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28-509: Adamant in classical mythology is an archaic form of diamond . In fact, the English word diamond is ultimately derived from adamas , via Late Latin diamas and Old French diamant . In ancient Greek ἀδάμας ( adamas ), genitive ἀδάμαντος ( adamantos ), literally 'unconquerable, untameable'. In those days, the qualities of hard metal (probably steel ) were attributed to it, and adamant became an independent concept as

56-529: A ceremony (epideictic). In the Poetics , Aristotle similarly divided poetry into three main genres: the epic , tragedy , and comedy . In the case of poetry, these distinctions are based not on rhetorical purpose, but on a combination of structure, content and narrative form. For each type, he proposed a definition as well as the rules for its construction. After the time of Aristotle, literary criticism continued to develop. The first-century Greek treatise " On

84-527: A result. In the Middle Ages adamant also became confused with the magnetic rock lodestone , and a folk etymology connected it with the Latin adamare , 'to love or be attached to'. Another connection was the belief that adamant (the diamond definition) could block the effects of a magnet. This was addressed in chapter III of Pseudodoxia Epidemica , for instance. Since the contemporary word diamond

112-422: Is a collection of ancient stories, legends, and beliefs that were created by the people of ancient Greece and Rome to explain aspects of the world around them, express cultural values, and provide a framework for understanding their existence. These myths often involve gods, heroes, goddesses, afterwar appearances, and other supernatural beings, and they were an integral part of the religious and cultural practices of

140-531: Is commonly accepted that the genre of fiction ("literature created from the imagination, not presented as fact, though it may be based on a true story or situation") is not applied to all fictitious literature, but instead encompasses only prose texts (novels, novellas, short stories) and not fables. There are other ways of categorizing books that are not usually considered "genre". Notably, this can include age categories, by which literature may be classified as adult, young adult , or children's literature . There

168-547: Is now used for the hardest gemstone, the increasingly archaic noun adamant has been reduced to mostly poetic or anachronistic use. In that capacity, the name, and various derivatives of it, are frequently used in modern media to refer to a variety of fictional substances. Classical mythology As late as the Roman conquest of Greece during the last two centuries Before the Common Era and for centuries afterwards,

196-765: Is typically subdivided into the classic three forms of Ancient Greece, poetry , drama , and prose . Poetry may then be subdivided into the genres of lyric , epic , and dramatic . The lyric includes all the shorter forms of poetry e.g., song , ode, ballad, elegy, sonnet. Dramatic poetry might include comedy , tragedy , melodrama , and mixtures like tragicomedy . The standard division of drama into tragedy and comedy derives from Greek drama. This division into subgenres can continue: comedy has its own subgenres, including, for example, comedy of manners , sentimental comedy, burlesque comedy , and satirical comedy. The genre of semi-fiction includes works that mix elements of both fiction and nonfiction. A semi-fictional work may be

224-719: The Greek god Ares and the Italic god Mars are both war deities , the role of each in his society and its religious practices differed often strikingly; but in literature and Roman art , the Romans reinterpreted stories about Ares under the name of Mars. The literary collection of Greco-Roman myths with the greatest influence on later Western culture was the Metamorphoses of the Augustan poet Ovid . Syncretized versions form

252-608: The chronology of the two cultures. Professor Elizabeth Vandiver says Greece was the first culture in the Mediterranean, then Rome second. Literary genre A literary genre is a category of literature . Genres may be determined by literary technique , tone , content , or length (especially for fiction). They generally move from more abstract, encompassing classes, which are then further sub-divided into more concrete distinctions. The distinctions between genres and categories are flexible and loosely defined, and even

280-523: The comic , and the tragic through the constitution of "the relation between the hero of the work and ourselves or the laws of nature." He also uses the juxtaposition of the "real" and the "ideal" to categorize the genres of romance (the ideal), irony (the real), comedy (transition from real to ideal), and tragedy (transition from ideal to real). Lastly, he divides genres by the audience they are intended for into: drama (performed works), lyric poetry (sung works), and epic poetry (recited works). Since

308-408: The tragedies of Aeschylus , Sophocles , and Euripides . Known versions are mostly preserved in sophisticated literary works shaped by the artistry of individuals and by the conventions of genre , or in vase painting and other forms of visual art. In these forms, mythological narratives often serve purposes that are not primarily religious, such as entertainment and even comedy ( The Frogs ), or

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336-685: The Greek goddess Aphrodite ; and the Roman sea god Neptune with the Greek god Poseidon . Latin remained the dominant language in Europe during the Middle Ages and Renaissance , largely due to the widespread influence of the Roman Empire . During this period, mythological names almost always appeared in their Latin form. However, in the 19th century, there was a shift towards the use of either

364-465: The Greek or Roman names. For example, " Zeus " and " Jupiter " both became widely used in that century as the name of the supreme god of the classical pantheon . The stories and characters found in Greco-Roman mythology are not considered real in terms of the same way that historical or scientific facts are real. They are not factual accounts of events that occurred. Instead, Greco-Roman mythology

