Genres

Genres
Definition: A term, French in origin, that denotes types or classes of literature. The genres into which literary works have been grouped at different times are very numerous, and the criteria on which the classifications have been based are highly variable. Since the writings of Plato and Aristotle, however, there has been an enduring division of the overall literary domain into three large classes, in accordance with who speaks in the work: lyric (uttered throughout in the first person), epic or narrative (in which the narrator speaks in the first person, then lets his characters speak for themselves); and drama (in which the characters do all the talking). A similar tripartite scheme was elaborated by German critics in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, was echoed by James Joyce in his Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), chapter 5, and functions still in critical discourse and in the general distinction, in college catalogues, between courses in poetry, prose fiction, and drama. Within this overarching division, Aristotle and other classical critics identified a number of more limited genres. Many of the ancient names, including epic, tragedy, comedy, and satire, have remained current to the present day; to them have been added, over the last three centuries, such newcomers as biography, essay, and novel. A glance at the articles listed in the Index of Terms under genre will indicate the crisscrossing diversity of the classes and subclasses to which individual works of literature have been assigned.