Republic of the Philippines

DR. EMILIO B. ESPINOSA, SR. MEMORIAL STATE COLLEGE

OF AGRICULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY
(Masbate State College)
www.debesmscat.edu.ph
Mandaon, Masbate
COLLEGE OF EDUCATION

GE 6 – ARTS APPRECIATION
MODULE 4

APPRECIATING THE ART OF LITERATURE

I. Module Overview

This module serves as a guide in appreciating literature as a work of art.

II. Desired Learning Outcomes

At the end of this topic, the students should be able to:
 Discuss the difference of literature form other forms of writing
 Identify the different types and forms of literature
 Develop one’s skills in literary writing
III. Take-Off/Motivation

IV. Content Focus

Literature comes from the Latin word litaritura/litteratura which means “writing formed with
letters”.
Generally, everything that is put into writing is considered literature. Novel on science are written
works. Both belonged to literature. But there is something that makes literature different from others.
Novel is made through the long waves of time. It does not come by accident. The words in the novel
are arranged cleverly with the author’s sweat and blood so as to produce something we call today
as art and it is the artistic side of the novel that separates it from the book of science.
Novel, short story, poem, and essay are printed matters with an artistic element. They are
made of art, which means that there is something in them that humanity must see. When a writer
pulls out his/her pen and picks up an empty piece of paper, there is something in his/her heart and
mind that he/she wants humanity to understand.
Our task as audience of art particularly literature is to find out the purpose of the writer in
writing the story, poem, essay or novel.
Standards of Good Literature

 Artistry: the quality appeals to our sense of beauty

 Intellectual value: the quality of a work that stimulates thought and enriches our
perspectives
 Universality: the quality of a work that makes it timeless and timely at the same time.
Always relevant to its themes and conditions
 Permanence: the quality of a work that makes it enduring. It can be read again and again
without it being stagnant
 Spiritual value: good literature brings and enriches one's morals
 Suggestiveness: the quality of a work associated with the emotional power it has

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Two Main Divisions of Literature

PROSE POETRY

Form Written in paragraph form Written in stanza or verse form

Expressed in metrical, rhythmical and

Language Expressed in ordinary form
figurative language

Appeal To the intellect To the emotion

To convince, instruct, imitate Stir the imagination and set an idea of

Aim
and reflect how life should be

Prose

1. Prose drama - a drama in prose form.  It consists entirely of dialogues in prose, and is
meant to be acted on stage.

2. Essay - a short literary composition which is expository in nature. The author shares some
of his thoughts, feelings, experiences or observations on some aspects of life that has
interested him.

3. Prose fiction
 Novel - a long fictitious narrative with a complicated plot.  It may have a main plot and
one or more subplots that develop with the main plot.  Characters and actions
representative of the real life of past or present times are portrayed in a plot.  It is made
up of chapters.
 Short story - a fictitious narrative compressed into one unit of time, place, and action.  It
deals with a single character interest, a single emotion or series of emotions called forth
by a single situation.  It is distinguished from the novel by its compression.

Poetry (7 Most Common Types)

1. Haiku – shorts poems with three-line stanzas with a 5/7/5 syllable count. This form of poetry
focuses on the beauty and simplicity found in nature. As its popularity grew, the 5/7/5
formula is often broken.

"Sick on a Journey" by Matsuo "5 & 7 & 5" by Anselm Hollo

Basho
night train whistles stars
Sick on a journey - over a nation under
Over parched field mad temporal czars
Dreams wander on
round lumps of cells grow
up to love porridge later
“The Old Pond” by Matsuo Basho become The Supremes

An old silent pond lady I lost my

A frog jumps into the pond – subway token we must part
Splash! Silence again it's faster by air

2. Free Verse - there are no rules and writers can do whatever they choose: to rhyme or not, to
establish any rhythm. Free verse is often used in contemporary poetry.

“This is Marriage" by Marianne Moore

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 This institution, perhaps one should say enterprise out of respect for which one says one
need not change one's mind about a thing one has believed in, requiring public promises of
one's intention to fulfil a private obligation: I wonder what Adam and Eve think of it by this
time, this fire-gilt steel alive with goldenness;

"Little Father" by Li-Young Lee

I buried my father in my heart.
Now he grows in me, my strange son,
My little root who won't drink milk,
Little pale foot sunk in unheard-of night,
Little clock spring newly wet
In the fire,little grape, parent to the future
Wine, a son the fruit of his own son,
Little father I ransom with my life.

