1.8: The Literary Landscape: Four Major Genres (2024)

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Heather Ringo & Athena Kashyap
City College of San Francisco via ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative

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The Literary Landscape: Four Major Genres

In the landscape of literature, there are four major genres: poetry, drama, fiction, and creative nonfiction. While there are certain key recognizable features of each genre, these are not so much rules as they are tools, or conventions, the author uses. If we think of literature as its own world, it mayhelp to think of genres more as regions with open borders, where there are no walls and that authors can freely move through if they desire. But, like any traveler, it helps you understand your place in the world if you know where you are located (or at least the "lay of the land"). It can also be interesting to analyze how certain texts break genre conventions. These major genres are briefly outlined below.

"Literary Genres Venn Diagram" by Matt Shirley (2021) licensed CC-BY-SA. This image shows some of the differences and overlap between different genres.

Poetry

Emphasis on image or feeling
More emphasis on rhythm and meter than other genres (older drama, like Shakespeare, often uses rhythm and meter)
Sometimes rhymes, but not always
Organized through stanzas and lines
Does not require a plot or characters, although it may (such as in narrative poetry). Often focuses on single moment or feeling or image
Meant to be heard as well as read

Example

"I wandered lonely as a cloud" by William Wordsworth (1807)

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees, 5
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay: 10
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company: 15
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

Drama

Meant to be performed to an audience
Character List (often); Character names indicate who is speaking (almost always)
Organized by Acts, Scenes, and Line Numbers
May include stage directions, but may not
Plot based (it tells a story, usually involving a conflict of some kind)
May be written in verse
Types: Comedy, Tragedy, History, Romance

Example

The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde (excerpt)

THE PERSONS IN THE PLAY

John Worthing, J.P.
Algernon Moncrieff
Rev. Canon Chasuble, D.D.
Merriman, Butler
Lane, Manservant
Lady Bracknell
Hon. Gwendolen Fairfax
Cecily Cardew
Miss Prism, Governess

ACT 1 SCENE 1

1 Morning-room in Algernon’s flat in Half-Moon Street. The room is luxuriously and artistically furnished. The sound of a piano is heard in the adjoining room.

2 [Lane is arranging afternoon tea on the table, and after the music has ceased, Algernon enters.]

Fiction

Prose
Created from the imagination. May be inspired by real events or people, but not chained by the constraints of reality.
Plot-based
Character based
Organized through paragraphs and sentences
Types: Short Story, Novella, Novel

Example

From the oval-shaped flower-bed there rose perhaps a hundred stalks spreading into heart-shaped or tongue-shaped leaves half way up and unfurling at the tip red or blue or yellow petals marked with spots of colour raised upon the surface; and from the red, blue or yellow gloom of the throat emerged a straight bar, rough with gold dust and slightly clubbed at the end. The petals were voluminous enough to be stirred by the summer breeze, and when they moved, the red, blue and yellow lights passed one over the other, staining an inch of the brown earth beneath with a spot of the most intricate colour. The light fell either upon the smooth, grey back of a pebble, or, the shell of a snail with its brown, circular veins, or falling into a raindrop, it expanded with such intensity of red, blue and yellow the thin walls of water that one expected them to burst and disappear. Instead, the drop was left in a second silver grey once more, and the light now settled upon the flesh of a leaf, revealing the branching thread of fibre beneath the surface, and again it moved on and spread its illumination in the vast green spaces beneath the dome of the heart-shaped and tongue-shaped leaves. Then the breeze stirred rather more briskly overhead and the colour was flashed into the air above, into the eyes of the men and women who walk in Kew Gardens in July.

In-Text Citation: The natural world is described in anatomical language, like dismembered body parts, such as the "heart-shaped or tongue-shaped leaves," the "throat" of the flowers, and the "veins" of the snail shells (Woolf 1). If there are page numbers, the number that goes in the parenthesis is the page number. If there are no page numbers, you can use the paragraph number (Woolf par. 1). If there are not page numbers, and there are too many paragraphs to count, you can just put the author last name (Woolf).

Works Cited Entry: Woolf, Virginia. "Kew Gardens." Monday or Tuesday. New York: Harcourt, 1921.

Creative Nonfiction

Prose
True (not fabricated, not from the imagination). This is a *very important* distinction from the other genres.
Plot-based
Character based
Organized through paragraphs and sentences
Types: Narrative, Memoir, Literary Criticism, Literary Journalism

Example

I was born in Tuckahoe, near Hillsborough, and about twelve miles from Easton, in Talbot county, Maryland. I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it. By far the larger part of the slaves know as little of their ages as horses know of theirs, and it is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep their slaves thus ignorant. I do not remember to have ever met a slave who could tell of his birthday. They seldom come nearer to it than planting-time, harvest-time, cherry-time, spring-time, or fall-time. A want of information concerning my own was a source of unhappiness to me even during childhood. The white children could tell their ages. I could not tell why I ought to be deprived of the same privilege. I was not allowed to make any inquiries of my master concerning it. He deemed all such inquiries on the part of a slave improper and impertinent, and evidence of a restless spirit. The nearest estimate I can give makes me now between twenty-seven and twenty-eight years of age. I come to this, from hearing my master say, some time during 1835, I was about seventeen years old.

In-Text Citation: Even from the first paragraph of his narrative, Douglass repeatedly notes the power of "knowledge" and "information", and of slaveowners' dehumanizing cruelty in withholding knowledge and information, such as birthdays (1). The number here represents the page. Just like in Fiction, if there is no page available, cite the paragraph number (Douglass par. 1). If there no page number, and there are too many paragraphs to count, just cite the last name (Douglass).

Works Cited Entry: Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Boston: District Court of Massachusetts, 1845.

Copyright

All literary works cited on this page are in the public domain.