21st CENTURY
LITERARY GENRES
21ST Century Literature
• refers to new literary work created within the last decade.
• written by contemporary authors which may deal with
current themes/ issues and reflects a technological culture.
21ST Century
• grew up using technology as a learning tool.
• capable of navigating and interpreting digital formats and
media messages.
Conventional
Literary
Genres
Conventional Literary Genres
POETRY FICTION
01 an imaginative awareness of
03 literature created from the
experience expressed through imagination, not presented as
meaning, sound and rhythmic fact, though it may be based on
language choices to evoke an a true story or situation.
emotional response.
DRAMA NON-FICTION
02 a composition in prose or verse
04 based on facts and the author’s
presenting in dialogue or pantomime opinion about a subject. The
a story involving conflict more purpose of non-fiction writing is to
contrast of character, especially on inform and sometimes to persuade.
intended to be acted on a
stage: a play.
21st
Century
Literature
Genres
01 ILLUSTRATED NOVEL
● Story through text and illustrated
images
● 50% 0f the narrative is presented
without words
● The reader must interpret the images to
comprehend the story completely.
● Textual portions are presented in
traditional form.
● Some illustrated novels may contain no
text at all.
● Span all genres.
THE
INVENTION OF
HUGO CABRET
THE ARRIVAL
02 DIGI- FICTION
● Triple Media Literature
● Combines three media: book,
movie/video and internet website
● To get the full story, students must
engage in navigation, reading,
viewing in all three forms.
● Patrick Carman’s Skeleton Creek
and Anthony Zuiker’s Level 26
are examples.
03 GRAPHIC NOVEL
● Narrative in comic book formats
● Narrative work in which the story is
conveyed to the reader using a comic form.
● The term is employed broadly manner,
encompassing non-fiction works
and thematically linked
● short stories as well as fictional stories
across a number of genres.
● Archie Comics by John Goldwater and
illustrator, Bob Montana, is a good example.
Detective Comics
(DC)
MARVEL
Comics
04 MANGA
● Japanese word for comics
● It is used in the English-speaking
world as a generic term for all
comic books and graphic
novels
● originally published in Japan.
● Considered as an artistic and
storytelling style.
● Ameri-manga- sometimes used to
refer to comics created by
American artists in manga style.
SHONEN
(Boy’s
Manga)
SHOJO
(Girl’s
Manga)
SEINEN
(Men’s
Manga)
JOSEI
(Women’s
Manga)
KODOM
O
(Children’s
Manga)
05 DOODLE FICTION
● Literary presentation where the
author incorporates doodle writing
and drawings and
● handwritten graphics in place of
the traditional font.
● Drawing enhances the story, often
adding humorous elements
● Examples include The Diary of a
Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney
and Timmy Failure by
Stephan Pastis.
06 TEXT-TALK NOVELS
● Blogs, email and IM
format narratives
● Stories told almost
entirely in dialogue
simulating social
network exchanges.
07 CHICK LITERATURE
● Is genre fiction which addresses
issues of modern womanhood, often
humorously and lightheartedly.
● Chick Lit typically features a female
protagonist whose femininity is
heavily thermalizing in the plot.
● Scarlet Bailey’s The night before
Christmas and Miranda Dickinson’s
It started with a Kiss are examples of
this.
Classics
Contemporaries
08 FLASH FICTION
● a style of fictional literature of extreme brevity
● There is no widely accepted definition of the length and
category. It could range from a word to a thousand.
Six-WORD FLASH FICTION
● Ernest Hemingway:
For sale: baby socks, never worn.
● Margaret Atwood:
Longed for him. Got him, Shit.
09 CREATIVE NON-FICTION
● Also known as literary non-fiction or
narrative non-fiction
● A genre of writing that uses literary
styles and techniques to create
factually accurate narratives.
● Contrasts with other non-fiction, such
as technical writing or journalism,
which is also rooted
● in accurate fact, but is not primarily
written in service to its craft.
10 SCIENCE FICTION
● a genre of speculative fiction dealing
with imaginative concepts such as
futuristic science and technology,
space travel, time travel, faster
than light travel, a parallel
universe and extraterrestrial life.
● Often explores the potential
consequences of scientific and other
innovations and has been called a
“literature of ideas”
11 BLOG
● A weblog, a website containing
short articles called posts that are
changed regularly.
● Some blogs are written by one person
containing their own opinions,
interests and experiences,
● while others are written by different
people.
12 HYPER POETRY
● Digital poetry that uses links using hypertext mark-up
● It can either involved set words, phrases, lines, etc. that
are presented in variable order but sit on the page
much as traditional poetry does, or it can contain
parts of the poem that move and mutate.
● It is usually found online, through CD-ROM and
diskette
versions exist. The earliest examples date to no later than
the mid-1980’s.
ACTIVITIES
Written Work
Answer “What’s More”, Activity 2 on page
23 of your 21st Century Literature Module
21st CENTURY
LITERARY GENRES