The question of genres is one of the oldest problems in poetics, and from antiquity to the present day, the definition of genres, their number, and the relationships between them have never ceased to be a subject of debate. Today, we consider this question to be generally related to the structural modeling of discourses, with literary discourse being only a special case. Since this modeling-in its generality-is relatively undefined, it will be useful to approach its study through literary genres.

First, we must dispel a false problem and cease defining genres by their names. Some of these names still enjoy considerable popularity ("tragedy," "comedy," "sonnet," "elegy," etc.). It is self-evident that if the concept of genre is to have a role in literary language theory, we cannot define it based solely on nomenclature. Some genres have never had a name, while others have been lumped together under a single name despite the differences in their characteristics. Hence, genres must be studied based on their structural properties, not their names. However, by removing this initial ambiguity, we do not resolve the question of the relationship between structural unity and historical phenomena. In fact, we observe two sharply different approaches throughout history.