GenreGenre is a term used to classify or describe a type or form of literature. Although it seems like a simple concept, it is actually a very complicated classification system. The reason for the complication is that literature does not always follow the typical characteristics established by that type of genre. For example, one of the characteristics of the tragedy genre is that there is a tragic hero who occupies a position of power. In classical tragedy this is true, as can be seen in Sophocles' Oedipus Rex because the tragic hero is Oedipus, who is the king of Thebes. In Renaissance tragedy this is not always the case, as in Shakespeare's Hamlet, the tragic hero is just a prince. Where this feature is completely abandoned is in Eugene O'Neill's modern tragedy, Desire Under the Elms, where the character playing the tragic hero is a farmer and it is difficult to determine which character is the true tragic hero. Yet all of these works are tragedies, despite their variations. Another aspect of the genre that makes the concept difficult to define is that there are parts of plays that fall into other genres. An example of this is seen in some parts of Desire Under the Elms, such as the party scene at the Cabot house. Although this play is a tragedy, there is comedy in this scene which manifests itself in the witty remarks of the revelers and Ephraim's silly dancing. As you can see, the simple concept of genre poses many complications when used to define a piece of literature. The genre is divided into two categories, which are representational genre and narrative genre. The first category, representational genre, consists of the “number and types of voices” in the literary work. (handout) There are three types of representative gender. The first type is the Narrator, which is when a speaker speaks directly to the audience and that speaker is responsible for telling the entire story to the audience without the help of other opinions or versions of the story of the other people involved. An example of this is when a comedian stands up. The audience can hear the funny story of, say, when the comedian learned to ride a bicycle and his father let him go early and the comedian fell, etc...