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What is Literature? || Definition & Examples

"what is literature": a literary guide for english students and teachers.

View the full series: The Oregon State Guide to English Literary Terms

• Guide to Literary Terms
• BA in English Degree
• BA in Creative Writing Degree
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What is Literature? Transcript (English and Spanish Subtitles Available in Video; Click HERE for Spanish Transcript)

By Evan Gottlieb & Paige Thomas

3 January 2022

The question of what makes something literary is an enduring one, and I don’t expect that we’ll answer it fully in this short video. Instead, I want to show you a few different ways that literary critics approach this question and then offer a short summary of the 3 big factors that we must consider when we ask the question ourselves.

Let’s begin by making a distinction between “Literature with a capital L” and “literature with a small l.”

“Literature with a small l” designates any written text: we can talk about “the literature” on any given subject without much difficulty.

“Literature with a capital L”, by contrast, designates a much smaller set of texts – a subset of all the texts that have been written.

what_is_literature_little_l.png

So what makes a text literary or what makes a text “Literature with a capital L”?

Let’s start with the word itself.  “Literature” comes from Latin, and it originally meant “the use of letters” or “writing.” But when the word entered the Romance languages that derived from Latin, it took on the additional meaning of “knowledge acquired from reading or studying books.” So we might use this definition to understand “Literature with a Capital L” as writing that gives us knowledge--writing that should be studied.

But this begs the further question: what books or texts are worth studying or close reading ?

For some critics, answering this question is a matter of establishing canonicity.  A work of literature becomes “canonical” when cultural institutions like schools or universities or prize committees classify it as a work of lasting artistic or cultural merit.

The canon, however, has proved problematic as a measure of what “Literature with a capital L” is because the gatekeepers of the Western canon have traditionally been White and male. It was only in the closing decades of the twentieth century that the canon of Literature was opened to a greater inclusion of diverse authors.

And here’s another problem with that definition: if inclusion in the canon were our only definition of Literature, then there could be no such thing as contemporary Literature, which, of course, has not yet stood the test of time.

And here’s an even bigger problem: not every book that receives good reviews or a wins a prize turns out to be of lasting value in the eyes of later readers.

On the other hand, a novel like Herman Melville’s Moby-Di ck, which was NOT received well by critics or readers when it was first published in 1851, has since gone on to become a mainstay of the American literary canon.

moby_dick_with_quote.png

As you can see, canonicity is obviously a problematic index of literariness.

So… what’s the alternative?  Well, we could just go with a descriptive definition: “if you love it, then it’s Literature!”

But that’s a little too subjective.  For example, no matter how much you may love a certain book from your childhood (I love The Very Hungry Caterpillar ) that doesn’t automatically make it literary, no matter how many times you’ve re-read it.

Furthermore, the very idea that we should have an emotional attachment to the books we read has its own history that cannot be detached from the rise of the middle class and its politics of telling people how to behave.

Ok, so “literature with a capital L” cannot always by defined by its inclusion in the canon or the fact that it has been well-received so…what is it then? Well, for other critics, what makes something Literature would seem to be qualities within the text itself.

According to the critic Derek Attridge, there are three qualities that define modern Western Literature:

1. a quality of invention or inventiveness in the text itself;

2.  the reader’s sense that what they are reading is singular. In other words, the unique vision of the writer herself.

3. a sense of ‘otherness’ that pushes the reader to see the world around them in a new way

Notice that nowhere in this three-part definition is there any limitation on the content of Literature. Instead, we call something Literature when it affects the reader at the level of style and construction rather than substance.

In other words, Literature can be about anything!

what_is_literature_caterpillar.png

The idea that a truly literary text can change a reader is of course older than this modern definition. In the English tradition, poetry was preferred over novels because it was thought to create mature and sympathetic reader-citizens.

Likewise, in the Victorian era, it was argued that reading so-called “great” works of literature was the best way for readers to realize their full spiritual potentials in an increasingly secular world.

But these never tell us precisely what “the best” is.  To make matters worse, as I mentioned already, “the best” in these older definitions was often determined by White men in positions of cultural and economic power.

So we are still faced with the question of whether there is something inherent in a text that makes it literary.

Some critics have suggested that a sense of irony – or, more broadly, a sense that there is more than one meaning to a given set of words – is essential to “Literature with a capital L.”

Reading for irony means reading slowly or at least attentively.  It demands a certain attention to the complexity of the language on the page, whether that language is objectively difficult or not.

In a similar vein, other critics have claimed that the overall effect of a literary text should be one of “defamiliarization,” meaning that the text asks or even forces readers to see the world differently than they did before reading it.

Along these lines, literary theorist Roland Barthes maintained that there were two kinds of texts: the text of pleasure, which we can align with everyday Literature with a small l” and the text of jouissance , (yes, I said jouissance) which we can align with Literature. Jouissance makes more demands on the reader and raises feelings of strangeness and wonder that surpass the everyday and even border on the painful or disorienting.

Barthes’ definition straddles the line between objectivity and subjectivity. Literature differs from the mass of writing by offering more and different kinds of experiences than the ordinary, non-literary text.

Literature for Barthes is thus neither entirely in the eye of the beholder, nor something that can be reduced to set of repeatable, purely intrinsic characteristics.

This negative definition has its own problems, though. If the literary text is always supposed to be innovative and unconventional, then genre fiction, which IS conventional, can never be literary.

So it seems that whatever hard and fast definition we attempt to apply to Literature, we find that we run up against inevitable exceptions to the rules.

As we examine the many problematic ways that people have defined literature, one thing does become clear. In each of the above examples, what counts as Literature depends upon three interrelated factors: the world, the text, and the critic or reader.

You see, when we encounter a literary text, we usually do so through a field of expectations that includes what we’ve heard about the text or author in question [the world], the way the text is presented to us [the text], and how receptive we as readers are to the text’s demands [the reader].

With this in mind, let’s return to where we started. There is probably still something to be said in favor of the “test of time” theory of Literature.

After all, only a small percentage of what is published today will continue to be read 10, 20, or even 100 years from now; and while the mechanisms that determine the longevity of a text are hardly neutral, one can still hope that individual readers have at least some power to decide what will stay in print and develop broader cultural relevance.

The only way to experience what Literature is, then, is to keep reading: as long as there are avid readers, there will be literary texts – past, present, and future – that challenge, excite, and inspire us.

Want to cite this?

MLA Citation: Gottlieb, Evan and Paige Thomas. "What is Literature?" Oregon State Guide to English Literary Terms, 3 Jan. 2022, Oregon State University, https://liberalarts.oregonstate.edu/wlf/what-literature-definition-examples. Accessed [insert date].

Interested in more video lessons? View the full series:

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Literary Genres: Definition and Examples of the 4 Essential Genres and 100+ Subgenres

by Joe Bunting | 1 comment

What are literary genres? Do they actually matter to readers? How about to writers? What types of literary genres exist? And if you're a writer, how do you decide which genre to write in?

To begin to think about literary genres, let's start with an example.

Let's say want to read something. You go to a bookstore or hop onto a store online or go to a library.

But instead of a nice person wearing reading glasses and a cardigan asking you what books you like and then thinking through every book ever written to find you the next perfect read (if that person existed, for the record, they would be my favorite person), you're faced with this: rows and rows of books with labels on the shelves like “Literary Fiction,” “Travel,” “Reference,” “Science Fiction,” and so on.

You stop at the edge of the bookstore and just stand there for a while, stumped. “What do all of these labels even mean?!” And then you walk out of the store.

Or maybe you're writing a book , and someone asks you a question like this: “What kind of book are you writing? What genre  is it?”

And you stare at them in frustration thinking, “My book transcends genre, convention, and even reality, obviously. Don't you dare put my genius in a box!”

What are literary genres? In this article, we'll share the definition and different types of literary genres (there are four main ones but thousands of subgenres). Then, we'll talk about why genre matters to both readers and writers. We'll look at some of the components that people use to categorize writing into genres. Finally, we'll give you a chance to put genre into practice with an exercise .

Table of Contents

Introduction Literary Genres Definition Why Genre Matters (to Readers, to Writers) The 4 Essential Genres 100+ Genres and Subgenres The 7 Components of Genre Practice Exercise

Ready to get started? Let's get into it.

What Are Literary Genres? Literary Genre Definition

Let's begin with a basic definition of literary genres:

Literary genres are categories, types, or collections of literature. They often share characteristics, such as their subject matter or topic, style, form, purpose, or audience.

That's our formal definition. But here's a simpler way of thinking about it:

Genre is a way of categorizing readers' tastes.

That's a good basic definition of genre. But does genre really matter?

Why Literary Genres Matter

Literary genres matter. They matter to readers but they also matter to writers. Here's why:

Why Literary Genres Matter to Readers

Think about it. You like to read (or watch) different things than your parents.

You probably also like to read different things at different times of the day. For example, maybe you read the news in the morning, listen to an audiobook of a nonfiction book related to your studies or career in the afternoon, and read a novel or watch a TV show in the evening.

Even more, you probably read different things now than you did as a child or than you will want to read twenty years from now.

Everyone has different tastes.

Genre is one way we match what readers want to what writers want to write and what publishers are publishing.

It's also not a new thing. We've been categorizing literature like this for thousands of years. Some of the oldest forms of writing, including religious texts, were tied directly into this idea of genre.

For example, forty percent of the Old Testament in the Bible is actually poetry, one of the four essential literary genres. Much of the New Testament is in the form of epistle, a subgenre that's basically a public letter.

Genre matters, and by understanding how genre works, you not only can find more things you want to read, you can also better understand what the writer (or publisher) is trying to do.

Why Literary Genres Matter to Writers

Genre isn't just important to readers. It's extremely important to writers too.

In the same way the literary genres better help readers find things they want to read and better understand a writer's intentions, genres inform writers of readers' expectations and also help writers find an audience.

If you know that there are  a lot  of readers of satirical political punditry (e.g. The Onion ), then you can write more of that kind of writing and thus find more readers and hopefully make more money. Genre can help you find an audience.

At the same time, great writers have always played with and pressed the boundaries of genre, sometimes even subverting it for the sake of their art.

Another way to think about genre is a set of expectations from the reader. While it's important to meet  some  of those expectations, if you meet too many, the reader will get bored and feel like they know exactly what's going to happen next. So great writers will always play to the readers' expectations and then change a few things completely to give readers a sense of novelty in the midst of familiarity.

This is not unique to writers, by the way. The great apparel designer Virgil Abloh, who was an artistic director at Louis Vuitton until he passed away tragically in 2021, had a creative template called the “3% Rule,” where he would take an existing design, like a pair of Nike Air Jordans, and make a three percent change to it, transforming it into something completely new. His designs were incredibly successful, often selling for thousands of dollars.

This process of taking something familiar and turning it into something new with a slight change is something artists have done throughout history, including writers, and it's a great way to think about how to use genre for your own writing.

What Literary Genre is NOT: Story Type vs. Literary Genres

Before we talk more about the types of genre, let's discuss what genre is  not .

Genre is  not  the same as story type (or for nonfiction, types of nonfiction structure). There are ten (or so) types of stories, including adventure, love story, mystery, and coming of age, but there are hundreds, even thousands of genres.

Story type and nonfiction book structure are about how the work is structured.

Genre is about how the work is perceived and marketed.

These are related but  not  the same.

For example, one popular subgenre of literature is science fiction. Probably the most common type of science fiction story is adventure, but you can also have mystery sci-fi stories, love story sci-fi, and even morality sci-fi. Story type transcends genre.

You can learn more about this in my book  The Write Structure , which teaches writers the simple process to structure great stories. Click to check out  The Write Structure .

This is true for non-fiction as well in different ways. More on this in my post on the seven types of nonfiction books .

Now that we've addressed why genre matters and what genre doesn't  include, let's get into the different literary genres that exist (there are a lot of them!).

How Many Literary Genres Are There? The 4 Essential Genres, and 100+ Genres and Subgenres

Just as everyone has different tastes, so there are genres to fit every kind of specific reader.

There are four essential literary genres, and all are driven by essential questions. Then, within each of those essential genres are genres and subgenres. We will look at all of these in turn, below, as well as several examples of each.

An important note: There are individual works that fit within the gaps of these four essential genres or even cross over into multiple genres.

As with anything, the edges of these categories can become blurry, for example narrative poetry or fictional reference books.

A general rule: You know it when you see it (except, of course, when the author is trying to trick you!).

1. Nonfiction: Is it true?

The core question for nonfiction is, “Is it true?”

Nonfiction deals with facts, instruction, opinion/argument reference, narrative nonfiction, or a combination.

A few examples of nonfiction (more below): reference, news, memoir, manuals, religious inspirational books, self-help, business, and many more.

2. Fiction: Is it, at some level, imagined?

The core question for fiction is, “Is it, at some level, imagined?”

Fiction is almost always story or narrative. However, satire is a form of “fiction” that's structured like nonfiction opinion/essays or news. And one of the biggest insults you can give to a journalist, reporter, or academic researcher is to suggest that their work is “fiction.”

3. Drama: Is it performed?

Drama is a genre of literature that has some kind of performance component. This includes theater, film, and audio plays.

The core question that defines drama is, “Is it performed?”

As always, there are genres within this essential genre, including horror films, thrillers, true crime podcasts, and more.

