21 Century

st

Literature from
Philippines and the
World
WHAT IS LITERATURE?
• Literature comes from the French phrase
“belles-letters” which means beautiful writing.
• Literature in its broadest sense is everything
that has ever written.
• Literature is our life’s story including its
struggles, ideals, failures, sacrifice, and
happiness. (Ang, 2006)
• Literature illuminates life.
 Two Main Divisions of Literature
  PROSE POETRY
FORM Written in paragraph Written in stanza or
form verse form
LANGU Expressed in ordinary Expressed in metrical,
AGE form rhythmical and
figurative language
APPEAL To the intellect To the emotion
AIM To convince, instruct, Stir the imagination
imitate, and reflect and set an idea of how
life should be.
A form of language that has no formal metrical
structure. Prose is the most typical form of language.
The English word 'prose' is derived from the Latin
prōsa, which literally translates as 'straight-forward.'

PROSE
 FICTION
and
NON-FICTION
It is a series of imagined facts which shows
truths about human life.

FICTION
 KINDS OF FICTION
• Short Story – brief, artistic form of prose which
centered on a major or main incident.
• Novel – a more extensive form of prose which is
elastic and can expand to hundreds of pages.
• Drama- comes from the Greek word “dran”
which means to do or to act. Drama is meant to
be performed.
These are literary works that are based
mainly on facts rather than on the
imagination.

NON-FICTION
 KINDS OF NON-FICTION
• Essay – a composition with moderate length, usually
expository in nature.
• Biography-. written in the third person about someone other
than the author.
• Autobiographies and memoirs are written by the subject
themselves. While autobiographies and memoirs are, by
necessity, written by someone who is currently alive at the
time of the writing, biographies may profile subjects both
living and dead.
(from the Latin poeta, a poet) is a form of literary art in which
language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to,
or in lieu of, its apparent meaning.

Poetry is the art of creating poems where as poem is a piece of writing

that has features of both speech and song. Poetry is also used to refer to
poems collectively or as a genre of literature.

POETRY
NARRATIVE POETRY
LYRIC POETRY
DRAMATIC POETRY
It is a poem that tells/narrates a story.

NARRATIVE POETRY
KINDS OF NARRATIVE POETRY
a. Ballad – short simple narrative poem composed to be
sung and is orally told from one generation to another
b. Metrical Romance – a long rambling love story in
verse which is centered on the adventures of knights and
lords, and their royal ladies during the age of chivalry.
c. Epic – a long, majestic narrative poem which tells the
adventures of a traditional hero and the development of a
nation.
It is a poem expresses the author’s own thoughts,
feelings, moods, and reflections in musical language. In
earlier days, it was meant to be sung to the
accompaniment of a musical instrument known as lyre.

LYRIC POETRY
 KINDS OF LYRIC POETRY
a. Simple Lyric – embraces a wide variety of poems and is
characterized by subjectivity, imagination, melody and emotion.
b. Song – short lyric poem which has a specific melodious
quality and is intended to be sung
c. Sonnet – a poem expressing of 14 lines with a formal rhyme
d. Elegy – a poem expressing lament or grief for the dead.
e. Ode – most splendid type of lyric poetry that expresses a
noble feeling with dignity.
It has the elements that are closely related to drama
because it is written in dramatic form or makes use of a
dramatic technique.

