Introduction of literary genre

Literary genres are generally divided into four categories: novels, poems, plays and essays.

Poetry language is concise, segmented and rhythmic.

Drama consists of scenery, role introduction, character lines and so on. And it is easy to distinguish in form.

Fiction and prose are easily confused, which can be distinguished from the following two aspects:

1. A novel is a novel, and the selection of prose materials is generally true.

2. Novels emphasize plot and characterization, while prose emphasizes clues and the expression of the author's feelings.

Literary genre refers to the specific style of literary works and is one of the elements of literary form. The ideological content of all literary works should be expressed through one genre or another, and literary works without genres do not exist. It's like making clothes. People must tailor their clothes and choose a certain style. In the history of literary development, there have been various literary genres, such as myths, epics, fables, street poems, narrative poems, short stories, novellas, novels, tragedies, comedies, dramas, lyric essays, essays, reportage and so on. The emergence and evolution of these literary genres have a certain social foundation and their own development laws.

Classification of literary genres In the process of its emergence and development, various literary genres have gradually formed their own characteristics, which are reflected in image-building, organizational structure and language use. Various literary genres are distinguished from each other because they have different characteristics and functions in reflecting social life and expressing thoughts and feelings. For a long time, writers and literary critics have been classifying various literary works in order to study and master the laws and characteristics of various literary genres and promote the development of literary creation and literary criticism, so some theories and works on stylistic classification have emerged. The classification of literary genres has always had different standards, so there are also different classifications. China's earliest classification method is dichotomy, that is, literary genres are divided into two categories: verse and prose according to rhyme and non-rhyme. But since the May 4th Movement, China has had two common classification rules: one is "three points" and the other is "four points".

"Trigonometry" is to divide various literary genres into three categories according to the ways of shaping images: narrative, lyric and drama. This classification standard is quite popular abroad, from Aristotle to belinsky. Aristotle (384 BC-322 BC) clearly pointed out that there are three ways for literature to imitate reality: "It can be like Homer's, sometimes with narrative techniques, sometimes with characters appearing [or incarnating as characters], or it can be always the same, with its own tone, or it can be imitated by imitators with actions." This is the earliest explanation of the "dichotomy", and the so-called "like Homer" refers to the narrative (epic) category; "Narrating in one's own tone" refers to the lyrical category; "Let imitators imitate with actions" refers to drama. After Aristotle, some famous literary critics in western Europe followed this classification standard. For example, Horace (8 years before 65 BC) did not specifically discuss the classification of literary genres, but when he talked about "what style to write in", he was essentially divided into three categories according to Aristotle's statement. (2) Povalo (1636-1711year) made it clear. In the art of poetry, he discussed the writing of lyric works which he regarded as "secondary poetry", and discussed the so-called "main poetic style" of tragedy, comedy and epic works. In belinsky (1811-1848), the classification standard of "trisection" is explained in detail and fully. Belinsky not only clearly divided literary genres into epic, lyric and drama, but also studied their various specific styles and their evolution, and thought that "there are only three types of poetry, and there can be no more".

According to the "three-point method", narrative refers to a work that depicts the character through the description of events, thus reflecting the reality and expressing the author's thoughts and feelings. In this kind of works, the author's thoughts and opinions permeate the description of specific events. "All internal factors are deeply infiltrated into external factors, so that these two aspects-internal and external-are inseparable from each other and present a definite and self-sufficient reality-event in direct integration. There are no poets here; A well-defined world is developing itself, and poets seem to simply say what they have done automatically. Because the author of this kind of works narrates from the side, and at the same time allows the characters to express themselves without any restrictions, it can reflect the real life to a very wide and sufficient extent. Such works include narrative poems, novels, fables and so on.

Lyricism refers to those works that reflect reality through the author's expression of some thoughts and feelings. In this kind of works, the author directly expresses his feelings about real life, love and hate, and reflects reality through it, infecting readers. "Here, poetry stays in the stage of thought, emotion and thinking of internal factors; The spirit retreats from the external reality to itself, endowing poetry with endless and complex colors of inner life (it transforms all external things into itself). Here, the poet's personality is dominant, and we can only feel and understand everything through the poet's personality. " (2) This kind of works generally have no complete plot, and the length is often short. It includes lyric poetry and lyric prose.

