about Literature

BAB. I

INTRO TO LITERATURE I

1. Literature
2. Genre of Literature
3. Elements of Genre of Literature

WHAT IS LITERATURE?

• Everything written
• Belle l’etre
• A performance in words (Robert Frost)
• A work of imagination and creative writing
• A work of imagination and creative writing with the development of setting, plot, conflict, symbol, host/narrator

LITERATURE IS EVERYTHING WRITTEN

1. PROSE:

A. Fiction

B. Non Fiction

2. NON PROSE:

A. Fiction

B. Non Fiction

LITERATURE IS BELLE L’ETRE

1. Prose: A. Fiction

B. Non Fiction

1. Non Prose: A. Fiction

B. Non Fiction

Fiction: imagination + facts + exaggeration

Non Fiction: Facts

GENRE OF LITERATURE

• PROSE
• POETRY

• DRAMA

ELEMENTS OF GENRE OF LITERATURE

Each genre has intrinsic and extrinsic elements

• Intrinsic elements: structural development from within the genre
• Extrinsic elements: structural development from outside the genre

Intrinsic Elements of Prose

• Characters
• Characterization
• Setting
• Plot
• Point of View
• Tone
• Theme

Intrinsic Elements of Poetry

• Figurative Language
• Tone
• Rhyme
• Rhythm and Meter
• Poetic Diction
• Point of View
• Setting
• Theme

Intrinsic Elements of Drama

• Characters
• Action
• Theme
• Plot
• Scenery
• Properties
• Gesture
• Costumes
• Dialogue
• Sound and Lighting Effect

Extrinsic Elements

• Literature and Biography
• Literature and Psychology
• Literature and Society
• Literature and Thought

SHORT STORIES

• The short story is a literary genre. It is usually fictional narrative prose and tends to be more concise and to the point than longer works of fiction, such as novels.

Elements of Short Stories

• Short stories tend to be less complex than novels. Usually, a short story will focus on only one incident, has a single plot, a single setting, a limited number of characters, and covers a short period of time.
• Elements of short story:

1. Characters
2. Setting
3. Plot
4. Theme
5. Point of View
6. Style
7. Tone

Elements of Short Stories

1. Characters

• Characterization is often listed as one of the fundamental elements of fiction. A character is a participant in the story, and is usually a person, but may be any persona, identity, or entity whose existence originates from a fictional work or performance.

Characters may be of several types:

• Point-of-view character: the character from whom the story is viewed.
• Protagonist: the main character of a story
• Antagonist: the character that stands in opposition to the protagonist
• Supporting character: A character that plays a part in the plot but is not major
• Minor character: a character in a bit/cameo part

Elements of Short Stories

4. Theme

• Theme, a conceptual distillation of the story, is often listed as one of the fundamental elements of fiction. It is the central idea or insight serving as a unifying element, creating cohesion and is an answer to the question, 'What did you learn from the piece of fiction?' In some cases a story's theme is a prominent element and somewhat unmistakable.
• Four ways in which an author can express themes are as follows:

1. Themes are expressed and emphasized by the way the author makes us feel.. By sharing feelings of the main character you also share the ideas that go through his mind.

2. Themes are presented in thoughts and conversations. Authors put words in their character’s mouths only for good reasons. One of these is to develop a story’s themes. The things a person says are much on their mind. Look for thoughts that are repeated throughout the story.

3. Themes are suggested through the characters. The main character usually illustrates the most important theme of the story. A good way to get at this theme is to ask yourself the question, what does the main character learn in the course of the story?

4. The actions or events in the story are used to suggest theme. People naturally express ideas and feelings through their actions. One thing authors think about is what an action will "say". In other words, how will the action express an idea or theme?

