RWS Midterms

• Genres are categories of artistic, musical, and literary compositions characterized by a particular style, form, or content
• Main literary genres include prose, poetry, and drama
• Prose is a form of written or spoken language that follows the natural flow of speech or uses the conventions of formal academic writing
• There are two different prose forms: fictional and nonfictional prose
• Fictional prose involves invented characters and allows readers to explore new worlds and learn from the experiences of others
• Fictional prose forms include novel, short story, novella, fable, parable, and legend
• Novels are works of prose fiction centered around characters, events, and settings with multiple chapters and a larger plot
• Short stories are shorter works of fiction with less developed characters and settings, consisting of 1,000 to 10,000 words
• Novellas are longer than short stories but shorter than novels, consisting of 17,500 to 40,000 words
• Fables are short stories with animals as characters that teach moral lessons
• Parables are brief tales used to illustrate moral lessons or religious principles
• Legends are traditional stories passed down through generations based on historical events and often include elements of mythology and folklore
• Nonfictional prose includes biographies, autobiographies, and essays that deal with real people, places, things, and events
• Nonfictional prose forms include history, news, biography, diary, anecdote, and essay
• History is the study of past events and their impact on people and societies
• News provides information about current events and situations through various media
• Biographies are detailed descriptions of a person's life, while autobiographies are written by the person themself
• Diaries are personal records of experiences, thoughts, or reflections kept regularly and often privately
• Anecdotes are brief, often amusing stories about real incidents or people
• Essays are short pieces of writing that focus on a particular topic or argument
• Poetry is a type of literature that attempts to stir a reader's imagination or emotions through distinctive style and rhythm
• Poetry can be narrative, lyric, or dramatic
• Narrative poetry tells a story with characters, setting, and climax
• Lyric poetry expresses personal emotions or thoughts and often includes rhyme and meter
• Dramatic poetry is meant to be performed in a play or theatrical setting
• Forms of poetry include epics, ballads, sonnets, free verse, and haiku
• Epics are long, narrative poems celebrating heroic figures and their adventures
• Ballads are songlike poems that tell stories of adventure and romance
• Sonnets are fourteen-line poems with specific rhyme schemes and thematic organization
• Free verse is poetry without a regular rhythmical pattern or meter
• Haiku is a Japanese poetic form with three lines and a specific syllable structure
• Poetry also uses structural elements such as line length and stanzas
• Kinds of stanzas include couplet, tercet, quatrain, quintain, sestet, septet, and octave
• Couplets are stanzas made of two lines often used in love poems
• Tercets consist of three lines
• Quatrains are stanzas of four lines
• Quintains are stanzas of five lines, with Tanka being a prominent example
• Sestets have six lines, and septets have seven lines
• Octaves are stanzas with eight lines written in iambic pentameter
• Drama is a story told in dialogue by performers before an audience, including television plays, radio plays, and movies