What are the genres in literature? Literary genres of works and their definitions

There are enough literary genres a large number of. Each of them is distinguished by a set of formal and substantive properties unique to it. Also Aristotle, who lived in the 4th century BC. presented their first systematization. According to it, literary genres represented a specific system that was fixed once and for all. The author’s task was only to find a correspondence between his work and the properties of his chosen genre. And over the next two millennia, any changes in the classification created by Aristotle were perceived as deviations from the standards. And only at the end of the 18th century did literary evolution and the associated decomposition of the rooted genre system, as well as the influence of completely new cultural and social circumstances, nullified the influence of normative poetics and allowed literary thought develop, move forward and expand. The prevailing conditions were the reason why some genres simply sank into oblivion, others found themselves in the center of the literary process, and some began to appear. We can see the results of this process (certainly not final) today - many literary genres, differing in type (epic, lyrical, dramatic), in content (comedy, tragedy, drama) and other criteria. In this article we will talk about what genres there are in form.

Literary genres by form

In form, literary genres are as follows: essay, epic, epic, sketch, novel, story (short story), play, story, essay, opus, ode and visions. Below is a detailed description of each of them.

Essay

An essay is a prose composition characterized by a small volume and free composition. It is recognized to reflect the author’s personal impressions or thoughts on any matter, but is not required to provide an exhaustive answer to the question posed or fully disclose the topic. The style of the essay is characterized by associativity, aphorism, imagery and maximum proximity to the reader. Some researchers classify essays as a type of fiction. In the 18th-19th centuries, the essay as a genre dominated French and English journalism. And in the 20th century, the essay was recognized and actively used by the world's largest philosophers, prose writers and poets.

Epic

The epic is a heroic narrative about the events of the past, reflecting the life of the people and representing the epic reality of heroic heroes. Usually, an epic tells about a person, about the events in which he took part, about how he behaved and what he felt, and also talks about his attitude towards the world around him and the phenomena in it. The ancestors of the epic are considered to be ancient Greek folk poems and songs.

Epic

Epic refers to large works of an epic nature and similar ones. An epic is generally expressed in two forms: it can either be a narrative of significant historical events in prose or verse, or a long history of something in which descriptions of various events are included. The epic owes its emergence as a literary genre to epic songs composed in honor of the exploits of various heroes. It is worth noting that a special type of epic also stands out - the so-called “moral-descriptive epic”, distinguished by its prosaic orientation and description of the comic state of any national society.

Sketch

A sketch is a short play whose main characters are two (sometimes three) characters. Sketch is most common on the stage in the form of sketch shows, which are several comedy miniatures (“sketches”) lasting up to 10 minutes each. Sketch shows are most popular on television, especially in the US and UK. However, a small number of such humorous television programs are also aired in Russia (“Our Russia”, “Give Youth!” and others).

Novel

A novel is a special literary genre, characterized by a detailed narrative about the life and development of the main characters (or one character) in the most unusual and crisis periods of their lives. The variety of novels is so great that there are many independent branches of this genre. Novels can be psychological, moral, chivalric, Chinese classic, French, Spanish, American, English, German, Russian and others.

Story

A short story (also known as a short story) is the main genre in short narrative prose and is smaller in length than a novel or story. The roots of the novel go back to folklore genres (oral retellings, tales and parables). A story is characterized by having a small number of characters and one plot line. Often the stories of one author form a cycle of stories. The authors themselves are often called short story writers, and the collection of stories - short stories.

Play

A play is the name of dramatic works that are intended for stage performance, as well as radio and television plays. Usually the structure of the play includes monologues and dialogues of the characters and various author's notes indicating the places where the events take place, and sometimes describing the interiors of the premises, the appearance of the characters, their characters, manners, etc. In most cases, the play is preceded by a list of characters and their characteristics. The play consists of several acts, including smaller parts - pictures, episodes, actions.

Tale

A story is a literary genre of a prosaic nature. It does not have any specific volume, but is located between a novel and a short story (short story), which it was considered to be until the 19th century. The plot of the story is most often chronological - it reflects the natural course of life, has no intrigue, and is focused on the main character and the peculiarities of his nature. Moreover, story line just one. In foreign literature, the term “story” itself is synonymous with the term “short novel”.

Feature article

An essay is considered to be a short artistic description the totality of any phenomena of reality, comprehended by the author. The basis of the essay is almost always the author’s direct study of the object of his observation. Therefore, the main feature is “writing from life.” It is important to say that while in other literary genres fiction may play a leading role, in the essay it is practically absent. There are several types of essays: portrait (about the personality of the hero and his inner world), problematic (about a specific problem), travel (about travel and wanderings) and historical (about historical events).

Opus

An opus in its broad sense is any musical piece (instrumental, folk), characterized by internal completeness, motivation of the whole, individualization of form and content, in which the personality of the author is clearly visible. In the literary sense, an opus is any literary work or treatise any author.

Oh yeah

Ode is a lyrical genre expressed in the form of a solemn poem dedicated to a specific hero or event, or separate work the same direction. Initially (in Ancient Greece) ode was the name given to any poetic lyric (even choral singing) that accompanied music. But since the Renaissance, pompous lyrical works, in which examples of antiquity serve as a guide, began to be called odes.

Visions

Visions belong to the genre of medieval (Hebrew, Gnostic, Muslim, Old Russian, etc.) literature. At the center of the narrative is usually a “clairvoyant,” and the content is imbued with otherworldly, afterlife visual images that appear to the clairvoyant. The plot is narrated by a visionary - a person to whom it was revealed in hallucinations or dreams. Some authors refer to visions as journalism and narrative didactics, because in the Middle Ages, human interaction with the world of the unknown was precisely the way to convey some didactic content.

These are the main types of literary genres, differing in form. Their diversity tells us that literary creativity has always been deeply appreciated by people, but the process of formation of these genres has always been long and complex. Each of the genres as such bears the imprint of a certain era and individual consciousness, each expressed in its ideas about the world and its manifestations, people and the characteristics of their personality. It is precisely due to the fact that there are so many genres and they are all different, any creative person had and has the opportunity to express himself in the form that more accurately reflects his mental organization.

The above types of classification are not mutually exclusive, but demonstrate different approaches to defining genres. Therefore, the same book can refer to several of them at once.

Classification of literary genres by type

When classifying literary genres by gender, they start from the author’s attitude to what is being presented. The basis for this classification was laid by Aristotle. According to this principle, four major genres are distinguished: epic, lyrical, dramatic and lyric-epic. Each of them has its own “subgenres”.

IN epic genres it tells about events that have already happened, and the author writes them down according to his memories, while he distances himself as much as possible from assessing what was said. These include epic novels, short stories, myths, ballads, fables and epics.

The lyrical genre involves the transmission of feelings experienced by the author in the form of a literary work in poetic form. These include odes, epigrams, epistles and stanzas.

Classic example stanzas - “Childe Harold” by Byron.