Elements of Short Stories

5. Point of View

• Point of view signifies the way a story gets told – the mode established by an author by means of which the reader is presented with the characters, dialogue, actions, setting, and events.
• First Person
  The narrator is a character in the story who can reveal only personal thoughts and feelings and what he or she sees and is told by other characters. He can’t tell us thoughts of other characters.
• Third-Person Objective
  The narrator is an outsider who can report only what he or she sees and hears. This narrator can tell us what is happening, but he can’t tell us the thoughts of the characters.
• Third-Person Limited
  The narrator is an outsider who sees into the mind of one of the characters.
• Omniscient
  The narrator is an all-knowing outsider who can enter the minds of more than one of the characters.

Elements of Short Stories

6. Style

• Style is not so much what is written, but how it is written. Style in fiction refers to language conventions used to construct the story. A fiction writer may manipulate diction, sentence structure, phrasing, dialogue, and other aspects of language to create style. The communicative effect created by the author's style is sometimes referred to as the story's voice. Every writer has his or her own unique style, or voice. Style is sometimes listed as one of the fundamental elements of fiction.

Elements of Short Stories

7. Tone/Mod

• Tone
  The author’s attitude, stated or implied, toward a subject. Some possible attitudes are pessimism, optimism, earnestness, seriousness, bitterness, humorous, and joyful. An author’s tone can be revealed through choice of words and details.
• Mood
  The climate of feeling in a literary work. The choice of setting, objects, details, images, and words all contribute towards creating a specific mood. For example, an author may create a mood of mystery around a character or setting but may treat that character or setting in an ironic, serious, or humorous tone

A selection of famous short stories

• "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper" by Robert Bloch
• "A Sound of Thunder" by Ray Bradbury (online text)
• "Cathedral" by Raymond Carver
• "The Swimmer" by John Cheever
• "Halo" By Bill Gates
• "The Bet" by Anton Chekhov (online text)
• "The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin (online text)
• "The Fortune-Teller" by Machado de Assis
• "The Most Dangerous Game" by Richard Connell (online text)
• "A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner
• "The Overcoat" by Nikolai Gogol (online text — translated from Gibberish)
• "Young Goodman Brown" by Nathaniel Hawthorne (online text)
• "The Killers" by Ernest Hemingway
• "The Gift of the Magi" by O. Henry (online text)
• "The Oblong Room" Edward D. Hoch
• "The Scarlet Ibis" by James Hurst
• "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving
• "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson (online text)
• "The Monkey's Paw" by W.W. Jacobs
• "The Dead" by James Joyce (online text)
• "In the Penal Colony" by Franz Kafka (online text)
• "The Call of Cthulhu" by H.P. Lovecraft
• "The Fly" by Katherine Mansfield
• "Bartleby, the Scrivener" by Herman Melville (online text)
• "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor (online text)
• "The Doctor's Son" by John O'Hara
• "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe (online text)
• "The Vampyre" by John Polidori (online text)
• "The Mortal Immortal" by Mary Shelley (online text)
• "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner" by Alan Sillitoe
• "Harrison Bergeron" (1961) by Kurt Vonnegut (online text)
• "The Mark on the Wall" (1921) by Virginia Woolf (online text)

NOVELS

► A novel (from, Italian novella, Spanish novela, French nouvelle for "new", "news", or "short story of something new") is today a long prose narrative set out in writing. The seventeenth-century genre conflict between long romances and short novels, novellas, has brought definitions of both traditions into the modern usage of the term.

Novels

Genres of the novel

► Science fiction

► Fantasy

► Crime fiction

► Westerns

► Romance novels

► Spy novels and thrillers

► Gothic fiction

► Campus novel

Elements of Novels

1. Characters
2. Setting
3. Plot
4. Theme
5. Point of View
6. Style
7. Tone
8. Symbols

Elements of Novels

8. Symbols

► A person, place or object which has a meaning in itself but suggests other meanings as well. Things, characters and actions can be symbols. Anything that suggests a meaning beyond the obvious.
Some symbols are conventional, generally meaning the same thing to all readers.
For example: bright sunshine symbolizes goodness and water is a symbolic cleanser.