Major Genres of Preromantic Literature

Abstract

Preromantic literature tended to blur the borderlines between genres. Poetry, especially lyrical poetry, began to permeate all other genres. A succinct statement of this new unitary view of literary genres as subordinated to poetry and merging with poetry comes from the pen of Karamzin who in 1791–92 wrote in his Moscow Journal, “... yet whenever a novel is not history, but invented, then it would seem, that it is a poem—an epic poem or otherwise, but still a poem—written in verse or in prose, but still a poem, which according to views generally accepted in other languages denotes any work created by imagination. In this manner a comedy, a novel are a poem.”¹ All literature converged in poetry in as far as it was literature, i.e. an original creation of the author’s imagination and not an historical account. Of course, this statement was not left unchallenged. An anonymous reviewer writing in The Northern Messenger (1804) attacked Karamzin violently and attempted to refute him by pointing to the teachings of Boileau, La Harpe, and Batteux, three of the apostles of the neo-classicist trend en vogue at the turn of the century.