Literary genre
Parent categories: literature - genre
Related: auteur - comics - fiction - genre - literature - paraliterature - popular fiction - pulp fiction
Axes and fault lines:
escapist fiction vs literary fictionThe genres of genre fiction action-adventure - crime - detective - erotica - fantasy - genre fiction (general category) - horror - mystery - romance - science fiction - thriller - western
Definition
A literary genre refers to the traditional divisions of literature of various kinds according to a particular criteria of writing. A literary genre is one of the divisions of literature into genres according to particular criteria such as literary technique, tone, or subject matter (content). Literary genres are also categories of marketing, literary criticism and consumption.
One of the areas in the study of literature is the difference between literary fiction on the one hand and genre fiction or escapist fiction on the other. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_genre [Aug 2006]
Prose vs poetry
In literature, we often refer to the "poetic genres" and the "prose genres". poetry might be subdivided into epic, lyric and dramatic, while prose might be divided into fiction and non-fiction. --http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Genre [Jun 2005]
Subgenres
Genres are also divided into sub-genres. With dramatic prose divided into comedy, tragedy, melodrama and so forth. This division can continue: "comedy" has its own genres, including farce, comedy of manners, burlesque, satire. --http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Genre [Jun 2005]
Types of literary genre
- Alternate history
- Autobiography
- Bildungsroman
- Biography
- Children's literature
- Constrained writing
- Diaries and Journals
- Fiction
- Oral Narrative (Oral History)
- Poetry
see also: literary genre - escapism
Slipstream literature
Slipstream is a term for a literary work which pushes the boundaries of the conventions of and thus neither sits comfortably within the confines of either science fiction or fantasy or in mainstream literary fiction. Christopher Priest wrote, "In literature you might include Angela Carter, Steve Erickson, Paul Auster, Haruki Murakami, J. G. Ballard, Jorge Luis Borges, some of John Fowles. In films, Memento, Being John Malkovich and Intacto are recent examples of pure slipstream."
The term slipstream when used in reference to literature, was coined by cyberpunk author Bruce Sterling in an article originally published in SF Eye #5, July 1989. He says in part that "...this is a kind of writing which simply makes you feel very strange; the way that living in the twentieth century makes you feel, if you are a person of a certain sensibility." Slipstream fiction has consequently been referred to as "the fiction of strangeness," which is as clear of a definition as any others in wide use.
Slipstream as indicated in the first paragraph above, falls in the gap left between SF (science fiction) and mainstream fiction. Fans of mainstream literature tend to avoid it because it is too strange, and fans of SF tend to avoid it because it is not strange enough. While some slipstream novels employ elements of fantasy or magic realism, not all do. The common unifying factor of these pieces of literature is the surreal feeling they leave with reader. Most readers who have never heard the term slipstream, will still recognize the names of authors, such as Christopher Priest, Margaret Atwood, Karen Joy Fowler, Steve Erickson, Douglas Coupland, and William S. Burroughs, who have written slipstream novels. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slipstream_%28literature%29 [Nov 2005]
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