GEC-LITERATURES OF THE WORLD

WEEK 1: INTRODUCTION TO LITERATURES OF THE WORLD

What is Literature?

Literature is artistry through the medium of language. It comes from the Latin term, “litera”, which means letter.
Because literature deals with ideas, thoughts, and emotions of man, literature can be said to be the story of man.
Man’s loves, griefs, thoughts, dreams, and aspirations coached in beautiful language is literature. It can be written or
unwritten. Literature is universal, beautiful, and timeless. Literature is universal, beautiful, and timeless. Also, literature
stimulates us intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually.

Literature is an art form using letters to imitate life or reality. The literatures of the world are literary pieces created
by the world’s greatest authors.

Why Study Literature?

• Literature improves communication skills

• Literature teaches you about yourself
• Literature teaches about the past
• Literature cultivates wisdom and a worldview
• Literature entertains

Divisions of Literature
(What are the two main divisions of Literature?)

1. PROSE- written within the common flow of conversation in sentences and paragraphs. It uses ordinary language.

Nonfiction - These are works of fact or theory.

• News – a broadcast or published report
• Essay – written composition that exposes, explains, narrates, or expresses opinions
• Journal – a daily record of what has been done at work or training
• Thesis – an academic paper that is technical and scientific to report a research or discovery
• Biography – a written report of the life of a person written by another person
• Autobiography – a written report of the life of a person written by the person himself

Fiction- This is a narrative literature that creates an imaginary reality in the form of a story written in sentences and
paragraphs with no strong rhythmic base.
• Parable – a story written to reveal spiritual, philosophical or moral truths
• Folktale – a story orally told in a region that reflects the locale’s beliefs and traditions
• Legend – a story of the origin of a person, a place, a thing, a name, and etc.
• Novel – long narratives made up of many chapters with many characters, settings, or events
 • Novelette- longer than a short story but shorter than a novel; around 50 to 100 pages
• Short Story – has a plot centered on one main theme, one setting and fewer characters
• Myth – a story that has been believed for a long time but has never been proven to be true
• Fairytale – a story with fairies and magic

2. POETRY- expressions in verse, with measure and rhyme, line and stanza, and has a more melodious tone. It uses
imagery, symbol, and figures of speech that are meant to be interpreted figuratively, not literally.

Lyrical – poetry meant to be sung, or something that expresses emotions.

• Sonnet – usually made up of 14 lines in one stanza; popularized by William Shakespeare
• Ballad – a poem meant to be sung; a lyric poem that is also a narrative poem because it tells a story
• Psalm – stanzas that are sung to praise and worship God
• Ode – a poem that expresses adoration, honor, or praise to someone or something
• Elegy – a poem that expresses sorrow or grief over someone who has died
• Folksong, Awit, Corrido – lyrical poems Philippines with certain number of lines and with association to
regional themes or stories

Narrative- describes important events in life, either real or imaginary

• Metrical Tale – a tale written in poetic form with meter
• Metrical Romance – a romantic story written in a poetic form with meter
• Epic – a long narrative poem on heroic exploits

Dramatic – *can actually be poetry or prose. This is an enactment rather than a narrative. It is meant to be acted on
stage.
• Comedy – the theme has sarcasm or humor
• Tragedy – a drama with a sad ending
• Melodrama – has a happy ending for the protagonists but a sad ending for the antagonists

Important Names in World Literature:

• Confucius – Father of Chinese literature

• Tagore- Foremost Indian aesthete
• Shakespeare – Greatest dramatic poet
• John Dryden – Father of English prose
• Samuel Richardson – Father of the English short story
• Henry Fielding – Father of the English novel
• Edgar Allan Poe- Father of the American Short Story
• John Wolfgang Von Goethe – Germany’s greatest writer
• Geoffrey Chaucer – Father of English literature/poetry
• Walt Whitman – Father of American poetry
• Emily Dickinson – Mother of American poetry
• Chinua Achebe – Father of Modern African Literature
Elements of Poetry

• Alliteration is a repetition of the same consonant sounds in a sequence of words, usually at the beginning of
a word or stressed syllable: “descending dew drops;” “luscious lemons.” Alliteration is based on the sounds of
letters, rather than the spelling of words; for example, “keen” and “car” alliterate, but “car” and “cite” do not.

• Assonance is the repetition of similar internal vowel sounds in a sentence or a line of poetry, as in “I rose and
told him of my woe.”

