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

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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.
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. Rhym
e
3. Sound
devic
es
• Imager
y
1. Figur
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es of
• 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
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
Sonnet
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 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
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)
Kinds of poetry
• Lyric poetry
1. Simple lyric
2. Song (sacred or secular)
3. Sonnet
a. Italian/Petrarchan sonnet
b. English/Elizabethan/Shakespearean sonnet
c. Spenserian sonnet
4. Elegy
5. Ode
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• Narrative poetry
1. 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 poetry
1. 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 Prose
• Expresses strong emotion • Is concerned with the
or lofty thought in a presentation of an idea,
compressed and intense concept or point of view
utterance in a more ordinary and
• Its main purpose is to leisurely manner
provide pleasure and • Its purpose is to furnish
delight information, instruction, or
• It appeals to the emotion enlightenment
and imagination • 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
• Novel
Bases 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 materials
a. Historical novel
b. Psychological novel
c. Social novel
 Structure of the novel
a. 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

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