Reading: Literature - Literary Genres - High School

If you want to keep your stories straight, study this list of literary genres. You'll learn all about different types of fiction, poetry, and drama, from folklore to memoir to epic.
53 words 1094 learners

Learn words with Flashcards and other activities

Definition First
Print Flashcards

Other learning activities

Answer a few questions about each word. Use this to prep for your next quiz! Compete with other teams in real time to see who answers the most questions correctly! Test your spelling acumen. Read the definition, listen to the word and try spelling it!

Teaching tools

Create and assign quizzes to your students to test their vocabulary. Assign learning activities including Practice, Vocabulary Jams and Spelling Bees to your students, and monitor their progress in real-time.

Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. autobiography
    a book or account of your own life
  2. ballad
    a narrative song with a recurrent refrain
  3. biography
    an account of the series of events making up a person's life
  4. black comedy
    comedy that uses black humor
  5. comedy
    light and humorous drama with a happy ending
  6. detective novel
    novel in which the reader is challenged to solve a puzzle before the detective explains it at the end
  7. drama
    a work intended for performance by actors on a stage
  8. dystopia
    a work set in an imaginary place where life is extremely bad
  9. elegy
    a mournful poem; a lament for the dead
  10. epic
    a long narrative poem telling of a hero's deeds
  11. epic poem
    a long narrative poem telling of a hero's deeds
  12. epistolary
    written in the form of letters or correspondence
  13. epitaph
    a summary statement of commemoration for a dead person
  14. essay
    an analytic or interpretive literary composition
  15. fable
    a short moral story
  16. fairy tale
    a children's story involving fantastical beings or elements
  17. fantasy
    fiction with a large amount of imagination in it
  18. farce
    a comedy characterized by broad satire
  19. folklore
    the unwritten stories and proverbs and songs of a culture
  20. gothic
    characterized by gloom and mystery and the grotesque
  21. haiku
    an epigrammatic Japanese verse form of three short lines
  22. high comedy
    a sophisticated comedy; often satirizing genteel society
  23. homily
    a sermon on a moral or religious topic
  24. low comedy
    a comedy characterized by slapstick and burlesque
  25. lyric
    a short poem of songlike quality
  26. magic realism
    a literary or artistic genre in which realistic narrative or meticulously realistic painting are combined with surreal elements of fantasy or dreams
  27. melodrama
    a story with characters behaving in an extreme emotional way
  28. memoir
    an account of the author's personal experiences
  29. miracle play
    a medieval play representing episodes from the life of a saint or martyr
  30. morality play
    an allegorical play popular in the 15th and 16th centuries
  31. mystery
    a story about a crime presented as a novel or play or movie
  32. mystery play
    a medieval play representing episodes from the life of Christ
  33. myth
    a traditional story serving to explain a world view
  34. novel
    an extended fictional work in prose
  35. novella
    a short novel
  36. ode
    a lyric poem with complex stanza forms
  37. parable
    a short moral story
  38. parody
    a composition that imitates or misrepresents a style
  39. pastoral
    a literary work idealizing the rural life
  40. picaresque
    (of fiction) involving clever rogues or adventurers
  41. poetry
    literature in metrical form
  42. romance
    a story dealing with love
  43. satire
    witty language used to convey insults or scorn
  44. satyr play
    an ancient Greek burlesque with a chorus of satyrs
  45. science fiction
    genre involving the imagined impact of technology on society
  46. short story
    a brief but fully developed prose narrative
  47. sonnet
    a verse form of 14 lines with a fixed rhyme scheme
  48. stream of consciousness
    a literary genre using long speeches to develop characters
  49. tall tale
    an improbable (unusual or incredible or fanciful) story
  50. thriller
    a suspenseful story, play, or movie
  51. tragedy
    drama exciting terror or pity
  52. tragicomedy
    a dramatic composition involving elements of both tragedy and comedy usually with the tragic predominating
  53. utopia
    a work of fiction describing an ideal state
Created on Fri Jan 13 13:19:12 EST 2017 (updated Wed Mar 29 15:36:31 EDT 2017)

Sign up now (it’s free!)

Whether you’re a teacher or a learner, Vocabulary.com can put you or your class on the path to systematic vocabulary improvement.