Conversations in Literature

Genre
Genre is a type or category of literature or film marked by certain shared features or
conventions. The three broadest categories of genre include poetry, drama, and fiction. These
general genres are often subdivided into more specific genres and subgenres. Examples of
specific genres are biography, fable, fairy tale, fantasy, folktale, memoir, mystery, myth,
parable, poetry, science fiction and short story.

BIOGRAPHY: (Greek, bios+graphe "life writing"): A non-fictional account of a person's life--

usually a celebrity, an important historical figure, or a writer. If a writer uses his or her own life
as the basis of a biography, the work is called an autobiography. Contrast with a memoir.

DYSTOPIAN: (from Greek, dys topos, "bad place"): The opposite of a utopia, a dystopia is an
imaginary society in fictional writing that represents, as M. H. Abrams puts it, "a very
unpleasant imaginary world in which ominous tendencies of our present social, political, and
technological order are projected in some disastrous future culmination" (Glossary 218). For
instance, while a utopia presents readers with a place where all the citizens are happy and ruled
by a virtuous, efficient, rational government, a dystopia presents readers with a world where all
citizens are universally unhappy, manipulated, and repressed by a sinister, sadistic totalitarian
state. This government exists at best to further its own power and at worst seeks actively to
destroy its own citizens' creativity, health, and happiness. Examples of fictional dystopias
include Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, George Orwell's 1984, Margaret Atwood's The
Handmaid's Tale, and Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed.

The utopia and its offshoot, the dystopia, are genres of literature that explore social and
political structures. Utopian fiction is the creation of an ideal world, or utopia, as the setting for
a novel. Dystopian fiction is the opposite: creation of a nightmare world, or dystopia. Many
novels combine both, often as a metaphor for the different directions humanity can take in its
choices, ending up with one of two possible futures. Both utopias and dystopias are commonly
found in science fiction and other speculative fiction genres, and arguably are by definition a
type of speculative fiction.

FABLE: A fable is a brief story illustrating a moral. Unlike the parables, fables often include
talking animals or animated objects as the principal characters. The interaction of these animals
or inanimate things reveals general truths about human nature, i.e., a person can learn practical
lessons from the fictional antics in a fable. However, the lesson learned is not allegorical. Each
animal is not necessarily a symbol for something else. Instead, the reader learns the lesson as an
exemplum--an example of what one should or should not do. After the 1600s, fables
increasingly became common as a form of children's literature.

FAIRY TALE: In common parlance, a tale about elves, dragons, hobgoblins, sprites, and other
fantastic magical beings set vaguely in the distant past ("once upon a time"), often in a pseudo-
medieval world. Fairy tales include shape-shifting spirits with mischievous temperaments,
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Genre
superhuman knowledge, and far-reaching power to interfere with the normal affairs of
humanity. Other conventions include magic, charms, disguises, talking animals, and a hero or
heroine who overcomes obstacles to "live happily ever after."

FANTASY: Any literature that is removed from reality--especially poems, books, or short
narratives set in nonexistent worlds, such as an elvish kingdom, on the moon, in Pellucidar (the
hollow center of the earth), or in alternative versions of the historical world--such as a version
of London where vampires or sorcerers have seized control of parliament. The characters are
often something other than humans, or human characters may interact with nonhuman
characters such as trolls, dragons, munchkins, kelpies, etc.

FOLKTALE: Folktales are stories passed along from one generation to the next by word-of-
mouth rather than by a written text.

HISTORICAL FICTION is a sub-genre of fiction that often portrays alternate accounts or

dramatization of historical figures or events. Stories in this genre, while fictional, make an
honest attempt at capturing the spirit, manners, and social conditions of the person or time they
represent with attention paid to detail and fidelity.

MEMOIR: A novel purporting to be a factual or autobiographical account but which is

completely or partially imaginary. The authorial voice or speaker is typically a made-up
character who never actually lived. This creation is not so much a hoax as a literary convention
or an artistic device. An early example would be Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe.

MYSTERY: A novel focused on suspense and solving a mystery--especially a murder, theft,

kidnapping, or some other crime. The protagonist faces inexplicable events, threats, assaults,
and unknown forces or antagonists. Conventionally, the hero is a keenly observant individual
(such as Sherlock Holmes) and the police are depicted as incompetent or incapable of solving
the crime by themselves.

MYTH: While common English usage often equates "myth" with "falsehood," scholars use the
term slightly differently. A myth is a traditional tale of deep cultural significance to a people in
terms of etiology, eschatology, ritual practice, or models of appropriate and inappropriate
behavior. The myth often (but not always) deals with gods, supernatural beings, or ancestral
heroes. The culture creating or retelling the myth may or may not believe that the myth refers to
literal or factual events, but it values the mythic narrative regardless of its historical authenticity
for its (conscious or unconscious) insights into the human condition.

NOVELLA: An extended fictional prose narrative that is longer than a short story, but not quite
as long as a novel. We might arbitrarily assign an approximate length of 20,000-50,000 words.

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PARABLE: A parable is a story or short narrative designed to reveal allegorically some

religious principle, moral lesson, psychological reality, or general truth. Rather than using
abstract discussion, a parable always teaches by comparison with real or literal occurrences--
especially "homey" everyday occurrences a wide number of people can relate to. The word
parable comes from Greek term parábol! (pará means "beside," plus bol!, which means "a
casting, putting, throwing, turning"), which the Romans called parabola in classical rhetoric.

POETRY: A variable literary genre characterized by rhythmical patterns of language.

SATIRE is often strictly defined as a literary genre or form, although in practice it can be found
in the graphic and performing arts An attack on or criticism of any stupidity or vice in the form
of scathing humor, or a critique of what the author sees as dangerous religious, political, moral,
or social standards. Satire became an especially popular technique used during the
Enlightenment, in which it was believed that an artist could correct folly by using art as a mirror
to reflect society. When people viewed the satire and saw their faults magnified in a distorted
reflection, they could see how ridiculous their behavior was and then correct that tendency in
themselves.

SCIENCE FICTION (originally "scientifiction," a neologism coined by editor Hugo

Gernsback in his pulp magazine Amazing Stories): Literature in which speculative technology,
time travel, alien races, intelligent robots, gene-engineering, space travel, experimental
medicine, psionic abilities, dimensional portals, or altered scientific principles contribute to the
plot or background.

SHORT STORY: "A brief prose tale," as Edgar Allan Poe labeled it. This work of narrative
fiction may contain description, dialogue and commentary, but usually plot functions as the
engine driving the art. The best short stories, according to Poe, seek to achieve a single, major,
unified impact.

Works Cited:
http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/lit_terms.html

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