Major Genres of Literature

1. Poetry
Poetry is generally considered to be the oldest of the arts. Long before our
forefathers learned to write, they sang and recite lines of verse.
Among the literary genres, poetry is the most closely related to music. Like music, it
appeals to the senses and imagination. Like music, too it is meant to be heard.
Poets choose words or their sounds as well as for their meanings. They combine
these words to create vivid pictures and to express deep feelings.
Elements of Poetry
1.

Sense- is revealed through the meaning of words; image and symbols.

a.
Diction- denotative and connotative meanings/symbols
Denotation is a literal meaning or the dictionary definition. It's exactly
what you say.
Connotation is when you mean something else or when something
might be hidden.
For example
If you write: He drank his beer quietly.
If we just read this sentence for the literal, or denotative meaning, we
learn that he drank his beer without saying much at all. However, we
know that drinking beer can be associated with a party atmosphere
where everyone is happy and loud, or it can be associated with
somberness and even sadness.
That said, we can also take a connotative meaning from this sentence.
We can surmise that this man wasn't happy or in good spirits because
he drank his beer quietly. Perhaps something is bothering him. Maybe
there's a hidden meaning in the way this sentence was written.
b.
Images and sense impressions- sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, motion
and emotion.
c.
Figures of speech- simile, metaphor, personification, apostrophe,
metonymy, synecdoche, allusion, antithesis, paradox, litotes, oxymoron,
onomatopoeia.
2.

Sound- is the result of the combination of elements.

a.
Tone color- alliteration, assonance, consonance, rhyme, repetition,
anaphora.

Assonance is the repetition of identical or similar stressed vowel sounds

where the consonants after the stressed vowels differ (e.g. gain gate
fame, find rhyme mine).
The twelvemonth and a day being up
The dead began to speak:
The twelvemonth and a day being up
The dead began to speak:
Oh who sits weeping on my grave
And will not let me sleep?
Tis I, my love, sits on your grave
And will not let you sleep;
For I crave one kiss of your clay-cold lips
And that is all I seek.
Consonance is a pleasing sounding caused by the repetition of consonant
sounds within sentences, phrases, or in poems. Typically this repetition
occurs at the end of the words, but may also be found within a word or at the
beginning.
Pairs of Consonance Examples
Blank and think
Spelled and scald
Sent and went
Dawn goes down
Laughed and deft
Cheer and beer
Strong and swing
Far and jar
Hard and ward
Borrow and sorrow
Litter and batter
Slither and slather
Pitter-patter
b.
Rhythm- order recurrent alteration of strong and weak elements in the
flow of the sound and silence: duple, triple, running or common rhyme.
c.
Meter- stress, duration, or number of syllables per line, fixed metrical
pattern, or a verse form: quantitative, syllabic and accentual syllabic.
Syllabic poetry means that each line of a poem has a certain number
of syllables. Sometimes each line has the same number of syllables.
Other times each line has a different but regular pattern of syllables
per line. You can either write a syllabic poem that has rules or make up
your own rules.

d.

Here is an example for the winter season:

Moonlight shines silver
on newly fallen snow banks,
reflecting nights stars.
Rhyme scheme- formal arrangement of rhymes in a stanza or the whole

poem.
3.
Structure- refers to (1) arrangement of words, and lines to it together, and (2)
the organization of
the parts to form a whole.
a.
Word order- natural and unnatural arrangement of words.
b.
Ellipsis- omitting some words for economy and effect.
c.
Punctuation- abundance or lack of punctuation marks.
d.
Shape- contextual and visual designs: jumps, omission of spaces,
capitalization, lower case.
4.
Speaker- all poems have a speaker, the voice that talks to the reader. In some
poems, the speaker
has a clear identity, using I and me. In other poems, the speaker remains in the
background. The
speaker is not necessarily the same as the poet.
5.
Sensory/Poetic Images- by using sensory/poetic images or words and phrases
that appeal to the
five senses, a poet recreates an experience.
2. Fiction
A work of fiction is created in the imagination of its author. The author invents the
story and makes up the characters, the plot or storyline, the dialogue and
sometimes even the setting. A fictional work does not claim to tell a true story.
Instead, it immerses us in experiences that we may never have in real life,
introduces us to types of people we may never otherwise meet and takes us to
places we may never visit in any other way. Fiction can inspire us, intrigue us, scare
us and engage us in new ideas. It can help us see ourselves and our world in new
and interesting ways. What's more, it's often just plain fun!
ELEMENTS OF FICTION
The six major elements of fiction are character, plot, point of view, setting, style,
and theme.
1. Character -- A figure in a literary work (personality, gender, age, etc). E. M.
Forester makes a distinction between flat and round characters. Flat characters are
types or caricatures defined by a single idea of equality, whereas round characters
have the three-dimensional complexity of real people.

2. Plot - the major events that move the action in a narrative. It is the sequence of
major events in a story, usually in a cause-effect relation.
3. Point of View -- the vantage point from which a narrative is told. A narrative is
typically told from a first-person or third-person point of view. In a narrative told
from a first-person perspective, the author tells the story through a character who
refers to himself or herself as "I." Third person narratives come in two types:
omniscient and limited. An author taking an omniscient point of view assumes the
vantage point of an all-knowing narrator able not only to recount the action
thoroughly and reliably but also to enter the mind of any character in the work or
any time in order to reveal his or her thoughts, feelings, and beliefs directly to the
reader. An author using the limited point of view recounts the story through the
eyes of a single character (or occasionally more than one, but not all or the narrator
would be an omniscient narrator).
4. Setting - That combination of place, historical time, and social milieu that
provides the general background for the characters and plot of a literary work. The
general setting of a work may differ from the specific setting of an individual scene
or event.
5.Style -- The authors type of diction (choice of words), syntax (arrangement of
words), and other linguistic features of a work.
6. Theme(s) -- The central and dominating idea (or ideas) in a literary work. The
term also indicates a message or moral implicit in any work of art.