Electronic literature: History and Key Facts
Electronic literature or digital literature is a genre of literature where digital capabilities such as interactivity, multimodality or algorithmic text generation are used aesthetically.
Literary Genres archive — Page 2
Oldest entries first, in a fixed order. Newly added articles appear at the end. Explore a shuffled selection →
Elegiac comedy: History and Key Facts
Elegiac comedy was a genre of medieval Latin literature—or drama—represented by about twenty texts written in the 12th and 13th centuries in the liberal arts schools of west central France (rough
Epistolography: History and Key Facts
Epistolography, or the art of writing letters, is a genre of Byzantine literature similar to rhetoric that was popular with the intellectual elite of the Byzantine age.
Erotic literature: History and Key Facts
The term erotic literature refers to fictional or factual stories and accounts of eros (passionate, romantic, or sexual relationships) intended to sexually arouse readers.
Ergodic literature: History and Key Facts
Ergodic literature is a mode of textual organization in which nontrivial effort is required for the reader to traverse the text, beyond ordinary eye movement or turning pages.
Fantasy literature: History and Key Facts
Fantasy literature is literature set in an imaginary universe, often but not always without any locations, events, or people from the real world.
Finnic riddles: History and Key Facts
The corpus of traditional riddles from the Finnic-speaking world (including the modern Finland, Estonia, and parts of Western Russia) is fairly unitary, though eastern Finnish-speaking regions sh
Finnic incantations: History and Key Facts
Finnic incantations or charms (Finnish: loitsut, singular loitsu) are a body of traditional literature in the Finnic languages whose purpose was to effect magical change on the world.
Gaucho literature: History and Key Facts
Gaucho literature, also known in Spanish as género gauchesco ("gauchoesque" genre) was a literary movement purporting to use the language of the gauchos, comparable to the American cowboy, and re
Garden writing: History and Key Facts
Writing about gardens takes a variety of literary forms, ranging from instructional manuals on horticulture and garden design, to essays on gardening, to novels.
Gawęda szlachecka: History and Key Facts
Gawęda szlachecka (variously translated as szlachta storytelling, noble storytelling, noble tale, etc.) is a Polish literary form in which works are presented as a story told by a Polish nobleman
German courtly romance: History and Key Facts
In the Middle High German (MHG) period (1050–1350) the courtly romance, written in rhyming couplets, was the dominant narrative genre in the literature of the noble courts, and the romances of Ha
Ghazal: History and Key Facts
Ghazal is a form of amatory poem or ode, originating in Arabic poetry and a predominant form in Persian Poetry, that often deals with topics of spiritual and romantic love.
Grotesque: History and Key Facts
Grotesque is an adjective often used to describe weird shapes and distorted forms such as Halloween masks.
Grunge lit: History and Key Facts
Grunge lit (an abbreviation for "grunge literature") is an Australian literary genre usually applied to fictional or semi-autobiographical writing concerned with dissatisfied and disenfranchised
Hexaemeron: History and Key Facts
The term Hexaemeron (Greek: Ἡ Ἑξαήμερος Δημιουργία Hē Hexaēmeros Dēmiourgia), literally "six days," is used in one of two senses.
Historical drama: History and Key Facts
A historical drama (also period drama, period piece or just period) is a dramatic work set in the past, usually used in the context of film and television, which presents historical events and ch
Histoires tragiques: History and Key Facts
Histoires tragiques ('tragic stories') were a genre of French fiction in 16th-17th centuries, a Baroque rendering of Boccaccio's type of short stories, concentrating on the dark side of human nat
Historical mystery: History and Key Facts
The historical mystery or historical whodunit is a subgenre of two literary genres, historical fiction and mystery fiction.
Hybrid genre: History and Key Facts
A hybrid genre is a literary or film genre that blends themes and elements from two or more different genres.
Jacobin novel: History and Key Facts
Jacobin novels were written between 1780 and 1805 by British radicals who supported the ideals of the French Revolution.
Insha: History and Key Facts
The Arabic word insha (Arabic: إنشاء, romanized: inshā’) means "construction", or "creation".
Joseimuke: History and Key Facts
Joseimuke (女性向け) is a Japanese term that is used to refer to a category of media specifically intended to be "targeted towards women." The Japanese word joseimuke (女性向け) directly translates to "a
Legend: History and Key Facts
A legend is a genre of folklore that consists of a narrative featuring human actions, believed or perceived to have taken place in human history.
Lad lit: History and Key Facts
Lad lit was a term used principally from the 1990s to the early 2010s to describe male-authored popular novels about young men and their emotional and personal lives.
Libertine novel: History and Key Facts
The libertine novel was an 18th-century literary genre of which the roots lay in the European but mainly French libertine tradition.
Legendary (hagiography): History and Key Facts
A legendary (Latin: legendarius) is a collection of saints' lives.
Life writing: History and Key Facts
Life writing is an expansive genre that primarily deals with the purposeful recording of personal memories, experiences, opinions, and emotions for different ends.
List of Western subgenres: History and Key Facts
The Western is a genre set in the American frontier and commonly associated with folk tales of the Western United States, particularly the Southwestern United States, as well as Northern Mexico a
Literary fairy tale: History and Key Facts
A literary fairy tale is a fairy tale that differs from an oral folktale in that it is written by "a single identifiable author", as defined by Jens Tismar's monograph.
Literary diary: History and Key Facts
A literary diary is a subgenre of diary writing that is read and analysed as literature.
Memoir: History and Key Facts
A memoir (; from French mémoire [me.mwaʁ], from Latin memoria 'memory, remembrance') is any nonfiction narrative writing based on the author's personal memories.
Menippean satire: History and Key Facts
The genre of Menippean satire is a form of satire, usually in prose, that is characterized by attacking mental attitudes rather than specific individuals or entities.
Merveilleux scientifique: History and Key Facts
Merveilleux scientifique (also spelled with a hyphen: merveilleux-scientifique, literally translated "scientific marvelous") is a literary genre that developed in France from the end of the 19th
Metahistorical romance: History and Key Facts
Metahistorical romance is a term describing postmodern historical fiction, defined by Amy J.
Misery literature: History and Key Facts
Misery literature, also called misery lit, misery porn, misery memoirs and trauma porn, is a literary genre dwelling on trauma, mental and physical abuse, destitution, or other enervating trials
Muwashshah: History and Key Facts
Muwashshah (Arabic: مُوَشَّح muwaššaḥ 'girdled'; plural مُوَشَّحَات muwaššaḥāt; also تَوْشِيْح tawšīḥ 'girdling,' pl.
Mystery fiction: History and Key Facts
Mystery is a fiction genre where the nature of an event, often a murder or other crime, remains mysterious until the end of the story.
Nasīb (poetry): History and Key Facts
Nasīb (Arabic: النسيب) is an Arabic literary form, 'usually defined as an erotic or amatory prelude to the type of long poem called a qaṣīdah.' However, although at the beginning of the form's de
Nautical fiction: History and Key Facts
Nautical fiction, frequently also naval fiction, sea fiction, naval adventure fiction or maritime fiction, is a genre of literature with a setting on or near the sea, that focuses on the human re