literary genres
Novel type groupings
Literary genres are categories for classifying written works by their form, style, or subject matter.
The major divisions—fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama—branch into countless subgenres: mystery, romance, memoir, epic.
Genre conventions shape reader expectations; a thriller promises suspense, a sonnet promises fourteen lines.
Works that blend or subvert genres are called genre-bending or cross-genre.
- comedyWork meant to amuse
- fantasyImaginative mental wandering
- novelNew and unusual
- romanceLove and its excitement
- historical fictionNovels set in actual pasts
speculative fiction · morality play · biography · subgenres · sonnet · prose poetry · melodrama · picaresque · epic · tragedy · epistolary · flash fiction · mystery · interactive fiction · sci-fi · narrative · coming of age · young adult
- literaturebooks, book, fiction, poetry, stories
- readingfluency, read, comprehension, readers, books
- literary studiescriticism, modernism, romanticism, analysis, realism
- Literature Studiesclose reading, poetry analysis, character analysis, plot analysis, narrative structure
- literary referenceplot summaries, lexicons, compendiums, poetic devices, author bios
- literature termsepic, saga, chronicle, narrative, realism
categorical abstraction level
literary genresliterary works
Texts of artistic value
novels · poems · short stories