Literary Genre

Artificial intelligence (AI) is both the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science which aims to create it. Major AI textbooks define artificial intelligence as "the study and design of intelligent agents,"where an intelligent agent is a system that...

Alternate history or alternative history is a subgenre of speculative fiction (or some would say science fiction) and historical fiction that is set in a world in which history has diverged from history as it is generally known. Alternate history literature asks the...

An autobiography, from the Greek autos, 'self', bios, 'life' and graphein, 'write', is a biography written by the subject or composed conjointly with a collaborative writer (styled "as told to" or "with"). The term was first used by the poet Robert Southey in 1809 in...

A biography (from the Greek words bios meaning "life", and graphos meaning "write") is an account of a person's life, usually published in the form of a book or essay, or in some other form, such as a film. An autobiography (auto, meaning "self", giving self-biography)...

A Bildungsroman (/, German: "novel of self-cultivation") is a novel form that concentrates on the spiritual, moral, psychological, or social development and growth of the protagonist usually from childhood to maturity. Sometimes it is referred to as a "Coming Of Age...

Computer software is a general term used to describe a collection of computer program, procedures and documentation that perform some tasks on a computer system.The term includes application software such as word processor which perform productive tasks for users,...

Computer programming (often shortened to programming or coding) is the process of writing, testing, debugging/troubleshooting, and maintaining the source code of computer program. This source code is written in a programming language. The code may be a modification of...

Cyberpunk is a science fiction genre noted for its focus on "high tech and low life." It is also a subgenre of industrial rock music. The name is derived from cybernetics and punk and was originally coined by Bruce Bethke as the title of his short story "Cyberpunk,"...

A comic book -- or comic for short -- is a magazine or book containing sequential art. Although the term implies otherwise, the subject matter in comic books is not necessarily humorous; in fact, it is often serious and action-oriented. Comic books are so called...

"Comedy" has a popular meaning (any discourse generally intended to amuse, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy). This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in Ancient...

A cartoon is any of several forms of illustration with varied meanings. The term has evolved from its original meaning from the fine art of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, to the more modern meaning of humorous illustrations in magazine and newspaper, to the...

A dictionary is a book of alphabetically listed words in a specific language, with definitions, etymologies, pronunciations, and other information; or a book of alphabetically listed words in one language with their equivalents in another, also known as a lexicon. ...

A dystopia (from the Greek δυσ- and τόπος, alternatively, cacotopia, kakotopia, cackotopia, or anti-utopia) is the vision of a society that is the opposite of utopia. A dystopian society is a state in which the conditions of life are extremely bad, characterized by...

Detective fiction is a branch of crime fiction that centers upon the investigation of a crime, usually murder, by a detective, either professional or amateur. Detective fiction is the most popular form of both mystery fiction and hardboiled crime fiction. Commonly in...

Economics is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Greek for oikos (house) and nomos (custom or law), hence "rules of the house(hold)." A definition that captures much of...

Epistemology or theory of knowledge is a branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge. The term was introduced into English by the Scottish philosopher James Frederick Ferrier (1808-1864). Much of the debate in this field has focused on...

An encyclopedia (or '''encyclopædia''') is a comprehensive written compendium that contains information on all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge. Encyclopedias are divided into articles with one article on each subject covered. The articles on...

Erotica (from the Greek Eros - "desire") or "curiosa," works of art, including literature, photography, film, sculpture and painting, that deal substantively with erotically stimulating or sexually arousing descriptions. Erotica is a modern word used to describe the...

An epistolary novel is a novel written as a series of documents. The usual form is letter, although diary entries, newspaper clippings and other documents are sometimes used. Recently, electronic "documents", such as blogs and e-mails have also come into use. The word...

An essay - is a typically short piece of writing, from an author's personal point of view. Essays are non-fiction but often subjective; while expository, they can also include narrative. Essays can be literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments,...

Fiction is the telling of stories which are not entirely based upon facts. More specifically, fiction is an imaginative form of narrative, one of the four basic rhetorical modes. Although the word fiction is derived from the Latin fingo, fingere, finxi, fictum, "to...

Feminist science fiction is a sub-genre of science fiction which tends to deal with women's roles in society. Feminist science fiction poses questions about social issues such as how society constructs gender roles, the role reproduction plays in defining gender and...

History is the study of the past, focused on human activity and leading up to the present day. More exactly, history is the field of research producing a continuous narrative and a systematic analysis of past events of importance to the human race, including the study...

Hard science fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by an emphasis on scientific or technical detail, or on scientific accuracy, or on both. The term was first used in print in 1957 by P. Schuyler Miller in a review of John W. Campbell, Jr.'s Islands of...

Horror fiction is, broadly, fiction in any medium intended to scare, unsettle, or horrify the audience. Historically, the cause of the "horror" experience has often been the intrusion of an evil —- or, occasionally, misunderstood —- supernatural element into everyday...

High fantasy, or epic fantasy, is a subgenre of fantasy fiction that is set in invented or parallel worlds. Built upon the platform of a diverse body of works in the already very popular fantasy genre, high fantasy came to fruition through the work of authors such as C...

Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that began as a loose association of Paris-based artist exhibiting their art publicly in the 1860s. The name of the movement is derived from the title of a Claude Monet work, Impression, Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant),...

A Künstlerroman (, German: "artist's novel") is a specific sub-genre of Bildungsroman; it is a novel about an artist's growth to maturity. Such novels often depict the struggles of a sensitive youth against the values of a bourgeois society of his or her time. Famous...

Martial arts are systems of codified practices and traditions of training for combat. While they maybe studied for various reasons, martial arts share a single objective: to defeat a person physically or to defend oneself from physical threat. In addition, some martial...

Modernism describes an array of cultural movement rooted in the changes in Western society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The term covers a series of reforming movements in art, architecture, music, literature and the applied arts which emerged...