Lecture
1. Literary genera and genres. For more than two
thousand years the problem of literary genera and genres has been the subject of researchers' close attention. If the first part of it is more or less clear — the overwhelming majority of scholars agree that there are three
literary genera — epic, lyric, and drama — then with regard to the second we have various, quite
contradictory points of view. Alongside the concept of "genre" the concept of "species" is also used. It is
worth noting also that in both textbooks and serious theoretical works the term «genre»
often denotes genus («lyric genre»), species («the novella genre»), and variety («epic drama»). Yet,
in translation from the French, genre means both genus and species. So, first we need to settle the
terminology. A three-tiered genus–genre classification seems more logical: genus —
genre – generic variety.
2. Literary genus. Genus is a way of expressing artistic content, or a set of
«principles of the formal organization of works, determined by the properties both of the subject
of depiction and of artistic speech.
3. Literary genres.
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A genre is a historically formed type of artistic work that synthesizes the characteristic
features of content and form of a particular kind of work; it has a relatively stable compositional structure, which
constantly develops and is enriched. The very definition of a genre attunes the reader to a certain
content. In this sense, genres include the epic, the novel, the novella, the narrative poem, the meditation, the ode, the tragedy,
the vaudeville, and so on.
Some genres are divided into generic varieties. According to the principle of content,
for example, the novel is divided into the following generic varieties: historical, philosophical, political,
domestic, and so on. A narrative poem may be heroic, satirical, or burlesque; a tragedy
mythological, historical, or romantic.
Certain genres, mostly lyric ones (odes, hymns, lyric portraits), do not have generic varieties.
Every era in the development of literature has its own most widespread genres. In order to
understand the modern classification of genera and genres, one must turn to the history of their study.
Modern literary epic has a fairly developed hierarchy of genres. The classification of
genres related to the epic genus of literature can be based on various principles of
their distribution: by time of origin, by features of speech organization (prose or verse), and so on.
Most often epic genres are grouped by the scope of their subject matter, i.e.,
by the fullness of their coverage of reality. Depending on the scale of the events and fates depicted,
three groups of epic genres are distinguished. The large genres include the epic proper (sometimes called the novel-epic) and the novel; the medium ones include the novella [povest]; the small genres are represented by the short story, tales, essays,
sketches, feuilletons, pamphlets, myths, legends, and parables.
Every literary era leaves its mark on the development of genres. The boundaries between them are quite
fluid, and each literary work brings something of its own to genre evolution.
The epic proper, or heroic or epic poem (as distinct from the later Romantic or lyro-epic)
poem — is a substantial, monumental work of epic content, in which an epochal
turning point in the life of an entire people (sometimes many peoples) is broadly and comprehensively
reproduced, reflecting events of decisive significance for many generations.
The novel is a large epic genre based on the depiction of the private life
of a person in inseparable connection with social development.
The novella [povest] is an epic work of medium genre form. It is most often spoken of as occupying an intermediate
position between the novel and the short story, with blurred and indistinct genre boundaries. Indeed, the novella
has much in common with both the novel and the short story. It reveals human destiny,
the hero's relationship with surrounding reality. The differences are more quantitative than qualitative
in nature.
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The short story [novella] is a small epic genre of fiction; it is sometimes identified with
the tale [rasskaz]. However, while having much in common, the short story differs substantially from the tale. The
short story is characterized by paradox; it always contains a satirical or comic pathos,
sometimes acquiring a dramatic or even tragic tinge. The ending of a short story is
unpredictable. In this genre, the poetic word acquires considerably greater artistic power.
The tale [rasskaz] is a small epic genre of fiction. The «span of life»
that can be «captured» by the genre of the tale is practically unlimited, but the most
traditional features of the tale's aesthetic selectivity «gravitate» toward depiction based on
a particular incident from life or some emphasized feature of human
character.
The essay is a genre that lies at the intersection of artistic and journalistic (sometimes popular-science) creativity. The distinguishing features of the essay are, as a rule, a modest length,
a specific theme given a deliberately free, subjective interpretation, a free composition,
a paradoxical manner of thinking, and so on.
The sketch [ocherk] is a small artistic-journalistic genre in which the author depicts real events and
facts. Most often sketches are devoted to recounting contemporary events or portraying people
whom the writer personally knew.
The specific artistic task of the sketch, as an epic form, is thought to consist in
«demonstrating and explaining some especially important, or new, previously unknown phenomena. The sketch
is always at the forefront of literature, allowing it to respond quickly to new themes
and problems.
The feuilleton is a short work of an artistic-journalistic nature, written
on a topical theme, treated in a humorous vein.
The pamphlet is an artistic-journalistic work that exposes, in a sharply satirical form,
topical phenomena of social life.
Myth is a short narrative work reflecting the notions
of collective (chiefly primal) consciousness about the surrounding world, its origin, and
the system of interrelations among the important parts of the universe.
