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understanding literary form—continuedForm is a way of classifying literature by its structure and framework. Compared with other ways of classifying literature, such as genres, period, or place, there are relatively few literary forms. Perhaps there are dozens of literary genres and dozens more of literary periods or literary places, but literary forms are relatively few. Today, this situation is being ameliorated somewhat because of all the vitality and imagination being poured into writing. A recent development, for example, is so-called 55 Fiction. The form of a literary work is 55 Fiction if it is written in fifty-five words or less, has a setting, has one or more characters, a tad of conflict, and a resolution. By way of example, The Muse offers the names and definitions of a few of the most prominent literary forms. You are probably familiar with all of them:
problems with the notion of literary formThe form of a literary work is one of its most important characteristics; together with its its genre, title, author, and publication date, its form tells us as much about a work as we can reasonably expect to know without looking under its cover. Is a cited work a novel? A short Story? Fiction or nonfiction? When we inspect a library index card or read a critical review or publisher's promotional ad for a new work, we naturally look first to discover its form. Many literary forms—epic poetry, lyric poetry, biography, philosophy, drama and dramatic poetry, song, and others—have been with us for at least two or three thousand years. Yet, despite all this time and attention forms have received, today neither experts nor laymen can always reach agreement on these aspects of form:
Problems with the notion of form are similar to problems with the notion of genre described by The Muse Of Literature on The Muse's page called More About Literary Genre, except that confusion over the notion of form is not as rampant as it is over the notion of genre. There are probably two chief reasons why there is less confusion about form than about genre: 1) there are fewer forms than genres, and 2) forms are more concrete concepts. Nevertheless, differences of opinion over the meaning of form and the classification specific literary works into form, genre, and period continue to exist among commentators.
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