3. Epic - a long and narrative poem that normally tells a story about a hero or an adventure.

"The Song of Hiawatha" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

By the shore of Gitchie Gumee,

By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
At the doorway of his wigwam,
In the pleasant Summer morning,
Hiawatha stood and waited.

"Canto I" by Ezra Pound

And then went down to the ship,

Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea, and
We set up mast and sail on that swart ship,
Bore sheep aboard her, and our bodies also
Heavy with weeping, so winds from sternward
Bore us out onward with bellying canvas,
Circe's this craft, the trim-coifed goddess.
Then sat we amidships, wind jamming the tiller,
Thus with stretched sail, we went over sea till day's end.
Sun to his slumber, shadows o'er all the ocean,
Came we then to the bounds of deepest water,
To the Kimmerian lands, and peopled cities
Covered with close-webbed mist, unpierced ever
With glitter of sun-rays
Nor with stars stretched, nor looking back from heaven
Swartest night stretched over wretched men there.
The ocean flowing backward, came we then to the place
Aforesaid by Circe.

4. Ballad - like epic poems, ballad poems also tell a story. However, ballad poetry is often
based on a legend or a folk tale. These poems may take the form of songs, or they may
contain a moral or a lesson. 

“Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe (first two stanzas)

It was many and many a year ago,

In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,

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 In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
I and my Annabel Lee—
With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven
Coveted her and me.
"The Ballad of Reading Gaol" by Oscar Wilde
He did not wear his scarlet coat,
For blood and wine are red,
And blood and wine were on his hands
When they found him with the dead,
The poor dead woman whom he loved,
And murdered in her bed.

He walked amongst the Trial Men

In a suit of shabby grey;
A cricket cap was on his head,
And his step seemed light and gay;
But I never saw a man who looked
So wistfully at the day.

I never saw a man who looked

With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky,
And at every drifting cloud that went
With sails of silver by.
5. Acrostic - also known as name poems, spell out names or words with the first letter in each
line. While the author is doing this, they're describing someone or something they deem
important.

"A Cry for Help" by 12-year-old Samar Alkhudairi

Brutal beatings beyond the feeling of pain

Understanding this hurt might get me closer to being sane
Love is a myth
Life has become like a work of Stephen King
You don't know what it's like
I am treated like just some "thing"
Never to be kissed, comforted, or loved
Going the rest of my life never to be hugged

"Alexis" by Nicholas Gordon

Alexis seems quite shy and somewhat frail,

Leaning, like a tree averse to light,
Evasively away from her delight.
X-rays, though, reveal a sylvan sprite,
Intense as a bright bird behind her veil,
Singing to the moon throughout the night

6. Cinquains - a five-line poem inspired by the Japanese haiku. There are many different
variations of cinquain including American cinquains, didactic cinquains, reverse cinquains,
butterfly cinquains and crown cinquains.

"To Helen" by Edgar Allan Poe "The World" by George Herbert

Helen, thy beauty is to me Love built a stately house, where Fortune came,
Like those Nicean barks of yore, And spinning fancies, she was heard to say
That gently, o'er a perfumed That her fine cobwebs did support the frame,
sea, Whereas they were supported by the same;
But Wisdom quickly swept them all away
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 The weary, way-worn wanderer bore
To his own native shore

7. Sonnet - practically synonymous with Shakespeare, but there are actually two different
kinds of this famous poetic form.
 Petrarchan - named for its famous practitioner, the poet Petrarch
 2 stanzas (14 lines)
 Presents an argument, observation, or question in the first 8 lines
 Turn (or “volta”) between 8th and 9th lines
 Second stanza answers the question or issue posed in the first
 Rhyme Scheme: ABBA, ABBA, CDECDE

The New Colossus' by Emma Lazarus

'Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
'Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!' cries she
With silent lips. 'Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!'

 Shakespearean - also known as the English sonnet

 3 quatrains (4 lines each) and a couplet (2 lines)
 Couplet usually forms a conclusion
 Rhyme scheme: ABAB, CDCD, EFEF, GG

"Sonnet 116" by William Shakespeare

Let 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-fixed 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 prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.
VIII. References

 Art Appreciation: Introduction to the Humanities by Claudio V. Tabotabo et. al., c2010
 Barron, K. (2021). 12 Types of Poems: How to Recognize Them and Write Your Own.
Retrieved from TCK Publishing: https://www.tckpublishing.com/types-of-poems/’
 https://www.mustangbols.com/art

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Compiled and Edited by:

JAY KENNETH B. CERNAL

COS Instructor/DEBESMSCAT

6|GE 6 – Arts Appreciation