Genre, text type and discourse in literary studies
Genre usually refers to one of the three classical literary forms of epic, drama and poetry. The epic is the forerunner of the modern novel because of its structural features such as plot, character presentation and narrative perspective. The tendency today is to abandon the term epic and introduce prose fiction or prosefiction.Text type: this term has been introduced under the influence of linguistics, it refers to conventional written documents such as instructional manuals, categories, scientific writing, sermons, advertising text.
Traditional literary studies also distinguish between the artistic object or primary source and its scholarly treatment in a critical text or secondary source.
Primary sources denote the traditional objects of analysis in literary criticism, including tests of all literary genres.
The term secondary source applies to articles, essays, book reviews, all which are published in scholarly journal. Discourse is the broadest term, which refers to a variety of written and oral manifestations, which share common thematic and structural features, e.g. male or female political, philosophic discourse.
