Atlas Trail
How Literature Sorts Itself: Genres, Movements and Forms
A short path through the atlas's own machinery for classifying literature: a genre asks what a work is (a novel, a fantasy, a horror story), a movement asks when and among whom it was written (Imagism, the Theatre of the Absurd), and a form asks what shape it takes on the page (a pantoum, a cinquain, a triolet). The path closes on a live scholarly dispute, The First Novel Question, as a reminder that even "genre" is an argument, not a fixed shelf.
Stop 1 of 7.
Categories
Start with the Genres category: what a work IS.
Stop 2 of 7.
Genres
Fantasy: a genre defined by what it allows itself (magic, invented worlds) rather than by when it was written.
Stop 3 of 7.
Genres
Horror Fiction: a genre defined by the effect it aims at, tracing its own lineage back to Gothic fiction.
Stop 4 of 7.
Movements
Imagism: now a movement, a group bound by a place, a decade and a shared manifesto rather than a shared subject.
Stop 5 of 7.
Movements
Theatre of the Absurd: a movement named after the fact by a critic, not chosen by the playwrights it describes.
Stop 6 of 7.
Forms
The Cinquain: now a form, a fixed shape on the page that any subject or era can be poured into.
Stop 7 of 7.
Open Questions
The First Novel Question: a reminder that even the most basic genre label, "novel," is a live scholarly argument, not a settled fact.
Create an account to keep this trail. Saving copies its stops into a collection of your own, which you can add to, reorder and share.
Where you have got to in this trail is kept by your own browser and is never sent to us. Clearing your browser data clears it. All trails.