4. Poetry: Is it verse?

Poetry is in some ways the most challenging literary genre to define because while poetry is usually based on form, i.e. lines intentionally broken into verse, sometimes including rhyme or other poetic devices, there are some “poems” that are written completely in prose called prose poetry. These are only considered poems because the author and/or literary scholars  said  they were poems.

To confuse things even more, you also have narrative poetry, which combines fiction and poetry, and song which combines poetry and performance (or drama) with music.

Which is all to say, poetry is challenging to classify, but again, you usually know it when you see it.

Next, let's talk about the genres and subgenres within those four essential literary genres.

The 100+ Literary Genres and Subgenres with Definitions

Genre is, at its core, subjective. It's literally based on the tastes of readers, tastes that change over time, within markets, and across cultures.

Thus, there are essentially an infinite number of genres.

Even more, genres are constantly shifting. What is considered contemporary fiction today will change a decade from now.

So take the lists below (and any  list of genres you see) as an incomplete, likely outdated, small sample size of genre with definitions.

1. Fiction Genres

Sorted alphabetically.

Action/Adventure. An action/adventure story has adventure elements in its plot line. This type of story often involves some kind of conflict between good and evil, and features characters who must overcome obstacles to achieve their goals .

Chick Lit. Chick Lit stories are usually written for women who interested in lighthearted stories that still have some depth. They often include romance, humor, and drama in their plots.

Comedy. This typically refers to historical stories and plays (e.g. Shakespeare, Greek Literature, etc) that contain a happy ending, often with a wedding.

Commercial. Commercial stories have been written for the sole purpose of making money, often in an attempt to cash in on the success of another book, film, or genre.

Crime/Police/Detective Fiction. Crime and police stories feature a detective, whether amateur or professional, who solves crimes using their wits and knowledge of criminal psychology.

Drama or Tragedy. This typically refers to historical stories or plays (e.g. Shakespeare, Greek Literature, etc) that contain a sad or tragic ending, often with one or more deaths.

Erotica. Erotic stories contain explicit sexual descriptions in their narratives.

Espionage. Espionage stories focus on international intrigue, usually involving governments, spies, secret agents, and/or terrorist organizations. They often involve political conflict, military action, sabotage, terrorism, assassination, kidnapping, and other forms of covert operations.

Family Saga. Family sagas focus on the lives of an extended family, sometimes over several generations. Rather than having an individual protagonist, the family saga tells the stories of multiple main characters or of the family as a whole.

Fantasy. Fantasy stories are set in imaginary worlds that often feature magic, mythical creatures, and fantastic elements. They may be based on mythology, folklore, religion, legend, history, or science fiction.

General Fiction. General fiction novels are those that deal with individuals and relationships in an ordinary setting. They may be set in any time period, but usually take place in modern times.

Graphic Novel. Graphic novels are a hybrid between comics and prose fiction that often includes elements of both.

Historical Fiction. Historical stories are written about imagined or actual events that occurred in history. They usually take place during specific periods of time and often include real or imaginary characters who lived at those times.

Horror Genre. Horror stories focus on the psychological terror experienced by their characters. They often feature supernatural elements, such as ghosts, vampires, werewolves, zombies, demons, monsters, and aliens.

Humor/Satire. This category includes stories that have been written using satire or contain comedic elements. Satirical novels tend to focus on some aspect of society in a critical way.

LGBTQ+. LGBTQ+ novels are those that feature characters who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or otherwise non-heterosexual.

Literary Fiction. Literary fiction novels or stories have a high degree of artistic merit, a unique or experimental style of writing , and often deal with serious themes.

Military. Military stories deal with war, conflict, combat, or similar themes and often have strong action elements. They may be set in a contemporary or a historical period.

Multicultural. Multicultural stories are written by and about people who have different cultural backgrounds, including those that may be considered ethnic minorities.

Mystery G enre. Mystery stories feature an investigation into a crime.

Offbeat/Quirky. An offbeat story has an unusual plot, characters, setting, style, tone, or point of view. Quirkiness can be found in any aspect of a story, but often comes into play when the author uses unexpected settings, time periods, or characters.

Picture Book. Picture book novels are usually written for children and feature simple plots and colorful illustrations . They often have a moral or educational purpose.

Religious/Inspirational. Religious/ inspirational stories describe events in the life of a person who was inspired by God or another supernatural being to do something extraordinary. They usually have a moral lesson at their core.

Romance Genre. Romance novels  or stories are those that focus on love between two people, often in an ideal setting. There are many subgenres in romance, including historical, contemporary, paranormal, and others.

Science Fiction. Science fiction stories are usually set in an imaginary future world, often involving advanced technology. They may be based on scientific facts but they are not always.

Short Story Collection . Short story collections contain several short stories written by the same or different authors.

Suspense or Thriller Genre. Thrillers/ suspense stories are usually about people in danger, often involving crimes, natural disasters, or terrorism.

Upmarket. Upmarket stories are often written for and/or focus on upper class people who live in an upscale environment.

Western Genre. Western stories are those that take place in the west during the late 19th century and early 20th century. Characters include cowboys, outlaws, native Americans, and settlers.

2. Nonfiction Genres

From the BISAC categories, a globally accepted system for coding and categorizing books by the Book Industry Standards And Communications group.

Antiques & Collectibles. Nonfiction books about antiques and collectibles include those that focus on topics such as collecting, appraising, restoring, and marketing antiques and collectibles. These books may be written for both collectors and dealers in antique and collectible items. They can range from how-to guides to detailed histories of specific types of objects.

Architecture. Architecture books focus on the design, construction, use, and history of buildings and structures. This includes the study of architecture in general, but also the specific designs of individual buildings or styles of architecture.

Art. Art books focus on visual arts, music, literature, dance, film, theater, architecture, design, fashion, food, and other art forms. They may include essays, memoirs, biographies, interviews, criticism, and reviews.

Bibles. Bibles are religious books, almost exclusively Christian, that contain the traditional Bible in various translations, often with commentary or historical context.

Biography & Autobiography. Biography is an account of a person's life, often a historical or otherwise famous person. Autobiographies are personal accounts of people's lives written by themselves.

Body, Mind & Spirt. These books focus on topics related to human health, wellness, nutrition, fitness, or spirituality.

Business & Economics. Business & economics books are about how businesses work. They tend to focus on topics that interest people who run their own companies, lead or manage others, or want to understand how the economy works.

Computers. The computer genre of nonfiction books includes any topics that deal with computers in some way. They can be about general use, about how they affect our lives, or about specific technical areas related to hardware or software.

Cooking. Cookbooks contain recipes or cooking techniques.

Crafts & Hobbies.  How-to guides for crafts and hobbies, including sewing, knitting, painting, baking, woodworking, jewelry making, scrapbooking, photography, gardening, home improvement projects, and others.

Design. Design books are written about topics that include design in some way. They can be about any aspect of design including graphic design, industrial design, product design, fashion, furniture, interior design, or others.

Education. Education books focus on topics related to teaching and learning in schools. They can be used for students or as a resource for teachers.

Family & Relationships. These books focus on family relationships, including parenting, marriage, divorce, adoption, and more.

Foreign Language Study. Books that act as a reference or guide to learning a foreign language.

Games & Activities. Games & activities books may be published for children or adults, may contain learning activities or entertaining word or puzzle games. They range from joke books to crossword puzzle books to coloring books and more.

Gardening. Gardening books include those that focus on aspects of gardening, how to prepare for and grow vegetables, fruits, herbs, flowers, trees, shrubs, grasses, and other plants in an indoor or outdoor garden setting.

Health & Fitness. Health and fitness books focus on topics like dieting, exercise, nutrition, weight loss, health issues, medical conditions, diseases, medications, herbs, supplements, vitamins, minerals, and more.

History. History books focus on historical events and people, and may be written for entertainment or educational purposes.

House & Home. House & home books focus on topics like interior design, decorating, entertaining, and DIY projects.

Humor. Humor books are contain humorous elements but do not have any fictional elements.

Juvenile Nonfiction. These are nonfiction books written for children between six and twelve years old.

Language Arts & Disciplines. These books focus on teaching language arts and disciplines. They may be used for elementary school students in grades K-5.

Law. Law books include legal treatises, casebooks, and collections of statutes.

Literary Criticism. Literary criticism books discuss literary works, primarily key works of fiction or memoir. They may include biographies of authors, critical essays on specific works, or studies of the history of literature.

Mathematics. Mathematics books either teach mathematical concepts and methods or explore the history of mathematics.

Medical. Medical books include textbooks, reference books, guides, encyclopedias, and handbooks that focus on fields of medicine, including general practice, internal medicine, surgery, pediatrics, obstetrics/gynecology, and more.

Music. Music books are books that focus on the history, culture, and development of music in various countries around the world. They often include biographies, interviews, reviews, essays, and other related material. However, they may also include sheet music or instruction on playing a specific instrument.

Nature. Nature books focus on the natural world or environment, including natural history, ecology, or natural experiences like hiking, bird watching, or conservation.

Performing Arts. Books about the performing arts in general, including specific types of performance art like dance, music, and theater.

Pets. Pet books include any book that deals with animals in some way, including dog training, cat care, animal behavior, pet nutrition, bird care, and more.

Philosophy. Philosophy books deal with philosophical issues, and may be written for a general audience or specifically for scholars.

Photography. Photography books use photographs as an essential part of their content. They may be about any subject.

Political Science. Political science books deal with politics in some way. They can be about current events, historical figures, or theoretical concepts.

Psychology. Psychology books are about the scientific study of mental processes, emotion, and behavior.

Reference. Reference books are about any subject, topic, or field and contain useful information about that subject, topic or field.

Religion. These books deal with religion in some way, including religious history, theology, philosophy, and spirituality.

Science. Science books focus on topics within scientific fields, including geology, biology, physics, and more.

Self-Help. Self-help books are written for people who want to improve their lives in some way. They may be about health, relationships, finances, career, parenting, spirituality, or any number of topics that can help readers achieve personal goals.

Social Science. Focus on social science topics.

Sports & Recreation. Sports & Recreation books focus on sports either from a reporting, historical, or instructional perspective.

Study Aids. Study aids are books that provide information about a particular subject area for students who want to learn more about that topic. These books can be used in conjunction with classroom instruction or on their own.

Technology & Engineering. Technology & engineering nonfiction books describe how technology has changed our lives and how we can use that knowledge to improve ourselves and society.

Transportation. Focus on transportation topics including those about vehicles, routes, or techniques.

Travel. Travel books are those that focus on travel experiences, whether from a guide perspective or from the author's personal experiences.

True Crime. True Crime books focus on true stories about crimes. These books may be about famous cases, unsolved crimes, or specific criminals.

Young Adult Nonfiction.  Young adult nonfiction books are written for children and teenagers.

3. Drama Genres

These include genres for theater, film, television serials, or audio plays.

As a writer, I find some of these genres particularly eye-roll worthy. And yet, this is the way most films, television shows, and even theater productions are classified.

Action. Action genre dramas involve fast-paced, high-energy sequences in which characters fight against each other. They often have large-scale battles, chase scenes, or other high-intensity, high-conflict scenes.

Horror.  Horror dramas focus on the psychological terror experienced by their characters. They often feature supernatural elements, such as ghosts, vampires, werewolves, zombies, demons, monsters, and aliens.

Adventure. Adventure films are movies that have an adventurous theme. They may be set in exotic locations, feature action sequences, and/or contain elements of fantasy.

Musicals (Dance). Musicals are dramas that use music in their plot and/or soundtrack. They may be comedies, dramas, or any combination.

Comedy (& Black Comedy). Comedy dramas feature humor in their plots, characters, dialogue, or situations. It sometimes refers to historical dramas (e.g. Shakespeare, Greek drama, etc) that contain a happy ending, often with a wedding.

Science Fiction. Science fiction dramas are usually set in an imaginary future world, often involving advanced technology. They may be based on scientific facts but do not have to be.

Crime & Gangster. Crime & Gangster dramas deal with criminals, detectives, or organized crime groups. They often feature action sequences, violence, and mystery elements.

War (Anti-War). War (or anti-war) dramas focus on contemporary or historical wars. They may also contain action, adventure, mystery, or romance elements.

Drama. Dramas focus on human emotions in conflict situations. They often have complex plots and characters, and deal with serious themes. This may also refer to historical stories (e.g. Shakespeare, Greek Literature, etc) that contain a sad or tragic ending, often with one or more deaths.

Westerns. Westerns are a genre of American film that originated in the early 20th century and take place in the west during the late 19th century and early 20th century. Characters include cowboys, outlaws, native Americans, and settlers.

Epics/Historical/Period. These are dramas based on historical events or periods but do not necessarily involve any real people.

Biographical (“Biopics”). Biopics films are movies that focus on real people in history.

Melodramas, Women's or “Weeper” Films, Tearjerkers. A type of narrative drama that focuses on emotional issues, usually involving love, loss, tragedy, and redemption.

“Chick” Flicks. Chick flicks usually feature romantic relationships and tend to be lighthearted and comedic in nature.

Road Stories. Dramas involving a journey of some kind, usually taking place in contemporary setting, and involving relationships between one or more people, not necessarily romantic.

Courtroom Dramas. Courtroom dramas depict legal cases set in courtrooms. They usually have a dramatic plot line with an interesting twist at the end.

Romance. Romance dramas feature love stories between two people. Romance dramas tend to be more serious, even tragic, in nature, while romantic comedies tend to be more lighthearted.

Detective & Mystery. These dramas feature amateur or professional investigators solving crimes and catching criminals.

