An artist observes, chooses, guesses, composes - these actions alone presuppose questions at the beginning. If from the very beginning he did not ask himself a question, then there is nothing to guess about and nothing to choose." The above applies not only to artistic creativity, but also to publicistic creativity. In publicistic work, the real situation and its analysis by the subject of the statement are inseparable. The situational nature of the statement is the basis of a publicistic speech. Chekhov's verbs "observes", "chooses", "guesses", "composes" convey the essential content of any creative process. The predetermination of the author's research is associated with the tasks set by the author.

Functions a publicistic statement, embodied in a specific genre, - identifying the laws of what is happening, establishing cause-and-effect relationships that gave rise to a given fact, event, problem; providing the audience with the opportunity to feel the relevance of the picture of the world reproduced by the author, helping the reader, listener, viewer in developing their attitude to reality.

In the very general view the function of a publicistic work is to comprehend the laws of the social and moral life of society within the limits of the possibilities that a particular genre provides. The resources of this comprehension are different in each genre. A note, fixing a fact, pushes the audience to self-comprehend it. The article, with its system of reasoning, offers the audience a variant of the author's detailed study of what is happening; the sketch reproduces a figurative picture of the described situation.

The nature of the knowledge of the world carried out by the author depends on method, used by him in research, comprehension of reality. The method of publicistic research is based on the movement from fact to phenomenon, understanding the individual as typical. The very selection of vital material, taken by the author for comprehension, contains the resources of future analysis arising from the nature of a particular genre.

Generalization resources in journalistic genres are as follows:

• - reliance on representative facts of reality, giving an idea of ​​the essence of the processes taking place in society;
• - a system of logical reasoning (thesis - argumentation - demonstration - conclusion), characteristic of most genres;
• - comparison of outwardly heterogeneous facts, allowing to see a certain problem behind their totality;
• - building analogies, associative, comparative system of reasoning, including both figurative narrative resources and conceptual resources;
• - the creation of a figurative picture of what is happening (fictionalization of a fact), which allows the audience to visualize what the author of the work invites it to see, understand and comprehend.

The research options proposed by the publicist determine content works in various modifications: the content of the text is a model of the real world in the form in which it is fixed by the perceiving consciousness. To put it quite simply, the content of a publicistic work is objective reality perceived by a publicist. So, the method of research in journalism is the transformation of the real world into a kind of virtual model that makes up the content of a journalistic text. Naturally, this content is cast into specific genre forms.

Form genre is a system of compositional and stylistic techniques, with the help of which the publicist fixes his idea of ​​the world around him and the processes taking place in it. The most important features of the form are the nature of the narrative, the aesthetic fixation of the author's modality, the structure of the narrative (including the heading complex), individual characteristics the author's word. It should be emphasized that the form of a publicistic work is inextricably linked with its content. The unity of form and content (meaningfulness of form) is an indispensable property of a journalistic statement.

The integrity of a publicistic work is ensured by the interaction of all its nature-forming concepts - subject, function, method, content and form. In this regard, the position of EI Pronin, who brings the structural features of the text beyond the genre, does not seem convincing enough. “The genre,” the researcher writes, “is undoubtedly very important for the adequate expression of the semantic basis of a journalistic work. But it can hardly be called a structural element of the text.<...>“Fact”, “image”, “postulate”, “basic idea”, “working idea”, “journalistic image”, on the one hand, and genres of journalism, on the other, dialectically interact with each other and oppose each other as expressive means the structural level and expressive means of the structuring level. The first reflect the patterns, the product of the typological structure of the journalistic text. The second is the patterns of its opening and the inclusion of the text in a specific communicative situation of social practice. "

Genre is not just "a way to adequately express the semantic basis of a journalistic work", it is also a special way of aesthetic organization of the author's ideas about the world around him. And an integral part of this organization is an image, the creation of which is unthinkable without expressive means, in which the structure of the narrative is an indispensable feature. The opening of the limits of the text and its inclusion in a specific communicative situation is an essential property of the publicistic image. In this case, it is not so much about two approaches to defining the concept of "genre" as about understanding that the genre as a category of poetics is "relatively stable types of utterances" and that these utterances are based on their stylistic features.

Speaking about the genre as a category of poetics of journalism, one can single out a number of features that unite this category into a kind of unified whole, which has common properties and functions.

