V. Genres

 not always clear-cut and easily distinguished  sub-genres

genology

 lyric, epic, lyric-epic and dramatic genres:

1. Lyric genres - lyric principle: plotlessness and atemporality.

The most important lyric genres:

• the ode

• the elegy

• the psalm

• the haiku

traditional haiku: 17 syllables, arranged in three lines of five, seven, and five syllables

Temple bells die out.

The fragrant blossoms remain.

A perfect evening! Basho (1644 – 1694)

• the sonnet - usually expresses a single, complete thought or sentiment.

Three basic kinds of sonnet in English poetry:

1. the Italian (Petrarcan) sonnet

2. the English (Shakespearean) sonnet

3. the Spenserian sonnet

• the limerick

e.g. Edward Lear’s Book of Nonsense (1846)

Oliver Wendell Holmes’s limerick on the 19^th century clergyman Henry Ward Beecher:

The Reverend Henry Ward Beecher

Called a hen a most eloquent creature.

The hen, pleased with that,

Laid an egg on his hat,

And thus did the hen reward Beecher.

lyrical genres in the form of a short prose statement:

• the epigram

e.g. Oscar Wilde: A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

• the aphorism (”proverbs of intellectuals”)

e.g. Wilde: Truth is never pure and rarely simple. or All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his. or Mark Twain (answering the question as to what he wished for after his death): Heaven for climate, hell for society.

• the maxim

e.g. Plutarch: Success is getting what you want; happiness is wanting what you get. or B. Franklin: He that goes a borrowing goes a sorrowing.

• the proverb

e.g. To miss a mile is as good as an inch.

often called by one term = gnomes (or gnomic genres, statements)

2. Lyric-epic genres

• the ballad

• the idyll

• paean

3. Epic (narrative) genres

• include the plot and the temporal

• according to the size of the literary work:

I) major epic genres

II) intermediate e. g.

III) minor e. g.

ad I)

• the epic or heroic epic

classical epic, mediaeval epic, modern epic

• the novel or realistic novel

- there are many kinds of novel according to the technique of composition or theme:

picaresque novel

epistolary novel

historical novel

philosophical novel

proletarian novel

working class novel

the novel of soil

biographical or (partly) autobiographical novel

Bildungsroman (education novel)

the problem novel or sociological novel

gothic novel

campus novel

psychological novel

experimental novel

magic realistic novel

post-colonial novel

anti-novel

utopian novel vs. anti-utopian or dystopian novel

science fiction novel

fantasy novel

The Postmodernist Novel

• Genre mixture

• Subjective narration(s)

• De-centered/marginalised perspective

• Mixing up the fictitious and the factual

• Focus on the irrational