literature

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What is literature?• Literature is the total of preserved writings

belonging to a given language or people.• Literature is the class or the total of

writings, of a given country or period, is which notable for literary form or expression, as distinguished, on the one hand, from works merely of technical or erudite and, on the other, from journalistic or other ephemeral writings.

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• Literature consists of those writings which interpret the meanings of nature and life, in words of charm and power, touched with the personality of the author, in artistic forms of permanent interests.

• It is a product of life and about life.• It uses language as medium

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• Imaginative literature or “literature of power” includes poems, short stories, novels, and plays. It interprets human experience by presenting fictitious persons, incidents, or situations, not by actual truths about particular events.

• Non-fiction or “literature of knowledge” includes biographies and essays which presents actual facts, events, experiences and ideas.

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Why study literature?• To express one’s self• To have access culture • To recognize human dreams and struggles• To develop mature sensibility and

compassion for the condition of all creation• To appreciate beauty• To shape one’s own goals and values and

clarify one’s own identity• To develop wider perspective of events

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Main ingredients of literature

• Subject• Form• Point of view

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Literary types or genre

• Fiction• Essay• Poetry• Drama

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Presentation and structure of literature

GENRE AUDIENCE AUTHOR WORK

Drama group absent performed

Epic group present recited

Short story private concealed read

Novel private concealed read

Poetry ignored present recited (or sung)

Essay private implied read

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Literary standards

• Artistry• Intellectual value• Suggestiveness• Spiritual value• Permanence• Universality• Style

The Form of the Poem

• A poem is formed by means of verses that are arranged into a stanza or stanzas, and that are regulated in flow by meter and rhyme.

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Poetry• It is a rhythmic imaginative language

expressing the invention, thought, imagination, taste, passion, and insight of the human soul.

• According to William Wordsworth, it is “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” taking its origin from “emotion recollected in tranquility.”

• For Edgar Allan Poe, poetry is the “rhythmical creation of beauty”

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Characteristics of poetry

• Rhythm 1. Meter

2. Rhyme

3. Sound devices• Imagery

1. Figures of speech

2. Symbols• Sense or meaning

• Verse – it is a single line of a poem. It may come short or long but whatever, it serves as a basic unit of stanza

• Stanza – it is a set of verses arranged to make a part of a poem or to serve as the poem itself.

The stanza may be:

• A couplet if it has two verses

• A tercet if it has three• A quatrain if it has four• A cinquain if it has five

A poem may also be

• A sonnet which consists of fourteen lines

• A haiku which consists of three verses made up of seventeen syllables, with the first and third verses with five syllables. The pattern is 5-7-5.

Couplet

I shall haunt you, O my lost one, as the twilight

Haunts a reed-entangled trail,

“To A Lost One”

by Angela Manalang Gloria

Tercet

Who’er she be,

That not impossible she

That shall command my heart and me

“Wishes for the (Supposed) Mistress”

by Richard Crashaw

Quatrain

Gather ye rose-buds while you may

Old time is still a-flying:

And this same flower that smiles to-day,

Tomorrow will be dying

“To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time”

by Robert Herrick

Cinquain

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

“The Road Not Taken”

by Robert Frost

SonnetLet me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments, love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

O no, it is an ever fixèd mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wand'ring bark,

Whose worth's unknown although his height be taken.

Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come,

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom:

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

“Sonnet 116”

by William Shakespeare

Haiku

In the flood afloat

Form a boy’s notebook, a page

Now a paper boat

“Paper Boat”

by G. Burce Bunao

Meter

• Meter means measure. It poetry, the verses are measured in foot, a measurement that is either disyllabic or trisyllabic long. A disyllabic foot is two syllables long while a trisyllabic foot is three syllables long.

Disyllabic foot

• The iamb – is a foot composed of one unaccented syllable followed by one accented syllable.

Example: x / x / x / x /

/Thy glance/ sweet maid/ when first/ we met

Disyllabic foot

• The trochee – is a foot composed of one accented syllable followed by one unaccented syllable.

Example: / x / x / x / x

/Spin him/ round and/ send him/ flying

Disyllabic foot

• The spondee – is a foot of two accented syllables. In a verse, it comes in combination with other foot as it is rare that one verse would contain all accented syllables.

Example: / / x / x / x /

/Heighho/ the tale/ was all/ a lie

Trisyllabic foot

• The dactyl – is a foot of one accented syllable followed by two unaccented.

Example: / x x / x x

/Boldly they/ fought and well

Trisyllabic foot

• The anapest – is a foot of two unaccented syllables followed by one accented.

Example:x x / x x / x x /

/And the sound/ of a voice/ that is still

• Verse differ in one another in the number of feet they contain. If a verse has one foot, it is called a monometer line; it it has two feet, a dimeter line; if it has three feet, a trimeter line; if it has four feet, a tetrameter line; and if it has five feet, a pentameter line.

/ x x / x x

/Boldly they/ fought and well/

Being a line of two feet is a dimeter line and because each foot is a dactyl, the line is called a dactylic dimeter line

x / x / x / x /

/Thy glance/ sweet maid/ when first/ we met/

Being a line of four feet is a tetrameter line and because each foot is an iamb, the line is called a iambic tetrameter line

• Not all verses are measured as regularly as the previous examples. Instead, some verses are controlled by some verbal devices such as the end-stop or the run-on.

The end-stop

• This is the verbal device that makes every line of a poem complete in thought. Thus, causes a stop at the end of every line, which stop serves as the verse control.

