Jot Down the Literature, Literati !: Form and Genre of Literature

The major form and genre of literature are

Poetry: Poetry is a piece of literature that has a meter, verse form, and rhyme in it.

o Meter is the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in the lines of poetry. It can be trochee (the stressed syllable come earlier to unstressed one), iambic meter (unstressed syllable is followed by stressed one), and dactyl (the three-syllable feet-pair of stressed and unstressed sound)

o Poetry is also written in a group of lines that are composed together to form a stanza. The stanza can be quatrain (have four lines), sestet (have six lines), octet (have eight lines), or Spenserian stanza. (one iambic pentameter comes earlier to eight iambic hexameter).

o Rhyme is considered the most crucial characteristic of poetry, which is the arrangement of words with respect to sound.

For example, the famous poems are ‘The Good Morrow’ by John Donne and “The Tyger” by William Blake. The following stanza from ‘The Tyger’ has all meter, verse, and rhyme in it.

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

William Blake

Picture Resource: Jstor Daily (2019), https://daily.jstor.org/william-blake-radical-abolitionist/

John Donne

Picture Resource: Biography, (2020), https://www.biography.com/writer/john-donne

Prose Fiction: According to Merriam Webster (1828), “a literary medium distinguished from poetry especially by its greater irregularity and variety of rhythm and its closer correspondence to the patterns of everyday speech” is known as prose. Rainsford (2014) says that prose fiction must have a narrative that can be metanarrative, epistolary, or free indirect discourse. The narrative for prose fiction always has a plot, round or flat characters, and a setting where the event takes place. Prose fiction is further categorized into sub-genre based on the text’s length. These sub-genres are;

· Novel: According to Dominic Rainsford, “Novel is a kind of fictional narrative that is long enough to be published as a book.” For example, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.

Jane Austen

Resource: Biography (2020), https://www.biography.com/writer/jane-austen

· Short story: It is sub-genre of prose fiction which is short in length and can be read in a single sitting. For example, Tell-tale heart by Edgar Allan Poe.

Edgar Allan Poe

Picture Resource: Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/story/the-mysterious-death-of-edgar-allan-poe

· Novella: Short novels and long short stories are called a novella. It consists of 80 pages. For example, Animal farm by George Orwell.

Film: It is different from other kinds of literature because of its dramatic context. Moreover, films are played in cinema and have characters, plot, narration, dialogue, stage directions, acts, scenes, and shots in them. In films and plays, the images give narration while in novels, the narration is given by description. Similarly, the camera is considered as a narrator in the film. An example for the film is “Moby Dick (1956)”

A scene from the movie ‘Moby Dick’

Picture Resource: Pete Laure, MOVIE REVIEW | Moby Dick, https://boredanddangerousblog.wordpress.com/2016/05/09/movie-review-moby-dick-1956/

Plays: Plays are performed in the theater. Plays that are written for television are known as a drama which is fictional or imaginative works that are recognized through performance or play-acting. These are different from the literary texts that are meant for reading as dramatic monologue has lyrics and narration. The plays have stage direction (current dramas have more stage direction than early modern dramas) and dialogue in them. For example, Sophocles’ Antigone and Shakespeare’s play Macbeth are famous plays.