This conventional movement in drama is not an absolute, but a tendency we observe, and variations are frequent. It is useful to understand this conventional structure of drama so that we can better appreciate departures from it, as well as apply it more specifically to tragedies, as well as to comedies. Its lengthiness was properly a response to the magnitude of the subject material. This broader classification can include many kinds of narratives, in prose as well as in verse. It should be noted that the three-part division of lyric, drama, and epic or fiction, while useful and relatively comprehensive, does not provide a place for all of the known literary genres.
Some obvious omissions are the essay, the pastoral, biography and autobiography, and satire.
How Literary Critics Have Used Genres Critics have employed the genre approach to literature in a number of ways. Thus the placement of comic episodes in otherwise predominantly serious works was frowned upon, and hybrid forms like tragicomedy were dismissed. There was also a tendency to rank the genres in a hierarchy, usually with epic or tragedy at the top, and shorter forms, such as the epigram and the subdivisions of the lyric, at the bottom. Modern critics have a different view of genres, and are likely to point out how, in actual practice, writers play against as well as with generic traditions and how specific conventions are imitated or defied, modified or renovated. Conclusion All of the arts consist of genres.