Legend is a folk or literary work containing a narrative on a fantastical theme.
The parable (Old Russian pritcha — that which is joined to, likened to something, and thus
acquires its meaning) is a brief folk or literary narrative work of an instructive nature, oriented mainly toward an allegorical form of demonstrating the content of ethical
values of existence.
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The fairy tale is a small epic genre whose roots go back to oral folk art. Fairy tales
are based on invented, fantastical, or adventurous events. Their ending is predominantly
optimistic: good triumphs over evil.
Lyric poetry (from the Greek lyra – a stringed musical instrument to whose accompaniment the ancient
Greeks sang songs) is one of the three principal literary genera, in which the surrounding
reality is depicted through the transmission of the feelings, moods, experiences, and emotions of the lyric
hero or the author.
In lyric poetry the subject displays particular activity, though it is not always individualized,
as we see in the genre system of the lyric poetry of the past (ode – elegy – satire).
Lyric poetry has a well-developed system of folk and literary genres. The problem lies in
the fact that in lyric poetry the process of genre evolution has today led to a situation where more and more
frequently, works come from the pens of especially gifted poets that do not correspond to any of the known
generic parameters. As a result, researchers propose abandoning altogether the
traditional generic division of lyric works and moving to their thematic-ideological classification.
According to such principles, lyric poetry is divided into civic (or political), philosophical,
landscape, and love (or intimate) poetry.
There is also another classification of lyric poetry. According to it, lyric poetry is divided into meditative and
suggestive. Meditative works are those dominated by reflection on the eternal
problems of existence; suggestive works are those in which the main emphasis is placed on conveying
emotional states.
G. Pospelov offers something along these lines, in a modified version, in his typological division of lyric poetry. He believed
that «lyric poetry may be meditative, meditative-descriptive, and properly descriptive».
The first two varieties of such lyric poetry are directed mainly toward introspection; they include
emotional or intellectual reflection. Lyric meditation may also be of an outward
kind and convey an attitude toward the events of the objective world. Properly descriptive lyric poetry
may be either descriptive (including landscape poetry) or narrative (sometimes with allegorical or
symbolic meaning).
Alongside the thematic classification of lyric works, the generic division of lyric poetry, carried out
depending on the type of the poet's experience, fully retains its significance. If the subject
immerses itself in an element of objective contemplation and, as it were, loses its
individuality in that contemplation, then we get: the hymn, the dithyramb, psalms, paeans. Subjective genres include songs,
sonnets, stanzas, canzones, elegies, epistles, and satires. The lyric genres (besides those named) also include
the epithalamium, the panegyric, the madrigal, the epitaph (which are almost never used in contemporary literature,
as are some of those named above), the meditation-poem [dumka], the romance, the lyric portrait, and the meditation.
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Drama is a literary genus that depicts reality directly through the utterances and
actions of the characters themselves. Genetically, drama is connected with folk ritual acts.
Literary theorists note two generic types of drama. The first of them is the so-called
«Aristotelian», or «closed» drama. It reveals the characters of the personages through their
actions. Such drama is characterized by a plot-based structure with the necessary accompanying attributes:
exposition, rising action, climax, and denouement. In this type of drama, the
chronology of events and the actions of the heroes is preserved within a relatively limited space.
The other generic type of drama is the so-called «non-Aristotelian», or «open» drama. Its
basis is a synthetic artistic thinking, in which epic or lyric elements actively
penetrate the dramatic genus, creating an impression of intergeneric diffusion.
If epic elements dominate in this generic type, such drama is called
epic drama. Its inherent elements may include conventionality, intellectualization of content,
and the active intervention of the writer in the action. Epic drama is vividly represented in the work of B.
Brecht, N. Hikmet, M. Kulish, and I. Kocherha.
Lyric drama is a dramatic work in which lyric
elements play a notable role. At the center of the depiction, the author places the inner world of the heroes. In lyric drama, the aesthetic functions of conventionality are considerably
strengthened, temporal and spatial parameters are deformed,
the composition becomes more complex, and associative connections dominate («The Magic Dream» by M. Starytsky,
«The Possessed» by Lesya Ukrainka).
Drama is a specific type of art that belongs simultaneously to literature and to
theater. Only through the collective creativity of the writer and the director, as well as the artist,
the composer, and the actors, can it become a notable phenomenon of literary-artistic life.
Throughout the centuries-long history of drama, various generic forms are born, develop, and sometimes
die out. Thus, in Ancient Greece tragedy and comedy arise, which
still exist today, and the satyr play, which disappeared already in antiquity. In the drama of
the Middle Ages, works of the genres of religious drama appear, connected with worship services and
with the plots of the Bible and hagiographic literature (liturgical drama, auto sacramental, mystery play). In the same period
secular theater is also born, with its own system of genres (farce, sottie, Fastnachtspiel,
morality play, interlude). During the Renaissance, the Italian improvisational commedia dell'arte flourishes.
