General Categories of Literature

PROSE POETRY
Prose is used in various ways for various purposes. It's a concept you need to understand Poetry is a broad literary category that covers a variety of writing, including bawdy
if your goal to master the literary form. limericks, unforgettable song lyrics, and even the sentimental couplets inside greeting
cards.

FICTION NONFICTION LYRIC

NARRATIVE DRAMATIC
Unlike nonfictional, fictional Nonfictional prose is a body of Lyric poetry refers to a short
prose is partly or wholly writing that is based on factual poem, often with songlike Is a poetry that is meant to read
tells stories through verse. Like a or performed aloud in front of an
created from a writer’s and true events. The information qualities, that expresses the novel or a short story, a narrative
imagination. The events, is not created from a writer’s speaker’s personal emotions audience and requires some
poem has plot, characters, and amount of acting.
characters, and story are imagination, but rather true and feelings. setting.
imagined such as Romeo and accounts of real [Link] type
Juliet, The Adventures of Tom can be found in newspapers,
Sawyer, or Brave New World. magazines, journals,
This type is found as novels, biographies,andtextbooks. Anne
short stories, or novellas. Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, ELEGY DIALOGUE
for example, is a work written in SONNET
is a poem of serious reflection,
nonfictional style. Dialogue is the exchange of
A sonnet is a poemgenerally especially one mourning the loss of
spoken words between two or
structured in the form of 14 someone who died. Elegies are more characters in a book, play,
lines, usually iambic or other written work.
defined by their subject matter, and
pentameter, that expresses a
HEROIC PROSE thought or idea and utilizes an don't have to follow any specific form
Heroic prose is a work of writing that is PROSE POETRY established rhyme scheme. in terms of meter, rhyme, or structure.
meant to be recited and passed on through oral Example: “Death be not proud.” Example: Adonaïs: An Elegy on the
Finally, prose poetry is poetry that is expressed
or written tradition. Legends, mythology, fables, —John Donne
and written in prose form. This can be thought of Death of John Keats ” by Persey
and parables are examples of heroic prose that “Shall I compare thee to a
almost as a hybrid of the two that can sometimes
have been passed on over time in preservation. summer’s day?” —William Bysshe Shelley–memorial poem for
utilize rhythmic measures. This type of poetry
Shakespeare poet John Keats
often utilizes more figurative language but is
usually written in paragraph form. “Blake’s Purest Daughter” by Brian
Patten–elegy for the poet Stevie Smith
BALLAD SOLILOQOY
VILLANELLE A ballad is a type of poem that A soliloquy is a literary
tells a story and was traditionally set to device, most often found in
Is a short poem of ninetine line, which follows a dramas, in which a character
music. English language ballads are
strict forms that consists of five tercets (three-line typically composed of four-line stanzas speaks to him or herself,
stanzas) followed by one quatrain (four line stanzas) that follow an ABCB rhyme scheme. relating his or her innermost
Example: Gypsy Davy: a traditional folk thoughts and feelings as if
Example: Mad Girl’s Love Song (By Sylvia Plath) thinking aloud.
One Art (By Elizabeth Bishop. ballad about a gypsy lover
Rime of the Ancient Mariner: a classic Hamlet's soliloquy starts "To be
ballad by Coleridge about a cursed or not to be"
sailor. Juliet speaks her thoughts aloud
when she learns that Romeo is
the son of her family's enemy:
"O Romeo, Romeo!"

RONDEAUS
Rondeau, plural rondeaux, one of several formes
EPIC
Is a long narrative poem that is
fixed (“fixed forms”) in French lyric poetry and song
elevated and dignified in theme, tone
of the 14th and 15th centuries. The full form of a
and style. As a literary device, an epic
rondeau consists of four stanzas. The first and last
celebrates heroic deeds and
are identical; the second half of the second stanza is
historically (or even cosmically) DRAMATIC
a short refrain, which has as its text the first half of MONOLOGUE
important events.
the first stanza.
Example: Paradise Lost: written by Dramatic monologue means self-
Example:Merciles Beaute by Geoffrey Chaucer
conversation, speech, or talks
Rondeau by Ernest Christophe Dowson John MiltonThe Mahābhārata: an epic which include an interlocutor
poem from ancient India composed in presented dramatically.
Sanskrit. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, ‘The
Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s
Point’.Our wounds are different.
Your white men
PANTOUMS IDYLL Are, after all, not gods indeed,
Nor able to make Christs again
Pantoums use the second and fourth lines of each a simple poem or other piece Do good with bleeding. We who
of writing that describes peaceful bleed . . .
stanza as the first and third lines of the next country life
stanza. They’re usually four stanzas. Example: Lully's Idylle sur la Paix set to Alfred, Lord Tennyson, ‘Ulysses’.
Example: "I Am Going to Like It Here" by Oscar a text by Racine.
Hammerstein (and Richard Rodgers) Desmarets' Idylle sur la naissance du I cannot rest from travel: I will
"On Beauty" by Nick Laird—a "broken" pantoum drink
duc de Bourgogne set to a text by
Life to the lees: All times I have
Antoinette Deshoulières enjoy’d
Greatly, have suffer’d greatly,