• What is a literary text?
• Characteristics of a literary text
• Types of literary texts
• Types and examples of narrative texts
• Examples of lyrical texts
• Examples of dramatic texts
• Literary text and non-literary text

We explain what a literary text is and the types that exist. Also, its characteristics and examples.

Literary texts offer the reader subjective, free and reflective approaches.

What is a literary text?

A literary text is an oral or written composition made by one or more authors that uses language to convey a certain message or story. This type of texts focuses on the aesthetic function of the language, more than in its utilitarian purpose, and uses resources and structures to relate real or imaginary universes through the word.

Literary texts offer the reader subjective, free approaches, with a reflective, experiential or contemplative content and emphasize language to relate situations and transmit emotions and sensations.

Authors of artistic texts use expressive devices, known as tropes, rhetorical figures or literary figures, to enrich the text. In addition, they use language in a powerful, moving, and rhythmic way.

In ancient Greece, the literary cradle of the West, the first literary analysis of history was made (Poetics Aristotle) ​​and literary texts were classified as: drama, epic genre Y lyric.

Currently, there are a large number of types of literary texts and the reading It is considered a leisure and recreation activity that, due to its deep human content, occupies a central place in the imaginary of the human being.

Characteristics of a literary text

A literary text has the following characteristics:

• Purpose Literary texts usually have an aesthetic purpose and convey a message, a teaching or feelings and emotions through language. Its main purpose is to embellish a text and offer it to the reader, either as entertainment or as a way to contemplate the use and resources of language.
• Language. Literary texts use language in different ways and use resources, such as metaphors, comparisons, personifications Y Ellipse, to generate an impact on the reader or describe a reality in a novel and subjective way. The language used in a literary text will vary according to each author, the language and the type of text. Literary texts use language as a form of expression and the author has the freedom to create from it.
• Content. Literary texts relate imaginary or real events, but from fictional, impossible or novel perspectives. They express deep subjective or philosophical content and the author has the freedom to create worlds and fictionalize. Literary texts are credible, that is, they add the reader to the reality they propose.
• Extension. Literary texts have different extensions according to each genre. For example: stories are shorter than novels.
• Medium. Literary texts are usually transmitted in written form through digital formats or physical supports, such as magazines and books. In addition, they can be transmitted orally to an audience.
• Weather. Literary texts endure in the weather and they are part of the literary tradition that brings together all the known texts of the history of mankind. Some of these texts become landmarks and are works that are recognized for their form, content, or structure.

Types of literary texts

Literary texts are classified, based on their structure or characteristics, into four main literary genres:

• Narrative genre. It is made up of literary texts that emphasize the characters, on the plot and, above all, in the figure of storyteller, which is the one that tells the story. Some examples of this genre are: short story, the novel, the micro-story, the chronicle, the legend, the myth, the fable, among others.
• Lyric. It is made up of texts that have different formats and structures and that usually describe a subjective state of being: feelings, life perspectives, reflections or even a certain degree of narration. They emphasize the aesthetic aspect of the word and use devices or figures of speech to convey their message. Some examples of this genre are: poems, sonnets, odes, verses, among others.
• Drama. It is made up of texts that are intended to be represented in theater, film or television. The dramatic genre uses the dialogue of the characters and usually does without a narrator. Some examples of this genre are: comedy, tragedy and drama.
• Didactic genre. It is made up of texts that are intended to teach something or convey a certain message or opinion to the reader. Some examples of this genre are: rehearsal, the Biography, the oratory, among others.

Types and examples of narrative texts

Some types of narrative texts are:

• Short story. It is a text written in prose, which is characterized by being very brief and telling a story in a narrative way with the use of the ellipsis. For example:
  • "The mirror that could not sleep" by Augusto Monterroso

    Once upon a time there was a hand mirror that when he was alone and no one looked in it, he felt the worst, like it didn't exist, and maybe he was right; but the other mirrors made fun of him, and when they were kept in the same dresser drawer at night they slept soundly satisfied, oblivious to the neurotic's concern.

  • “Al adivino” by Jorge Luis Borges

    In Sumatra, someone wants to get a doctorate as a fortune teller. The examining witch asks him if he will be failed or if he will pass. The candidate responds that he will be failed ...

• Story. It is a short text written in prose with a plot in which characters intervene in a defined time and space. For example:
  • "Cinderella" by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm.
  • "Tom Thumb" by Charles Perrault.
  • Edgar Allan Poe's "The Black Cat".
  • "Sadness" by Antón Chejov.
  • Ernest Hemingway's "The Assassins".
  • "House taken" by Julio Cortázar.
  • "Reunion" by John Cheever.
• Novel. It is a text written in prose that narrates facts and that differs from the story because it is longer and has a more complex plot with the participation of a narrator, characters and various spaces. For example:
  • "Don Quijote de la Mancha" by Miguel de Cervantes.
  • "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen.
  • Herman Melville's "Moby Dick".
  • "Crime and Punishment" by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
  • "War and peace" by Leo Tolstoi.
  • "Ulysses" by James Joyce.
  • "1984" by George Orwell.
  • "The Catcher in the Rye" by J. D. Salinger.
  • "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel García Márquez.
  • "Harry Potter" by J.K. Rowling.
• Myth. It is a fictional story that tells a story or adventure starring gods, demigods or humans to whom divine characteristics are attributed. For example:
  • "Romulus and Remus and the foundation of Rome."
  • "The myth of Sisyphus."
  • "The myth of the minotaur."
  • "The myth of Prometheus."
  • "Icarus and Daedalus."
• Fable. It is a story starring, in most cases, by animals and that tells a story that seeks to leave a moral or teaching. For example:
  • "Peter and the wolf."
  • "The hare and the Tortoise".
  • "The fox and the grapes."
  • "The lion and the Mouse".
  • "The Ant and the Grasshopper".

