UNIT 3: MAJOR LITERARY GENRES

GENRE- is a category of artistic, musical, or literary composition characterized by a particular

style or content.
LITERARY GENRE- is a type or category of literary compositions.

Three main subgenres:

I. POETRY
-Most compact form of literature
-The ideas, feelings, rhythm, and sound are packed into carefully chosen words,
working to convey meaning to readers

Types of Poetry
1. Narrative Poetry
-Poems that tell a story
-Began as oral tradition
Ex: The Iliad, and The Odyssey. Beowulf, Biag ni Lam-ang
2. Lyric Poetry
-supposed sung with musical accompaniment
- express the poets or the persona’s and feelings and emotions
Ex: sonnets, psalms, songs and odes
3.Dramatic Poetry
-are usually perform on stage, and they can be sung or spoken
Ex: Romeo and Juliet, Oedipus the King

ELEMENTS OF POETRY

 Persona- is a dramatic character who is the speaker in the poem

 Form- is written in lines and oftentimes the lines are divided into groups called stanza
 Imagery- use of language that appeal to the five senses: visual (sight), auditory
(hearing), gustatory (taste), tactile (touch), and olfactory (sense)
 Sound patterns – include rhyme, rhythm, and other literary devices that pertain to
sounds, such as onomatopoeia, alliteration, and assonance
 Rhyme- is a repetition of similar or identical sounds at the end of poetic lines
 Rhyme scheme- is the pattern of the rhyme placed at the end of each line or stanza in a
poem
 TYPE OF FOOT PATTERN EXAMPLE
Iambic 1 unstressed syllable followed by 1 Completed (com-PLETE)
stressed syllable
Trochaic 1 stressed syllable followed by 1 Garland (GAR- land)
unstressed syllable
Anapestic 2 unstressed syllables followed by On the road interrupt (in- ter-
1 stressed syllable RUPT)
Dactylic 1 stressed syllable followed by 2 Happiness (HAP- pi- ness)
unstressed syllables
Spondaic All syllables have equal stress

TYPE OF METER PATTERN

Monometer One foot
Dimeter Two feet
Trimeter Three feet
Tetrameter Four feet
Pentameter Five feet
Hexameter Six feet
Heptameter Seven feet
Octameter Eight feet

 Figurative Language- poet use words or phrases that are put together to help ordinary
things in new ways
 Theme- is the central idea of a poem

II. PROSE
-Divided into two: fiction and nonfiction

 Fiction- is a story that is made up or invented by an author

-According to Edgar Allan Poe, short stories should be read in one sitting, strive
for unity and effect, begin with the first sentence.
-Novel has over 40,000 words
-The five basic and common plot structure of a story follows a linear format

Other type of plot Definition Examples

Episodic plot It features distinct episodes that are
related to one another but that also can be
read individually, almost as stories by
themselves
Cumulative plot It contains repetition of phrases, sentences,
or events with one new aspect added with
each repetition
“Don Quixote de la Mancha” by
Miguel de Cervantes
“Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain
“The Gingerbread Man”
“The Great, Big, Enormous Turnip”
Frame narrative It is a story in which another story or other “The Canterbuy Tales” by
(embedded plot) multiple stories is/are embedded. It can also Geoffrey Chaucer
be that the main story is relayed second “Wuthering Heights” by Emily
hand to a character in the narrative Bronte

III. CREATIVE NON- FICTION

NON- FICTION- deals with real people, places, and events

1.Informative non- fiction – provides factual information such as science and history books
, encyclopedias, dictionaries, and periodicals.
2. Literary non- fiction- people, events and places involved are factual.
 Autobiography- the story person’s life told by the same person
 Biography- the story person’s life told by another person
 Essay- a piece writing that centers one topic or subject matter

DRAMA- are stories in verse or prose forms that are meant to be performed onstage in front
of an audience
 Comedy- aim to make audience laugh
 Musical drama- the characters in musical drama dance and sing
 Farce- is a nonsensical kind of drama that employs slapstick humor.
 Melodrama- is characterized by the characters’ exaggerated emotions in various
situation