Competency 5: Differentiate/compare and contrast the various 21st-century literary genres and the ones from the earlier genres/periods citing their elements, structures, and traditions.
The 21st Century reader grew up using technology as a primary learning tool and navigating and interpreting digital formats and media messages. He or she possesses literacy skills, including technological abilities such as keyboarding, internet navigation, interpretation of technological speak, ability to communicate and interpret coded language and decipher graphics. Thus, the new literary work created within the last decade written by contemporary authors, deals with current themes/issues and reflects a technological culture that often breaks traditional writing rules. Emerging genres like IM and blog format books, Digi-fiction, doodle surfaced.
21st Century Literary Genres
50% of the narrative is presented without words. The reader must interpret the images to comprehend the complete story. Textual portions are presented in traditional form. However, some illustrated novels may contain no text at all.
It is a literary experience that combines three media: book, movie/video, and Internet website. To get the full story, students must engage in navigation, reading, viewing in all three formats.
A narrative work in which the story is conveyed to the reader using a comic form. The term is employed broadly, encompassing non-fiction works and thematically linked short stories as well as fictional stories across several genres.
The 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. Manga is considered an artistic and storytelling style. The term "Ameri-Manga" is sometimes used to refer to comics created by American artists in a manga style.
A scholarly presentation where the author incorporates doodle drawings and handwritten graphics in place of the traditional font. Drawings enhance the story, often adding humorous elements that would be missing if the illustrations were omitted.
Stories told almost completely in dialogue, simulating social network exchanges.
A genre fiction that addresses issues of modern womanhood, often humorously and lightheartedly. Chick it typically features a female protagonist whose womanhood is heavily thermalized in the plot.
It is a style of fictional literature of extreme brevity. There is no widely accepted definition of the length of the category. It could range from word to a thousand.
A speculative fiction genre deals 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.”
A weblog; a website containing short articles called posts that are changed regularly. The same blogs are written by one person containing their own opinions, interests, and experiences, while many different people write to others.
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, are also rooted in accurate facts but are not primarily written in service to its craft. As a genre, creative non-fiction is still relatively young and is only beginning to be scrutinized with the same critical analysis given to fiction and poetry.
Digital poetry that uses links using hypertext mark-up. It can involve set words, phrases, lines, etc. 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/or mutate. It is usually found online, through CD-ROM and diskette versions exist. The earliest examples date to no later than the mid-1980s