What are the most important literary genres?

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How to classify literature? What genres exist? What defines them and can each one of them contribute to us? In this article we tell you.

What are the most important literary genres? The answer generates debate. For example, Greek authors already hierarchized or divided works based on their usefulness.

Today, updating this Hellenic tradition, we will identify the most important literary genres by following a natural criterion, which is what most critics currently take as a reference.

“The first book in history was born when words, barely written air, found shelter in the marrow of an aquatic plant.”

-Irene Vallejo, Infinity in a reed

What are the most important literary genres?

As Germán Garrido Miñambres describes in his 2010 article for the Literature Magazine, the current comparison requires a rethinking of the literary genre from a historical point of view; since it has been modifying its cataloging over time based on the didactics of the topics that the writings dealt with.

Nowadays, The criterion used to divide literature is based on the characteristics of the communicative act. Therefore, this classification is natural (it has not been created by man), it has a universal character and is immovable. From this point of view, there are 3 or 4 literary genres.

Lyric or poetry

It is the literary genre that is based on the expressive communicative attitude. So, A poetic text is one that expresses in a personal, subjective way, through emotional functions.such as intersections or exclamations.

“The poet is a pretender.

Fake it so completely

that even pretends that it is pain,

the pain you really feel.

And, in the pain that you have read,

Your readers come to read,

not the two he has had,

but only the one they don’t have.

And so he gets into life,

distracting reason,

and turns, the toy train

which is called heart.”

-Fernando Pessoa, The poet is a pretender–

The texts focus on a specific idea and are characterized by their musicality. However, verses are usually associated with poetry, and this is not correct.

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For example, him Poem of My Cid Formally it has verses, it rhymes, but it is not a lyrical text, but a narrative one. On the other hand, it should be noted that this genre is one of the oldest, since its composition facilitated oral transmission, so important when we did not have the help of writing and societies felt the need to transmit their historical legacy to the following generations.

Within the lyric, you can find different subgenres:

Song.Eclogue.Elegy.Epigram.Hymn.Ode.

“Rhythm is not only an ally of memory, but it is also a catalyst for our pleasures – dance, music and sex play with repetition, rhythm and cadences. Language also has infinite rhythmic possibilities.”

-Irene Vallejo, Infinity in a reed

Epic (narrative)

The epic genre has a narrative (tells a story) and mixed attitude; since they intervene in the narrative of the tells a series of actions carried out by characters at a time and in a place determined. It is a natural genre because the narrative is found anywhere in the world, with its variations in society.

Furthermore, literary narrative is a self-referential or fictional narrative. That is, it does not correspond to reality, and this implies that The one who tells the story is not the author, but the narrator (the voice created by the author).

For this reason, the history of The Quijote It is told by Cide Hamete Benengeli, the Moorish translator who found the papers where the adventures came from and which, of course, was another of Cervantes’ inventions. Likewise, within the narrative or epic genre there are several subgenres as well:

Dramatic

Theater is based on the representative attitude. Therefore, Their texts are different because they are created expressly to be represented, in the same way as movies.. Thus, when reading a theatrical text, the stage directions are also important.

The best example to understand this is given in the work of Say yes by Griselda Gambaro, in which there is hardly any dialogue; since the information between the Barber and the Man occurs precisely in what is not said, in the silences, as a method to denounce that time of military dictatorship that Argentina suffered.

Besides, When one attends a play, one enters a kind of illusion of reality. That is, one has the feeling that what happens on stage is a reality separate from the world. This would be what some have called “the fourth wall”, but since the 20th century the main objective has been to break it with actors who insert themselves among the audience itself, for example.

Even so, the truth is that the main subgenres continue to prevail:

Tragedy.Comedy.Tragicomedy.Drama.Melodrama.Auto sacramental.Loa.Entremés.Sainete.

Rehearsal

Finally, although it is currently a topic that generates controversy among literary critics, The essay could also be considered as another separate genre, marked by its argumentative or expository attitude.

However, the problem of considering the essay as a literary genre has to do with the conception of literature that “how the message is transmitted is what is important.” In this sense, In the essay it seems more important what is said, rather than how it is said.

For this reason, if it is not considered, it would not be its own genre or, directly, it would not be considered literature.

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The theory of literature, which is responsible for classifying the most important literary genres

Literature is one of the 7 fine arts through which one has artistic pleasure. Therefore, it is normal for people to sometimes decide what is and what is not literary. In fact, this is what has been happening throughout history.

The theory of literature is what is responsible for laying the foundations and makes an effort to try to catalog the different creations.. An effort that often collides – fortunately, and in a magical way – with the reality that each work is personal and unrepeatable because it belongs to an author, with its own context and a special sensitivity.