Transcript Sub Genres in Literature - Ms. Knudsen's English classes

SUB GENRES IN LITERATURE
Remember literature genres?
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Fiction Genres:
Historical fiction
Fantasy
Science Fiction
Drama
Comedy
Tragedy
So what are subgenres?
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They are specific literary types used in poetry,
prose, plays, novels, short stories, essays, and other
basic genres.
Allegory
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A story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to
reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or
political one.
Examples of Allegories
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Producer Cameron’s Avatar (2009) is a movie about
a soldier infiltrating the distant planet of Pandora
by taking the identity of one its natives “Na’vi”
James Cameron has expressed that his movie is an
allegory of the U.S. war on terror.
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Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is a representation of
how man accepts conventions and refuses to
question them. Plato conveys this message by using
a group of prisoners trapped in a cave.
Satire
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A text or performance that uses irony, derision, or
wit to expose or attack human vice, foolishness, or
stupidity.
Parody
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An imitation of the style of a particular writer, artist,
or genre with deliberate exaggeration for comic
effect.
In ancient Greece, a parody was a song or poem
that imitated the style and flow of another poem.
The word parody, has Greek root words, with par
meaning “beside” and ody referring to an “ode” or
“song.”
Examples:
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Scary Movie is a parody of horror films.
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Spaceballs is a parody of the Star Wars films.
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The Hunger Pains: A Parody” is a parody of Hunger
Games
Pastoral Literature
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A pastoral poem or piece of literature depicts rural
life in a peaceful, idealized way, for example of
shepherds or country life.
Examples:
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Christopher Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to
His Love"
“Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields. “
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Walter Raleigh's "The Nymph's Reply to the
Shepherd".
“The flowers do fade, and wanton fields,
To wayward winter reckoning yields,
A honey tongue, a heart of gall,
Is fancy’s spring, but sorrow’s fall.”
The Rape of the Lock by Alexander
Pope
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The Rape of the Lock is a humorous indictment
(satire) of the vanities and idleness of 18th-century
high society. Basing his poem on a real incident
among families of his acquaintance, Pope intended
his verses to cool hot tempers and to encourage his
friends to laugh at their own folly
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The poem is perhaps the most outstanding example in
the English language of the genre of mock-epic. The
epic had long been considered one of the most
serious of literary forms; it had been applied, in the
classical period, to the lofty subject matter of love
and war.
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Pope’s mock-heroic treatment in The Rape of the
Lock underscores the ridiculousness of a society in
which values have lost all proportion, and the trivial
is handled with the gravity and solemnity that ought
to be accorded to truly important issues.
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Some nymphs there are, too conscious of their face,
For life predestin'd to the Gnomes' embrace.
These swell their prospects and exalt their pride,
When offers are disdain'd, and love deny'd:
Then gay Ideas crowd the vacant brain,
While Peers, and Dukes, and all their sweeping train,
And Garters, Stars, and Coronets appear,
And in soft sounds, Your Grace salutes their ear.
'T is these that early taint the female soul,
Instruct the eyes of young Coquettes to roll,
Teach Infant-cheeks a bidden blush to know,
And little hearts to flutter at a Beau.
Georgics, by Virgil
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A poem in four books, likely published in 29 BC.
The subject of the poem is agriculture; but far from
being an example of peaceful rural poetry, it is a
work characterized by tensions in both theme and
purpose.
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Prominent themes of the second book include
agriculture as man's struggle against a hostile
natural world, often described in violent terms, and
the ages of Saturn and Jupiter.
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The third book is chiefly and ostensibly concerned
with animal husbandry. It consists of two principal
parts, the first half is devoted to the selection of
breed stock and the breeding of horses and cattle.
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Book four, a tonal counterpart to Book two, is
divided approximately in half; the first half (1–
280) is didactic and deals with the life and habits
of bees
The second half describes the restoration of the
bees is accomplished by bugonia, spontaneous
rebirth from the carcass of an ox.
You Are Old, Father William
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"The Old Man's Comforts, and how he gained them"
is a deeply Victorian poem; pious and proper
The father preaches not simply that virtue in youth is
rewarded in old age, but that his virtue has been
rewarded.
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In Lewis Carroll’s parody “You Are Old, father William” The
father is an entirely different creature to the earlier Father
William, Carroll's robust geriatric exudes vigour, irreverence,
veniality and, finally, impatience. He is a great comic creation.
The son, meanwhile, is deliciously deadpan. Sometimes prim,
sometimes sarcastic, he's critical of his father to the point of
insolence.