In the 17th–18th centuries the interlude spreads. New dramatic genres arise in the 18th
century (vaudeville, drama, melodrama). The theater of the current century is characterized by an increasingly
noticeable tendency toward all kinds of intergeneric fusions and the interpenetration of generic forms. In the
20th century, hybrid genres dominate (tragicomedy, tragifarce).
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Tragedy is a dramatic work based on a sharp, irreconcilable conflict between
a personality striving to realize its creative potential to the fullest, and the objective impossibility
of its realization. The etymology of the term «tragedy» is connected with cult rites, the stage
enactment of myth, an attribute of which was the goat. The conflict of tragedy has a profound philosophical
content, is extremely relevant in political, social, or spiritual terms,
and is distinguished by a high tension of the hero's psychological experience. Tragedy almost always
ends in the death of the main hero. Each historical era gave its own answers to
the causes of the emergence of tragic conflicts.
Comedy is a dramatic work in which, by means of humor and satire, negative
social and everyday phenomena are debunked, and the ridiculous in surrounding reality or in
human beings is revealed. Comedy as a genre originated in ancient Greece. It arose out of ribald songs.
Traditionally, a distinction is made between the comedy of situations and the comedy of characters. The source of the comic in the former
is unexpected plot situations, a concurrence of circumstances («The Comedy of Errors» by W. Shakespeare,
«The Pious Martha» by T. de Molina, «Matchmaking at Honcharivka» by H. Kvitka-Osnovianenko).
Tragicomedy is a dramatic genre characterized by features of both tragedy and comedy at once. This
distinguishes it from drama as a genre intermediate between tragedy and comedy. At the heart of
tragicomedy lies the tragicomic worldview of the playwright. It is evident that the tragic and
the comic, both in life and in art, cannot exist «in parallel» without colliding with one
another. The interaction of these polar elements can also be observed in the theater.
One of the principal means of contemporary tragicomedy is at the same time the tragicomic grotesque, which
underscores the meaning of a terrifying phenomenon while baring its comically absurd side. The characters of tragicomedy
possess such contrasting qualities that they simultaneously display their comic traits and a hopeless
doom. Playwrights working in this genre both delve into the problems of
human existence and laugh at them. Tragicomedy is at once a bleak view of the
world and buffoonery. Contemporary tragicomedy is almost always ironic. It does not moralize or condemn, but
tries to reflect together with the viewer on this or that problem and to grant the viewer the right
to make a free choice.
A variety of tragicomedy that became an independent genre in the 20th century is the tragifarce. The
expression «tragic farce» is found in the great German philosopher A. Schopenhauer.
The Russian playwright A. Sukhovo-Kobylin calls his play "The Death of Tarelkin" a "tragifarce". Alfred Jarry and Guillaume Apollinaire also write in this genre («The Breasts of Tiresias»).
Drama [as a genre] is a play with a sharp conflict of a social or everyday nature, which
develops in constant tension. The heroes of works written in this genre are predominantly
ordinary, common people. The author seeks to reveal their psychology, to aesthetically explore the evolution
of characters, and the motivations of their deeds and actions. An example of drama is Vynnychenko's «The Black Panther and the White
Bear».
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Alongside epic, lyric, and drama, literature often features works in which
features of the epic, lyric, and dramatic genera are combined with adjacent branches
of human social activity, including science and journalism.
Most often there occurs a combination of the epic and lyric principles. Works of this kind
belong to the lyro-epic. A person is depicted here on two planes: on the one hand,
certain events of his life are conveyed, and on the other – experiences, emotions, moods. Such
works most often include the ballad, the duma, the epic folk song [bylina], the fable, the satire, the bucolic, the conversation-poem, as well as
the narrative poem, and sometimes the novel in verse.
Specific intergeneric formations have become literary biography (documentary-biographical artistic prose) and memoirs, which have features both of the genres of fiction and
of journalism and documentary writing, relying on historical data. If literary memoirs
generalize and aesthetically assimilate real facts from the author's life, then literary biography
is built on the aesthetic treatment of the facts of the life of a real hero. Let us examine in more detail the lyro-epic, memoir, and biographical genres.
Self-check questions.
1. Explain the concepts of species, genus, and genre as applied to literary works.
2. How does the interpenetration of epic, lyric, and drama occur?
3. Is there a lyric element in epic and dramatic works?
4. Discuss genre as a form of content.
5. How do genera and genres arise in the historical-literary process?
6. What is an epic work? Name the varieties of epic works.
7. What is a dramatic work? Features of dramatic works.
8. What is the problem of distinguishing between epic genres?
9. Name the varieties of lyric poetry and describe their features.
10. How did drama develop over the course of its history?
11. What are the varieties of mixed form?
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