The lyric-epic genre combines the characteristics of the epic and lyrical genres. These include ballads and poems, in which there is both a plot and the author’s attitude to what is happening.

The dramatic genre exists at the intersection of literature and theater. Nominally it includes dramas, comedies and tragedies with a list of the characters involved at the beginning and author's notes in the main text. However, in fact, it can be any work written in the form of a dialogue.

Classification of literary genres by content

If we define works by content, then they are combined into three large groups: comedies, tragedies and dramas. Tragedy and drama, which tell, respectively, about the tragic fate of the heroes and the emergence and overcoming of the conflict, are quite homogeneous. Comedies are divided into several types, according to the action taking place: parody, farce, vaudeville, sitcom and character comedy, sketch and sideshow.

Classification of literary genres by form

When classifying genres by form, only formal features such as the structure and volume of the work are taken into account, regardless of their content.

Lyrical works are classified most clearly in this way; in prose, the boundaries are more blurred.

According to this principle, thirteen genres are distinguished: epic, epic, novel, short story, sketch, play, sketch, essay, opus, ode and visions.

Sources:

• “Theory of Literature”, V. V. Prozorov, 1987
• “Theoretical poetics: concepts and definitions”, N. D. Tamarchenko, 1999

Literary is a class of texts that have a similar structure, content, and limit of variability. There are many genre ov text, and you need to know their characteristics if you do not want to make a mistake in choosing the type.

Instructions

In order to correctly characterize the text and attribute it to a specific genre oh, please read the work carefully. Think about whether it amuses you or upsets you, conveys the author’s feelings towards his characters or simply tells about some events, struggles with insurmountable circumstances or with himself? If you can understand the text, you will easily find its literary genre.

There are three ways to classify literary genre ov. They are grouped by form, resulting in such types as essay, story, ode. A play is a writer’s creation intended to be performed on stage, a story is a short narrative work in prose. What distinguishes a novel from a short story is its scale. It tells about the life and development of the main character during a period of crisis for him. An essay is a type of story characterized by the absence of a single conflict. Story - prose genre, located in volume between a novel and a short story, telling about the ups and downs of the life of the main character.

Genre is a type of meaningful form that determines the integrity of a literary work, which is determined by the unity of theme, composition and style; a historically established group of literary works, united by a set of characteristics of content and form.

Genre in literature

IN artistic structure the genre category is a modification of the literary type; a species, in turn, is a type of literary genus. There is another approach to the generic connection: – genre – genre variety, modification or form; in some cases it is proposed to distinguish only gender and genre.
The belonging of genres to traditional literary genres (epic, lyric, drama, lyric-epic) determines their content and thematic focus.

Genre in ancient literature

In ancient literature, the genre was an ideal artistic norm. Ancient ideas about genre norms were focused primarily on poetic forms; prose was not taken into account, as it was considered trivial reading. Poets often followed the artistic models of their predecessors, trying to surpass the pioneers of the genre. Ancient Roman literature relied on the poetic experience of ancient Greek authors. Virgil (1st century BC) continued the epic tradition of Homer (8th century BC), since the Aeneid is focused on the Odyssey and the Iliad. Horace (1st century BC) owns odes written in the manner of the ancient Greek poets Arion (VII–VI centuries BC) and Pindar (VI–V centuries BC). Seneca (1st century BC) developed dramatic art, reviving the work of Aeschylus (6th–5th centuries BC) and Euripides (5th century BC).

The origins of the systematization of genres go back to the treatises of Aristotle “Poetics” and Horace “The Science of Poetry”, in which a genre denoted a set of artistic norms, their natural and fixed system, and the author’s goal was considered to correspond to the properties of the chosen genre. The understanding of genre as a constructed model of a work led to the subsequent emergence of a number of normative poetics, including dogmas and laws of poetry.

Renewal of the European genre system in the 11th–17th centuries

The European genre system began its renewal in the Middle Ages. In the 11th century new ones have arisen lyrical genres troubadour poets (serenades, albums), later the genre of the medieval novel arose (chivalrous novels about King Arthur, Lancelot, Tristan and Isolde). In the XIV century. Italian poets had a significant influence on the development of new genres: Dante Alighieri wrote the poem “The Divine Comedy” (1307–1321), combining narrative and the genre of vision, Francesco Petrarch approved the genre of the sonnet (“Book of Songs,” 1327–1374), Giovanni Boccaccio canonized the short story genre (Decameron, 1350–1353). At the turn of the 16th–17th centuries. genre varieties of drama were expanded by the English poet and playwright W. Shakespeare, whose famous plays - “Hamlet” (1600–1601), “King Lear” (1608), “Macbeth” (1603–1606) - contain themselves have the characteristics of tragedy and comedy and are classified as tragicomedies.

Code and hierarchy of genres in classicism

The most complete, systematic and significant set of genre norms was formed in the 17th century. with the appearance of the poem-treatise of the French poet Nicolas Boileau-Depreo “The Poetic Art” (1674). The essay defines the genre system of classicism, regulated by reason, a generally understandable style with the division of literary genres into epic, dramatic, lyrical birth. The structure of the canonical genres of classicism goes back to ancient forms and images.

The literature of classicism was characterized by a strict hierarchy of genres, dividing them into high (ode, epic, tragedy) and low (fable, satire, comedy). Mixing genre characteristics was not allowed.

Genres of literary aesthetics of romanticism

Literature of the Romantic era in the 18th century. did not obey the canons of classicism, as a result of which the traditional genre system lost its advantage. In the context of a change in literary trends, deviations from the rules of normative poetics, a rethinking of classical genres occurs, as a result of which some of them ceased to exist, while others, on the contrary, became entrenched.

At the turn of the 18th–19th centuries. at the center of the literary aesthetics of romanticism were lyrical genres - ode (“Ode to the Capture of Khotin” by M. Lomonosov, 1742; “Felitsa” by G. R. Derzhavin, 1782, “Ode to Joy” by F. Schiller, 1785 .), romantic poem (“Gypsies” by A. S. Pushkin, 1824), ballad (“Lyudmila” (1808), “Svetlana” (1813) by V. A. Zhukovsky), elegy (“Rural cemetery" by V. A. Zhukovsky, 1808); Comedy prevailed in the drama (“Woe from Wit” by A. S. Griboedov, 1825).

Prose genres flourished: the epic novel, the story, the short story. The most common type of epic literature of the 19th century V. was considered a novel, which was called the “eternal genre.” The novels of Russian writers L. N. Tolstoy (“War and Peace,” 1865–1869; “Anna Karenina,” 1875–1877; “Resurrection,” 1899) and F. M. had a significant influence on the European epic. Dostoevsky (“Crime and Punishment”, 1866; “The Idiot”, 1868; “Demons”, 1871–1872; “The Brothers Karamazov”, 1879–1880).

Formation of genres in literature of the twentieth century

The formation of mass literature in the twentieth century, its need for stable thematic, compositional and stylistic prescriptions led to the formation of a new system of genres, based primarily on the “absolute center of the genre system of literature” according to the Russian scientist M. M. Bakhtin - the novel.
New genres have emerged within popular literature: love story, sentimental novel, crime novel (action, thriller), dystopian novel, anti-romance, science fiction, fantasy, etc.

