Literary works are divided on the basic methods of image into three kinds: epic, drama and lyricism. Epos – art reproduction is external to the writer of the world, deployed in space and time. A crucial role in an epic kind of literature is narrative, ie, story of the events, which is 'part'. In the epic life is portrayed with the utmost fullness, in the intersection of the fate of various characters. Historical and other important social events are revealed through the characters, heroes. An important property of the epic is the distance between the time of the depicted action and the time of the narrative. As a rule, in the epic describes what has already happened.

The main genres are the epic fable, poem, ballad, story, story, novel, epic. Fable – one of the oldest forms of epic poetry. She is known among the peoples of ancient Greece, India, Egypt. On behalf of the poet-fabulist Aesop, whose works under the guise of animals in allegorical form mocked people with their flaws and shortcomings, there was the concept of 'Aesopian' (ie, figurative, allegorical language). Fable consists of a small acute episode and moralizing. Fables allegory based on the known features of animals: the fox cunning, stupid ass coward hare, the strength of a lion, cunning wolf.

In Russia, the fable is developing in the XVIII – early XIX at. in the work of I. Hemnitsera, P. Sumarokov, I. Dmitriev, but it reaches a particular height in the works of Ivan Krylov.