Genre - category historically specific. Genres, how people are born, developed, renewed; decrepit, they die in order to re-emerge over time. Μ. M. Bakhtin wrote: "A genre lives in the present, but always remembers its past, its beginning. Genre is a representative of creative memory in the process of literary development." This observation also applies to journalistic genres. Who Needs an Editorial Today - This Pointing Finger state power, if the autocratic gradation of subordination of the press, characteristic of Soviet times, has disappeared? The domestic press arose at one time as an instrument of influence on society. Today, power and society are divorced. The propaganda function of the media has been weakened, the corresponding genres and their varieties have gone into the shadows - editorial, editorial, press review, review, correspondence.

Genre - special form of organization of life material. This organization is carried out along two axes: problem-thematic and structural-communicative. EI Pronin rightly noted: "A journalistic work as a type of message is, firstly, a presentation of current phenomena and circumstances of public life, and secondly, a biased interpretation of their meaning according to the laws of mass communication." The problem-thematic axis is the comprehension of the event space of the work, the reading of reality with the help of a particular system signs. The structural-compositional axis is the building of the narrative in accordance with the genre possibilities of the analysis.

Genre - optimal a way to solve a specific creative problem. The effectiveness of solving this problem depends primarily on the nature of the dialogue between the author and the audience. The nature of an effective dialogue is ensured by the intelligibility of the provisions formulated by the author expressing his position, and those features of the presentation that involve the text in meditation, invite for co-reflection. In this regard, let us refer to the note "A soldier died in a military unit iodine Krasnodar" (Izvestia. 25.07.2006).

The incident took place in military unit No. 3373 in the city of Zheleznogorsk. As Izvestia was told in the military prosecutor's office of the Siberian Military District, one of the two conscripts on guard accidentally pulled the trigger and shot a comrade in the head.

- There is no talk about hazing - both guys had six months to serve, - the prosecutor's office emphasized.

Over the past two years, there have already been several tragic cases, most of which were regarded as suicide.

Veronika Baghramyan.

At first glance, an ingenuous narrative about a frequent incident, unfortunately: the whole country knows that in the Russian armed forces they kill not only during military operations. But the essence of the article is not only about the news item. The author arranges the text of the note as correspondence. The headline serves as an information lead - "A soldier died in a military unit near Krasnodar." The author knows that the soldier was killed, but the headline does not say so. Veronika Baghramyan writes "perished". Death can be heroic. The reader is invited to read. The intonation of the narration is emphatically epic: the geographical coordinates of the unit where the conscript was killed, the unit number, a small detail - they were killed by a shot in the head by accident. But - at the post.

The savvy reader guesses: another case of bullying. "There is no talk of hazing here," people from the military prosecutor's office reassure. As if the parents of the deceased (and us, the readers) find it easier that in the Russian army one can die from an accidental shot in the head? But how did the sentry at the post manage to shoot in the head? After all, the automatic at the sentry, according to the charter of the guard service, must be behind his back. In extreme cases, on the chest. Did two colleagues play with weapons who had six months to serve? But what about the charter? The final phrase removes all questions: "Over the past two years, several tragic cases have already occurred in this part, most of which were regarded as suicide." Does suicide look "nicer" than murder in the reports of the unit commander? Or is suicide a purely psychological problem generated by the unstable psyche of conscripts?

And by the way (and the newspaper "Izvestia" wrote about this shortly before the publication of the article) in Zheleznogorsk there is a plant for the processing and disposal of nuclear weapons decommissioned from combat duty. Behind all this reticence one can feel the breath of a very serious strategically important problem: something unfavorable is happening in the country's armed forces. And the fathers-commanders put up with this trouble.

Genre - category typological, those. the genre has a set of recurring stable features. Trait persistence is not only a sign of genre vitality, but also the ability to support genre audience expectations. The rights of NS Valgin, who drew attention to the fact that the text "turns out to be both the result of the activity (of the author) and the material for the activity of (the reader-interpreter)." The foregoing applies to the text of any genre - from notes to essays. Any genre, we recall, contains not only the "event of telling", but also the "event of perception". There is, of course, a gap between these two events, allowing the audience to expand the meaning of the author's utterance inherent in the perception of the thinking audience.