Modern literary genres are not part of a predetermined structure; they arise as a result of the embodiment of author's ideas in verbal and artistic works.

The origins of the appearance of genre varieties

The emergence of genre varieties can be associated with both literary direction, movement, school - a romantic poem, a classicist ode, a symbolist drama, etc., and with the names of individual authors who introduced genre-stylistic forms of the artistic whole into literary circulation (Pindaric ode, Byron's poem, Balzac's novel, etc. .), forming traditions, and this means the possibility different types their assimilation (imitation, stylization, etc.).

The word genre comes from French genre, which means genus, species.

As is known, all literary works, depending on the nature of the depicted, belong to one of three genres: epic, lyric or drama .

1 ) Anecdote2) Apocrypha3) Ballad4) Fable5) Epic

6) Drama7) Life 8) Riddle9) Historical songs

10)Comedy11)Legend12) Lyrics13) Novella

14) Ode 15)Essay16) Pamphlet17) Tale

18) Proverbs and sayings 19) Poems 20) Story21) Roman

22) Fairy tale23) Word 24) Tragedy25) Ditty26) Elegy

27) Epigram 28) Epic29) Epic

Video lesson "Literary genres and genres"

EPOS(from the Greek “narration”) is a generalized name for works depicting events external to the author.

LYRICS(from the Greek “performed to the lyre”) is a generalized name for works in which there is no plot, but the feelings, thoughts, experiences of the author or his lyrical hero are depicted.

DRAMA(from the Greek “action”) - a generalized name for works intended for production on stage; The drama is dominated by character dialogues, and the author's input is kept to a minimum.

The types of epic, lyrical and dramatic works are called types of literary works.

Type and genre - concepts in literary criticism very close.

Genres are variations of a type of literary work. For example, a genre variety of a story can be a fantasy or historical story, and a genre variety of a comedy can be vaudeville, etc. Strictly speaking, a literary genre is a historically established type of artistic work that contains certain structural features and aesthetic quality characteristic of a given group of works.

TYPES (GENRES) OF EPIC WORKS:

epic, novel, tale, story, fairy tale, fable, legend.

EPIC is a major work of fiction telling about significant historical events. In ancient times - a narrative poem of heroic content. In the literature of the 19th and 20th centuries, the genre of the epic novel appeared - this is a work in which the formation of the characters of the main characters occurs during their participation in historical events.

A NOVEL is a large narrative work of art with a complex plot, in the center of which is the fate of an individual.

A STORY is a work of art that occupies a middle position between a novel and a short story in terms of volume and complexity of the plot. In ancient times, any narrative work was called a story.

A STORY is a small work of fiction based on an episode, an incident from the life of the hero.

TALE - a work about fictional events and characters, usually involving magical, fantastic forces.

A FABLE (from “bayat” - to tell) is a narrative work in poetic form, small in size, of a moralizing or satirical nature.

TYPES (GENRES) OF LYRIC WORKS:

ode, hymn, song, elegy, sonnet, epigram, message.

ODA (from Greek “song”) is a choral, solemn song.

HYMN (from Greek “praise”) is a solemn song based on programmatic verses.

EPIGRAM (from Greek “inscription”) is a short satirical poem of a mocking nature that arose in the 3rd century BC. e.

ELEGY is a genre of lyrics dedicated to sad thoughts or a lyric poem imbued with sadness. Belinsky called elegy “a song of sad content.” The word "elegy" is translated as "reed flute" or "plaintive song." Elegy originated in Ancient Greece in the 7th century BC. e.

MESSAGE - a poetic letter, an appeal to a specific person, a request, a wish, a confession.

SONNET (from the Provencal sonette - “song”) is a poem of 14 lines, which has a certain rhyme system and strict stylistic laws. The sonnet originated in Italy in the 13th century (the creator was the poet Jacopo da Lentini), in England it appeared in the first half of the 16th century (G. Sarri), and in Russia in the 18th century. The main types of sonnet are Italian (from 2 quatrains and 2 tercets) and English (from 3 quatrains and a final couplet).

LYROEPIC TYPES (GENRES):

Literary genres - groups of literary works united by a set of formal and substantive properties (in contrast to literary forms, the identification of which is based only on formal characteristics).

If at the folklore stage the genre was determined from an extra-literary (cult) situation, then in literature the genre receives a description of its essence from its own literary norms, codified by rhetoric. The entire nomenclature of ancient genres that had developed before this turn was then energetically rethought under its influence.

Since the time of Aristotle, who gave the first systematization of literary genres in his “Poetics,” the idea has become stronger that literary genres represent a natural, once and for all fixed system, and the author’s task is only to achieve the most complete compliance of his work with the essential properties of the chosen genre. This understanding of the genre - as a ready-made structure presented to the author - led to the emergence of a whole series of normative poetics containing instructions for authors regarding exactly how an ode or tragedy should be written; The pinnacle of this type of writing is Boileau’s treatise “The Poetic Art” (1674). This does not mean, of course, that the system of genres as a whole and the characteristics of individual genres really remained unchanged for two thousand years - however, the changes (and very significant ones) were either not noticed by theorists, or were interpreted by them as damage, a deviation from the necessary models. And only by the end of the 18th century, the decomposition of the traditional genre system, associated, in accordance with the general principles of literary evolution, both with intraliterary processes and with the influence of completely new social and cultural circumstances, went so far that normative poetics could no longer describe and curb literary reality.

In these conditions alone traditional genres began to rapidly die out or become marginalized, others, on the contrary, moved from the literary periphery to the very center of the literary process. And if, for example, the rise of the ballad at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries, associated in Russia with the name of Zhukovsky, turned out to be quite short-lived (although in Russian poetry it then gave an unexpected new surge in the first half of the 20th century - for example, in Bagritsky and Nikolai Tikhonov) , then the hegemony of the novel - a genre that normative poets for centuries did not want to notice as something low and insignificant - lasted in European literature for at least a century. Works of a hybrid or undefined genre nature began to develop especially actively: plays about which it is difficult to say whether they are a comedy or a tragedy, poems for which it is impossible to give any genre definition, except that it is a lyric poem. The decline of clear genre identifications was also manifested in deliberate authorial gestures aimed at destroying genre expectations: from Laurence Sterne’s novel “The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman,” which ends mid-sentence, to N. V. Gogol’s “Dead Souls,” where the subtitle is paradoxical for a prose text the poem can hardly fully prepare the reader for the fact that he will now and then be knocked out of the fairly familiar rut of a picaresque novel by lyrical (and sometimes epic) digressions.

