Introduction to Literary Genres
Senior 1 · English
Introduction to Literary Genres
Lesson 3 of 5
30 min
Let's begin
In 1812, two brothers in Germany, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, published the first volume of a book of tales they had collected from storytellers, Children's and Household Tales. They did for German oral tales what the African Storybook does for African ones: they wrote them down. Once a tale is printed, its words are fixed. The tale you will read below is word for word as Margaret Hunt printed it in her English translation in 1884, and readers all over the world can read exactly the same words.
This lesson crosses from oral to written literature. You will meet the main kinds of written story, and then learn to draw the shape that almost every story follows: its plot.
Written literature does all the jobs of literature that you met in Lesson 1, and writing makes some new things possible:
Rwanda has written literature in Kinyarwanda, French and English. Alexis Kagame (1912–1981) wrote poetry and history in Kinyarwanda, and Scholastique Mukasonga's French novel Notre-Dame du Nil (2012), set in a girls' secondary school in Rwanda, won France's Prix Renaudot.
Written literature is usually divided into the three genres you met in Lesson 1: prose, poetry and drama. Prose itself can be fiction (invented stories) or non-fiction (true writing, such as biographies and reports). This lesson is about prose fiction, which comes in three main lengths.
| Type | Length (roughly) | Features | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Novel | long: usually more than 40,000 words; a book of many chapters | many characters and settings; a main plot with smaller side plots; time often passes over months or years | Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (1958): the life of Okonkwo, a proud man in an Igbo village in Nigeria |
| Novella | medium: roughly 17,000 to 40,000 words; a short book | fewer characters; one main plot; often one main setting | George Orwell, Animal Farm (1945): the animals of an English farm drive out the farmer and run it themselves |
| Short story | short: from a few hundred words to about 7,500; read at one sitting | a few characters; one main event; one setting; one strong effect | Chinua Achebe, Dead Men's Path (1953): a young headmaster closes an old village path that runs through his school |
The word counts are only a guide: writers and prize juries draw the lines in slightly different places. What matters more is the scale: how many characters, how many events, and how much time.
Definition
Novel: a long work of prose fiction, usually published as a book of many chapters. Example: Things Fall Apart.
Novella: a work of prose fiction longer than a short story but shorter than a novel. Example: Animal Farm.
Short story: a work of prose fiction short enough to read at one sitting, usually built around one main event. Example: Dead Men's Path.
Translated from German by Margaret Hunt, 1884. This is the first of three short tales that the Grimms gathered under this title.
A shoemaker, by no fault of his own, had become so poor that at last he had nothing left but leather for one pair of shoes. So in the evening, he cut out the shoes which he wished to begin to make the next morning, and as he had a good conscience, he lay down quietly in his bed, commended himself to God, and fell asleep.
In the morning, after he had said his prayers, and was just going to sit down to work, the two shoes stood quite finished on his table. He was astounded, and did not know what to say to it. He took the shoes in his hands to observe them closer, and they were so neatly made that there was not one bad stitch in them, just as if they were intended as a masterpiece. Soon after, too, a buyer came in, and as the shoes pleased him so well, he paid more for them than was customary, and, with the money, the shoemaker was able to purchase leather for two pairs of shoes. He cut them out at night, and next morning was about to set to work with fresh courage; but he had no need to do so, for, when he got up, they were already made, and buyers also were not wanting, who gave him money enough to buy leather for four pairs of shoes. The following morning, too, he found the four pairs made; and so it went on constantly, what he cut out in the evening was finished by the morning, so that he soon had his honest independence again, and at last became a wealthy man.
Now it befell that one evening not long before Christmas, when the man had been cutting out, he said to his wife, before going to bed, "What think you if we were to stay up to-night to see who it is that lends us this helping hand?" The woman liked the idea, and lighted a candle, and then they hid themselves in a corner of the room, behind some clothes which were hanging up there, and watched. When it was midnight, two pretty little naked men came, sat down by the shoemaker's table, took all the work which was cut out before them and began to stitch, and sew, and hammer so skilfully and so quickly with their little fingers that the shoemaker could not turn away his eyes for astonishment. They did not stop until all was done, and stood finished on the table, and then they ran quickly away.
Next morning the woman said, "The little men have made us rich, and we really must show that we are grateful for it. They run about so, and have nothing on, and must be cold. I'll tell thee what I'll do: I will make them little shirts, and coats, and vests, and trousers, and knit both of them a pair of stockings, and do thou, too, make them two little pairs of shoes." The man said, "I shall be very glad to do it;" and one night, when everything was ready, they laid their presents all together on the table instead of the cut-out work, and then concealed themselves to see how the little men would behave.
