Portfolio Entry # 7 - GENRE: Exploring Ideas in Literature

GENRES: Exploring Ideas in Literature

• Summary

     Genre is a French term that means “kind” or “type”. In literature, it refers to any work that helps to express ideas and shares certain characteristics. There are different genres to embody content. The two major categories are fiction and nonfiction; however, various types of media can be considered genres nowadays. For instance, short stories, novels, comedies are models of fiction genre. Autobiographies, essays, news articles, speeches illustrates nonfiction genre. TV shows, advertising and web sites are types of media.

     Fiction such as short stories, novels and novellas have a plot, a setting and characters; many have a major theme. The novel is the longest genre of narrative prose fiction in modern literature. Otherwise, the novella is prose narrative that is shorter than a novel and longer than a short story.

     Poetry is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and rhythmic qualities of language. Poems are written in stanzas, which are groups of lines within a poem that are similar in rhyme, rhythm or style. Some poems use rhyming words to create a certain effect. However, not all poems are rhyming. Poetry that does not rhyme is called “free verse poetry”. Sometimes poets use repetition of sounds or patterns to create a musical effect, which an be described as the beat of the poem. Poetry uses imagery in order to create mental pictures through language.

     Drama is a piece of writing that tells a story and is performed on a stage. A particular feature of drama is that it is written as a dialogue between the characters. The author also describes the setting, the characters´ movements and other notes that reflects the playwright´s point of view.

     Contradistinctively, in nonfiction and informational texts events actually happened, and the characters are real people. Nonfiction is usually written with specific text features and structures, for instance: subheadings, bullets, fonts, whit space, pictures, labels, etc. Text cues or signal words help readers decode how ideas are organized. Some nonfiction works are autobiographies, biographies, essays, speeches, news, feature articles, and functional documents.

     Undoubtedly, mass media influence people´s believes and opinions, so it is important to become media literate. This is the ability to analyze, evaluate and create messages in a wide variety of media modes, genres and formats, for instance feature films, news media, TV shows, advertising and web sites. All of them have their own characteristics and hey all have a target audience, in order words, a particular group of consumer to which a message is addressed.


Bibliography:

• Allen, J. et al (2011). "Genres: Exploring Ideas in Literature". In  Literature. U.S.: McDougall Littell