In the 20th century, literary genres were especially influenced by strong influence separation of mass literature from literature focused on artistic exploration. Mass literature has once again felt an urgent need for clear genre prescriptions that significantly increase the predictability of the text for the reader, making it easy to navigate through it. Of course, the previous genres were not suitable for mass literature, and it quickly formed new system, which is based on the genre of the novel, which is very flexible and has accumulated a lot of varied experience. At the end of the 19th century and in the first half of the 20th, the detective and police novels, science fiction and the ladies' (“pink”) novel took shape. It is not surprising that contemporary literature, aimed at artistic search, sought to deviate as far as possible from the mass literature and therefore moved away from genre definition as far as possible. But since extremes converge, the desire to be further from genre predetermination sometimes led to new genre formation: for example, the French anti-novel did not want to be a novel so much that the main works of this literary movement, represented by such original authors as Michel Butor and Nathalie Sarraute, there are clear signs of a new genre. Thus, modern literary genres (and we already encounter such an assumption in the thoughts of M. M. Bakhtin) are not elements of any predetermined system: on the contrary, they arise as points of concentration of tension in one place or another of the literary space, in accordance with artistic tasks posed here and now by this circle of authors. Special study of such new genres remains a matter for tomorrow.

List of literary genres:

• By shape
  • Visions
  • Novella
  • Tale
  • Story
  • joke
  • novel
  • epic
  • play
  • sketch
• by content
  • comedy
    • farce
    • vaudeville
    • interlude
    • sketch
    • parody
    • sitcom
    • comedy of characters
  • tragedy
  • Drama
• By birth
  • Epic
    • Fable
    • Bylina
    • Ballad
    • Novella
    • Tale
    • Story
    • Novel
    • Epic novel
    • Fairy tale
    • Fantasy
    • Epic
  • Lyrical
    • Oh yeah
    • Message
    • Stanzas
    • Elegy
    • Epigram
  • Lyric-epic
    • Ballad
    • Poem
  • Dramatic
    • Drama
    • Comedy
    • Tragedy

Poem- (Greek póiema), large poetic work with a narrative or lyrical plot. A poem is also called an ancient and medieval epic (see also Epic), nameless and authored, which was composed either through the cyclization of lyric-epic songs and tales (the point of view of A. N. Veselovsky), or through the “swelling” (A. Heusler) of one or several folk legends, or with the help of complex modifications of ancient plots in the process of the historical existence of folklore (A. Lord, M. Parry). The poem developed from an epic depicting an event of national historical significance (“Iliad”, “Mahabharata”, “Song of Roland”, “Elder Edda”, etc.).

There are many genre varieties of the poem: heroic, didactic, satirical, burlesque, including heroic-comic, poem with a romantic plot, lyrical-dramatic. The leading branch of the genre for a long time a poem on a national historical or world historical (religious) theme was considered (“Aeneid” by Virgil, “The Divine Comedy” by Dante, “The Lusiads” by L. di Camoes, “Jerusalem Liberated” by T. Tasso, “Paradise Lost” by J. Milton, “Henriad” by Voltaire, “Messiad” by F. G. Klopstock, “Rossiyad” by M. M. Kheraskov, etc.). At the same time, a very influential branch in the history of the genre was the poem with romantic plot features (“The Knight in the Leopard’s Skin” by Shota Rustaveli, “Shahname” by Ferdowsi, to a certain extent - “ Furious Roland"L. Ariosto), connected to one degree or another with the tradition of the medieval, mainly knightly, novel. Gradually, personal, moral and philosophical issues come to the fore in the poems, lyrical-dramatic elements are strengthened, the folklore tradition is opened and mastered - features already characteristic of pre-romantic poems (Faust by J. V. Goethe, poems by J. Macpherson, V. Scott). The genre flourished in the era of romanticism, when the greatest poets of various countries turned to creating poems. "Top" in the evolution of the genre romantic poem works acquire a socio-philosophical or symbolic-philosophical character (“Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” by J. Byron, “The Bronze Horseman” by A. S. Pushkin, “Dzyady” by A. Mickiewicz, “The Demon” by M. Yu. Lermontov, “Germany, Winter fairy tale" by G. Heine).

In the 2nd half of the 19th century. the decline of the genre is obvious, which does not exclude the appearance of individual outstanding works (“The Song of Hiawatha” by G. Longfellow). In the poems of N. A. Nekrasov (“Frost, Red Nose,” “Who Lives Well in Rus'”), genre tendencies characteristic of the development of the poem in realistic literature (synthesis of moral descriptive and heroic principles) are manifested.

In a poem of the 20th century. the most intimate experiences are correlated with great historical upheavals, imbued with them as if from within (“Cloud in Pants” by V. V. Mayakovsky, “The Twelve (poem)” by A. A. Blok, “First Date” by A. Bely).

In Soviet poetry, there are various genre varieties of the poem: reviving the heroic principle (“Vladimir Ilyich Lenin” and “Good!” by Mayakovsky, “Nine Hundred and Fifth” by B. L. Pasternak, “Vasily Terkin” by A. T. Tvardovsky); lyrical-psychological poems (“About this” by V.V. Mayakovsky, “Anna Snegina” by S.A. Yesenin), philosophical (N.A. Zabolotsky, E. Mezhelaitis), historical (“Tobolsk Chronicler” by L. Martynov) or combining moral and socio-historical issues (“Mid-Century” by V. Lugovsky).

The poem as a synthetic, lyric-epic and monumental genre, which allows you to combine the epic of the heart and “music”, the “element” of world upheavals, intimate feelings and historical concept, remains a productive genre of world poetry: “Breaking the Wall” and “Into the Storm” by R. Frost, “ Landmarks" by Saint-John Perse, "The Hollow People" by T. Eliot, "The Universal Song" by P. Neruda, "Niobe" by K. I. Galczynski, "Continuous Poetry" by P. Eluard, "Zoe" by Nazim Hikmet.

Epic(ancient Greek έπος - “word”, “narration”) - a set of works, mainly of an epic kind, united common theme, era, nationality, etc. For example, Homeric epic, medieval epic, animal epic.

The emergence of the epic is gradual in nature, but is conditioned by historical circumstances.

The birth of the epic is usually accompanied by the composition of panegyrics and laments, close to the heroic worldview. The great deeds immortalized in them often turn out to be the material that heroic poets base their narratives on. Panegyrics and laments are usually composed in the same style and meter as the heroic epic: in Russian and Turkic literature, both types have almost the same manner of expression and lexical composition. Lamentations and panegyrics are preserved as part of epic poems as decoration.

The epic claims not only objectivity, but also the truthfulness of its story, and its claims, as a rule, are accepted by listeners. In his Prologue to The Earthly Circle, Snorri Sturluson explained that among his sources were “ancient poems and songs that were sung for people’s amusement,” and added: “Although we ourselves do not know whether these stories are true, we know for sure that that the wise men of old believed them to be true.”

Novel- a literary genre, usually prose, which involves a detailed narrative about the life and development of the personality of the main character (heroes) during a crisis/non-standard period of his life.