DRAMATIC POETRY
 KINDS OF LYRIC POETRY
a. Dramatic Monologue – a combination of drama and poetry
which presents the speech of a character in a particular situation at a
critical moment.
b. Soliloquy – passage spoken by the speaker in a poem of a by the
character in a play except that there is no one present to hear him
except the audience or the reader.
c. Character Sketch – poem which the writer is concerned less with
complete or implied matters of a story, but rather with arousing
sympathy or antagonism for, or some interest in an individual
FOUR LITERARY
GENRES
SHORT STORY
POETRY
DRAMA
ESSAY
 SHORT STORY
A short story is a fictional narrative in prose that
can be read in one sitting. It is also an imaginative
re-creation and re-construction of life and presents
human life on two levels – the world of objectivity
and the world of subjectivity.
 SHORT STORY
a. Characters
b.Setting
c. Conflict
d.Plot
e. Point of view
g. Symbolism
 CHARACTER
• Characterization deals with how the characters in the story are
described. In short stories there are usually fewer characters compared
to a novel. They usually focus on one central character or protagonist.
Ask yourself the following:
• Who is the main character?
• Who or what is the antagonist?
• Are the main character and other characters described through
dialogue – by the way they speak (dialect or slang for instance)?
• Has the author described the characters by physical appearance,
thoughts and feelings, and interaction (the way they act towards
others)?
 CHARACTER
• Are they static characters who do not change?
• Are they dynamic characters who change?
• What type of characters are they? What qualities
stand out? Are they stereotypes?
• Are the characters believable?
• Do the characters symbolize something?
 SETTING
• Setting is a description of where and when the story takes
place. In a short story there are fewer settings compared to a
novel. The time is more limited. Ask yourself the following
questions:
• How is the setting created? Consider geography, weather, time
of day, social conditions, etc.
• What role does setting play in the story? Is it an important part
of the plot or theme? Or is it just a backdrop against which the
action takes place?
• Does the setting change? If so, how?
 SETTING
• Study the time period, which is also part of the
setting, and ask yourself the following:
• When was the story written?
• Does it take place in the present, the past, or the
future?
• How does the time period affect the language,
atmosphere or social circumstances of the short
story?
 CONFLICT
• Conflict or tension is usually the heart of the short
story and is related to the main character. In a short
story there is usually one main struggle.
• How would you describe the main conflict?
• Is it an internal conflict within the character?
• Is it an external conflict caused by the surroundings
or environment the main character finds
himself/herself in?
 CONFLICT
• Man Vs. Man
• Mas. Vs. Nature
• Man. Vs. Himself
• Man Vs. Technology
• Man Vs. Society
• Man Vs. Supernatural
PLOT
 POINT OF VIEW
• Point of view is the perspective from which a
narrative is told. It indicates who is telling the story
and how the information is being filtered to the
audience:
• First person employs the I or we pronouns
• Second person is told through the pronoun, you
• Third Person uses he, she, and they
 SYMBOLISM
• Symbolism is the use of symbols to signify ideas and qualities,
by giving them symbolic meanings that are different from their
literal sense.
• Symbolism can take different forms. Generally, it is an object
representing another, to give an entirely different meaning that
is much deeper and more significant. Sometimes, however, an
action, an event or a word spoken by someone may have a
symbolic value. For instance, “smile” is a symbol of friendship.
Similarly, the action of someone smiling at you may stand as a
symbol of the feeling of affection which that person has for you.
 SYMBOLISM
• Symbols do shift their meanings depending on the
context they are used in. “A chain,” for example,
may stand for “union” as well as “imprisonment”.
Thus, symbolic meaning of an object or an action is
understood by when, where, and how it is used. It
also depends on who reads the work.
 SYMBOLISM
in our daily life, we can easily identify objects that can be taken
as examples of symbolism, such as the following:

• The dove is a symbol of peace.

• A red rose, or the color red, stands for love or romance.
• Black is a symbol that represents evil or death.
• A ladder may stand as a symbol for a connection between
heaven and earth.
• A broken mirror may symbolize separation.
 POETRY
Oldest form of literature.
 DRAMA
The drama comes from the Greek word “dran”
which means to do or to act. Drama is meant to
be performed.
DRAMA
 FORMAT OF 5 ACT STRUCTURE
• Act 1: The Exposition
Here, the audience learns the setting (Time/Place), characters are
developed, and a conflict is introduced.
• Act 2: Rising Action
The action of this act leads the audience to the climax. It is
common for complications to arise, or for the protagonist to
encounter obstacle
• Act 3: The Climax
This is the turning point of the play. The climax is characterized by
the highest amount of suspense.
 FORMAT OF 5 ACT STRUCTURE
• Act 4: Falling Action
The opposite of Rising Action, in the Falling Action the
story is coming to an end, and any unknown details or
plot twists are revealed and wrapped up.
• Act 5: Denouement or Resolution
This is the final outcome of the drama. Here the
authors tone about his or her subject matter is
revealed, and sometimes a moral or lesson is learned.
 ESSAY
ESSAY has a cognate ASSAY which means to test or
to evaluate. The essay received its name from the title
of Michel de Montague’s first collection of short
prose writings-ESSAIS or attempts-and from its
beginning, it was considered an “attempt” to
communicate.
 ASYCHRONOUS
Read and analyze the meaning of this quotation:

"When you write in prose, you cook the rice. When you write poetry, you
turn rice into rice wine. Cooked rice doesn't change its shape, but rice
wine changes both in quality and shape. Cooked rice makes one full so one
can live out one's life span . . . wine, on the other hand, makes one
drunk, makes the sad happy, and the happy sad. Its effect is sublimely
beyond explanation." - Wu Qiao