That's a genre. Genre boundaries always shift and are always a bit fuzzy. Most great works could be put in more than one genre.
I'd say literary fiction is a genre that focuses on the craft of writing, usually through either poetic prose or deep character study. There are bonus points if the topic or style is challenging, so you get tropes that lead in this direction: deep studies of complicated often problematic characters (Lolita), deep studies of society (Pride and Prejudice), unusual plot structures (Cloud Atlas), experimental prose style (Ulysses), etc. These are literary tropes because they're challenging to write -- in terms of the craft of writing itself. The most literary of literary fiction is "writer's writing" in the sense that some experimental jazz is "musician's music."
And of course you can have deliberate genre crossovers. Literary sci-fi has been popular lately, like Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go or the already mentioned Cloud Atlas.
I'd say literary fiction is a genre that focuses on the craft of writing, usually through either poetic prose or deep character study. There are bonus points if the topic or style is challenging, so you get tropes that lead in this direction: deep studies of complicated often problematic characters (Lolita), deep studies of society (Pride and Prejudice), unusual plot structures (Cloud Atlas), experimental prose style (Ulysses), etc. These are literary tropes because they're challenging to write -- in terms of the craft of writing itself. The most literary of literary fiction is "writer's writing" in the sense that some experimental jazz is "musician's music."
And of course you can have deliberate genre crossovers. Literary sci-fi has been popular lately, like Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go or the already mentioned Cloud Atlas.