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Reading: Literature - Literary Genres - Introductory

If you want to keep your stories straight, study this list of literary genres. You'll learn about comedy and tragedy, novels and short stories, myths and fables, and more.
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Full list of words from this list:

  1. autobiography
    a book or account of your own life
  2. biography
    an account of the series of events making up a person's life
  3. comedy
    light and humorous drama with a happy ending
  4. drama
    a work intended for performance by actors on a stage
  5. essay
    an analytic or interpretive literary composition
  6. fable
    a short moral story
  7. fairy tale
    a children's story involving fantastical beings or elements
  8. fantasy
    fiction with a large amount of imagination in it
  9. folklore
    the unwritten stories and proverbs and songs of a culture
  10. memoir
    an account of the author's personal experiences
  11. mystery
    a story about a crime presented as a novel or play or movie
  12. myth
    a traditional story serving to explain a world view
  13. novel
    an extended fictional work in prose
  14. poetry
    literature in metrical form
  15. science fiction
    genre involving the imagined impact of technology on society
  16. short story
    a brief but fully developed prose narrative
  17. tall tale
    an improbable (unusual or incredible or fanciful) story
  18. tragedy
    drama exciting terror or pity
Created on Fri Jan 13 14:40:26 EST 2017 (updated Wed Mar 29 15:36:03 EDT 2017)

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