Sports. Sports dramas focus on athletic competition in its many forms and usually involve some kind of climactic tournament or championship.

Disaster. Disaster dramas are adventure or action dramas that include natural disasters, usually involving earthquakes, floods, volcanoes, hurricanes, tornadoes, or other disasters.

Superhero. Superhero dramas are action/adventure dramas that feature characters with supernatural powers. They usually have an origin story, the rise of a villain, and a climactic battle at the end.

Fantasy. Fantasy dramas films are typically adventure dramas that feature fantastical elements in their plot or setting, whether magic, folklore, supernatural creatures, or other fantasy elements.

Supernatural. Supernatural dramas feature paranormal phenomena in their plots, including ghosts, mythical creatures, and mysterious or extraordinary elements. This genre may overlap with horror, fantasy, thriller, action and other genres.

Film Noir. Film noir refers to a style of American crime drama that emerged in the 1940s. These dramas often featured cynical characters who struggled, often fruitlessly, against corruption and injustice.

Thriller/Suspense. Thriller/suspense dramas have elements of suspense and mystery in their plot. They usually feature a character protagonist who must overcome obstacles while trying to solve a crime or prevent a catastrophe.

Guy Stories. Guy dramas feature men in various situations, usually humorous or comedic in nature.

Zombie . Zombie dramas are usually action/adventure dramas that involve zombies.

Animated Stories . Dramas that are depicted with drawings, photographs, stop-motion, CGI, or other animation techniques.

Documentary . Documentaries are non-fiction performances that attempt to describe actual events, topics, or people.

“Foreign.”  Any drama not in the language of or involving characters/topics in your country of origin. They can also have any of the other genres listed here.

Childrens – Kids – Family-Oriented . Dramas with children of various ages as the intended audience.

Sexual – Erotic . These dramas feature explicit sexual acts but also have some kind of plot or narrative (i.e. not pornography).

Classic . Classic dramas refer to dramas performed before 1950.

Silent . Silent dramas were an early form of film that used no recorded sound.

Cult . Cult dramas are usually small-scale, independent productions with an offbeat plot, unusual characters, and/or unconventional style that have nevertheless gained popularity among a specific audience.

4. Poetry Genres

This list is from Harvard's Glossary of Poetic Genres  who also has definitions for each genre.

Dramatic monologue

Epithalamion

Light verse

Occasional verse

Verse epistle

What Are the Components of Genre In Literature? The 7 Elements of Genre

Now that we've looked, somewhat exhaustively, at examples of literary genres, let's consider how these genres are created.

What are the elements of literary genre? How are they formed?

Here are seven components that make up genre.

• Form . Length is the main component of form (e.g. a novel is 200+ pages , films are at least an hour, serialized episodes are about 20 minutes, etc), but may also be determined by how many acts or plot lines they have. You might be asking, what about short stories? Short stories are a genre defined by their length but not their content.
• Intended Audience . Is the story meant for adults, children, teenagers, etc?
• Conventions and Tropes . Conventions and tropes describe patterns or predictable events that have developed within genres. For example, a sports story may have a big tournament at the climax, or a fantasy story may have a mentor character who instructs the protagonist on the use of their abilities.
• Characters and Archetypes. Genre will often have characters who serve similar functions, like the best friend sidekick, the evil villain , the anti-hero , and other character archetypes .
• Common Settings and Time Periods . Genre may be defined by the setting or time period. For example, stories set in the future tend to be labelled science fiction, stories involving the past tend to be labelled historical or period, etc.
• Common Story Arcs . While every story type may use each of the six main story arcs , genre tends to be defined by specific story arcs. For example, comedy almost always has a story arc that ends positively, same with kids or family genres. However, dramas often (and when referring to historical drama, always) have stories that end tragically.
• Common Elements (such as supernatural elements, technology, mythical creatures, monsters, etc) . Some genres center themselves on specific elements, like supernatural creatures, magic, monsters, gore, and so on. Genre can be determined by these common elements.

As you consider these elements, keep in mind that genre all comes back to taste, to what readers want to consume and how to match the unlimited variations of story with the infinite variety of tastes.

Read What You Want, Write What You Want

In the end, both readers and writers should use genre for what it is, a tool, not as something that defines you.

Writers can embrace genre, can use genre, without being controlled by it.

Readers can use genre to find stories or books they enjoy while also exploring works outside of that genre.

Genre can be incredibly fun! But only if you hold it in tension with your own work of telling (or finding) a great story.

What are your favorite genres to read in? to write in?  Let us know in the comments!

Now that we understand everything there is to know about literary genres, let's put our knowledge to use with an exercise. I have two variations for you today, one for readers and one for writers.

Readers : Think of one of your favorite stories. What is the literary genre of that story? Does it have multiple? What expectations do you have about stories within that genre? Finally, how does the author of your favorite story use those expectations, and how do they subvert them?

Writers : Choose a literary genre from the list above and spend fifteen minutes writing a story using the elements of genre: form, audience, conventions and tropes, characters and archetypes, setting and time periods, story arcs, and common elements.

When you’re finished, share your work in the Pro Practice Workshop here .  Not a member yet? Join us here !

Joe Bunting

Joe Bunting is an author and the leader of The Write Practice community. He is also the author of the new book Crowdsourcing Paris , a real life adventure story set in France. It was a #1 New Release on Amazon. Follow him on Instagram (@jhbunting).

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So how big does an other-genre element need to get before you call your book “cross-genre”? Right now, I’m writing a superhero team saga (which is already a challenge for platforms that don’t recognize “superhero” as a genre, since my team’s powers lie in that fuzzy land where the distinction between science and magic gets more than a little blurry), so it obviously has action/adventure in it, but it’s also sprouting thriller and mystery elements. I’m wondering if they’re big enough to plug the series to those genres.

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What's the Difference Between Classical and Classic Literature?

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Some scholars and writers use the terms "classical" and "classic" interchangeably when it comes to literature. However, each term actually has a separate meaning. The list of books that are considered classical versus classic books differs greatly. What confuses things further is that classical books are also classic. A work of classical literature refers only to ancient Greek and Roman works, while classics are great works of literature throughout the ages. 

What Is Classical Literature?

Classical literature refers to the great masterpieces of Greek, Roman, and other ancient civilizations. The works of Homer , Ovid , and Sophocles are all examples of classical literature. The term isn't just limited to novels. It can also include epic, lyric, tragedy, comedy, pastoral, and other forms of writing. The study of these texts was once considered to be a necessity for students of the humanities. Ancient Greek and Roman authors were viewed to be of the highest quality. The study of their work was once seen as the mark of elite education. While these books generally still find their way into high school and college English classes, they are no longer commonly studied. The expansion of literature has offered readers and academics more to choose from.

What Is Classic Literature?

Classic literature is a term most readers are probably familiar with. The term covers a much wider array of works than classical literature. Older books that retain their popularity are almost always considered to be among the classics. This means that the ancient Greek and Roman authors of classical literature fall into this category as well. It's not just age that makes a book a classic, however. Books that have a timeless quality are considered to be in this category. While determining if a book is well-written or not is a subjective endeavor, it is generally agreed that classics have high-quality prose. 

What Makes a Book a Classic?

While most people are referring to literary fiction when they refer to the classics , each genre and category of literature has its own classics. For example, the average reader might not consider Steven King's novel "The Shining," the story of a haunted hotel, to be a classic, but those who study the horror genre may. Even within genres or literary movements, books that are considered classic are those that are well-written and/or have cultural importance. A book that may not have the best writing but was the first book in a genre to do something ground-breaking is a classic. For example, the first romance novel that took place in a historic setting is culturally significant to the romance genre. 

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Characterization

Characterization Definition

What is characterization? Here’s a quick and simple definition:

Characterization is the representation of the traits, motives, and psychology of a character in a narrative. Characterization may occur through direct description, in which the character's qualities are described by a narrator, another character, or by the character him or herself. It may also occur indirectly, in which the character's qualities are revealed by his or her actions, thoughts, or dialogue.

Some additional key details about characterization:

• Early studies of literature, such as those by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, saw plot as more important than character. It wasn't until the 15th century that characters, and therefore characterization, became more crucial parts of narratives.
• Characterization became particularly important in the 19th century, with the rise of realist novels that sought to accurately portray people.

Characterization Pronunciation

Here's how to pronounce characterization: kar-ack-ter-ih- zey -shun

Direct and Indirect Characterization

Authors can develop characterization in two ways: directly and indirectly. It's important to note that these two methods are not mutually exclusive. Most authors can and do use both direct and indirect methods of characterization to develop their characters.

Direct Characterization

In direct characterization, the author directly describes a character's qualities. Such direct description may come from a narrator, from another character, or through self-description by the character in question. For instance, imagine the following dialogue between two characters:

"That guy Sam seems nice." "Oh, no. Sam's the worst. He acts nice when you first meet him, but then he'll ask you for money and never return it, and eat all your food without any offering anything in return, and I once saw him throw a rock at a puppy. Thank God he missed."

Here the second speaker is directly characterizing Sam as being selfish and cruel. Direct characterization is also sometimes called "explicit characterization."

Indirect Characterization

In indirect characterization, rather than explicitly describe a character's qualities, an author shows the character as he or she moves through the world, allowing the reader to infer the character's qualities from his or her behavior. Details that might contribute to the indirect characterization of a character are:

• The character's thoughts.
• The character's actions.
• What a character says (their choice of words)
• How a character talks (their tone, dialect, and manner of speaking)
• The character's appearance
• The character's movements and mannerisms
• How the character interacts with others (and how others react to the character)

Indirect characterization is sometimes called "implicit characterization."

Indirect Characterization in Drama

It's worth noting that indirect characterization has an additional layer in any art form that involves actors, including film, theater, and television. Actors don't just say the words on the script. They make choices about how to say those words, how to move their own bodies and in relation to other character. In other words, actors make choices about how to communicate all sorts of indirect details. As a result, different actors can portray the same characters in vastly different ways.

For instance, compare the way that the the actor Alan Bates plays King Claudius in this play-within-a-play scene from the 1990 movie of Hamlet, versus how Patrick Stewart plays the role in the same scene from a 2010 version. While Bates plays the scene with growing alarm and an outburst of terror that reveals his guilt, Stewart plays his Claudius as ice cold and offended, but by no means tricked by Hamlet's little play-within-a-play into revealing anything.

Round and Flat Characters

Characters are often described as being either round or flat.

• Round characters : Are complex, realistic, unique characters.
• Flat characters : Are one-dimensional characters, with a single overarching trait and otherwise limited personality or individuality.

Whether a character is round or flat depends on their characterization. In some cases, an author may purposely create flat characters, particularly if those characters will appear only briefly and only for a specific purpose. A bully who appears in a single scene of a television show, for instance, might never get or need more characterization than the fact that they act like a bully.

But other times authors may create flat characters unintentionally when round characters were necessary, and such characters can render a narrative dull, tensionless, and unrealistic.

Character Archetypes

Some types of characters appear so often in narratives that they come to seen as archetypes —an original, universal model of which each particular instance is a kind of copy. The idea of the archetype was first proposed by the psychologist Carl Jung, who proposed that there were twelve fundamental "patterns" that define the human psyche. He defined these twelve archetypes as the:

While many have disagreed with the idea that any such twelve patterns actually psychologically define people, the idea of archetypes does hold a lot of sway among both those who develop and analyze fictional characters. In fact, another way to define round and flat character is to think about them as they relate to archetypes:

• Flat characters are easy to define by a single archetype, and they do not have unique personal backgrounds, traits, or psychology that differentiates them from that archetype in a meaningful way.
• Round characters may have primary aspects that fit with a certain archetype, but they also may be the combination of several archetypes and also have unique personal backgrounds, behaviors, and psychologies that make them seem like individuals even as they may be identifiable as belonging to certain archetypes.

Good characterization often doesn't involve an effort to avoid archetype altogether—archetypes are archetypes, after all, because over human history they've proved to be excellent subjects for stories. But successful authors will find ways to make their characters not just archetypes. They might do so by playing with or subverting archetypes in order to create characters who are unexpected or new, or more generally create characters whose characterization makes them feel so unique and individual that their archetype feels more like a framework or background rather than the entirety of who that character is.

Characterization Examples

The characters of nearly every story—whether in literature, film, or any other narrative—have some characterization. Here are some examples of different types of characterization.

Characterization in Hamlet

The famous literary critic Harold Bloom has argued in his book The Invention of the Human that "Personality, in our sense, is a Shakespearean invention." Whether or not you agree with that, there's no doubting that Shakespeare was a master of characterization. One way he achieved such characterization was through his characters delivering soliloquies . The excerpt of a soliloquy below is from Hamlet , in which Hamlet considers suicide:

To be, or not to be? That is the question— Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And, by opposing, end them? To die, to sleep— No more—and by a sleep to say we end The heartache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to—’tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished! To die, to sleep. To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there’s the rub, For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause.

Hamlet's soliloquy is not simply him saying what he thinks. As he delivers the soliloquy, he discovers what he thinks. When he says "To die, to sleep. To sleep," he is all-in on the idea that suicide is the right course. His words "perchance to dream" flow directly out of his thoughts about death as being like "sleep." And with his positive thoughts of death as sleep, when he first says "perchance to dream" he's thinking about having good dreams. But as he says the words he realizes they are deeper than he originally thought, because in that moment he realizes that he doesn't actually know what sort of dreams he might experience in death—they might be terrible, never-ending nightmares. And suddenly the flow of his logic leaves him stuck.

