Genres of Imaginative Literature

1. Genres of Imaginative Literature • Fiction • Poetry • Drama

2. Genre means class or type. If you've ever studied science, you know another word for classifications, genus, from the same Latin root. In the arts, genre classifications are usually related to characteristics of style, form, and presentation. For example, fiction typically is read silently, poetry read aloud, and drama performed on stage

3. Poetry, fiction, and drama are also formatted or structured differently.

4. Prose fiction on the page looks like prose nonfiction, the text arranged from page margin to page margin without regard for the relationship between the words and the margins. • Printed poetry, on the other hand, is recognizable by lines that end based on sound or appearance or meaning rather than on the page margins. • Drama in print looks different from fiction and poetry; dramatic scripts usually have character names followed by dialogue and usually have no narrator.

5. Before the twentieth century, genre classifications were easier to recognize and explain than they are now. One genre from the past hardly exists any longer, the epic, which was part of an oral tradition that presented the cultural history of a people in lyrics that when eventually written down, for example by Homer in The Odyssey or Virgil in The Aeneid, resembled what we call poetry in their rhythms and word choices. 

6. Let’s compare the three genres we’ve studied this semester.

8. The epic poem has qualities of fiction (prose), poetry, and drama. While it has the length, depth, and exposition of a novel and the word choice and rhythm of a poem, the epic poem was, like a play, composed to be performed in front of a large audience.