The name "Roman" arose in the middle of the 12th century along with the genre chivalric romance(old French) romanz from late Latin dialect romanice"in the (vernacular) Romance language"), as opposed to historiography in Latin. Contrary to popular belief, from the very beginning this name did not refer to any work in the vernacular (heroic songs or troubadour lyrics were never called novels), but to one that could be contrasted with a Latin model, even if very distant: historiography, fable ( "The Romance of Renard"), vision ("The Romance of the Rose"). However, in the XII-XIII centuries, if not later, the words roman And estoire(the latter also means “image”, “illustration”) are interchangeable. In reverse translation into Latin, the novel was called (liber) romanticus, where in European languages ​​the adjective “romantic” came from, until the end of the 18th century it meant “inherent in novels”, “such as in novels”, and only later the meaning on the one hand was simplified to “love”, but on the other hand it gave rise to the name of romanticism as a literary movement.

The name “novel” was preserved even when, in the 13th century, the performed poetic novel was replaced by a prose novel for reading (with complete preservation knightly topics and plots), and for all subsequent transformations of the knightly romance, right up to the works of Ariosto and Edmund Spenser, which we call poems, and contemporaries considered novels. It persists even later, in the 17th-18th centuries, when the “adventurous” novel is replaced by the “realistic” and “psychological” novel (which in itself problematizes the supposed gap in continuity).

However, in England the name of the genre is also changing: the “old” novels retain the name romance, and the name “new” novels from the middle of the 17th century was assigned novel(from Italian novella - “short story”). Dichotomy novel/romance means a lot for English-language criticism, but adds additional uncertainty to their actual historical relationships rather than clarifies them. Generally romance is considered rather a kind of structural-plot variety of the genre novel.

In Spain, on the contrary, all varieties of the novel are called novela, and what happened from the same romanice word romance from the very beginning belonged to the poetic genre, which was also destined Long story, - to romance.

Bishop Yue at the end of the 17th century, in search of the predecessors of the novel, first applied this term to a number of phenomena of ancient narrative prose, which have since also come to be called novels.

Visions

Fabliau dou dieu d'Amour"(The Tale of the God of Love), " Venus la déesse d'amors

Visions- narrative and didactic genre.

The plot is told on behalf of the person to whom it was allegedly revealed in a dream, hallucination or lethargic sleep. The core mostly consists of actual dreams or hallucinations, but already in ancient times fictional stories appeared, clothed in the form of visions (Plato, Plutarch, Cicero). The genre received special development in the Middle Ages and reached its apogee in Dante's Divine Comedy, which represents the most developed vision in form. The authoritative sanction and the strongest impetus for the development of the genre were given by the “Dialogues of Miracles” of Pope Gregory the Great (VI century), after which visions began to appear en masse in church literature in all European countries.

Until the 12th century, all visions (except the Scandinavian ones) were written in Latin; from the 12th century, translations appeared, and from the 13th century, original visions appeared in vernacular languages. The most complete form of visions is presented in the Latin poetry of the clergy: this genre, in its origins, is closely related to canonical and apocryphal religious literature and is close to church sermons.

The editors of the visions (they are always from among the clergy and they must be distinguished from the “clairvoyant” himself) took advantage of the opportunity on behalf of “ higher power”, sending a vision, to propagate their political views or attack personal enemies. Purely fictitious visions also appear - topical pamphlets (for example, the vision of Charlemagne, Charles III, etc.).

However, since the 10th century, the form and content of the visions have caused protest, often coming from the declassed layers of the clergy themselves (poor clergy and goliard scholars). This protest results in parodic visions. On the other hand, courtly knightly poetry in folk languages ​​takes over the form of visions: visions here acquire new content, becoming the frame of a love-didactic allegory, such as, for example, “ Fabliau dou dieu d'Amour"(The Tale of the God of Love), " Venus la déesse d'amors"(Venus is the goddess of love) and finally - the encyclopedia of courtly love - the famous "Roman de la Rose" (Romance of the Rose) by Guillaume de Lorris.

The “third estate” puts new content into the form of visions. Thus, the successor to the unfinished novel by Guillaume de Lorris, Jean de Meun, turns the exquisite allegory of his predecessor into a ponderous combination of didactics and satire, the edge of which is directed against the lack of “equality”, against the unfair privileges of the aristocracy and against the “robber” royal power). The same is true of Jean Molyneux’s “The Hopes of the Common People.” The sentiments of the “third estate” are no less clearly expressed in Langland’s famous “Vision of Peter the Plowman,” which played a propaganda role in the English peasant revolution of the 14th century. But unlike Jean de Meun, a representative of the urban part of the “third estate,” Langland, the ideologist of the peasantry, turns his gaze to the idealized past, dreaming of the destruction of capitalist usurers.

As a complete independent genre, visions are characteristic of medieval literature. But as a motif, the form of visions continues to exist in the literature of modern times, being especially favorable for the introduction of satire and didactics, on the one hand, and fantasy, on the other (for example, “Darkness” by Byron).

Novella

The sources of the novella are primarily Latin example, as well as fabliaux, stories interspersed in the “Dialogue about Pope Gregory”, apologists from the “Lives of the Church Fathers”, fables, folk tales. In the 13th century Occitan language, the word appeared to denote a story created on some newly processed traditional material nova.Hence - Italian novella(in the most popular collection of the late 13th century, Novellino, also known as One Hundred Ancient Novels), which, starting in the 15th century, spread throughout Europe.

The genre was established after the appearance of Giovanni Boccaccio’s book “The Decameron” (c. 1353), the plot of which was that several people, fleeing the plague outside the city, tell each other short stories. Boccaccio in his book created the classic type of Italian short story, which was developed by his many followers in Italy itself and in other countries. In France, under the influence of the translation of the Decameron, a collection of One Hundred New Novels appeared around 1462 (however, the material owed more to the facets of Poggio Bracciolini), and Margarita Navarskaya, based on the Decameron, wrote the book Heptameron (1559).

In the era of romanticism, under the influence of Hoffmann, Novalis, Edgar Allan Poe, short stories with elements of mysticism, fantasy, and fabulousness spread. Later, in the works of Prosper Mérimée and Guy de Maupassant, this term began to be used to refer to realistic stories.

For American literature, starting with Washington Irving and Edgar Poe, the novella, or short story (English. short story), has special significance as one of the most characteristic genres.

In the second half XIX-XX centuries the traditions of the novella were continued by such different writers as Ambrose Bierce, O. Henry, H. G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, Gilbert Chesterton, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Karel Capek, Jorge Luis Borges.

The novella is characterized by several important features: extreme brevity, a sharp, even paradoxical plot, a neutral style of presentation, lack of psychologism and descriptiveness, and an unexpected denouement. The novella takes place in modern author world. The plot structure of a novella is similar to a dramatic one, but usually simpler.

Goethe spoke about the action-packed nature of the novella, giving it the following definition: “an unheard-of event that has happened.”

The short story emphasizes the significance of the denouement, which contains an unexpected turn (pointe, “falcon turn”). According to the French researcher, “ultimately, one can even say that the entire novel is conceived as a denouement.” Viktor Shklovsky wrote that a description of happy mutual love does not create a novella; a novella requires love with obstacles: “A loves B, B does not love A; when B fell in love with A, then A no longer loves B.” He identified a special type of ending, which he called a “false ending”: usually it is made from a description of nature or weather.

