The Genres of Literature and its Elements - Essay Sample

Introduction

The human race is naturally conservative. Communication and entertainment have for many years evolved, and still there some sights and scenes that human beings can't just let go of. Such important events form a memorable history of the human communities. They not only use them to communicate a message, but also use it to educate, inform, predict the future events, and guide. All these are referred to as literature. Literature refers to highly esteemed accounts or written works about people, places, and events. In the past literature used to be delivered by word of mouth. However, human civilization brought writing which led to the generalization that literature would refer to a piece of writing. It should be noted that literature is part of humanities, and is a distinct discipline. For that reason, literature is wide and has its types referred to as genres which all have their distinctive features otherwise known elements.

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Literature has three major genres namely; poetry, drama, and prose. Poetry refers to the artistic expression of ideas, people, events, and places in a verified language. The individual works of poetry are known as poems. The main elements of a poem are; verse, lines, and stylistic devices. To understand what a verse means, consider a story that is told in bits but in very short bits and sometimes in incomplete sentences. Such a short chunk is what is referred to as a verse otherwise known as a stanza. A poem can have one short stanza or several. Verses are made of short lines that consist of artistically interwoven words. To give a poem its distinctive feature, it has another element known as stylistic devices which also has sub-elements. These sub-elements include rhyme which refers to the musicality that a poem has. Actually, it is rhyme that makes up a poem although not all poems have rhymes. Additionally, some poems are not verified but are instead made of a single paragraph. However, a poem that is in form of a paragraph must have all the elements of a poem such as a word play which essentially gives rise to rhyme (Hudson, p.63-70).

Prose refers to a long account of peoples, places, events, and occasions. The prose is also referred to as narratives. The features of narratives include; plot, character, scene, and point of view. A plot refers to the flow of ideas, information, and happenings in a prose. The timing, themes, and orderliness of such occurrences are the foundation of a plot. Character refers to the elements in the story. Characters can be humans, objects, animals, or even the deities. Characters are the building blocks of a prose's plot. Scene refers to the place where occurrences in a prose are set to happen. Sometimes, this is also referred to as setting. Point of view, also known as a method of narration, is how the author or the narrator of a prose chooses to present their works. Method of narration can either be in first, second, or third person. The first person point of view is mostly used when a person expresses their personal experiences, second person is used when an author talks about someone else, and the third person point of view, also known as an omniscient narrator refers to an author who knows everything about the characters and their fates as well as their past (Kuiper, p.4-10).

Conclusion

The elements of drama are; acts, scene, and characters. An act is like an entire chapter of a book except that in drama it has specific events. A scene refers to where the events expressed in a drama are taking place. Usually, there are several scenes in a drama. Drama is also referred to as a play because characters play different roles (O'Toole & Haseman). In summary, literature has its types known as a genre. Each of those genres has their distinguishing features referred to as elements. However, these genres still have common elements across them.

References

Hudson, William Henry. An Introduction to the Study of Literature. New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers & Dist, 2006.

Kuiper, Kathleen. Prose: Literary Terms and Concepts. New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, 2011.

O'Toole, John, and Haseman, Brad. Dramawise Reimagined: Learning to Manage the Elements of Drama. Redfern: Currency Press, 2017.