Examples of lyrical texts

Some types of lyrical texts are:

• Poem. It is a composition in verse or prose that uses poetic resources to convey an emotion or experience. For example:
  • "La aurora" by Federico García Lorca

    The New York aurora has
    four columns of silt
    and a hurricane of black doves
    splashing the waters rotten New York aurora groans
    down the huge stairs
    searching between the edges
    tuberose of anguish drawn.

    The dawn arrives and nobody receives it in their mouth
    because there is no tomorrow or possible hope.
    Sometimes the coins in angry swarms
    they drill and devour abandoned children.

    The first to come out understand with their bones
    that there will be no paradise or leafless loves;
    they know they go to the mire of numbers and laws,
    to games without art, to fruitless sweats.

    The light is buried by chains and noises
    in shameless challenge of science without roots.
    In the neighborhoods there are people who waver insomniac
    like fresh out of a shipwreck of blood.

• Sonnet. It is a poetic composition that is usually made up of four stanzas, the first two of four lines and the last two of three lines. Uses poetic devices and rhyme. For example:
  • "Constant love beyond death" by Francisco de Quevedo.

    Close my eyes the last
    shadow that the white day will take me,
    and can unleash this soul of mine
    hour to his eager flattery; but not, on the other hand, on the shore,
    will leave the memory, where it burned:
    swimming knows my flame the cold water,
    And lose respect for severe law.

    Soul to whom a prison god has been,
    veins that humor to so much fire have given,
    marbles that have gloriously burned,

    your body will leave, not your care;
    They will be ashes, but it will make sense;
    dust they will be, more dust in love.

• Ode. It is a poetic composition that includes reflections and, originally, it used to be sung. For example:
  • "Ode to age", by Pablo Neruda (fragment)

    I don't believe in age, all the old men
    They carry
    In the eyes
    child,
    and children
    sometimes
    they watch us
    like profound elders.

    We will measure
    life
    by meters or kilometers
    or months?
    So much since you were born?
    How many
    you must walk
    until
    like everyone
    instead of walking over it
    let us rest, under the earth?

• Elegy. It is a poetic composition in which a loss or misfortune is lamented. For example:
  • "Elegy interrupted", by Octavio Paz (fragment)

    Today I remember the dead of my house.
    We never forget the first death,
    even if I die of lightning, so quickly
    that does not reach the bed or the oils.
    I hear the cane that hesitates on a step,
    the body that takes hold in a sigh,
    the door that opens, the dead that enters.
    From a door to die there is little space
    and there is hardly time to sit down,
    raise your face, see the time
    and find out: a quarter past eight.

    Today I remember the dead of my house.
    The one who died night after night
    and it was a long goodbye,
    a train that never departs, its agony.
    Lust of the mouth
    to the thread of a suspended sigh,
    eyes that do not close and make signs
    and they wander from the lamp to my eyes,
    fixed gaze that hugs another,
    alien, suffocating in the embrace
    and at last he escapes and sees from the shore
    how the soul sinks and loses body
    and he can't find eyes to hold onto ...
    And did that look invite me to die?
    Maybe we die just because no one
    wants to die with us, nobody
    wants to look us in the eye.

Examples of dramatic texts

Some types of dramatic texts are:

• Tragedy. It is a dramatic work starring characters who are exposed to an unexpected, tragic situation or misfortune. For example:
  • Sophocles' "Oedipus Rex".
  • Euripides's "Medea".
  • "The supplicants" of Aeschylus.
  • "Hamlet" by William Shakespeare.
  • "Blood Weddings" by Federico García Lorca.
• Comedy. It is a literary work that seeks to entertain and make the reader or public laugh and has a happy ending. For example:
  • "The Trickster of Seville" by Tirso de Molina.
  • Molière's "The Miser".
  • "Tartufo" by Molière.
  • "The dog in the manger" by Lope de Vega.
  • "A Midsummer Night's Dream" by William Shakespeare.

Literary text and non-literary text

Literary texts differ from non-literary ones in one fundamental respect: their aesthetic purpose. Literary texts are created by the authors without a concrete practical utility, on the contrary, they seek to use language to transmit thoughts, sensations or stories. The reader, on the other hand, consumes this type of text to admire the language, as a form of entertainment and to obtain a subjective experience.

On the other hand, non-literary texts are all those that are created with a clear and evident meaning and with a specific purpose, which is usually to transmit certain information so that it is known by the reader. For example: Instructions for using a washing machine, a cooking recipe, a billboard, or a News at newspaper.