Among Boccaccio's predecessors, the novella had a moralizing attitude. Boccaccio retained this motif, but for him the morality flowed from the story not logically, but psychologically, and was often only a pretext and device. The later novella convinces the reader of the relativity of moral criteria.

Tale

Story

Joke(fr. anecdote- fable, fable; from Greek τὸ ἀνέκδοτоν - unpublished, lit. “not issued”) - genre of folklore - short funny story. Most often, a joke has an unexpected semantic resolution at the very end, which gives rise to laughter. This could be a play on words, different meanings of words, modern associations that require additional knowledge: social, literary, historical, geographical, etc. Anecdotes cover almost all areas of human activity. There are jokes about family life, politics, sex, etc. In most cases, the authors of the jokes are unknown.

In Russia XVIII-XIX centuries. (and in most languages ​​of the world to this day) the word “anecdote” had a slightly different meaning - it could just be an entertaining story about some famous person, not necessarily with the goal of ridiculing him (cf. Pushkin: “Anecdotes of days gone by”). Such “anecdotes” about Potemkin became classics of that time.

Oh yeah

Epic

Play(French pièce) - a dramatic work, usually classic style, created for staging any action in the theater. This is a general specific name for works of drama intended for performance on stage.

The structure of the play includes the text of the characters (dialogues and monologues) and functional author's remarks (notes containing the designation of the location of the action, interior features, appearance of the characters, their manner of behavior, etc.). As a rule, the play is preceded by a list of characters, sometimes indicating their age, profession, titles, family ties and so on.

A separate, complete semantic part of a play is called an act or action, which may include smaller components - phenomena, episodes, pictures.

The very concept of a play is purely formal; it does not include any emotional or stylistic meaning. Therefore, in most cases, the play is accompanied by a subtitle that defines its genre - classic, main (comedy, tragedy, drama), or author's (for example: My poor Marat, dialogues in three parts - A. Arbuzov; We'll wait and see, a pleasant play in four acts - B. Shaw; The Good Man from Szechwan, parabolic play - B. Brecht, etc.). The genre designation of the play not only serves as a “hint” to the director and actors during the stage interpretation of the play, but helps to enter into the author’s style and the figurative structure of the dramaturgy.

Essay(from fr. essai“attempt, trial, sketch”, from Lat. exagium“weighing”) is a literary genre of prose composition of small volume and free composition. The essay expresses the author’s individual impressions and considerations on a specific occasion or subject and does not pretend to be an exhaustive or definitive interpretation of the topic (in the parodic Russian tradition of “a look and something”). In terms of volume and function, it borders, on the one hand, with a scientific article and a literary essay (with which an essay is often confused), and on the other, with a philosophical treatise. The essayistic style is characterized by imagery, fluidity of associations, aphoristic, often antithetical thinking, an emphasis on intimate frankness and conversational intonation. Some theorists consider it as the fourth, along with epic, lyricism and drama, type of fiction.

Michel Montaigne introduced it as a special genre form, based on the experience of his predecessors, in his “Essays” (1580). Francis Bacon, for the first time in English literature, gave the title English to his works, published in book form in 1597, 1612 and 1625. essays. The English poet and playwright Ben Jonson first used the word essayist. essayist) in 1609.

In the 18th-19th centuries, the essay was one of the leading genres of English and French journalism. The development of essayism was promoted in England by J. Addison, Richard Steele, and Henry Fielding, in France by Diderot and Voltaire, and in Germany by Lessing and Herder. The essay was the main form of philosophical-aesthetic polemic among the romantics and romantic philosophers (G. Heine, R. W. Emerson, G. D. Thoreau)..

The essay genre is deeply rooted in English literature: T. Carlyle, W. Hazlitt, M. Arnold (19th century); M. Beerbohm, G. K. Chesterton (XX century). In the 20th century, essayism experienced its heyday: major philosophers, prose writers, and poets turned to the essay genre (R. Rolland, B. Shaw, G. Wells, J. Orwell, T. Mann, A. Maurois, J. P. Sartre).

In Lithuanian criticism, the term essay (lit. esė) was first used by Balis Sruoga in 1923. Characteristic features of essays are noted in the books “Smiles of God” (lit. “Dievo šypsenos”, 1929) by Juozapas Albinas Gerbachiauskas and “Gods and Smutkyalis” (lit. “Dievai”) ir smūtkeliai", 1935) by Jonas Kossu-Alexandravičius. Examples of essays include “poetic anti-commentaries” “Lyrical Etudes” (lit. “Lyriniai etiudai”, 1964) and “Antakalnis Baroque” (lit. “Antakalnio barokas”, 1971) by Eduardas Meželaitis, “Diary without dates” (lit. “Dienoraštis be datų", 1981) by Justinas Marcinkevičius, "Poetry and the Word" (lit. "Poezija ir žodis", 1977) and Papyri from the graves of the dead (lit. "Papirusai iš mirusiųjų kapų", 1991) by Marcelius Martinaitis. An anti-conformist moral position, conceptuality, precision and polemic characterizes the essay by Tomas Venclova

The essay genre was not typical for Russian literature. Examples of the essayistic style are found in A. S. Pushkin (“Journey from Moscow to St. Petersburg”), A. I. Herzen (“From the Other Shore”), F. M. Dostoevsky (“A Writer’s Diary”). At the beginning of the 20th century, V. I. Ivanov, D. S. Merezhkovsky, Andrei Bely, Lev Shestov, V. V. Rozanov turned to the essay genre, and later - Ilya Erenburg, Yuri Olesha, Viktor Shklovsky, Konstantin Paustovsky. Literary critical assessments of modern critics, as a rule, are embodied in a variation of the essay genre.

IN musical art The term piece is usually used as a specific name for works of instrumental music.

Sketch(English) sketch, literally - sketch, draft, sketch), in the 19th - early 20th centuries. a short play with two, rarely three characters. The sketch became most widespread on the stage.

In the UK, television sketch shows are very popular. Similar programs have begun to appear recently on Russian television(“Our Russia”, “Six Frames”, “Give You Youth!”, “Dear Program”, “Gentleman Show”, “Town”, etc.) A striking example of a sketch show is the television series “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” .

A famous sketch creator was A.P. Chekhov.

Comedy(Greek κωliμωδία, from Greek κῶμος, kỗmos, “festival in honor of Dionysus” and Greek. ἀοιδή/Greek. ᾠδή, aoidḗ / ōidḗ, “song”) is a genre of fiction characterized by a humorous or satirical approach, as well as a type of drama in which the moment of effective conflict or struggle between antagonistic characters is specifically resolved.

Aristotle defined comedy as “the imitation of the worst people, but not in all their depravity, but in a funny way” (“Poetics”, Chapter V).

