What is the oldest literary genre?

Poetry. Common literary genres include poems, novels, essays and plays. Poetry is regarded as the oldest literary genre, which originated from labor production, sex and primitive religion in ancient society, and was the oral tradition and expression demand of early human beings. Before the invention or popularization of writing, people have already conveyed their feelings, told stories and conveyed knowledge and wisdom through poetry. Poetry makes use of the musicality of language, such as rhythm, rhythm and repetition, to facilitate memorization and singing. This musicality enables poetry to cross time and space and be handed down from generation to generation.

In different cultures, the development of poetry has its own characteristics. For example, Homer's ancient Greek epics "Iliad" and "Odyssey" are famous early epic works in western literature, which adopt six-step poetic form. The earliest collection of poems in China is The Book of Songs, which contains 305 poems from the early Western Zhou Dynasty to the middle of the Spring and Autumn Period (1 1 century to the 6th century), reflecting all aspects of society at that time. With the passage of time, poetry has gradually evolved into various forms and styles, including lyric poetry, narrative poetry, drama poetry and so on. , and become an important tool to express personal feelings and thoughts and record history and culture.