Literary genres

PROSE
POETRY
DRAMA
1. PROSE

1.1 Prose and fiction

1.2 The short story
FICTIO
1.3 The novel N
What is prose?

Prose is the ordinary medium through which we communicate.

All narrative prose (the one we use everyday or the artistic one),
makes use of some recurrent structural characteristics.
What is fiction?

The term fiction is used to refer to

both the novel and the short
story.
Aristotle noticed that in any narration there are
some recurring structural characteristics:
STORY (how?)

CHARACTER (who?)

TIME (when?)

SPACE (where?)
 1.1 PROSE AND FICTION
The main structural features of prose are:

STORY = description of a connected series of events

PLOT = the way in which the events that make up a story are organized into a
narrative (events that make up a story, you decide the order)

SETTING = the place where the story happens (time, background, outdoor scenery,
interiors, social setting. Round = dynamic

CHARACTER = a person represented in a story (main or secondary ones)

Flat = static

NARRATOR = who narrates the story (first person narrator vs third person narrator;
obtrusive VS unobtrusive; omniscent VS non-omniscent)
POINT OF VIEW
1.2 THE SHORT STORY
It is an ideal starting point for the study of fiction.

It has several qualities:

It is written in artistic prose
It is short
It is carefully constructed

Narrative techinque:
STORY
CHARACTERS
SETTING
ECONOMY OF STYLE AND OF STRUCTURE
BEGINS IN THE MIDDLE OF A SITUATION
 1.3 THE NOVEL
It is a long work of fiction written in prose (there are always the same elements: story and
plot, characters, setting, narrator and point of view).

THE UTOPIAN NOVEL ( it describes an ideal world, usually with a negative

connotation: hopelessly tyrannical world)

THE SCIENCE-FICTION NOVEL ( it is based on future or recent scientific

discoveries science and technology )

THE HISTORICAL NOVEL ( it is set in past times = colourful characters, past

costumes and events)
2. POETRY
It is not easy to define what a poem is, but it depends on several techincal
features:
The choice of words
The position of words in the lines
Words’ sound

The etymology of «poetry» comes from a Greek word = «making»

The Old English word for someone who wrote verse was «maker»

The poet was someone who made or

created things
Words have physical features:

Signs they leave on the pages => LINES

SOUND
They reinforce
each other
MEANING
2.1 Rhythm
Rhythm derives from a combination of several factors:

LINE LENGTH => to measure the lenght of a line of poetry is, as in

Italian, to count the syllables that make up the line
BEAT => it’s a strong stress as opposed to a weak stress
(iamb)
RHYME => when a word has the same sound ending as another
word. Usually rhymes are at the end of the lines, but there are also
cases of internal rhymes.
ALLITERATION AND ASSONANCE => they are the most
common and effective phonetic devices. The alliteration is the
repetition of consonant sounds and the assonance is the repetition of
vowel sounds.
2.2 Figures of speech (rhetorical tools)

PATTERNS (CONCERN THE POSITION OF WORDS)

MANIPULATION OF THE MEANING

This figurative use of language is part of a very old art: RHETORIC.

Metaphor: it is a figure of speech which consists in transferring the meaning of a word
to another which shares with the former some analogies.

Simile: it is a comprison between two terms ( clearly separate and are linked by a word
of likening such as like or as )

Anaphora: the repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive lines

Chiasmus: the order of the words in the first line is reversed in the second line to form
a criss-cross pattern

Consonance: the repetition of the same consonant sound/s before and after different
vowels.

Enjambement: the overflow of a sentence across two lines of verse

Hyperbole: Consists of exaggerating some part of a statement in order to
give it emphasis or focus

Litotes: litotes emphasizes its point by using a word opposite to the

condition

Synesthesia: the association of images pertaining to different humans

senses
 3. DRAMA
Drama = theatrical performance

It comes from a Greek word “action” – “play”

Sense of loss and fear Sense of joy

DRAMA = whether tragic or comic

3.1 The play

The play = any work written to be performed on a STAGE

A stage implies an audience, actors, directors, playwrights etc….

A COOPERATIVE EFFORT

A text, to become a play, needs an audience.

 2.2 Features of drama

PRINTED
AUDIENCE
EDITION
(for readers)
PLAYWRIGH TEXT
T SCRIPT
(for the director and PLAY
actors)
2.3 Structure of drama
2.4 Genres of drama