The typological principle in a genre is realized primarily in the aesthetic quality prevailing in each genre. In the note, such a predominant aesthetic quality is the extremely limited chronotope of the narrative: time-space is compressed to the limits of an event that has exhausted its information resource. In the interview, the predominant aesthetic quality was recorded in a demonstrative two-part voice. In the reportage, the dominant quality is the famous "presence effect"; in correspondence - personally observed facts, united by the author's reflections; in the article is a system of the broadest possible generalizations based on information gleaned from the most various sources... In the view of the audience, they offer panoramic image events; in a comment - a response to what happened; in the column - the most subjective statement of the author about what happened; in the feuilleton - a comic allegory; in the sketch - an emotionally colored narration; in a theatrical review - a figurative analysis of a work of art; in the essay - the experience of the subject of the statement; the letter contains a public demonstration of the controversy between the addressee and the addressee.

Literary critic S. S. Averintsev reasonably call the typological property of the genre "genre inertia".

Genre - category epistemological. The cognitive specificity of the genre lies in the fact that it reflects reality not in a mirror, but fixes the attitude of the subject of the statement to this reality. The appearance of the genre on the newspaper page (as well as on television and radio) is always justified by the tasks that the publicist is currently solving. The solution to these problems depends on what exactly is being cognized, at what level, for what purpose and by what means. V. Solganik is right when he remarked that a genre is "always an orientation towards a certain type, a way of depicting, the nature and scale of generalizations, a kind of approach, an attitude to reality."

One and the same fact, one and the same phenomenon can become the subject of research in different genres, depending on the tasks facing the publicist and his real capabilities. It is impossible to write correspondence and reportage without having been at the scene of the event - these genres require the reproduction of personally observed facts (the so-called facts of the first information order), you cannot create a travel sketch using only the information of the participants in the trip. But the most important thing: the cognitive basis of any genre is that level of perception of reality, which determines the degree of interest in comprehending the world of the creator of the text himself. The genre grows out of the obvious desire of a publicist to see, hear, feel, understand something.

Genre - category morphological. Publicistic works are a special form of the existence of a work (morphology is the science of the structure and form of a thing). The amount of information in each genre is different, the nature of its assessments, too. The morphology of the genre is, first, the determination of the place of the fact in the narrative; secondly, the specifics of the development of the problem (the nature of the conflict); thirdly, the narrative features of the story (its conceptual-figurative structure); fourth, the structure of the narrative (composition, interaction of the described and narrative components, the architectonics of the text).

Genre - category axiological. The genre contains an assessment of the described facts, events, problems, processes, ideas. The publicist's point of view can be explicitly expressed or latent (hidden), but it is always present or implied. A publicistic work is a statement with a specific purpose, its character directly depends on the worldview and attitude of the subject of speech. That is why one and the same fact or problem is analyzed in different ways (and perceived too). The multidirectionality of assessments of what is happening is determined not so much by an information failure (the lack of information received often affects the nature of its assessment), but by the ideological attitudes on which the publicist relies.

Genre - category creatively constructive. The specificity of displaying reality in a publicistic work is associated with the fact that the author presents the audience with a personal view of the world, his model of the world or its individual fragments. The publicist strives for reliable knowledge and reproduction of reality. But if a fact, as is known, is invariant, then its interpretation is variant. The text initially assumes the presence of a subjective component within its limits. That is why, considering the documentary nature of the journalistic genre, it is possible to use the concept of "reliance on facts", but not "facts and only facts." This concept expands the creative limits of the narrative, giving the publicist the opportunity to reconstruct events, state hypotheses, predict situations, thereby encouraging the audience to co-creation.

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Literary genre is a group of literary works that have common historical development trends and are united by a set of properties in their content and form. Sometimes this term is confused with the concepts of "kind" "form". Today there is no single clear classification of genres. Literary works are subdivided according to a certain number of characteristic features.

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The history of the formation of genres

The first systematization of literary genres was presented by Aristotle in his Poetics. Thanks to this work, the impression began to form that the literary genre is a natural, stable system that requires the author to fully comply with the principles and canons a certain genre. Over time, this led to the formation of a number of poetics, strictly prescribing to authors exactly how they should write a tragedy, ode or comedy. For many years, these requirements remained unshakable.