Drama refers to those works that put characters on the stage and let them express their character through actions. In this kind of works, "as in epics, there are some real events that are driven by various subjective and objective forces;" However, this kind of event is not purely external. Here, the event is not suddenly presented to us, but prepared: it begins with the initiative hidden from us, goes through its own journey of freedom, and then falls back to itself. Yes, here, we see the origin and process of the event from our personal will and character. On the other hand, these characters do not stay on themselves, but are constantly exposed, and they should constantly expose the inner side of their spirit in practical interests. "That is to say, this kind of works has the characteristics of narrative works-it has a complete plot, and the factors of lyric works can be expressed one by one through the characters; But it is not only different from lyricism, but also different from narration, and it is not a simple make-up between the two. It has its own characteristics, which is why it can exist independently. Such works include tragedies, comedies and plays.

"The above is the basic theory of" three points ". As for the "quartering method", all literary works are divided into four categories according to their different basic points in image-building, institutional structure, language use and expression. This classification is widely used in China. In the development of China's literature, two genres of poetry and prose first appeared, while novels and dramas gradually matured (as did the literary development of other countries in the world). Therefore, the earliest literary genre classification in China was only poetry and prose, but literary critics in past dynasties often subdivided it into several categories. Cao Pi said in Dian Lun Essay: "Fu Wen is the same but not different: the cover is elegant, the book theory is reasonable, the inscription is profound and the poetry is beautiful" (2) This shows that Cao Pi divided the articles (people didn't distinguish between general articles and literary works at that time) into four categories according to his understanding of "same" and "same". From now on, when these four categories merge, there are actually only two categories: poetry and prose. After Cao Pi, with the further enrichment of creative achievements and the gradual accumulation of creative experience, and with people's further understanding of the nature and characteristics of literature, the classification of literary genres has also developed. For example, Lu Ji's Wen Fu, Zhi Yu's Essays on Biezhi, Xiao Tong's Preface to Selected Works and Liu Xie's Wen Xin Diao Long all put forward opinions on the classification of literary genres. It is precisely because people can't grasp the classification standards of literary genres in essence that some classifications are still a mere formality, and some people even divide them into one or two hundred categories, which is very complicated. After the Song and Yuan Dynasties, novels and drama literature developed, but people did not pay enough attention to the classification of literature, because at that time, both novels and dramas were excluded from literature by literati of the feudal ruling class. In the late Qing Dynasty, due to the attention and advocacy of bourgeois reformists and revolutionary Democrats, more and more foreign novels and dramas were translated, and at the same time, domestic novels and dramas gradually attracted social attention. At that time, the literary genre classification of magazines and literary works actually began to adopt the quartering method. After the May 4th Movement, with the development of the literary revolutionary movement, the creation of new poems, novels, dramas and essays has made great progress. At that time, foreign theories on literary genre classification were also introduced, so the "four-division method" was clearly defined on the basis of inheriting the advantages of past literary classification and absorbing the advantages of foreign classification. When discussing essays, Lu Xun said that since the May 4th Movement, "the success of essays is almost above novels, operas and poems". This is the classification standard of "quartering". The new literature series edited by Lu Xun and Mao Dun in the 1930 s were also edited in four categories: novels, poems, essays and plays.

In the "four-division", the first kind of poetry includes lyric poetry in the "three-division" and narrative poetry in the narrative category. They are grouped together because they have many similarities in shaping images, organizational structure, language use and so on. Fiction is a part of the narrative category in the "trichotomy". Because it is centered on the shaping of characters, it has outstanding characteristics in character description, plot description, environmental description, structural arrangement and language use, which is obviously different from poetry and prose. This school was the most popular in modern times, so it came out as a big category in the "quartering method". Prose refers to all literary genres except novels, poems and drama literature. It has a wide range. Lyric prose can be classified into this category, as well as travel notes, miscellaneous notes, reportage, biography and so on. What belongs to the narrative category can also be classified into this category, even including essays and essays with narrative and discussion. As an independent category, rake prose is different from poetry, novel, drama and literature because of its wide range of subjects and diverse styles. It does have the basic characteristics of literature. At the same time, it can also correct some narrow understandings of literature and prevent some works with literary value and characteristics from being excluded from literature. As for drama literature, it is exactly the same as drama in the "trichotomy".