In showing a character experiencing his own thoughts the way that real people experience their thoughts, not as a smooth flow but as ideas that spark new and different and unexpected ideas, Shakespeare gives Hamlet a powerful humanity as a character. By giving Hamlet a soliloquy on the possible joy of suicide he further captures Hamlet's current misery and melancholy. And in showing how much attention Hamlet pays to the detail of his logic, he captures Hamlet's rather obsessive nature. In other words, in just these 13 lines Shakespeare achieves a great deal of characterization.

Characterization in The Duchess of Malfi

In his play the The Duchess of Malfi , John Webster includes an excellent example of direct characterization. In this speech, the character Antonio tells his friend about Duke Ferdinand:

The Duke there? A most perverse and turbulent nature; What appears in him mirth is merely outside. If he laugh heartily, it is to laugh All honesty out of fashion. … He speaks with others' tongues, and hears men's suits With others' ears; will seem to sleep o’th' bench Only to entrap offenders in their answers; Dooms men to death by information, Rewards by hearsay.

Ferdinand directly describes the Duke as deceitful, perverse, and wild, and as a kind of hollow person who only ever laughs for show. It is a devastating description, and one that turns out to be largely accurate.

Characterization in The Great Gatsby

Here's another example of direct characterization, this time from The Great Gatsby . Here, Nick Carraway, the narrator of the novel, describes Tom and Daisy Buchanan near the end of the novel.

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.

But The Great Gatsby, like essentially all other literature, doesn't solely rely on direct characterization. Here is Nick, earlier in the novel, describing Gatsby:

He stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock.

This is an example of indirect characterization. Nick isn't describing Gatsby character directly, instead he's describing how Gatsby is behaving, what Gatsby is doing. But that physical description—Gatsby reaching out with trembling arms toward a distant and mysterious green light—communicates fundamental aspects of Gatsby's character: his overwhelming yearning and desire, and perhaps also the fragility inherent such yearning.

Why Do Writers Use Characterization?

Characterization is a crucial aspect of any narrative literature, for the simple reason that complex, interesting characters are vital to narrative literature. Writers therefore use the techniques of characterization to develop and describe characters':

• Motivations
• History and background
• Interests and desires
• Skills and talents
• Self-conception, quirks, and neuroses

Such characteristics in turn make characters seem realistic and also help to drive the action of the plot, as a plot is often defined by the clash of actions and desires of its various characters.

Other Helpful Characterization Resources

• Wikipedia entry on characterization: A brief but thorough entry.
• Archetypal characters: The website TV tropes has built a vast compendium of different archetypal characters that appear in film and television (and by extension to books).
• Encyclopedia Britannica on characters: A short entry on flat and round characters.

• PDFs for all 136 Lit Terms we cover
• Downloads of 1956 LitCharts Lit Guides
• Teacher Editions for every Lit Guide
• Explanations and citation info for 41,253 quotes across 1956 books
• Downloadable (PDF) line-by-line translations of every Shakespeare play
• Flat Character
• Round Character
• Antimetabole
• Rhyme Scheme
• Static Character
• Dynamic Character
• Point of View
• Verbal Irony
• Internal Rhyme
• Foreshadowing
• Protagonist
• Climax (Figure of Speech)

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Last updated on Feb 07, 2023

What is Literary Fiction? The Ultimate Guide in 2024

Literary fiction is a category of novels that emphasize style, character, and theme over plot. Lit fic is often defined in contrast to genre fiction and commercial fiction , which involve certain tropes and expectations for the storyline; literary fiction has no such plot-based hallmarks.

Though it's a tough category to define, you can certainly spot literary fiction once you know what you're looking for. Intrigued? In this short guide, we’ll unpack this elusive category and give you tips for writing with literary readers in mind.

Literary fiction is not a standalone genre

You will rarely see novels marketed as ‘literary fiction’, or even shelved that way in a bookstore. This is because literary fiction still shares some features with genre and commercial fiction, though they’re presented more subtly in lit fic. But even when it’s shelved alongside commercial fiction, literary fiction has a few telltale signs, as you’ll soon see. 

It’s considered a prestige category

Literary fiction novels are often seen as prestige items in a publisher’s list: cutting-edge works of ‘serious fiction’ by artists of the written word. As a result, literary fiction — even from debut authors — will often get an initial hardback release. If you see a new hardcover on prominent display at the bookstore, it’s almost guaranteed to be literary fiction.

This strategy not only gives it a chance to be seen by plenty of devoted readers, it also increases the book’s chances of being reviewed. According to the editor of The Bookseller in 2018, some literary editors will only review novels launched in hardback .

Books in this category are also privy to publishing’s biggest prizes, such as the Booker Prize and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. So if you see a sticker on the cover boasting that it’s been nominated for a prestigious award, you’re likely looking at a work of literary fiction.

Style and theme take priority

Another key quality of literary fiction is its attention to style, which in turn underscores major themes. Of course, when thinking of literary fiction, people tend to imagine ‘highbrow’ or difficult prose. This has led to generations of aspiring literary authors packing their prose with run-on sentences, florid metaphors, and other rhetorical bells and whistles. 

While this stereotype is certainly true of some novelists (James Joyce, for example, was no stranger to run-on sentences), many literary authors favor concise prose over fancy linguistic flourishes. Take it from George Orwell, who lived by the maxim “never use a complicated word when a simple one will do” — or Hemingway, whose famously lean prose has taught generations of writers that less is more. 

Basically, though you may associate literary fiction with insufferable purple prose , it doesn’t have to be that way. The defining feature of literary fiction isn’t one specific style of prose, but rather its impact on the reader, and its ability to deliver or embody the book’s theme.

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Themes are explored in depth

Indeed, literary fiction isn’t all style over substance: meaningful themes are just as important in this category. After all, what use is an interesting voice if you don’t have anything to say? 

Literary fiction commonly examines ‘serious’ concepts like politics, social issues, and psychological conflict. But what makes the themes in literary fiction stand apart from those in genre fiction is the level of detail and narrative weight they’re given.

For example, Orwell’s Animal Farm is defined by its commentary on political structures. The plot and characters are just small parts that build the novel’s overarching metaphor for the Russian Revolution, as seen through Orwell’s satirical lens. 

As you can probably guess, the level of nuance required to explore serious themes calls for a great deal of time and effort on the author’s part. After all, it’s not easy to have a strong take on a weighty topic, and (crucially) understand how impacted characters would think, feel, and react — so if you intend to write literary fiction with big themes, make sure you’ve thought deeply about the real-world consequences.

They often drill into a single theme

Now, one might argue that The Hunger Games also tackles serious themes of social inequality — so how come it’s not considered literary fiction? Well, because this dystopian novel more strongly foregrounds elements of romance, coming of age, and an action-packed plot. The social themes, in many ways, are garnishes rather than the main course. 

In short, genre fiction’s focus on story means that it will rarely explore themes in as much depth as literary fiction. This thematic intensity doesn't make literary fiction “better” than genre fiction, or vice-versa — it just goes to show that there are many different approaches out there to meet the varied needs of different readers.

Character studies are its bread and butter

While authors of genre fiction certainly can’t ignore character-based storytelling , their equal (or greater) focus on plot gives them less opportunity to drill deep into a character’s inner life. What’s more, most genre fiction has a protagonist who is lovable by design.

Meanwhile, in literary fiction, you’re much more likely to encounter morally gray and flawed characters , and find yourself absorbed by their history and psyche. That’s not to say every character in this category is inherently evil, incredibly flawed, or unlikable — they're just far more likely to be approached in a more complex way that exposes their faults, thus giving you the tools to dissect them.

Take The Catcher in the Rye as an example. J.D. Salinger’s hero is Holden Caulfield, a seventeen-year-old boarding school drop-out. Holden isn’t necessarily likable — in fact, he often alienates others by judging superficial characteristics extremely critically — but readers are intrigued by the book’s psychological insights into his personality. Though Holden is quick to judge others, particularly those he views as “phony”, he’s far from perfect himself; this makes trying to understand his behavior even more compelling. 

Instead of making Holden likable, Salinger makes the reader empathize with him despite his personality and actions — something that’s arguably much harder to do as an author. This challenging, thought-provoking nature is a definite hallmark of literary fiction. 

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The tone is often realistic and introspective

What do Of Mice and Men, Mrs Dalloway, The Remains of the Day have in common besides their dark elements and focus on longing? While none of these books would be mistaken for nonfiction , they are all grounded in a certain realism — their writers have taken special care in exploring the emotions and reactions of their characters in very specific settings.

Considering this, it won’t surprise you that literary fiction tends to rely on internal conflict of a character to drive the plot. In Of Mice and Men, for example, migrant farm worker George Milton is torn between his survival instincts and his loyalty to his simple (yet dangerous) friend, Lenny. While the novel arguably does have a villain — the landowner’s cruel son — the story’s true conflict takes place in George’s mind.

You might also look to Mrs Dalloway as a good example of realistic introspection. In this book, readers follow a single day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, culminating in her finally reconciling herself with life in the present — despite her strong attachments to the past.

The Remains of the Day creates a similar air of realism by exploring the human psyche: we follow the butler of a grand English estate as he comes to terms with how his unhealthy devotion to his work, subsequent repression, and his fears of intimacy have held him back for years. 

It’s about the journey

But while the resolutions of all these stories may be melancholy and uncertain, sad endings alone don’t make them lit fic — it’s about the characters’ journeys to get there.

Good literary fiction feels so real because there isn’t that certainty of a happily ever after. After this, the characters will continue on their journey, and readers can only imagine where they might go. They want to wonder what will happen to the characters based on what they’ve learned through the story, rather than simply arrive at an ending that’s wrapped up in a bow. 

That literary fiction writers allude to this “to be continued” reality in their novels, makes them that much more believable. 

But it can also be fanciful!

Literary fiction isn’t all dark character studies about people living on the verge of despair, mumbling to each other in a studio apartment. On the contrary, literary fiction can absolutely be fantastical while simultaneously presenting people and themes in a believable way — and what better way to study human nature than by throwing your characters into highly unusual situations? 

Plenty of literary fiction writers actually specialize in playing with genre tropes and devising the most inventive concepts. One recent example of fantasy-infused literary fiction is Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi , which follows Piranesi — a man who seemingly lives alone in a vast, statue-filled labyrinth that periodically floods to dangerous levels. Let’s be honest, not much besides the human insight is realistic in this novel (unless you happen to holiday in similar dangerous labyrinths). But the outlandish premise makes the perfect playground for Clarke to explore themes of personhood and isolation.

You might also point to Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black , a novel which is equal parts literary fiction and Gothic horror. Arthur Kipps is a young lawyer investigating a creepy house on a remote island — one that belonged to his deceased client.

Through Kipps’s seemingly supernatural experiences at the house, readers are asked to consider bigger questions about sanity and objectivity. While the harrowing events in this novel are hardly realistic in the way that a Sally Rooney novel might be, its rich narration, focus on human psychology, and themes of isolation align it with literary fiction.

Authors are more free to experiment

Writers of literary fiction benefit from the fact that their readers tend to enjoy more challenging works. In genre and commercial fiction, there is an expectation that the writer will always engage the reader, propelling them through the book with quickly mounting tension. In contrast, literary fiction readers are more flexible in their initial expectations — understanding that a slow start can still build to a satisfying reveal later. 

A great example of slow-burn literary fiction is Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin , in which elderly Iris Chase recounts her dramatic life and the events leading up to her sister's death. Though this novel has received wide critical acclaim, a lot of readers have unfortunately placed this challenging book back on the shelf early because of its slow-paced beginning. However, the novel’s unique ‘memory recall’ structure needs that time to build the twisting mysteries which ultimately make it a true page turner. 

Indeed, literary fiction readers often expect some level of experimentation that subverts the formal conventions of storytelling. Sarah Waters’s The Night Watch overturns readers' expectations by telling its story in reverse, moving backwards through the 1940s, starting in 1947. Waters’s unconventional style challenges readers by asking them to forget their curiosity about the future and try to focus solely on unraveling the past. 

Of course, experimental or unusual structures aren’t just used in literary fiction for the sake of challenging readers. Typically, a nuanced structure works towards immersing the reader in the character or world of the book.

For example, a long stream of consciousness narrative (think Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea , in which the narrator’s thoughts gradually become harder to follow) might be a great way to make readers lose themselves in the narrator’s mental decline. Or utilizing an epistolary structure (as in Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin , which is told through a series of letters penned by a grieving mother) can really make the stakes feel tangible as readers dig through years of correspondence. 

Literary fiction is a broad and diverse genre, so it’s pretty difficult to track down an exact definition ― but hopefully, equipped with this field guide to lit fic, you’ll feel more confident identifying it when you come across it in the wild.

If all this literary talk has you feeling inspired, make sure to head over to the next part of our guide, where you can learn 10 insightful tips for writing your own literary fiction!

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How to Read and Enjoy the Classics

• Thoughts on the Greats
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Four Qualities that Make Great Literature Special

Classic literature is like this beautiful Live Oak tree in Natchitoches, Louisiana: it lasts for hundreds of years, growing in beauty and complexity every time someone regards it.*

If you are an avid reader, I clasp you to my heart, whatever and why ever you are reading—for pleasure, escape, knowledge, social concerns. There are a myriad of good, and  even mediocre, books and poetry that can keep us entertained, or give us vicarious experiences of  unknown places and times, or inform our opinions on social issues.