Types of comedy include genres such as farce, vaudeville, sideshow, sketch, operetta, and parody. Nowadays, examples of such primitiveness are many comedy films, built solely on external comedy, the comedy of situations in which the characters find themselves in the process of developing the action.

Distinguish sitcom And comedy of characters.

Sitcom (situation comedy, situational comedy) is a comedy in which the source of humor is events and circumstances.

Comedy of characters (comedy of manners) - a comedy in which the source of the funny is the inner essence of the characters (morals), funny and ugly one-sidedness, an exaggerated trait or passion (vice, flaw). Very often, a comedy of manners is a satirical comedy that makes fun of all these human qualities.

Tragedy(Greek τραγωδία, tragōdía, literally - goat song, from trаgos - goat and öde - song), a dramatic genre based on the development of events, which, as a rule, is inevitable and necessarily leads to a catastrophic outcome for the characters, often filled with pathos; a type of drama that is the opposite of comedy.

The tragedy is marked by stern seriousness, depicts reality in the most pointed way, as a clot of internal contradictions, reveals the deepest conflicts of reality in an extremely intense and rich form, acquiring the meaning of an artistic symbol; It is no coincidence that most tragedies are written in verse.

Drama(Greek Δρα´μα) - one of the types of literature (along with lyric poetry, epic, and lyric epic). It differs from other types of literature in the way it conveys the plot - not through narration or monologue, but through character dialogues. Drama in one way or another includes any literary work constructed in a dialogical form, including comedy, tragedy, drama (as a genre), farce, vaudeville, etc.

Since ancient times, it has existed in folklore or literary form among various peoples; The ancient Greeks, ancient Indians, Chinese, Japanese, and American Indians created their own dramatic traditions independently of each other.

In Greek, the word "drama" depicts a sad, unpleasant event or situation of one specific person.

Fable- a poetic or prose literary work of a moralizing, satirical nature. At the end of the fable there is a short moralizing conclusion - the so-called morality. The characters are usually animals, plants, things. The fable ridicules the vices of people.

Fable is one of the oldest literary genres. In Ancient Greece, Aesop (VI-V centuries BC) was famous, who wrote fables in prose. In Rome - Phaedrus (1st century AD). In India, the collection of fables “Panchatantra” dates back to the 3rd century. The most prominent fabulist of modern times was the French poet J. Lafontaine (17th century).

In Russia, the development of the fable genre refers to mid-18th century - early XIX centuries and is associated with the names of A.P. Sumarokov, I.I. Khemnitser, A.E. Izmailov, I.I. Dmitriev, although the first experiments in poetic fables were in the 17th century by Simeon of Polotsk and in the 1st half. XVIII century by A.D. Kantemir, V.K. Trediakovsky. In Russian poetry, fable free verse is developed, conveying the intonations of a relaxed and crafty tale.

I. A. Krylov's fables, with their realistic liveliness, sensible humor and excellent language, marked the heyday of this genre in Russia. IN Soviet time The fables of Demyan Bedny, S. Mikhalkov and others gained popularity.

There are two concepts of the origin of the fable. The first is represented by the German school of Otto Crusius, A. Hausrath and others, the second by the American scientist B. E. Perry. According to the first concept, in a fable the narrative is primary, and the moral is secondary; The fable comes from an animal tale, and the animal tale comes from a myth. According to the second concept, morality is primary in the fable; the fable is close to comparisons, proverbs and sayings; like them, the fable arises as an auxiliary means of argumentation. The first point of view goes back to the romantic theory of Jacob Grimm, the second revives the rationalistic concept of Lessing.

Philologists of the 19th century were long occupied with the debate about the priority of the Greek or Indian fable. It can now be considered almost certain that the common source of the material of the Greek and Indian fables was the Sumerian-Babylonian fable.

Epics- Russian folk epic songs about the exploits of heroes. The basis of the plot of the epic is some heroic event, or a remarkable episode of Russian history (hence popular name epics - " old man", "old lady", implying that the action in question took place in the past).

Epics are usually written in tonic verse with two to four stresses.

The term “epics” was first introduced by Ivan Sakharov in the collection “Songs of the Russian People” in 1839; he proposed it based on the expression “according to epics” in “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign,” which meant “according to the facts.”

Ballad

Myth(ancient Greek μῦθος) in literature - a legend that conveys people’s ideas about the world, man’s place in it, the origin of all things, about gods and heroes; a certain idea of ​​the world.

The specificity of myths appears most clearly in primitive culture, where myths are the equivalent of science, an integral system in terms of which the whole world is perceived and described. Later, when such forms are isolated from mythology public consciousness, like art, literature, science, religion, political ideology, etc., they hold a number of mythological models that are uniquely reinterpreted when included in new structures; the myth is experiencing its second life. Of particular interest is their transformation in literary creativity.

Since mythology masters reality in the forms of figurative storytelling, it is close in essence to fiction; historically, it anticipated many of the possibilities of literature and influenced its early development all-round influence. Naturally, literature does not part with mythological foundations even later, which applies not only to works with mythological basis of the plot, but also to realistic and naturalistic everyday life writing of the 19th and 20th centuries (it is enough to name “Oliver Twist” by Charles Dickens, “Nana” by E. Zola, “The Magic Mountain” by T. Mann).

Novella(Italian novella - news) - narrative prose genre, which is characterized by brevity, a sharp plot, a neutral style of presentation, lack of psychologism, and an unexpected ending. Sometimes used as a synonym for story, sometimes called a type of story.

Tale- a prose genre of unstable volume (mostly intermediate between a novel and a story), gravitating towards a chronicle plot that reproduces the natural course of life. The plot, devoid of intrigue, is centered around the main character, whose identity and fate are revealed within a few events.

The story is an epic prose genre. The plot of the story tends more towards epic and chronicle plot and composition. Possible verse form. The story depicts a series of events. It is amorphous, events often simply join each other, a large independent role extra-plot elements play. It does not have a complex, intense and complete plot point.

Story - small form epic prose, correlated with the story as a more developed form of storytelling. Goes back to folklore genres (fairy tales, parables); how the genre became isolated in written literature; often indistinguishable from a short story, and since the 18th century. - and an essay. Sometimes a short story and an essay are considered as polar varieties of a story.

A story is a work of small volume, containing a small number of characters, and also, most often, having one storyline.

Fairy tale: 1) a type of narrative, mostly prosaic folklore ( fairy tale prose), which includes works of different genres, the content of which, from the point of view of folklore bearers, lacks strict authenticity. Fairy-tale folklore is opposed to the “strictly reliable” folklore narrative ( non-fairy prose) (see myth, epic, historical song, spiritual poems, legend, demonological stories, tale, blasphemy, legend, epic).

2) genre of literary storytelling. A literary fairy tale either imitates a folklore one ( literary fairy tale written in folk poetic style), or creates a didactic work (see didactic literature) based on non-folklore stories. Folklore tale historically precedes literary.

Word " fairy tale"attested in written sources no earlier than the 16th century. From the word " say" What mattered was: a list, a list, an exact description. It acquires modern significance from the 17th-19th centuries. Previously, the word fable was used, until the 11th century - blasphemy.

