Genres Flashcards
Nonsense
- Exaggeration, disproportion
- Invented words (Jabberwocky)
- Misplaced adjectives and adverbs
- Rhyme more important than meaning
- Reversal of expectations: In “The Owl and the Pussycat,” Lear reverses our expectations about the behaviour of owls and cats: owls are predators and so are cats; when they go to sea together in a boat, we expect some violence, but instead they fall in love.
- Conflict between illustrations and text
- Language play
Books:
- Alice in Wonderland
- Edward Lear poems
- Dr. Seuss
Fairy Tales
Three types: folk, literary, revisionist
-Short story
-Hero/Heroine
- Evil Character
- Magical characters and events
- Overcoming evil
- Moral message
- Predictable language/ structure
- Oral tradition
- Happily ever after
Books:
- The Light Princess
- Little Red Riding Hood
- Hansel and Gretel
- Three-beat rhythm - three stages, obstacles, tries, and/or places in a fairy tale
- Three comes in characters as well
- Often girls linked with nature especially while the prince is linked to culture and the castle
- Girls must leave nature behind to enter the castle
- Fairy tale protagonist is often associated with and protected by nature, even when outcast by his/her family
- Motif of animal helpers
- Children in fairy tales are not helpless, returning home with wealth and riches after all obstacles to happiness have been removed
- Tendency to translate the internal into the external (equate goodness with handsomeness and beauty)
- Evil is overcome in its own element
- Sharpness and clarity in nearly every aspect of the fairy tale – relationships, plot line, props, and style
- Hero isolated and wandering
- Stages must be passed though to find maturation and psychological health
- Quest narratives
- Plot line is fairly linear
Adventure
- Heroic protagonist
- A journey
- Good vs. Evil
- Triumph over adversity
- Friendship
- Recognized formula
- Life and death situations
- Outdoor settings, typically all-male
- Escaping adult authority
- Child-adult relationships
- Escapism
- Fast paced
Books:
- Treasure Island
- Peter Pan
Animal Fiction
- Tends to assert that beasts/animals are as rational as humans
- Anthropomorphism (fantasy)
- Sometimes educate in heroism
Books:
- Peter Rabbit
- Ragyslug
- Charlottes Web
- Narnia
Fantasy
- Magical Forces
- World Building
- Fantastical Characters
- Dangerous Quest
- Mythical Creatures
Books:
- Peter Pan
- Narnia
- Charlottes Web (second half)
- Awake and Dreaming (Theo’s dreams)
Realism
- Tend to take place in the present or recent past.
- Characters are involved in events that could happen.
- Characters live in places that could be or are real.
- The characters seem like real people with real issues solved in a realistic way
- The events portrayed in realistic fiction conjure questions that a reader could face in everyday life
Books:
- Charlottes Web (first half)
- Awake and Dreaming
- Bridge to Terabithia
Gothic
–isolated place
–tension between levels of narration
–imperilled heroine
–family secrets
–family inheritance
–an exploration of the nature of evil
–uncanny doubles
–love triangles
–monsters/monstrosity
–the grotesque
Domestic Fiction
- Marriage
- A troubled domestic situation
- Distinctions between home and the outside world
- An educational journey
