1、按载体分为：口头文学、书面文学、网络文学三大类；
2、按作者所在的时代分为：古代文学，近代文学，现代文学和当代文学。他们的范围都是随着读者而不断迁移的；
3、按产生地域分为：欧美文学，中国文学，日本文学，拉美文学等。
4、按读者分为：
a、按受众身份/年龄有儿童文学，成人文学等；
b、按读者群体及内容分为严肃文学和通俗文学或大众文学、民间文学、少数民族文学、宗教文学等。
5、按内容分为：史传文学、纪实文学、奇幻文学、报道文学等。
6、按表达体裁分为：小说、散文、诗歌、报告文学、戏剧、歌剧、剧本、民间传说、寓言、笔记小说、野史、童话、对联和笑话等；其他如史传、哲理、赋、骈文、小品文、文学批评、有文字剧情架构的电脑游戏(含游戏主机)等

文学的相关知识

For the difference between realism and romanticism.
Check the Webpage : ~hammarberg/russ251/romreal.html

It's very well laid out.

For Classicism and Romanticism

Toward the end of the eiteenth-century, Romanticism emerged as a response to Classicism. Even though this change was gradual, it transformed everything from art and philosophy to education and science. While the Classicsts thought of the world as having a rigid and stern structure, the romanticists thought of the world as a place to express their ideas and believes. The Romaniticists and Classicsts differed in their views of the relationship between an individual and society, their views of nature and the relationship between reason and imagination.

Classicists and Romanticists differed in their views of nature. Classicism was based on the idea that nature and human nature could be understood by reason and thought. Classicist believed that nature was, a self-contained machine, like a watch, whose laws of operation could be rationally understood. On the other hand, Romanticists viewed nature as mysterious and ever changing. As William Cullen Bryant states that nature ?;speaks a various language. Romantic writes believed that nature is an ever changing living organism, whose laws we will never fully understand.

Classicist and Romanticists also differed on their approches towards reason and imagination. Classicism attached much more importance to reason than imagination because imagination could not be explained by their laws. To them, the imagination, though essential to literature, had to be restrained by reason and common sense. The Romanticists, however, emphasized that reason was not the only path to truth. ?;Instead, Romantic writers emphasized intuition, that inner perception of truth which is independent of reason. To the Romantic writers, imagination was ultimately superior to reason.

Yet another area of difference between Classicits and Romanticsts whether they placed greater importance on tradition or whether they chose to innovate. Classicists thought that it was literature's function to show the everyday values of humanity and the laws of human existence. Their idea was that classicism upheld tradition, often to the point of resisting change, because tradition seemed a reliable testing ground for those laws. As for the Romantics, they wrote about how man has no boundaries and endless possibilities. Who, Emerson asked, can set bounds to the possibilities of man? Opposing classicits' importance being put on human limitation, the Romantics stressed the human potential for social progress and spiritual growth.

For Modernism and Postmordenism

Modernism
Modernism is an intellectual and artistic movement that developed in conjunction with, and eventually in opposition to, fully developed modernity. Modernist artists and intellectuals were disgusted with the banality and dehumanized quality of life in industrial capitalism. They responded to this degradation of the quality of life by retreating into a nostalgia for pre-capitalist organic social order (F. R. Leavis, T. S. Eliot), by embracing fascist leaders and ideologies (Ezra Pound's support of Mussolini, Gertrude Stein's support of Marshal Petain, etc.) by seeking refuge in radical and sometimes anti-social individualism (Hemingway, J. D. Salinger, etc.) or agrarian populism (Faulkner, John Crowe Ransom and the agrarian fugitives, of the 1930's, etc.). High modernist art often features fragmentation and disruption at the level of form (e.g. James Joyce), though it generally attempts to recuperate a sense of order and faith in universal values at the level of content or overall effect. In this way the modernists attempted to shore up (invoking Eliot's phrase from The Waste Land) the grand narratives, the absolute truths and values, of the western tradition.

Postmodernism
Whereas the high modernists experimented with abstract representation and formal fragmentation as a way of resisting the degradation of social life in industrial capitalism, postmodernists have embraced this condition, ostensibly rejecting the grand narratives and values for parodies of the classics and exalting popular or low culture at the expense of traditional high culture. Postmodern art, then, is characterized by highly self-conscious uses of strategies like parody and pastiche to undermine a sense of order, timeless values, universal truths, and grand narratives. In doing so it emphasizes surfaces at the expense of substance and depth...insisting that appearance or representation are, effectively, all there is to what the modernists would have called reality, and that there are in fact many plural realities rather than a universal one. For a more detailed introduction to this concept, follow this link to a lecture on postmodernism by Mary Klages, of the University of Colorado.