392-519: The Renaissance era, who primarily studied the Christian teachings, Classical mythology found a way to be told from the freshly found ancient sources that authors and directors used for plays and stories for the retelling of these myths. Professor John Th. Honti stated that "many myths of Graeco-Roman antiquity" show "a nucleus" that appear in "some later common European folk-tale". Mythology

420-463: The Romans, who already had gods of their own, adopted many mythic narratives directly from the Greeks while preserving their own Roman (Latin) names for the gods. As a result, the actions of many Roman and Greek deities became equivalent in storytelling and literature. For example, the Roman sky god Jupiter or Jove became equated with his Greek counterpart Zeus ; the Roman fertility goddess Venus with

448-591: The Romantic period, modern genre theory often sought to dispense with the conventions that have marked the categorization of genres for centuries. However, the twenty-first century has brought a new era in which genre has lost much of the negative connotations associating it with loss of individuality or excess conformity. Genre categorizes literary works based on specific shared conventions, including style, mood, length, and organizational features. These genres are in turn divided into subgenres . Western literature

476-557: The Sublime ", for example, discussed the works of more than 50 literary writers and the methods they used to influence their audiences' emotions and feelings. The origins of modern Western genre theory can be traced to the European Romantic movement in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, during which the concept of genre was scrutinized heavily. The idea that it was possible to ignore genre constraints and

504-664: The birth of Romulus and Remus and the founding of the city, in which fratricide can be taken as expressing the long history of political division in the Roman Republic . As late as the Hellenistic period of Greek influence and primarily through the Roman conquest of Greece , the Romans identified their own gods with those of the Greeks, keeping their own Roman names but adopting the Greek stories told about them (see interpretatio graeca ) and importing other myths for which they had no counterpart. For instance, while

532-400: The classical tradition of mythography , and by the time of the influential Renaissance mythographer Natalis Comes (16th century), few if any distinctions were made between Greek and Roman myths. The myths as they appear in popular culture of the 20th and 21st centuries often have only a tangential relation to the stories as told in ancient Greek and Latin literature. The people living in

560-465: The exploration of social issues ( Antigone ). Roman myths are traditional stories pertaining to ancient Rome 's legendary origins , religious institutions , and moral models , with a focus on human actors and only occasional intervention from deities but a pervasive sense of divinely ordered destiny. Roman myths have a dynamic relation to Roman historiography , as in the early books of Livy 's Ab urbe condita . The most famous Roman myth may be

588-478: The idea that each literary work was a "genre unto itself" gained popularity. Genre definitions were thought to be "primitive and childish." At the same time, the Romantic period saw the emergence of a new genre, the 'imaginative' genre. The reason for this shift is often attributed to the social events that were taking place in the Western world in terms of wars, infighting and overthrown leadership. People felt

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616-399: The need for "escapism" to remove themselves from their respective situations. In 1957 Canadian scholar Northrop Frye published "Anatomy of Criticism," in which he proposes a system of genres and a set of rules to describe the constraints of each genre. In this work, he defines methodological classifications of the genres of myth , legend , high mimetic genre, low mimetic genre, irony ,

644-555: The novel is a large genre of narrative fiction; within the category of the novel, the detective novel is a sub-genre, while the "hard-boiled" detective novel is a sub-genre of the detective novel. In the Rhetoric , Aristotle proposed three literary genres of rhetorical oratory: deliberative , forensic , and epideictic . These are divided based on the purpose of the orator: to argue for future policy or action (deliberative), discuss past action (forensic), or offer praise or blame during

672-475: The retelling of a true story with only the names changed; at the other end of the spectrum, it may present fictional events with a semi-fictional protagonist, as in Jerry Seinfeld . Often, the criteria used to divide up works into genres are not consistent, and can be subject to debate, change and challenge by both authors and critics. However, some basic distinctions are widely accepted. For example, it

700-430: The rules designating genres change over time and are fairly unstable. Genres can all be in the form of prose or poetry . Additionally, a genre such as satire , allegory or pastoral might appear in any of the above, not only as a subgenre (see below), but as a mixture of genres. They are defined by the general cultural movement of the historical period in which they were composed. The concept of genre began in

728-567: The time. While these myths are not considered historically accurate, they hold cultural and literary significance. Greek myths were narratives related to ancient Greek religion , often concerned with the actions of gods and other supernatural beings and of heroes who transcend human bounds. Major sources for Greek myths include the Homeric epics , that is, the Iliad and the Odyssey , and

756-488: The works of Aristotle , who applied biological concepts to the classification of literary genres, or, as he called them, "species" (eidē). These classifications are mainly discussed in his treatises Rhetoric and Poetics . Genres are categories into which kinds of literary material are organized. The genres Aristotle discusses include the epic, the tragedy, the comedy, dithyrambic poetry, and phallic songs. Genres are often divided into complex sub-categories. For example,

784-399: Was not the only borrowing that the Romans made from Greek culture. Rome took over and adapted many categories of Greek culture: philosophy , rhetoric , history , epic, tragedy and their forms of art . In these areas, and more, Rome took over and developed the Greek originals for their own needs. Some scholars argue that the reason for this “borrowing” is largely, among many other things,

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