Decisive changes in the system of literary genres began only towards the end of the 18th century.

At the same time, literary works aimed at artistic search, in their attempts to move away from genre divisions as much as possible, gradually came to the emergence of new phenomena, unique for literature.

What literary genres exist

To understand how to determine the genre of a work, it is necessary to familiarize yourself with existing classifications and characteristic features each of them.

Below is an example table to determine the type of existing literary genres.

by birth	epic	fable, epic, ballad, myth, short story, story, story, novel, fairy tale, fantasy, epic
	lyrical	ode, message, stanzas, elegy, epigram
	lyro-epic	ballad, poem
	dramatic	drama, comedy, tragedy
by content	comedy	farce, vaudeville, interlude, sketch, parody, sitcom, comedy of riddles
	tragedy
	drama
in form	visions short story story epic story anecdote novel ode epic play essay sketch

Separation of genres by content

Classification of literary movements based on content includes comedy, tragedy, and drama.

Comedy is a kind of literature which provides a humorous approach. Varieties of the comic direction are:

There is also a comedy of characters and a sitcom. In the first case, the source of humorous content is the internal traits of the characters, their vices or shortcomings. In the second case, the comic is manifested in the prevailing circumstances and situations.

Tragedy is a dramatic genre with the obligatory catastrophic denouement, the opposite of the comedy genre. Tragedy usually reflects the deepest conflicts and contradictions. The plot is as tense as possible. In some cases, tragedies are written in poetic form.

Drama is a special kind of fiction, where the events taking place are conveyed not through their direct description, but through monologues or dialogues of the actors. Drama as a literary phenomenon existed among many peoples even at the level of works of folklore. Originally in Greek, the term meant a sad event that struck one particular person. Subsequently, the drama began to represent a wider range of works.

The most famous prose genres

The category of prose genres includes literary works of various sizes, performed in prose.

novel

The novel is a prosaic literary genre that implies a detailed narration about the fate of the heroes and certain critical periods of their lives. The name of this genre dates back to the 12th century, when chivalric stories were born "in the popular Romance language" as the opposite of Latin historiography. The novel began to be considered a plot variety of the novel. At the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries, such concepts as a detective novel, a woman's novel, and a science fiction novel appeared in literature.

Novella

Novella is a kind of prose genre. The famous collection "Decameron" Giovanni Boccaccio... Subsequently, several collections were released on the model of "The Decameron".

The era of romanticism introduced elements of mysticism and phantasmagorism into the novel genre - examples are the works of Hoffmann, Edgar Allan Poe. On the other hand, the works of Prosper Mérimée carried the features of realistic stories.

Novella as short story with a poignant plot became a characteristic genre for American literature.

The characteristic features of the novel are:

1. Maximum brevity of presentation.
2. The sharpness and even the paradox of the plot.
3. Neutrality of style.
4. Lack of descriptiveness and psychologism in the presentation.
5. An unexpected outcome, always containing an extraordinary turn of events.

The story

A story is a prose of a relatively small volume. The plot of the story, as a rule, has the character of reproducing the natural events of life. Usually the story reveals the fate and personality of the hero against the backdrop of ongoing events. A classic example is "The Tale of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin" by A.S. Pushkin.

Story

A story is a small form of a prose work, which originates from folklore genres - parables and fairy tales. Some literary specialists as a kind of genre consider an essay, essay and short story... Usually the story is characterized by a small volume, one storyline and a small number of characters. Stories are typical for literary works of the 20th century.

Play

A play is a dramatic work that is created for the purpose of subsequent theatrical performance.

The structure of the play usually includes the phrases of the characters and the author's remarks describing the environment or the actions of the characters. There is always a list of characters at the beginning of the play. With brief description their appearance, age, character, etc.

The whole play is divided into large parts - acts or actions. Each action, in turn, is subdivided into smaller elements - scenes, episodes, pictures.

The plays of J.B. Moliere ("Tartuffe", "The Imaginary Sick") B. Shaw ("Wait and See"), B. Brecht ("The Good Man from Sézuan", "Threepenny Opera").

Description and examples of selected genres

Let's consider the most common and significant examples of literary genres for world culture.