But what I am here to advocate, and why I have started this site, is that Classic Literature—truly Great Literature—is something different, something especially worth treasuring, preserving, learning about, experiencing, re-reading, and pondering. The experience, the grace given to the mind and soul, is a larger, higher experience than that offered by the average popular novel or poem or drama, well-crafted though each may be.

Devoted readers of the Classics know this from experience, yet defining the exact qualities that make a piece of literature “ Great” is never easy. Not that many lovers of literature haven’t tried. In another post, I’ll tell you about some writers who have said things about classic literature that I find  persuasive. But let me take my own  stab at it here. My main purpose in this post is to start readers thinking about what makes classic literature great, and what it gives to readers that most books can’t.  So here goes!

Four Qualities  of Classic Literature

1. Great works may present and explain something about their own times, but also observe something larger and lasting about the human condition.

A great work does convey the writer’s intentions, quite clearly, contrary to what some contemporary theorists argue.  A  great writer has something specific to say, or perhaps, more typically, a big question to ask about the nature of the world as it was in the times of that writer.   But a great work also observes truths about the human condition as it occurs in any age.

A  great writer examines the world as she or he sees it and communicates consciously to the reader about those observations. But in addition,  a great work can also convey things a writer has observed unintentionally, unconsciously.   If so, the intentional design of the work is well-formed enough to encompass whatever messages may be unintentional, so that the work feels like an organic whole, where all the parts belong.

2. Great literature is based on ideas that are startling,  unexpected, unusual, weighty. or new.

Great literature makes us see or think things we never did before. The ideas underpinning the work challenge our accustomed categories and ways of thinking, putting  minds on edge. We may agree, and also we disagree. Some cherished beliefs are expressed and affirmed, making us feel less lonely.  But also our assumptions  are interrogated by what we read. We have to flex our minds, make them get bigger to try to understand everything we are reading.

3. Great literature is fine art. As such, it is aesthetically marvelous.

Either the style of a great work is incredibly interesting and beautiful, or the drama leaves us breathless, or the characters or scenes are so expertly drawn. We are lifted from our ordinary mode of being and given mental and spiritual refreshment from the high aesthetic experience of reading great literature.

4. Great literature is complex enough to offer us something new every time we read it, especially at different stages of our lives.

Like all great art, great works are based contrast and tension—not just conflicting characters, but also conflicting ideas, images, and viewpoints, allowing room for readers to entertain all sides, not just one  idea the writer may be featuring.

Why Great Literature is Special  

Much late 20th century and early 21st century theory argues against the “specialness” of great literature. According to many of these creeds, texts are just texts, of varying cultural value depending on political and social circumstances. Classic literature, these theories argue, should be regarded with caution or even suspicion for its probable role in perpetuating socially unjust assumptions woven into the culture.

Nonsense! Most literature we now regard as classic has been, and still retains the power to be, deeply subversive—and I mean subversive in the most positive way, granting us the ability to question outworn or unjust or too-small assumptions and to grow our minds and the quality of our thought.

Speaking of minds, I think I’ll end this post with an argument that even a die-hard materialist or a be-littler  of classic literature would find hard to refute: scientific proof!

What Shakespeare and Wordsworth Can Do for Your Brain

Check out this recent article in The Telegraph that announces:

‘The works of Shakespeare and Wordsworth are “rocket-boosters” to the brain and better therapy than self-help books, researchers will say this week.’

According to this article by Julie Henry, The Telegraph’s Education Correspondent, researchers recorded volunteers’ brain activity while they read Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and T. S. Eliot. Then they translated the same texts into simplified modern language and scanned the volunteer readers again:

“Scans showed that the more ‘challenging’ prose and poetry set off far more electrical activity in the brain than the more pedestrian versions.”

They also found that reading poetry triggered the autobiographical centers of the brain, where personal memories are, which encouraged people to re-evaluate their own past experiences.

Wow! Scientists have documented that reading boosts your brainpower. But not just any kind of reading. ONLY Great Literature can supply rocket fuel to your mind.

Don’t you want yourself some of that?

*Photo by MJ Booklover. Natchitoches, LA. 2014. 

Mary Jane is a longtime literature lover who lived in the Cincinnati area for many years, then in central Louisiana for three years (what a treat!), teaching literature classes at universities in both locations. Now back in the Cincinnati area, she pampers her grandchildren, experiments with cooking, and visits art museums as often as possible.

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April 4, 2017 at 12:07 pm

I’m going to return to this post again and again. Here’s a favorite passage:

“Either the style of a great work is incredibly interesting and beautiful, or the drama leaves us breathless, or the characters or scenes are so expertly drawn. We are lifted from our ordinary mode of being and given mental and spiritual refreshment from the high aesthetic experience of reading great literature.”

There’s a lovely little Renaissance song by Thomas Campion called “When to her Lute Corina Sings.” It’s a simple song but it addresses, in a sense, the initial experience of artifice through our senses. I’ve been thinking about some of these, what we would now call, more “romantic” conceptions of experiencing artifice lately as I’ve meditated on Campion. Here are a few excerpts: “When to her lute Corina sings, Her voice revives the leaden strings,” AND “But when she doth of mourning speak, Eu’n with her sighes the strings do break.” AND “As her lute doth live or die, Led by her passion, so must I” I’d like to say something about this at a later point but I’m still thinking. The last section is very visceral in its imagining of our experience of art in the proximity of an encompassing performance.

April 4, 2017 at 12:16 pm

Thanks for your comment, David! It makes me think of two very different kinds of poems, but both about this topic, the heightened sense of being or awareness that reading great literature can give us: Frost’s “Birches” and Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale.” Both different, but both about how great words can sweep us away, if only temporarily.

December 6, 2021 at 9:43 pm

” something especially worth treasuring, preserving, learning about, experiencing, re-reading, and pondering.” Does this mean more it is pondering re-reading etc the better the work? Or is it just right they are like that. Asking as as an aspiring writer.

December 10, 2021 at 12:10 pm

Hello Rick, I’m having to guess what you mean by this question–it’s not quite clear to me. But my guess is that you are asking whether literature becomes “great” BECAUSE we keep reading and pondering it, or is it “great” because it has inherent qualities that reward readers deeply, so they are aware of gaining benefit from re-reading and pondering. If that is your question, my answer is decidedly the latter–great literature has inherent qualities, whether any particular reader or generation of readers understands it or not. Some literature is very popular in its day because it suits the current tastes, but does not survive to interest later generations because it lacks one of the four qualities I discuss in this article. It is not universally applicable to people, or the quality of thought is not deep or original, or it is inartistic, and so on. If, as a writer, you are asking whether you can purposely set out to embed your work with these qualities, well, that question is harder to answer! Creative lives of great authors suggest that they have spent time and effort perfecting their craft, but other than that, the creative process is almost a mystery. It seems almost serendipitous whether a particular work will be truly great or not. An author must have a great and original mind and ability to observe keenly, whether the topic is nature, human psychology, or social forces. Are these things that can be developed, or are just innate talents in a person? To some extent, I would say they can be developed–but I also imagine that not every mind is born to produce great art. Whether a writer produces great art or just well-crafted works that delight and interest current readers, I would say that attempting to write to and about your fellow beings is still a wonderful thing to do. Good luck with your writing!

September 5, 2022 at 8:12 pm

This has been the best breakdown of what literary fiction does, how it’s absorbed and felt. How it nourishes the tirelessly hungry human that must feed on novelty for this repetitive experience to be transcended. Literary fiction, like all of art, is about evolution.

September 6, 2022 at 11:45 am

Thank you so much for your comment. Yes–and not just evolution, but enlargement of the mind!

September 24, 2022 at 7:16 pm

Reading good literature strikes home, that is, I feel that there is some kind of truth in it. It gives the impression that the characters are real people, and act as if I would in similar circumstances. There is something noble about them, in their successes and failures. The author treats them with understanding and respect, There is thus a moral aspect to the work.

September 26, 2022 at 11:35 am

Beautifully put. Love your focus on the special nature of characters in great literature, their realism, nobility, and respectful treatment. Great literature does indeed have a moral aspect. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

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Broad and narrow conceptions of poetry

Translation.

• The word as symbol
• Themes and their sources
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• Objective-subjective expression
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Literary composition

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Critical theories

If the early Egyptians or Sumerians had critical theories about the writing of literature, these have not survived. From the time of Classical Greece until the present day, however, Western criticism has been dominated by two opposing theories of the literary art, which might conveniently be called the expressive and constructive theories of composition .

The Greek philosopher and scholar Aristotle is the first great representative of the constructive school of thought. His Poetics (the surviving fragment of which is limited to an analysis of tragedy and epic poetry) has sometimes been dismissed as a recipe book for the writing of potboilers. Certainly, Aristotle is primarily interested in the theoretical construction of tragedy, much as an architect might analyze the construction of a temple, but he is not exclusively objective and matter of fact. He does, however, regard the expressive elements in literature as of secondary importance, and the terms he uses to describe them have been open to interpretation and a matter of controversy ever since.

The 1st-century Greek treatise On the Sublime (conventionally attributed to the 3rd-century Longinus) deals with the question left unanswered by Aristotle—what makes great literature “great”? Its standards are almost entirely expressive. Where Aristotle is analytical and states general principles, the pseudo-Longinus is more specific and gives many quotations: even so, his critical theories are confined largely to impressionistic generalities.

Thus, at the beginning of Western literary criticism, the controversy already exists. Is the artist or writer a technician, like a cook or an engineer, who designs and constructs a sort of machine that will elicit an aesthetic response from his audience? Or is he a virtuoso who above all else expresses himself and, because he gives voice to the deepest realities of his own personality, generates a response from his readers because they admit some profound identification with him? This antithesis endures throughout western European history— Scholasticism versus Humanism , Classicism versus Romanticism , Cubism versus Expressionism —and survives to this day in the common judgment of our contemporary artists and writers. It is surprising how few critics have declared that the antithesis is unreal, that a work of literary or plastic art is at once constructive and expressive, and that it must in fact be both.

Critical theories of literature in Asian cultures , however, have been more varied. There is an immense amount of highly technical, critical literature in India . Some works are recipe books, vast collections of tropes and stylistic devices; others are philosophical and general. In the best period of Indian literature , the cultural climax of Sanskrit (c. 320–490), it is assumed by writers that expressive and constructive factors are twin aspects of one reality. The same could be said of the Chinese, whose literary manuals and books on prosody and rhetoric are, as with the West, relegated to the class of technical handbooks, while their literary criticism is concerned rather with subjective, expressive factors—and so aligns itself with the pseudo-Longinus’ “sublime.” In Japan , technical, stylistic elements are certainly important (Japanese discrimination in these matters is perhaps the most refined in the world), but both writer and reader above all seek qualities of subtlety and poignancy and look for intimations of profundity often so evanescent as to escape entirely the uninitiated reader.

East Asian literary tradition has raised the question of the broad and narrow definitions of poetry (a question familiar in the West from Edgar Allan Poe ’s advocacy of the short poem in his “Poetic Principle” [1850]). There are no long epic poems in Chinese, no verse novels of the sort written in England by Robert Browning or Alfred Lord Tennyson in the 19th century. In Chinese drama , apart from a very few of the songs, the verse as such is considered doggerel . The versified treatises on astronomy, agriculture, or fishing, of the sort written in Greek and Roman times and during the 18th century in the West, are almost unknown in East Asia . Chinese poetry is almost exclusively lyric , meditative, and elegiac, and rarely does any poem exceed 100 lines—most are little longer than Western sonnets; many are only quatrains. In Japan this tendency to limit length was carried even further. The ballad survives in folk poetry, as it did in China, but the “long poem” of very moderate length disappeared early from literature. For the Japanese, the tanka is a “long poem”: in its common form it has 31 syllables; the sedōka has 38; the dodoitsu , imitating folk song, has 26. From the 17th century and onward, the most popular poetic form was the haiku , which has only 17 syllables.

This development is relevant to the West because it spotlights the ever-increasing emphasis which has been laid on intensity of communication , a characteristic of Western poetry (and of literature generally) as it has evolved since the late 19th century. In East Asia all cultivated people were supposed to be able to write suitable occasional poetry, and so those qualities that distinguished a poem from the mass consequently came to be valued above all others. Similarly, as modern readers in the West struggle with a “communication avalanche” of words, they seek in literature those forms, ideas, values, vicarious experiences, and styles that transcend the verbiage to be had on every hand.

Literary language

In some literatures (notably classical Chinese, Old Norse, Old Irish), the language employed is quite different from that spoken or used in ordinary writing. This marks off the reading of literature as a special experience. In the Western tradition, it is only in comparatively modern times that literature has been written in the language of common speech. The Elizabethans did not talk like Shakespeare nor 18th-century people in the stately prose of Samuel Johnson or Edward Gibbon (the so-called Augustan plain style in literature became popular in the late 17th century and flourished throughout the 18th, but it was really a special form of rhetoric with antecedent models in Greek and Latin). The first person to write major works of literature in the ordinary English language of educated people was Daniel Defoe (1660?–1731), and it is remarkable how little the language has changed since. Robinson Crusoe (1719) is much more contemporary in tone than the elaborate prose of 19th-century writers like Thomas De Quincey or Walter Pater . (Defoe’s language is not, in fact, so very simple: simplicity is itself one form of artifice.)