• Figurative language is a form of language use in which the writers and speakers mean something other than
the literal meaning of their words. Two figures of speech that are particularly important for poetry are simile
and metaphor. A simile involves a comparison between unlike things using like or as. For instance, “My love
is like a red, red rose.” A metaphor is a comparison between essentially unlike things without a word such as
like or as. For example, “My love is a red, red rose.” Synecdoche is a type of metaphor in which part of
something is used to signify the whole, as when a gossip is called a “wagging tongue.” Metonymy is a type of
metaphor in which something closely associated with a subject is substituted for it, such as saying the “silver
screen” to mean motion pictures.

• Imagery is the concrete representation of a sense impression, feeling, or idea that triggers our imaginative
ere-enactment of a sensory experience. Images may be visual (something seen), aural (something heard),
tactile (something felt), olfactory (something smelled), or gustatory (something tasted). Imagery may also refer
to a pattern of related details in a poem.

• Rhyme is the repetition of identical or similar concluding syllables in different words, most often at the ends of
lines. Rhyme is predominantly a function of sound rather than spelling; thus, words that end with the same
vowel sounds rhyme, for instance, day, prey, bouquet, weigh, and words with the same consonant ending
rhyme, for instance vain, rein, lane. The rhyme scheme of a poem, describes the pattern of end rhymes.
Rhyme schemes are mapped out by noting patterns of rhyme with small letters: the first rhyme sound is
designated a, the second becomes b, the third c, and so on.

• Rhythm is the term used to refer to the recurrence of stressed and unstressed sounds in poetry. Poets rely
heavily on rhythm to express meaning and convey feeling. Caesura is a strong pause within a line of poetry
that contributes to the rhythm of the line. When a line has a pause at its end, it is called an end-stopped line.
Such pauses reflect normal speech patterns and are often marked by punctuation. A line that ends without a
pause and continues into the next line for its meaning is called a run-on line or enjambment.

• Stanza is a grouping of lines, set off by a space, which usually has a set pattern of meter and rhyme.

• Tone conveys the speaker’s implied attitude toward the poem’s subject. Tone is an abstraction we make from
the details of a poem’s language: the use of meter and rhyme (or lack of them); the inclusion of certain kinds
of details and exclusion of other kinds; particular choices of words and sentence pattern, or imagery and
figurative language (diction). Another important element of tone is the order of words in sentences, phrases,
or clauses (syntax)
Elements of Fiction

• Plot refers to the significant order in which the action is presented, or the arrangement of events that make up
a story. It is the structure or arrangement of materials in a story that gives it meaningful continuity. Plot answers
the questions, “What happened?” and “How did it happen?” in local color writing often very little happens: local
stories instead incorporate storytelling and revolve around the community and rituals.

a. introduction/exposition,
b. rising action,
c. conflict (- the struggle between two opposing forces around which the action of a work of
literature revolves)
d. climax (the most exciting or thrilling part),
e. falling action, and
f. resolution/denouement

• Setting refers to the time and place of the story, or the “spatial” and “temporal” environment. It answers the
question, “When and where did the story happen?” in local color writing, the setting can be so integral to the
story that it sometimes becomes a character in itself. Setting involves the landscape, dialect customs, and
folklore specific to a geographic region or locale;

• Characters – people, animals, machines, etcetera in the story.

Protagonist- “good guy”; antagonist – “bad guy”

• Theme is often called the central message of the story. It is the author’s statement of purpose, philosophy, or
an attitude towards life. It may be presented explicitly or implicitly. Thematically, many regional and local color
stories share an aversion to change and a weakness for sentimentality or nostalgia for the anachronistic beliefs
and practices of a past golden age.

• Point-of-View person through whose eyes a reader sees what happens in a story; in other words, the voice
through which a writer tells the story.
First – Person POV – “I”
Second – Person POV- “You”
Third- person / Omniscient (all-knowing) POV
Third person limited – thoughts of only one person

WORKS CITED:

Meheongal Littell. The Language of Literature. 2011.

Pugh, Tison and Johnson, Margaret E. Eds. Literary Studies: A Practical Guide. Routledge, 2013.
Zunshine,Lisa. Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel. Ohio State University Press, 2006. Youtube video:
Literary Genres and Subgenres (Fiction, Nonfiction, Drama, and Poetry) - Video and Worksheet by English Units:
http://www.englishunits.com/genres/ Elements of Poetry (lexiconic.net) Five Reasons to Study Literature - AOP Homeschooling