Poem

A poem is a large poetic work that has a lyrical plot or describes a sequence of events. Historically, the poem was "born" from the epic

In turn, a poem can have many genre varieties:

1. Didactic.
2. Heroic.
3. Burlesque,
4. Satirical.
5. Ironic.
6. Romantic.
7. Lyric and dramatic.

Initially, the leading themes for the creation of poems were world-historical or important religious events and themes. An example of such a poem is Virgil's Aeneid, Dante's Divine Comedy, Jerusalem Liberated by T. Tasso, Paradise Lost by J. Milton, Henriad by Voltaire, etc.

At the same time, a romantic poem developed - "The Knight in the Leopard's Skin" by Shota Rustaveli, "Furious Roland" by L. Ariosto. This kind of poem to a certain extent echoes the tradition of medieval knightly romances.

Over time, moral, philosophical and social themes began to come to the fore ("Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" by J. Byron, "The Demon" by M. Yu. Lermontov).

In the XIX-XX centuries, the poem increasingly begins become realistic("Frost, Red Nose", "Who Lives Well in Russia" by NA Nekrasov, "Vasily Turkin" by AT Tvardovsky).

Epos

It is customary to understand an epic as a set of works that are united by a common era, national identity, and theme.

The emergence of each epic is due to certain historical circumstances. As a rule, the epic claims to be objective and reliable in the presentation of events.

Visions

This kind of narrative genre when the plot is presented from the perspective who is allegedly experiencing a dream, lethargy or hallucination.

1. Already in the era of antiquity, under the guise of real visions, fictional events began to be described in the form of visions. The authors of the first visions were Cicero, Plutarch, Plato.
2. In the Middle Ages, the genre began to gain momentum in popularity, reaching its heights with Dante in his "Divine Comedy", which in its form represents an expanded vision.
3. For some time, visions were an integral part of church literature in most European countries. The editors of such visions have always been representatives of the clergy, thus having received the opportunity to express their personal views, allegedly on behalf of higher powers.
4. Over time, a new acutely social satirical content was put into the form of visions ("The Vision of Peter the Ploughman" by Langland).

In more recent literature, the genre of visions has come to be used to introduce elements of fiction.

All literary genres are unique, each of which has a complex of qualities and characteristics inherent exclusively to it. Their first known classification was proposed by Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher and naturalist. In accordance with it, the basic literary genres can be assembled into a small list, which is not subject to any changes. The author, working on any work, must simply find similarities between his creation and the parameters of the specified genres. Over the next two millennia, any changes in the classifier developed by Aristotle were taken with hostility and considered a shift from the norm.

In the 18th century, a large-scale literary restructuring began. The rooted types of the genre and their system began to undergo major changes. The current conditions became the main prerequisite for the fact that some genres of literature have sunk into oblivion, others have gained insane popularity, and others have just begun to form. The results of this transformation, which is continuing now, we can personally observe with our own eyes - types of genres that are dissimilar in meaning, kind and many other criteria. Let's try to figure out what genres are in literature and what are their features.

A genre in literature is a historically established set of literary creations, united by a set of similar parameters and formal characteristics.

Everything existing species and genres of literature can be visually represented in a table, in which large groups will appear in one part, and its typical representatives in the other. There are 4 main groups of genres by gender:

• epic (mostly prose);
• lyric (mainly poetics);
• dramatic (plays);
• lyroepic (something between lyrics and epic).

Also, the types of literary works can be classified by content:

• comedy;
• tragedy;
• drama.

But to understand what types of literature there are, it becomes much easier if you understand their forms. The form of a work is a method of presenting the author's ideas underlying the work. Distinguish between external and internal forms. The first, in fact, is the language of the work, the second is the system of artistic methods, images and means with which it was created.

What are the genres of books by form: essay, vision, short story, epic, ode, play, epic, essay, sketch, opus, novel, story. Let's consider each in detail.

Essay

An essay is a short, prosaic essay with a free composition. His the main objective- show the personal opinion and concepts of the author on a particular occasion. In this case, the essay is not obliged to fully disclose the presentation problem or clearly answer the questions. Basic properties:

• figurativeness;
• proximity to the reader;
• aphoristic;
• associativity.

There is an opinion that the essay - separate species works of art. This genre dominated British and Western European journalism in the 18th and 19th centuries. Notable representatives of that time: J. Addison, O. Goldsmith, J. Wharton, W. Godwin.