Other writers have sought to use language for its most subtle and complex effects and have deliberately cultivated the ambiguity inherent in the multiple or shaded meanings of words. Between the two world wars, “ambiguity” became very fashionable in English and American poetry and the ferreting out of ambiguities—from even the simplest poem—was a favorite critical sport. T.S. Eliot in his literary essays is usually considered the founder of this movement. Actually, the platform of his critical attitudes is largely moral , but his two disciples , I.A. Richards in Principles of Literary Criticism (1924) and William Empson in Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930), carried his method to extreme lengths. The basic document of the movement is C.K. Ogden and I.A. Richards’ The Meaning of Meaning (1923), a work of enormous importance in its time. Only a generation later, however, their ideas were somewhat at a discount. However, ambiguity remained a principal shaping tool for the writer and a primary focus in literary criticism.

Certainly, William Blake or Thomas Campion , when they were writing their simple lyrics, were unaware of the ambiguities and multiple meanings that future critics would find in them. Nevertheless, language is complex. Words do have overtones; they do stir up complicated reverberations in the mind that are ignored in their dictionary definitions. Great stylists, and most especially great poets, work with at least a half-conscious, or subliminal, awareness of the infinite potentialities of language. This is one reason why the essence of most poetry and great prose is so resistant to translation (quite apart from the radically different sound patterns that are created in other-language versions). The translator must project himself into the mind of the original author; he must transport himself into an entirely different world of relationships between sounds and meanings, and at the same time he must establish an equivalence between one infinitely complex system and another. Since no two languages are truly equivalent in anything except the simplest terms, this is a most difficult accomplishment. Certain writers are exceptionally difficult to translate. There are no satisfactory English versions, for example, of the Latin of Catullus , the French of Baudelaire , the Russian of Pushkin , or of the majority of Persian and Arabic poetry. The splendor of Sophocles ’ Greek, of Plato at his best, is barely suggested even in the finest English versions. On the other hand, the Germans insist that Shakespeare is better in German than he is in English, a humorous exaggeration perhaps. But again, Shakespeare is resistant to translation into French. His English seems to lack equivalents in that language.

The very greatest translations may become classics in their own right, of enduring literary excellence (the King James Version of the Bible , appearing in 1611, is an outstanding example), but on the whole the approximate equivalence of most translations to their originals seems to have a very short life. The original work remains the same, of lasting value to its own people, but the translation becomes out of date with each succeeding generation as the language and criteria of literary taste change. Nothing demonstrates the complexity of literary language more vividly. An analogous process takes place when a reader experiences a literary work in his own language; each generation gets a “new version” from its own classics.

Yet the values of great literature are more fundamental than complexity and subtleties of meaning arising from language alone. Works far removed from contemporary humankind in time and in cultural background, composed in a variety of languages utterly different from one another in structure, have nevertheless been translated successfully enough to be deeply moving. The 20th century witnessed an immense mass of the oral literature of preliterate peoples and of the writings of all the great civilizations translated into modern languages. Translations of these literatures often distorted the original stories and, at best, captured only their essence. However, without these translations, such stories would most likely be forever lost.

Communicative Sciences and Disorders

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• Cite and Manage Your Sources
• Critical Appraisal
• What are Literature Reviews?
• Conducting & Reporting Systematic Reviews
• Finding Systematic Reviews
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Choosing a Review Type

For guidance related to choosing a review type, see:

• "What Type of Review is Right for You?" - Decision Tree (PDF) This decision tree, from Cornell University Library, highlights key difference between narrative, systematic, umbrella, scoping and rapid reviews.
• Reviewing the literature: choosing a review design Noble, H., & Smith, J. (2018). Reviewing the literature: Choosing a review design. Evidence Based Nursing, 21(2), 39–41. https://doi.org/10.1136/eb-2018-102895
• What synthesis methodology should I use? A review and analysis of approaches to research synthesis Schick-Makaroff, K., MacDonald, M., Plummer, M., Burgess, J., & Neander, W. (2016). What synthesis methodology should I use? A review and analysis of approaches to research synthesis. AIMS Public Health, 3 (1), 172-215. doi:10.3934/publichealth.2016.1.172 More information less... ABSTRACT: Our purpose is to present a comprehensive overview and assessment of the main approaches to research synthesis. We use "research synthesis" as a broad overarching term to describe various approaches to combining, integrating, and synthesizing research findings.
• Right Review - Decision Support Tool Not sure of the most suitable review method? Answer a few questions and be guided to suitable knowledge synthesis methods. Updated in 2022 and featured in the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology 10.1016/j.jclinepi.2022.03.004

Types of Evidence Synthesis / Literature Reviews

Literature reviews are comprehensive summaries and syntheses of the previous research on a given topic.  While narrative reviews are common across all academic disciplines, reviews that focus on appraising and synthesizing research evidence are increasingly important in the health and social sciences.  

Most evidence synthesis methods use formal and explicit methods to identify, select and combine results from multiple studies, making evidence synthesis a form of meta-research.  

The review purpose, methods used and the results produced vary among different kinds of literature reviews; some of the common types of literature review are detailed below.

Common Types of Literature Reviews 1

Narrative (literature) review.

• A broad term referring to reviews with a wide scope and non-standardized methodology
• Search strategies, comprehensiveness of literature search, time range covered and method of synthesis will vary and do not follow an established protocol

Integrative Review

• A type of literature review based on a systematic, structured literature search
• Often has a broadly defined purpose or review question
• Seeks to generate or refine and theory or hypothesis and/or develop a holistic understanding of a topic of interest
• Relies on diverse sources of data (e.g. empirical, theoretical or methodological literature; qualitative or quantitative studies)

Systematic Review

• Systematically and transparently collects and categorize existing evidence on a question of scientific, policy or management importance
• Follows a research protocol that is established a priori
• Some sub-types of systematic reviews include: SRs of intervention effectiveness, diagnosis, prognosis, etiology, qualitative evidence, economic evidence, and more.
• Time-intensive and often takes months to a year or more to complete 
• The most commonly referred to type of evidence synthesis; sometimes confused as a blanket term for other types of reviews

Meta-Analysis

• Statistical technique for combining the findings from disparate quantitative studies
• Uses statistical methods to objectively evaluate, synthesize, and summarize results
• Often conducted as part of a systematic review

Scoping Review

• Systematically and transparently collects and categorizes existing evidence on a broad question of scientific, policy or management importance
• Seeks to identify research gaps, identify key concepts and characteristics of the literature and/or examine how research is conducted on a topic of interest
• Useful when the complexity or heterogeneity of the body of literature does not lend itself to a precise systematic review
• Useful if authors do not have a single, precise review question
• May critically evaluate existing evidence, but does not attempt to synthesize the results in the way a systematic review would 
• May take longer than a systematic review

Rapid Review

• Applies a systematic review methodology within a time-constrained setting
• Employs methodological "shortcuts" (e.g., limiting search terms and the scope of the literature search), at the risk of introducing bias
• Useful for addressing issues requiring quick decisions, such as developing policy recommendations

Umbrella Review

• Reviews other systematic reviews on a topic
• Often defines a broader question than is typical of a traditional systematic review
• Most useful when there are competing interventions to consider

1. Adapted from:

Eldermire, E. (2021, November 15). A guide to evidence synthesis: Types of evidence synthesis. Cornell University LibGuides. https://guides.library.cornell.edu/evidence-synthesis/types

Nolfi, D. (2021, October 6). Integrative Review: Systematic vs. Scoping vs. Integrative. Duquesne University LibGuides. https://guides.library.duq.edu/c.php?g=1055475&p=7725920

Delaney, L. (2021, November 24). Systematic reviews: Other review types. UniSA LibGuides. https://guides.library.unisa.edu.au/SystematicReviews/OtherReviewTypes

Further Reading: Exploring Different Types of Literature Reviews

• A typology of reviews: An analysis of 14 review types and associated methodologies Grant, M. J., & Booth, A. (2009). A typology of reviews: An analysis of 14 review types and associated methodologies. Health Information and Libraries Journal, 26 (2), 91-108. doi:10.1111/j.1471-1842.2009.00848.x More information less... ABSTRACT: The expansion of evidence-based practice across sectors has lead to an increasing variety of review types. However, the diversity of terminology used means that the full potential of these review types may be lost amongst a confusion of indistinct and misapplied terms. The objective of this study is to provide descriptive insight into the most common types of reviews, with illustrative examples from health and health information domains.
• Clarifying differences between review designs and methods Gough, D., Thomas, J., & Oliver, S. (2012). Clarifying differences between review designs and methods. Systematic Reviews, 1 , 28. doi:10.1186/2046-4053-1-28 More information less... ABSTRACT: This paper argues that the current proliferation of types of systematic reviews creates challenges for the terminology for describing such reviews....It is therefore proposed that the most useful strategy for the field is to develop terminology for the main dimensions of variation.
• Are we talking the same paradigm? Considering methodological choices in health education systematic review Gordon, M. (2016). Are we talking the same paradigm? Considering methodological choices in health education systematic review. Medical Teacher, 38 (7), 746-750. doi:10.3109/0142159X.2016.1147536 More information less... ABSTRACT: Key items discussed are the positivist synthesis methods meta-analysis and content analysis to address questions in the form of "whether and what" education is effective. These can be juxtaposed with the constructivist aligned thematic analysis and meta-ethnography to address questions in the form of "why." The concept of the realist review is also considered. It is proposed that authors of such work should describe their research alignment and the link between question, alignment and evidence synthesis method selected.
• Meeting the review family: Exploring review types and associated information retrieval requirements Sutton, A., Clowes, M., Preston, L., & Booth, A. (2019). Meeting the review family: Exploring review types and associated information retrieval requirements. Health Information & Libraries Journal, 36(3), 202–222. doi: 10.1111/hir.12276

Integrative Reviews

"The integrative review method is an approach that allows for the inclusion of diverse methodologies (i.e. experimental and non-experimental research)." (Whittemore & Knafl, 2005, p. 547).

• The integrative review: Updated methodology Whittemore, R., & Knafl, K. (2005). The integrative review: Updated methodology. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 52 (5), 546–553. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2648.2005.03621.x More information less... ABSTRACT: The aim of this paper is to distinguish the integrative review method from other review methods and to propose methodological strategies specific to the integrative review method to enhance the rigour of the process....An integrative review is a specific review method that summarizes past empirical or theoretical literature to provide a more comprehensive understanding of a particular phenomenon or healthcare problem....Well-done integrative reviews present the state of the science, contribute to theory development, and have direct applicability to practice and policy.

• Conducting integrative reviews: A guide for novice nursing researchers Dhollande, S., Taylor, A., Meyer, S., & Scott, M. (2021). Conducting integrative reviews: A guide for novice nursing researchers. Journal of Research in Nursing, 26(5), 427–438. https://doi.org/10.1177/1744987121997907
• Rigour in integrative reviews Whittemore, R. (2007). Rigour in integrative reviews. In C. Webb & B. Roe (Eds.), Reviewing Research Evidence for Nursing Practice (pp. 149–156). John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470692127.ch11

Scoping Reviews

Scoping reviews are evidence syntheses that are conducted systematically, but begin with a broader scope of question than traditional systematic reviews, allowing the research to 'map' the relevant literature on a given topic.

• Scoping studies: Towards a methodological framework Arksey, H., & O'Malley, L. (2005). Scoping studies: Towards a methodological framework. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 8 (1), 19-32. doi:10.1080/1364557032000119616 More information less... ABSTRACT: We distinguish between different types of scoping studies and indicate where these stand in relation to full systematic reviews. We outline a framework for conducting a scoping study based on our recent experiences of reviewing the literature on services for carers for people with mental health problems.
• Scoping studies: Advancing the methodology Levac, D., Colquhoun, H., & O'Brien, K. K. (2010). Scoping studies: Advancing the methodology. Implementation Science, 5 (1), 69. doi:10.1186/1748-5908-5-69 More information less... ABSTRACT: We build upon our experiences conducting three scoping studies using the Arksey and O'Malley methodology to propose recommendations that clarify and enhance each stage of the framework.
• Methodology for JBI scoping reviews Peters, M. D. J., Godfrey, C. M., McInerney, P., Baldini Soares, C., Khalil, H., & Parker, D. (2015). The Joanna Briggs Institute reviewers’ manual: Methodology for JBI scoping reviews [PDF]. Retrieved from The Joanna Briggs Institute website: http://joannabriggs.org/assets/docs/sumari/Reviewers-Manual_Methodology-for-JBI-Scoping-Reviews_2015_v2.pdf More information less... ABSTRACT: Unlike other reviews that address relatively precise questions, such as a systematic review of the effectiveness of a particular intervention based on a precise set of outcomes, scoping reviews can be used to map the key concepts underpinning a research area as well as to clarify working definitions, and/or the conceptual boundaries of a topic. A scoping review may focus on one of these aims or all of them as a set.

Systematic vs. Scoping Reviews: What's the Difference? 

YouTube Video 4 minutes, 45 seconds

Rapid Reviews

Rapid reviews are systematic reviews that are undertaken under a tighter timeframe than traditional systematic reviews. 