At midnight they came bounding in, and wanted to get to work at once, but as they did not find any leather cut out, but only the pretty little articles of clothing, they were at first astonished, and then they showed intense delight. They dressed themselves with the greatest rapidity, putting the pretty clothes on, and singing,
"Now we are boys so fine to see,
Why should we longer cobblers be?"Then they danced and skipped and leapt over chairs and benches. At last they danced out of doors. From that time forth they came no more, but as long as the shoemaker lived all went well with him, and all his undertakings prospered.
| Word or phrase | Meaning |
|---|---|
| by no fault of his own | not because he had done anything wrong |
| leather | animal skin prepared for making shoes, bags and belts |
| cut out | cut the pieces of leather to the right shapes, ready to be sewn |
| a good conscience | the peaceful feeling of knowing you have done nothing wrong |
| commended himself to God | prayed and asked God to take care of him |
| astounded | very surprised |
| stitch | one movement of a needle and thread through material |
| masterpiece | a piece of work made with the greatest possible skill |
| customary | usual |
| his honest independence | enough money, honestly earned, to live without help |
| it befell | it happened (old-fashioned) |
| concealed themselves | hid |
| with the greatest rapidity | very quickly |
| cobbler | a person who makes or mends shoes |
| all his undertakings prospered | everything he tried to do was successful |
Thee and thou are old forms of you, used in 1884 between family members: "I'll tell thee what I'll do" means "I'll tell you what I'll do".
Definition
Plot: the series of connected events in a story, in the order the writer tells them, where each event leads to the next.
Conflict: the problem or struggle at the centre of a plot. It may be between two characters, between a character and nature or bad luck, or inside a character's own mind. Example: in The Elves, the shoemaker's poverty, and then the mystery of who is making the shoes.
Definition
The five stages of a plot:
Exposition: the opening, which introduces the main characters, the setting and the situation.
Rising action: the events that develop the conflict and build up tension.
Climax: the turning point, the moment of greatest tension, after which things cannot stay the same.
Falling action: the events that follow the climax, as the tension eases.
Resolution: the ending, where the conflict is settled and we see how things are now.
Most stories follow the same shape: a slow start, a climb as the problem grows, a peak, and a way down to a new calm. Here is The Elves drawn on that shape.
Plot is one of five elements that every work of prose fiction has. You met some of them in earlier units; here they are together.
| Element | The question it answers | In The Elves |
|---|---|---|
| Plot | What happens, in what order, and why? | poverty, then mysterious help, the discovery, the gift, and the elves' departure; the shoemaker prospers |
| Character | Who is in the story, and what are they like? | an honest, hard-working shoemaker; his kind, practical wife; two tiny, skilful, merry elves |
| Setting | Where and when does it happen? | a shoemaker's workshop, long ago, mostly at night, "not long before Christmas" |
| Theme | What is the story really about? | gratitude: kindness should be repaid with kindness; honest people deserve help |
| Point of view | Who tells the story, and how much do they know? | a narrator outside the story, who says "he", "she" and "they", and knows what the shoemaker feels ("he had a good conscience") |
| Stage | Useful linking words | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Exposition | At the beginning, … · The story opens with … | At the beginning, a shoemaker is so poor that he has leather for only one pair of shoes. |
| Rising action | Then … · Next … · Soon … · After that … | Then the shoes are made in the night, and soon he is rich. |
| Climax | One night, … · At last … · Suddenly … | One night, the couple finally see two little men at work. |
| Falling action | After this, … · As a result, … | As a result, the wife makes them tiny clothes, and the elves dance away. |
| Resolution | In the end, … · Finally, … | In the end, the elves never return, but the shoemaker prospers. |
Write a plot summary in the present simple (the shoemaker finds, the elves dance), even though the story itself is told in the past. This is how critics and examiners write about stories.
Worked example
Map the plot of Chicken and Millipede (Lesson 1) onto the five stages.
Check: the conflict (two friends who must always win) grows through the rising action and comes to a head at the climax. The last line settles it for ever.
Warning
Tip
Climb the hill. The exposition is the path to the foot of the hill, the rising action is the climb, the climax is the top, the falling action is the way down, and the resolution is home again. To find the climax, ask: after which moment can things never go back to how they were?
The elements of a story, from Khan Academy (5 minutes). The presenter maps a space-age version of The Three Little Pigs onto the same stages: exposition, conflict, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution. Pause after the exposition and predict the climax, then check.
In pairs, tell The Elves in exactly five sentences, one for each stage, in the present simple. Begin each sentence with a linking word from the table. Your partner listens and names the stage of each sentence. Then swap, and do the same for Anansi and Wisdom.
At the beginning, people know nothing, and the god Nyame keeps all the world's wisdom in a clay pot. Then he gives the pot to Anansi, who decides to hide it at the top of a tall tree, but the climb is hard with the pot on his stomach. At last his young son tells him to tie it to his back, and Anansi realises that a child is cleverer than he is. As a result, Anansi angrily throws the pot down and it smashes. In the end, the wisdom is free, and everyone learns to farm, weave and make tools.
Plan your own short story on a plot diagram: write one note for each of the five stages. Then write the exposition in full (60 to 80 words): introduce the main character, the setting and the situation, and end with a hint of the coming conflict.
Plan: "The Strange Note"
Exposition: Every Saturday, while her friends slept late, Ishimwe sat behind her mother's tomato stall at Kimironko market. She liked the noise: the sellers calling out prices, the motos hooting at the gate, the radio playing somewhere behind the bananas. By thirteen, she could add up any bill faster than her mother. But she had never needed to look closely at the money itself. Not until that Saturday.
Practice
Sources and credits