Epos

The epic is at the same time a genus, type and genre of literature. It is a heroic tale of the past, showing the then life of people and the reality of the characters from the epic side. Often the epic speaks in detail about a person, about an adventure with his participation, about his feelings and experiences. It also tells about the attitude of the hero to what is happening around him. Representatives of the genre:

• The Iliad, The Odyssey by Homer;
• "Song of Roland" Turold;
• "Song of the Nibelungs", author unknown.

The ancestors of the epic are the traditional poems-songs of the ancient Greeks.

Epic

Epic - great works with heroic overtones and those that are similar to them. What is the literature of this genre:

• narration of important historical moments in poetic form or prose;
• a story about something, including several descriptions of various significant events.

There is also a moral epic. This is a special kind of storytelling in literature, distinguished by its prosaicity and ridicule of the comic state of society. It includes Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel.

Sketch

A sketch is a short play in which there are only two (rarely three) main characters. Today the sketch is used on the stage in the form of a comedy show with miniatures lasting no more than 10 minutes. Such shows appear regularly on television in Britain, the United States and Russia. Well-known example programs on TV - "Unreal Story", "6 frames", "Our Russia".

novel

The novel is a separate literary genre. It presents a detailed presentation of the development and life of key characters (or one hero) in the most crisis and difficult periods. The main types of the novel in literature - belonging to a particular era or country, psychological, chivalrous, classical, moral and many others. Notable examples:

• "Eugene Onegin" Pushkin;
• "Doctor Zhivago" Pasternak;
• "The Master and Margarita" Bulgakov ".

Novella

The novella or short story is a key genre of fiction and is less extensive than a story or novel. The main properties of the work include:

• the presence of a small number of heroes;
• the plot has only one line;
• cyclicality.

The storyteller is a short story writer, and the collection of short stories is short storytelling.

Play

The play is a representative of drama. It is intended to be shown on the stage of the theater and in other performances. The play consists of:

• speeches of the main characters;
• copyright notes;
• descriptions of the places where the main activities take place;
• characteristics appearance the persons involved, their demeanor and character.

The play includes several acts, which consist of episodes, actions, pictures.

The story

The story is a work of a prosaic nature. It does not have any special restrictions on the volume, but it is located between the novella and the novel. Usually the plot of the story has a clear chronology, shows the natural course of the character's life without intrigue. All attention belongs to the main person and the specifics of his nature. It is worth noting that there is only one plot line. Notable representatives of the genre:

• "The Hound of the Baskervilles" by A. Conan Doyle;
• "Poor Liza" by N. M. Karamzin;
• "Steppe" by A. P. Chekhov.

In foreign literature, the concept of "story" is equal to the concept of "short novel".

Feature article

The essay is a concise, true fictional tale about several events and phenomena thought out by the author. The base of the essay is an accurate understanding of the subject of observation directly by the writer. Types of such descriptions:

• portrait;
• problematic;
• travel;
• historical.

Opus

Generally speaking, an opus is a piece accompanied by music. Main characteristics:

• internal completeness;
• individuality of the form;
• thoroughness.

In the literary sense, an opus is any scientific work or the creation of the author.

Oh yeah

Oda is a poem (usually solemn) dedicated to a specific event or person. At the same time, an ode can be a separate piece with a similar theme. In ancient Greece, all poetic lyrics, even the singing of the choir, were considered odes. Since the time of the Renaissance, this is how they began to call exclusively high-flown lyric poems, focusing on the images of antiquity.

Vision

Vision is a genre of medieval literature, based on a "clairvoyant" who tells about the afterlife and unreal images that appear to him. Many modern researchers attribute visions to didactics of the narrative type and journalism, since in the Middle Ages a person could thus convey his thoughts about the unknown.

These are the main types of literature in form and what their variations are. Unfortunately, all genres of literature and their definitions are difficult to fit into a small article - there are really a lot of them. In any case, everyone understands the necessity and importance of reading a wide variety of works, because they are real vitamins for the brain. With the help of books, you can increase your intelligence level, expand your vocabulary, improve memory and attentiveness. BrainApps is a resource that will help you develop in this direction. The service features more than 100 effective simulators that can easily pump gray matter.