In the classification of literary genres, whether it is "three-way division" or "four-way division", it is only relative. Because, in the process of its formation and development, some literary genres often absorb some factors from other literary genres, thus forming a situation in which this genre and that genre cross each other. For example, the genre of prose poetry, from its content, has the quality of poetry and is full of the author's strong feelings and imagination, but it appears in the form of prose, which is quite different from poetry in genre and closer to prose. This genre, if divided by "quartering", can be attributed to both prose and poetry. This is a situation. Secondly, when using some literary genres, the author often absorbs and uses the characteristics of other literary genres in order to better express his life and attract readers. For example, poetic drama is an obvious example. Generally speaking, poetic drama belongs to drama, but the lyrics in it are written in the form of poetry, and independence is poetry. In addition, some schools have different interpretations of its connotation, so it is difficult to classify specific works. For example, fables can be classified as novels or essays; Reportage and short Wei novels are sometimes not so easy to distinguish. As for the specific names or boundaries in the same category (such as the boundaries between novels and novellas), it is more common. When talking about "trigonometry", belinsky said: Epic, street poetry and drama "exist differently from each other, but when they are presented in individual poems, they are not always clearly divided. On the contrary, they are often mixed together, so that some works are epic in form, but they have the characteristics of drama, or vice versa. This is also the case with the "quartering method". This fully shows the relativity of literary genre classification, indicating that classification can only be general, not absolute.

The classification of literary genres is not only relative, but also develops with the rich development of practical experience in literary creation. As I said before, literary genre has its formation and development process in history. When a literary genre has not been produced or matured in creative practice, it cannot be reflected in genre classification theory. For example, in the literary history of our country, novels and dramas matured late, so in the theory of literary genre classification, they were only divided into two categories: poetry and prose for a long time. Secondly, after the emergence of a certain literary genre, it is still in constant development and change. Therefore, to study the classification of literary genres, we need to pay attention to their different situations in different periods. For example, China's novel genre has experienced different stages of development, such as Six Dynasties, Tang and Song Legends, Song and Yuan storybooks, Zhang Hui novels in Ming and Qing Dynasties and new novels after the May 4th Movement, and each stage has different characteristics. Nowadays, people generally use "three-way division" or "four-way division" to divide literary genres, which is mainly based on the current actual situation besides historical reasons. With the development of social life and the accumulation of creative experience, in order to express a new life, new literary genres are bound to emerge constantly, so the classification of literary genres cannot be fixed. For example, with the high development of modern science and technology, especially the development of photography and recording technology, a new comprehensive art form-film art has emerged on the basis of drama art, and a new genre of film literature has been born accordingly. Others, such as radio novels, TV dramas, science fiction, etc. , are new schools that have emerged and developed in modern times and even in modern times. Therefore, if we treat "three-way division" and "four-way division" in a fixed way, we will not be able to adapt to the situation that new schools are constantly emerging.

Above, we have emphatically introduced the two most common classifications of literary genres-"trisection" and "quartering". So, what are the advantages and disadvantages of these two classifications? What kind of classification will we adopt in this book?

Trigonometry classifies literary works according to different methods of creating images and reflecting life, and captures some important basic characteristics of various genres, which has strong generalization power. However, it only classifies from three different aspects: narrative, lyric and drama, ignoring the characteristics of various genres of literary works in other aspects such as system, structure and language, thus separating some literary genres with the same basic characteristics that should belong to the same category. For example, quoted poems and narrative poems in poetry, lyric prose and narrative prose in prose are rigidly separated and classified into two categories. In this way, the similarities between lyric poetry and narrative poetry, lyric prose and narrative prose are easily overlooked.

To sum up, the advantages of the "quartering method" mainly include: First, the division not only pays attention to the differences in image-building methods, but also pays attention to the differences in systems, which is more in line with China's traditional habits. In naming, it is more specific and easier to master than the "trisection", and it is easy to associate its name with its characteristics. Secondly, the novel genre has developed rapidly since it came into being, especially since modern times, and it occupies a very important position in literary creation. It is in line with the actual situation to divide literary creation into a big category independently. Thirdly, prose is a very flexible genre, which has a glorious tradition and rich inside information in the history of China literature development. From the pre-Qin period to the May 4th Movement, many excellent masterpieces and great writers appeared in the field of prose. It is not only in line with the actual situation of literary creation, but also conducive to critically inheriting the excellent tradition of China literature and prospering socialist literary creation. Therefore, in this book, we have adopted the "quartering method".