• Evidence summaries: The evolution of a rapid review approach Khangura, S., Konnyu, K., Cushman, R., Grimshaw, J., & Moher, D. (2012). Evidence summaries: The evolution of a rapid review approach. Systematic Reviews, 1 (1), 10. doi:10.1186/2046-4053-1-10 More information less... ABSTRACT: Rapid reviews have emerged as a streamlined approach to synthesizing evidence - typically for informing emergent decisions faced by decision makers in health care settings. Although there is growing use of rapid review "methods," and proliferation of rapid review products, there is a dearth of published literature on rapid review methodology. This paper outlines our experience with rapidly producing, publishing and disseminating evidence summaries in the context of our Knowledge to Action (KTA) research program.
• What is a rapid review? A methodological exploration of rapid reviews in Health Technology Assessments Harker, J., & Kleijnen, J. (2012). What is a rapid review? A methodological exploration of rapid reviews in Health Technology Assessments. International Journal of Evidence‐Based Healthcare, 10 (4), 397-410. doi:10.1111/j.1744-1609.2012.00290.x More information less... ABSTRACT: In recent years, there has been an emergence of "rapid reviews" within Health Technology Assessments; however, there is no known published guidance or agreed methodology within recognised systematic review or Health Technology Assessment guidelines. In order to answer the research question "What is a rapid review and is methodology consistent in rapid reviews of Health Technology Assessments?", a study was undertaken in a sample of rapid review Health Technology Assessments from the Health Technology Assessment database within the Cochrane Library and other specialised Health Technology Assessment databases to investigate similarities and/or differences in rapid review methodology utilised.
• Rapid Review Guidebook Dobbins, M. (2017). Rapid review guidebook. Hamilton, ON: National Collaborating Centre for Methods and Tools.
• NCCMT Summary and Tool for Dobbins' Rapid Review Guidebook National Collaborating Centre for Methods and Tools. (2017). Rapid review guidebook. Hamilton, ON: McMaster University. Retrieved from http://www.nccmt.ca/knowledge-repositories/search/308
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Dermoscopic characteristics of Merkel cell carcinoma

• Dimitra Koumaki   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7074-2374 1 ,
• Georgios Evangelou   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-4468-446X 1 ,
• Alexander C. Katoulis   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8189-7486 2 ,
• Zoe Apalla 3 ,
• Aimilios Lallas 4 ,
• Marios Papadakis   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9020-874X 5 ,
• Stamatios Gregoriou   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-7585-1032 6 ,
• Elizabeth Lazaridou   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4072-3591 3 &
• Konstantinos Krasagakis   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2197-2530 1  

BMC Cancer volume  24 , Article number:  785 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

Metrics details

Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC) is a rare, aggressive, cutaneous tumour with high mortality and frequently delayed diagnosis. Clinically, it often manifests as a rapidly growing erythematous to purple nodule usually located on the lower extremities or face and scalp of elderly patients. There is limited available data on the dermoscopic findings of MCC, and there are no specific features that can be used to definitively diagnose MCC.

Aim of the study

Here, we aimed to summarize existing published literature on dermatoscopic and reflectance confocal microscopy (RCM) features of MCC.

Materials and methods

To find relevant studies, we searched the PubMed and Scopus databases from inception to April 12, 2023. Our goal was to identify all pertinent research that had been written in English. The following search strategy was employed: (“ dermoscopy” OR “ dermatoscopy” OR “ videodermoscopy” OR “ videodermatoscopy” OR “ reflectance confocal microscopy”) AND “ Merkel cell carcinoma”. Two dermatologists, DK and GE, evaluated the titles and abstracts separately for eligibility. For inclusion, only works written in English were taken into account.

In total 16 articles were retrieved (68 cases). The main dermoscopic findings of MCC are a polymorphous vascular pattern including linear irregular, arborizing, glomerular, and dotted vessels on a milky red background, with shiny or non-shiny white areas. Pigmentation was lacking in all cases. The RCM images showed a thin and disarranged epidermis, and small hypo-reflective cells that resembled lymphocytes arranged in solid aggregates outlined by fibrous tissue in the dermis. Additionally, there were larger polymorphic hyper-reflective cells that likely represented highly proliferative cells.

Dermoscopic findings of MCC may play a valuable role in evaluating MCC, aiding in the early detection and differentiation from other skin lesions. Further prospective case-control studies are needed to validate these results.

Peer Review reports

Introduction

Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC) is a rare but aggressive type of skin cancer that typically affects older individuals with fair skin. It usually presents as a rapidly growing, firm nodule that may be flesh-colored or bluish-red in appearance, often found in sun-exposed areas of the body (Fig.  1 ) [ 1 ]. Recent studies from various countries have reported an increasing incidence of MCC over the past few decades [ 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ]. Based on early histologic and ultrastructural studies, it is believed that MCC originates from Merkel cells, which are found in the basal layer of the epidermis and hair follicles and are associated with sensory neuritis in the dermal papillae, the skin mechanoreceptors [ 6 ]. However, this hypothesis is controversial, and an alternative hypothesis suggests that these tumors may originate from immature multipotent stem cells that acquire neuroendocrine features during malignancy transformation (Fig.  2 ). UV radiation exposure may be particularly relevant in the pathogenesis of the virus-negative subtype of MCC, as evidenced by a lower prevalence of MCPyV-positive tumours in areas with sun damage [ 6 ].

Clinical presentation of Merkel cell carcinoma presenting as a violaceous nodule

Pathogenesis of Merkel cell carcinoma. Adapted with permission from Hernandez LE, et al. Dermatol Ther . 2022 Mar;35(3):e15292. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/dth.15292

There is limited available data on the Dermoscopic reflectance confocal microscopy (RCM) findings of MCC, and there are no specific features that can be used to definitively diagnose MCC. In this study, we aimed to summarize existing published data on the dermoscopic and RCM features of MCC.

The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) standards were followed for conducting this systematic review with meta-analysis [ 7 ]. To find relevant studies, we searched the PubMed and Scopus databases from inception to April 12, 2023. Our goal was to identify all pertinent research that had been written in English. The following search strategy was employed: (“ dermoscopy” OR “ dermatoscopy” OR “ videodermoscopy” OR “ videodermatoscopy” OR “ reflectance confocal microscopy”) AND “ Merkel cell carcinoma”. Two dermatologists, DK and GE, evaluated the titles and abstracts separately for eligibility. For inclusion, only works written in English were taken into account.

All articles detailing the dermoscopic characteristics of MCC in one or more patients were considered. Reference lists of papers that were included were checked again for more publications that qualified. A consensus was reached in the event of a disagreement between the two researchers. The clinical, dermoscopic, RCM and histological data were collected from each relevant article after it had been fully retrieved. Based on the initial description provided by the authors of the included studies, the dermoscopic characteristics of MCC were initially evaluated.

In total 29 articles were retrieved of which 13 were irrelevant, therefore 16 articles were included in this study, in a total of 68 MCC cases (Fig.  3 ). The dermoscopic and RCM characteristics of MCC cases of our study are summarized in Table  1 [ 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 ]. The most common dermatoscopic signs included the following (Fig.  4 ):

Flow diagram

Clinical and dermoscopic images of patients with Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC). Some dermoscopic characteristics are marked as follows: arrows: large vessels, arrowheads: shiny white areas, asterisk: non-shiny white areas. NPD: non-polarized dermoscopy, PD: polarized dermoscopy. Reproduced with permission from Jalilian C. et al. Br J Dermatol . 2013 Aug;169(2):294-7. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/bjd.12376

Milky red areas

On dermoscopy, milky red areas were reported in 49/68 (72.05%) of published MCC cases. Milky red areas, also called pink-white structureless areas, and creamy red background or pink homogeneous areas, refer to structureless areas exhibiting pink to-white-red colour [ 24 , 25 , 26 ]. Although the occurrence of milky red areas in skin lesions is infrequent, their presence has been strongly linked to invasive melanoma. These areas/globules may help identify thicker amelanotic/ hypomelanotic melanomas (AHM), which often lack traditional melanoma features [ 27 , 28 , 29 ]. In AHM, milky read globules/areas were observed in 31% of thin melanomas (1 mm) and 93.3% of thick melanomas, in contrast to 17.3% and 9.1% of amelanotic/hypomelanotic benign melanocytic lesions and amelanotic/hypomelanotic non-melanocytic lesions, respectively, according to a study [ 30 , 31 ]. Vascular blush, also known as erythematous blush, pink veil, or milky red patches, is a red or pink area, corresponding to a more vascularized site of a lesion. Vascular blush can therefore be seen in a wide range of dermatologic entities, including dermatofibromas, vascular tumours such as pyogenic granulomas (PG), inflammatory lesions, melanoma, and nonmelanoma skin malignancies. Regarding melanocytic lesions, vascular blush can be seen in nevi, but it is more frequent and noticeable in melanoma [ 32 , 33 ].

Linear irregular vessels

Linear irregular vessels were noticed under dermoscopy in MCC cases with a frequency of 64/68 (94.11%) (Fig.  5 ). These vessels are red vascular structures that vary in size, shape, and distribution. The presence of irregular vessels is a strong indication of malignancy since they are commonly found in melanoma, basal cell carcinoma (BCC), and squamous cell carcinoma (SCC). In a previous study, linear irregular vessels were identified in 33.3% of melanomas, with a positive predictive value (PPV) of 67.6% [ 30 ].

Schematic approach of dermoscopic characteristics of Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC) indicating multiple arborizing irregular, polymorphous vessels, shiny white, milky red areas as well as structureless areas Adapted with permission from Jalilian C. et al. Br J Dermatol. 2013 Aug;169(2):294-7. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/bjd.12376

Arborizing vessels

The presence of arborizing vessels was reported in 51/68 (75%) of cases (Figs.  4 and 5 ). Arborizing vessels are vessels with large diameter, branching irregularly into fine capillaries. They are usually seen in BCC but they can also be present in furuncles, cysts, intradermal nevi, and other adnexal tumours. Bright-red, in focus, arborizing vessels have a PPV of 94% for BCC [ 34 , 35 , 36 ]. Arborizing vessels, when viewed under dermoscopy, are red linear vessels with a thick diameter (0.2 mm or more) that split into branches with progressively thinner diameters, resembling a tree-like pattern. In BCC these vessels are sharply focused due to their superficial location just below the epidermis and exhibit irregular branching into small diameter capillaries (10 μm). Traditionally, arborizing vessels were considered a reliable indicator of BCC, with a PPV of 94%, sensitivity of 96,1%, and specificity of 90.9%. However, a recent study from Korea found that only 54% of lesions displaying arborizing vessels (Avs) were confirmed as BCCs. The variation in PPV for BCC diagnosis using arborizing vessels can be attributed to the types of lesions included in the analysis. When only lesions in the differential diagnosis for BCC are considered, the PPV of arborizing vessels may be higher compared to when all lesions, regardless of differential diagnosis, are included. It is worth noting that adnexal tumours can sometimes exhibit similar features, including arborizing vessels, as BCCs [ 34 , 35 ].

• Polymorphous vessels

Polymorphous vessels were seen in 27/68 (39.70%) of MCC cases (Figs.  4 and 5 ). Polymorphous vessels are a combination of two or more vessel morphologies, with the most common combination being dotted and serpentine vessels. Polymorphous vessels, corresponding to the neovascularization of a tumour, have been traditionally considered an indicator of melanoma. A study of lesions with vascular features on dermoscopy showed that only 20% of the lesions had a polymorphous pattern and their presence had a PPV of 52.6% for melanoma. Specifically, the combination of dotted and linear-irregular vessels was found in 18% of amelanotic/ hypomelanotic melanomas, but rarely in other nonmelanoma amelanotic/hypomelanotic lesions [ 36 , 37 ]. Polymorphous vessels may also be present in cutaneous metastases, and other tumours such as eccrine poromas [ 29 ].

Lacunes/vascular lakes

Lacunae were observed in 2/68% of MCC cases. Lacunae are clusters of numerous well-defined round or oval, reddish formations that are divided by septae, a white rim. They are comparable to dilated, thin-walled veins in the papillary dermis histologically. Vascular tumours, especially angiomas, are distinguished by lacunae. Black (violaceous, blue-black, or black) lacunae that are extremely distinctive to isolated angiokeratomas show partially or entirely thrombosed dermal arteries lying deeper in the dermis.

Ulceration was reported in 2/68 (2.94%) of MCC cases.

Structureless areas

Structureless areas were described in 13/68 (19.11%) MCC cases. Regions within a lesion that lack any discernible feature or structure are referred to as “structureless areas”. These areas should occupy at least 10% of the total surface of the lesion. Structureless areas can exhibit hypopigmentation, hyperpigmentation, or regular pigmentation [ 37 ].

Sharply focused vessels

Sharply-focused vessels were mentioned in 15/68 (22.05%) of MCC cases. Sharply focused vessels have been previously described in a case series of necrobiosis lipoidica (NL) [ 38 ].

White areas (Milky white background)

White areas or milky white backgrounds were noticed in 20/68 (29.41%) of cases.

Architectural disorder

Architectural disorder was reported in 9/68 (13.23%) of the cases.