The end-stop

Youth is full of pleasance,

Age is full of care;

Youth like summer morn,

Age like winter weather.

“A Madrigal”

by William Shakespeare

The run-on

• This is a verbal device that makes the reading of the verses go “running on” from one verse to another until and up to where the full thought is conveyed.

The run-on

Lances and laces my lord

I place upon your head.

“Gifts”

by Cirilo Bautista

The Rhyme

• The rhyme makes the poem musical sounding. It is the identity of sounds within a verse line or at the end of the verse lines. The identity of sound within is an internal rhyme.

Internal Rhyme

For all averred, I had killed the bird

That made the breeze to blow.

Ah wretch! said they, the bird to slay

That made the breeze to blow.

“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Rhyme

• The identity of the sound at the end of the lines is called an end rhyme and this may be single or masculine end rhyme or double or feminine end rhyme

The Rhyme

• There is a single or masculine rhyme when the last pronounced syllable of one line and the last pronounced syllable of another line are identical. And there is double or masculine rhyme when the last two pronounced syllables of one line and the last two syllables of another line are the same.

She holds no joys beyond the day’s tomorrow,

She finds no worlds beyond his arms embrace,

She looks upon the Form behind the furrow

Who is her Mind, her Motion, Time, and Space

“The Spouse”

by Luis Dato

Green – double (feminine rhyme)

Red – single (masculine rhyme)

• Alliteration – this is a rhyme device which makes a poem musical sounding by the repetition of initial consonantal sounds.

• Euphony – this is a sound quality of a poem affected by the use of soft, fluid, pleasing sounds.

Silently sifting and veiling road, roof and railing

Having difference, making unevenness even,

Into angles and crevices softly drifting and sailing

(Notice the alliterating s and r and the euphonious sound of the underlined phrases)

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Kinds of poetry• Lyric poetry

1. Simple lyric

2. Song (sacred or secular)

3. Sonneta. Italian/Petrarchan sonnet

b. English/Elizabethan/Shakespearean sonnet

c. Spenserian sonnet

4. Elegy

5. Ode

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• Narrative poetry1. Ballad (folk and literary)

2. Metrical Tale

3. Metrical Romance

4. Epic

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Characteristics of epic

a. Broad in scope and theme; its subject matter is often a mixture o legend, history, myth, religion and tradition

b. The action is grand and in a huge scale, the supernatural element is highly pronounced, the characters are larger than life (god, demi-gods, and highborn mortals)

c. The source of conflict involves elemental passions. The events centers on a prodigious struggle or effort to achieve a great purpose or carry out a great task against powerful forces.

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Characteristics of epic

d. The plot consists of numerous episodes and sub-plots people by numerous characters, each with his own adventure and story; but all these are held together by a unifying theme.

e. The plot often begins in medias res (in the middle or near the end of the action) and the story is completed by a series of flashbacks. This plot is recounted in the epic poem is often just a portion of a much larger story which is found in the mythology of the nation.

f. The style is solemn and majestic in keeping with the grandeur of the subject matter.

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• Dramatic poetry1. Dramatic monologue

2. Soliloquy

3. Character sketch

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Prose • Prose is discourse which uses sentences

usually forming paragraphs to express ideas, feelings and actions. In subject matter, prose generally concentrates on the familiar and the ordinary. Prose is mainly concerned with the ordinary, but it may deal with subjects such as heroism, beauty, love and the nobility of spirit which usually find the most eloquent expression in poetry.

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Distinction between prose and poetry

Poetry • Expresses strong

emotion or lofty thought in a compressed and intense utterance

• Its main purpose is to provide pleasure and delight

• It appeals to the emotion and imagination

Prose • Is concerned with the

presentation of an idea, concept or point of view in a more ordinary and leisurely manner

• Its purpose is to furnish information, instruction, or enlightenment

• It appeals to the intellect

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Elements of fiction

• Plot• Setting• Characterization• Style• Point of view

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Divisions of prose

• NovelBases for classification The novelist’s vision of life

a. Romantic fiction

b. Realistic fiction

c. Naturalistic fiction

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Writer’s choice of materialsa. Historical novel

b. Psychological novel

c. Social novel

Structure of the novela. Panoramic novel

b. Dramatic novel

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Point of view• Internal

1. The narrator is himself the protagonist or the most important character

2. The story is told by a minor character who is supposed to be present at the time of the important incidents

3. Composite point of view – the reader is given a comprehensive view of the different aspects of the action and the different angles from which the plot develops

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• External point of view – also called omniscient point of view

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Short story

• It is an artistic form of prose fiction which is centered on a single main incident and is intended to produce a single dominant impression.

• Economy, compression and emphasis characterize the short story.

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Non-fiction

• Essay

1. Formal

2. Informal • Oration• Biography• Autobiography, memoirs, letters and

epistles, diaries and journals

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Drama

• Tragedy

1. Serious drama

2. Tragicomedy

3. Melodrama• Comedy

1. farce

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Styles of drama

• The realistic or illusionistic or representational style

• The non-realistic or non-illusionistic or presentational style

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Sources:

• Garcia, Carolina U. et al. (1993). A study of literary types and forms. Manila: UST Publishing House.

• Sebastian, Evelyn L. and Erlinda A. Cayao. (2006). Readings in world literature. Quezon City; C & E Publishing Inc.

• Tan, Arsenia B. (2001). Introduction to literature. Fourth edition. Manila: Academic Publishing Corporation