SUB GENRES IN LITERATURE

Remember literature genres? Fiction Genres: Historical fiction Fantasy Science Fiction Drama Comedy Tragedy

So what are subgenres? They are specific literary types used in

poetry, prose, plays, novels, short stories, essays, and other basic genres.

Allegory A story, poem, or picture that can be

interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one.

 

Examples of Allegories Producer Cameron’s Avatar (2009) is a

movie about a soldier infiltrating the distant planet of Pandora by taking the identity of one its natives “Na’vi”

James Cameron has expressed that his movie is an allegory of the U.S. war on terror.

Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is a representation of how man accepts conventions and refuses to question them. Plato conveys this message by using a group of prisoners trapped in a cave.

Satire A text or performance that uses irony,

derision, or wit to expose or attack human vice, foolishness, or stupidity.

Parody An imitation of the style of a particular

writer, artist, or genre with deliberate exaggeration for comic effect.

  In ancient Greece, a parody was a song

or poem that imitated the style and flow of another poem. The word parody, has Greek root words, with par meaning “beside” and ody referring to an “ode” or “song.”

Examples: Scary Movie is a parody of horror films.

Spaceballs is a parody of the Star Wars films.

The Hunger Pains: A Parody” is a parody of Hunger Games

Pastoral Literature A pastoral poem or piece of literature

depicts rural life in a peaceful, idealized way, for example of shepherds or country life.

  

Examples: Christopher Marlowe's "The Passionate

Shepherd to His Love"

“Come live with me and be my love,And we will all the pleasures proveThat valleys, groves, hills, and fields,Woods, or steepy mountain yields. “

Walter Raleigh's "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd".

“The flowers do fade, and wanton fields, To wayward winter reckoning yields, A honey tongue, a heart of gall, Is fancy’s spring, but sorrow’s fall.”

The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope

The Rape of the Lock is a humorous indictment (satire) of the vanities and idleness of 18th-century high society. Basing his poem on a real incident among families of his acquaintance, Pope intended his verses to cool hot tempers and to encourage his friends to laugh at their own folly

The poem is perhaps the most outstanding example in the English language of the genre of mock-epic. The epic had long been considered one of the most serious of literary forms; it had been applied, in the classical period, to the lofty subject matter of love and war.

Pope’s mock-heroic treatment in The Rape of the Lock underscores the ridiculousness of a society in which values have lost all proportion, and the trivial is handled with the gravity and solemnity that ought to be accorded to truly important issues.

Some nymphs there are, too conscious of their face,For life predestin'd to the Gnomes' embrace.These swell their prospects and exalt their pride,When offers are disdain'd, and love deny'd:Then gay Ideas crowd the vacant brain,While Peers, and Dukes, and all their sweeping train,And Garters, Stars, and Coronets appear,And in soft sounds, Your Grace salutes their ear.'T is these that early taint the female soul,Instruct the eyes of young Coquettes to roll,Teach Infant-cheeks a bidden blush to know,And little hearts to flutter at a Beau.

Georgics, by Virgil A poem in four books, likely published in

29 BC. The subject of the poem is agriculture; but far from being an example of peaceful rural poetry, it is a work characterized by tensions in both theme and purpose.

Prominent themes of the second book include agriculture as man's struggle against a hostile natural world, often described in violent terms, and the ages of Saturn and Jupiter.

The third book is chiefly and ostensibly concerned with animal husbandry. It consists of two principal parts, the first half is devoted to the selection of breed stock and the breeding of horses and cattle.

Book four, a tonal counterpart to Book two, is divided approximately in half; the first half (1–280) is didactic and deals with the life and habits of bees

The second half describes the restoration of the bees is accomplished by bugonia, spontaneous rebirth from the carcass of an ox.

You Are Old, Father William "The Old Man's Comforts, and how he

gained them" is a deeply Victorian poem; pious and proper

The father preaches not simply that virtue in youth is rewarded in old age, but that his virtue has been rewarded.

In Lewis Carroll’s parody “You Are Old, father William” The father is an entirely different creature to the earlier Father William, Carroll's robust geriatric exudes vigour, irreverence, veniality and, finally, impatience. He is a great comic creation. The son, meanwhile, is deliciously deadpan. Sometimes prim, sometimes sarcastic, he's critical of his father to the point of insolence.