Dotted vessels

Dotted vessels were seen in 25/68 (36.76%) of MCC cases. Dotted vessels are small red dots, ranging in diameter from 0.01 to 0.02 mm that histologically correspond to vessels with perpendicular orientation to the skin surface. Dotted vessels can be observed in inflamed, traumatized, or stasis skin, as well as in cutaneous tumours. The presence of dotted vessels is often indicative of melanocytic lesions, with a study showing that 90% of lesions with dotted vessels were melanocytic. In melanocytic tumours, dotted vessels have varying PPV for different types of melanoma, ranging from 38% for melanoma to 16% for dermal/congenital nevi, 21% for Clark nevi, and 16% for Spitz nevi. In benign nevi, dotted vessels correspond to vessels at the tips of dermal papillae and are often observed within the pigment network. In melanoma, dotted vessels, usually found in conjunction with other types of vessels, can be located anywhere within the lesion but are more concentrated toward the center. Studies have shown that dotted vessels are commonly seen in thinner melanomas (< 1 mm), compared to thicker ones (> 1 mm), particularly in amelanotic and hypomelanotic melanomas [ 39 , 40 , 41 ].

Large vessels

Large vessels were observed in 16 out of 68 cases (23.52%).

A collarette was shown only in one out of 68 cases (1.47%). A collarette refers to a thin rim of loosened keratin that overhangs the periphery of the skin lesion and is connected to the adjacent healthy skin. The external edge of the collarette is attached, whereas the internal edge is free. Collarette can be seen in eccrine poroma [ 28 ].

Scale was described in 14/68 (20.58%) cases.

Glomerular vessels

Glomerular vessels were noticed in 10/68 (14.70%) of cases. Glomerular vessels are coiled vessels mimicking the glomerular apparatus of the kidney. They can be seen in Bowenoid actinic keratosis, Bowen’s Disease (BD), SCC, and clear cell acanthoma. They have a 62% PPV for SCC [ 37 ].

Comma vessels

Comma vessels were reported in 3/68 (4.41%) cases. Comma vessels which are vessels that are curved in a shape resembling a comma are typically blurry when viewed under dermoscopy due to their deeper location within the dermis. These vessels are commonly associated with dermal naevi, with studies showing that 66.3% of dermal/ congenital naevi exhibit this vascular pattern, and they have a PPV of 94% [ 36 , 37 ]. Additionally, in another study, the presence of organized comma vessels as the predominant vessel morphology is indicative that the lesion is not a melanoma, suggesting a benign naevus, commonly dermal or compound naevus.

Horseshoe-like structures

Horseshoe-like structures were described in 3/68 (4.41%) of cases.

Linear beaded vessels

Linear beaded vessels were seen in 9/68 (13.23%) of cases.

Pinkish structureless background

Pinkish structureless background was observed in 7/68 (10.29%) of cases.

Shiny white lines

Shiny white lines were reported in one case 6/68 (8.82%). These white streaks are oriented in parallel or sometimes perpendicular to each other. In dermoscopy, perpendicular white lines are short, separate white lines that are oriented parallel or perpendicular to each other and can only be seen under polarized light. They are also known by various names such as polarizing white lines, short white lines, shiny white lines, whiny white streaks, chrysalis, chrysalids, and crystalline structures. Polarized dermoscopy enables improved visualization of deep structures and reveals structures that are not visible with non-polarized dermoscopy, such as 4-dot clods (also known as rosettes) and shiny bright, linear, and white lines referred to as shiny white streaks (SWSs). SWSs can be found in both benign and malignant skin lesions, including melanoma, Spitz naevus, dysplastic naevus, intradermal naevus, BCC, dermatofibroma, scar tissue, and benign lichenoid keratosis. Previous studies have shown that SWSs are more prevalent in melanomas (ranging from 23.4 to 32.8%) compared to melanocytic naevi (ranging from 0.07 to 2.6%) and their visualization as thin, shiny, linear, white structures depends on the use of polarized dermoscopy. The presence of SWSs histologically corresponds to broad deep dermal fibroplasia. Cases with diffuse SWSs exhibited a significantly higher degree of deep fibroplasia than cases with focal SWSs [ 41 , 42 ].

Reflectance confocal microscopy (RCM) findings in MCC

RCM is a non-invasive technique that allows for high-resolution imaging that can provide detailed images of the cellular and structural features of the skin, including the epidermis, dermis, and other skin layers, as well as blood vessels and hair follicles [ 43 , 44 ].

In the case presented by Longo et al., which was a primary MCC, the use of reflectance confocal microscopy (RCM) showed that there were clusters of small cells that appeared darker compared to lymphocytes, and they were larger than normal cells. Some of these cells had irregularly shaped nuclei that filled up the entire cell (Table  2 ). These clusters were surrounded by fibrotic tissue. In live imaging, large blood vessels were observed near the tumour growth. Additionally, within these dark cells, some bright cells likely represented highly proliferative cells, which appeared more reflective in RCM [ 22 ].

Cinotti et al. described four patients who had four primary MCC lesions and one of them had six lesions of metastatic MCC located on the same limb. The RCM features observed in all cases by Cinotti et al., were very similar and confirmed the morphological aspects described in a previous study by Longo et al. The RCM images showed small hypo-reflective cells that resembled lymphocytes arranged in solid aggregates outlined by fibrous tissue in the dermis. Additionally, there were larger polymorphic hyper-reflective cells that likely represented highly proliferative cells. The epidermis appeared thin and disarranged due to the underlying tumours. Metastatic lesions exhibited the same RCM features. While these findings could also be seen in cases of amelanotic melanoma, MCC showed a less pronounced polymorphous appearance and a more evident fibrotic stroma between the cell aggregates, which supported the diagnosis of a non-melanocytic skin tumour. Notably, apart from the findings previously reported in the RCM case described earlier by Longo et al., Cinotti also noted the dissociation of cell aggregates in certain regions of MCC. While this dissociation has been suggested to be a potential artifact resulting from tissue processing and fixation, it should not be dismissed as such, as it was consistently observed in vivo in RCM images and was in perfect alignment with histopathology findings, similar to clefts around to BCC [ 23 ].

In a case of intraepidermal MCC described by Navarrette-Dechent et al., RCM assessment using VivaScope 3000, a device by Caliber Imaging and Diagnostics in Rochester, NY, USA, revealed the presence of dark pagetoid cells in the epidermis, as well as glandular nests at the dermo-epidermal junction that were separated by septae [ 21 ].

One of the characteristic, though non-pathognomonic, dermoscopic findings in MCC is the presence of polymorphous vessels, which are typically irregular or tortuous, and neoangiogenesis, crucial for tumor growth and invasion, may be associated with these dermoscopic structures in MCC [ 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 ].

These vessels can appear as arborizing or linear with irregular shapes and sizes and are often distributed in a scattered or clustered pattern. Arborizing vessels, typically seen in BCC, are clearly defined with a distinct red color, indicating their superficial location. In contrast, the poorly focused and pink-colored vessels observed in MCC suggest a deeper vessel location. Histopathological findings support the notion that deep angiogenesis is associated with milky red areas in dermoscopy [ 24 , 25 , 26 ]. Well-defined large arborizing vessels may correspond to new vessels located closer to the surface, while blurry vessels may be located deeper. Linear-irregular vessels may indicate elongation of capillaries and tortuous horizontal vessels [ 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 ]. Milky-red areas or globules may also suggest deep tumoral angiogenesis, which could explain the presence of blurred white and pink structures. The disordered formation of new blood vessels, a characteristic feature of MCC, may account for the appearance of the rainbow pattern observed in such lesions. This pattern, typically seen in Kaposi sarcoma, could aid in diagnosing MCC [ 24 ].

One study demonstrated a link between the irregular linear vessels observed through dermoscopy and the presence of clustered dilated vessels at the tumor’s periphery upon histopathological examination [ 35 ]. These linear irregular vessels are indicative of small, structurally abnormal, and variably dense blood vessels, commonly seen in tumor angiogenesis. They often occur in areas where vessel dilation is prominent. Linear irregular vessels and milky red areas, although common in hypomelanotic and amelanotic melanoma, are less distinctive for MCC. Additionally, the clustering of dilated blood vessels in the middle dermis, along with increased vascular proliferation in the deeper dermis, can correspond to irregular vessels and milky red areas observed in dermoscopy. Another characteristic dermoscopic feature, known as glomerular vessels, is frequently seen in Bowen’s disease (BD) [ 25, 26]. The significance of shiny white chrysalis-like structures in MCC is not yet understood.

The differential diagnoses often considered alongside MCC include amelanotic melanoma, BCC, SCC, cutaneous B-cell lymphoma, and PG [14–16 ]. We observed that MCC typically lacks pigmented structures or a blue-grey veil, which helps distinguish it from hypomelanotic melanoma. Unlike well-differentiated SCCs, MCCs generally lack hyperkeratosis. The presence of a collarette is infrequent in MCCs, which is an important clue for distinguishing MCC from PG, which often exhibits milky red areas. Scale and hyperkeratosis, also present in BD and SCC, may suggest epidermotropism when found in MCC, as evidenced by a case of combined MCC/SCC [ 12 ].

RCM is a supplementary diagnostic technique that enables in-depth examination of the skin at a resolution close to that of histology. Reported RCM findings of MCC included small hypo-reflective cells forming solid aggregates in the presence of fibrotic stroma and prominent vasculature. These findings were similar to some melanoma subtypes (such as nevoid melanoma), but the monomorphous appearance favored a diagnosis of non-melanoma skin cancer, specifically not BCC [ 39, 40 ].

In conclusion, the dermoscopic findings of MCC are indicative of the rapid growth of this tumor. However, they are not specific to MCC, and therefore, their usefulness and value in diagnosis and management are unknown. All studies were descriptive and observational, without evaluation of diagnostic significance.

Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available upon reasonable request from the corresponding author, MP.

Abbreviations

Merkel cell carcinoma

Positive predictive value

Shiny white streaks

Basal cell carcinoma

Bowen’s Disease

Squamous cell carcinoma

Reflectance confocal microscopy

Pyogenic granuloma

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Dimitra Koumaki, Georgios Evangelou & Konstantinos Krasagakis

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Conceptualization, DK, AK, GE, MP, SG, KK and EL.; methodology, ZA, AL, SG, MP, KK and DK.; software, ZA, AL, SG, MP, DK; validation, DK, AK, GE, MP, and EL.; formal analysis, DK, AK, and SG; investigation, DK, AK, GE, MP, SG, and EL.; resources, DK, AK, and SG.; data curation DK, AK, GE, SG, MP, and EL, DK, AK, and SG.; writing—original draft preparation DK, AK, GE, SG, MP, KK and EL; writing—review and editing, ZA, AL, SG, MP, and DK.; visualization, ZA, AL, SG, MP, AK, KK, and EL; supervision, ZA, AL, SG, MP, AK, KK and EL.; project administration, DK, AK, KK, and EL; All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

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Koumaki, D., Evangelou, G., Katoulis, A.C. et al. Dermoscopic characteristics of Merkel cell carcinoma. BMC Cancer 24 , 785 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12885-024-12566-2

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Autonomous self-healing agents in cementitious materials: parameters and impacts on mortar properties.

1. Introduction

2. systematic literature review, bibliometric analysis, 3. results and discussion, 3.1. parameters for the preparation and composition of self-healing material mixtures, 3.2. parameters adopted in the encapsulation of healing agents, 3.3. parameters adopted for crack control and curing environment, 3.4. the influence of pellets/granules/capsules on the properties of mortar, 3.5. the influence of healing agents on the self-healing properties of mortars, 4. conclusions and research gaps.

• The predominant encapsulation method used for healing agents was the simultaneous use of granules and pellets in equipment designated as granulators and pelletizers, respectively. Additionally, the predominant surface coating mainly consists of a PVA film. However, cementitious materials incorporating pellets with a PVA film coating significantly reduced spreading and compressive strength properties.
• Adverse behavior was observed in these properties for capsules coated with Portland cement and sprayed with a water and sodium silicate solution. This indicates a trend towards their use, as it reduces the negative effect of pellet/capsule incorporation on mortar properties. Additionally, this type of coating, regarding the use of expansive agents through pellets/capsules as the core, may provide benefits in crack sealing and increase the incorporation content in cementitious materials to promote self-healing.
• It was observed in this systematic review that the preferred pre-crack test method is the three-point flexural test. Steel wires are used to prevent the complete rupture of the prismatic sample, and a small notch (1.5 mm) at the bottom center of the sample is made to induce a crack at a specific point. The CMOD device is the central apparatus for crack control to observe crack opening.
• Regarding the parameters for evaluating self-healing, it was observed that for pellets, granules, or capsules composed of expansive agents, the pre-crack test is generally conducted at 7 days, and the curing time and duration of the crack sealing monitoring process are both approximately 28 days. Additionally, the environment for conducting the autonomous healing of cement-based materials was water.

Supplementary Materials

Author contributions, data availability statement, acknowledgments, conflicts of interest.

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Lima, G.T.d.S.; Silvestro, L.; Tambara Júnior, L.U.D.; Cheriaf, M.; Rocha, J.C. Autonomous Self-Healing Agents in Cementitious Materials: Parameters and Impacts on Mortar Properties. Buildings 2024 , 14 , 2000. https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings14072000

Lima GTdS, Silvestro L, Tambara Júnior LUD, Cheriaf M, Rocha JC. Autonomous Self-Healing Agents in Cementitious Materials: Parameters and Impacts on Mortar Properties. Buildings . 2024; 14(7):2000. https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings14072000

Lima, Geannina Terezinha dos Santos, Laura Silvestro, Luís Urbano Durlo Tambara Júnior, Malik Cheriaf, and Janaíde Cavalcante Rocha. 2024. "Autonomous Self-Healing Agents in Cementitious Materials: Parameters and Impacts on Mortar Properties" Buildings 14, no. 7: 2000. https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings14072000

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