The word “fairy tale” suggests that people will learn about it, “what it is” and find out “what” it, a fairy tale, is needed for. The purpose of a fairy tale is to subconsciously or consciously teach a child in the family the rules and purpose of life, the need to protect one’s “area” and a worthy attitude towards other communities. It is noteworthy that both the saga and the fairy tale carry a colossal information component, passed on from generation to generation, the belief in which is based on respect for one’s ancestors.

There are different types fairy tales

Fantasy(from English fantasy- “fantasy”) - view fantastic literature, based on the use of mythological and fairy tale motifs. IN modern form formed at the beginning of the 20th century.

Fantasy works most often resemble a historical adventure novel, the action of which takes place in a fictional world close to the real Middle Ages, the heroes of which encounter supernatural phenomena and creatures. Fantasy is often built on archetypal plots.

Unlike science fiction, fantasy does not seek to explain the world in which the work takes place from a scientific point of view. This world itself exists in the form of a certain assumption (most often its location relative to our reality is not specified at all: is it a parallel world, or another planet), and its physical laws may differ from the realities of our world. In such a world, the existence of gods, witchcraft, mythical creatures (dragons, gnomes, trolls), ghosts and any other fantastic entities may be real. At the same time, the fundamental difference between the “miracles” of fantasy and their fairy-tale counterparts is that they are the norm of the described world and act systematically, like the laws of nature.

Nowadays, fantasy is also a genre in cinema, painting, computer and board games. Such genre versatility especially distinguishes Chinese fantasy with elements of martial arts.

Epic(from epic and Greek poieo - I create)

1. An extensive narrative in verse or prose about outstanding national historical events (“Iliad”, “Mahabharata”). The roots of the epic are in mythology and folklore. In the 19th century an epic novel arises (“War and Peace” by L.N. Tolstoy)
2. A complex, long history of something, including a number of major events.

Oh yeah- a poetic, as well as musical and poetic work, distinguished by solemnity and sublimity.

Initially, in Ancient Greece, any form of poetic lyric intended to accompany music was called an ode, including choral singing. Since the time of Pindar, the ode has been a choral epipic song in honor of the winner sports competitions sacred games with a three-part composition and emphasized solemnity and pomposity.

In Roman literature, the most famous are the odes of Horace, who used the dimensions of Aeolian lyric poetry, primarily the Alcaean stanza, adapting them to the Latin language; a collection of these works in Latin is called Carmina - songs; they were later called odes.

Since the Renaissance and in the Baroque era (XVI-XVII centuries), odes began to be called lyrical works in a pathetically high style, focusing on ancient examples; in classicism, ode became the canonical genre of high lyricism.

Elegy(Greek ελεγεια) - genre of lyric poetry; in early ancient poetry - a poem written in elegiac distich, regardless of content; later (Callimachus, Ovid) - a poem of sad content. In modern European poetry, elegy retains stable features: intimacy, motives of disappointment, unhappy love, loneliness, the frailty of earthly existence, determines rhetoric in the depiction of emotions; classical genre sentimentalism and romanticism (“Confession” by E. Baratynsky).

A poem with the character of thoughtful sadness. In this sense, we can say that most of Russian poetry is in an elegiac mood, at least up to the poetry of modern times. This, of course, does not deny that in Russian poetry there are excellent poems of a different, non-elegiac mood. Initially, in ancient Greek poetry, E. denoted a poem written in a stanza of a certain size, namely a couplet - hexameter-pentameter. Having the general character of lyrical reflection, E. among the ancient Greeks was very diverse in content, for example, sad and accusatory in Archilochus and Simonides, philosophical in Solon or Theognis, warlike in Callinus and Tyrtaeus, political in Mimnermus. One of the best Greek authors E. is Callimachus. Among the Romans, E. became more defined in character, but also freer in form. The importance of love stories has greatly increased. Famous Roman authors of romance include Propertius, Tibullus, Ovid, Catullus (they were translated by Fet, Batyushkov, etc.). Subsequently there was, perhaps, only one period in development European literature, when the word E. began to mean poems with a more or less stable form. And it began under the influence of the famous elegy of the English poet Thomas Gray, written in 1750 and causing numerous imitations and translations in almost all European languages. The revolution brought about by this era is defined as the onset of a period of sentimentalism in literature, which replaced false classicism. In essence, this was the decline of poetry from rational mastery in once established forms to the true sources of internal artistic experiences. In Russian poetry, Zhukovsky’s translation of Gray’s elegy (“Rural Cemetery”; 1802) definitely marked the beginning new era, which has finally gone beyond rhetoric and turned to sincerity, intimacy and depth. This internal change was also reflected in the new methods of versification introduced by Zhukovsky, who is thus the founder of new Russian sentimental poetry and one of its great representatives. In the general spirit and form of Gray's elegy, i.e. in the form of large poems filled with mournful reflection, such poems by Zhukovsky were written, which he himself called elegies, such as “Evening”, “Slavyanka”, “On the death of Cor. Wirtembergskaya". His “Theon and Aeschylus” is also considered an elegy (more precisely, it is an elegy-ballad). Zhukovsky called his poem “The Sea” an elegy. In the first half of the 19th century. It was common to give your poems the title of elegies; Batyushkov, Boratynsky, Yazykov and others especially often called their works elegies; subsequently, however, it went out of fashion. Nevertheless, many poems by Russian poets are imbued with an elegiac tone. And in world poetry there is hardly an author who does not have elegiac poems. IN German poetry Goethe's Roman Elegies are famous. Elegies are Schiller’s poems: “Ideals” (in Zhukovsky’s translation of “Dreams”), “Resignation”, “Walk”. Much of the elegies belong to Matisson (Batyushkov translated it “On the ruins of castles in Sweden”), Heine, Lenau, Herwegh, Platen, Freiligrath, Schlegel and many others. etc. The French wrote elegies: Millvois, Debord-Valmore, Kaz. Delavigne, A. Chenier (M. Chenier, the brother of the previous one, translated Gray's elegy), Lamartine, A. Musset, Hugo, etc. In English poetry, besides Gray, there are Spencer, Jung, Sidney, and later Shelley and Byron. In Italy, the main representatives of elegiac poetry are Alamanni, Castaldi, Filicana, Guarini, Pindemonte. In Spain: Boscan Almogaver, Gars de le Vega. In Portugal - Camoes, Ferreira, Rodrigue Lobo, de Miranda.

Attempts to write elegies in Russia before Zhukovsky were made by such authors as Pavel Fonvizin, the author of “Darling” Bogdanovich, Ablesimov, Naryshkin, Nartov and others.

Epigram(Greek επίγραμμα “inscription”) - a small satirical poem ridiculing a person or social phenomenon.

Ballad- a lyric epic work, that is, a story told in poetic form, of a historical, mythical or heroic nature. The plot of a ballad is usually borrowed from folklore. Ballads are often set to music.