INTRODUCTION TO LITERARY STUDIES
EXAMINATION TOPICS
Functions of literature.
. an entertaining function,
2. an informative function,
3. an aesthetic function, and last but not least,
4 an intellectual function.
5Literature is a common cultural heritage of mankind. It also integrates, preserves, and improves a
national language.
-An entertaining function of literature consists in giving us pleasure. What is it that makes literature pleasant? A variety of features can make a literary work delightful. It depends on the reader and his or her taste. A book of adventures will be pleasant reading for many young and adult readers. Others will read thrillers and police novels for pleasure and enjoyment. A few, however, will find this type of reading unworthy of notice. They will rather read literature to expand the knowledge of the past, present or future world. They seek information in literature. A certain percentage of readers achieve aesthetic and/or intellectual experience in literature. They read literature because it offers them a unique delight or satisfaction or some sort of truth which they are looking for.
2.Intertextuality.
In the late 1960s Kristeva introduced the notion of intertextuality which has become an important contribution to literary theory. Intertextuality refers to the relationships between different works of literature. A literary text is treated as a dialogue with other texts.
3.Literary language and the language of literature.
-Literary or standard language is a historical category and it is a variety of the national language.
Literary (standard) language has a number of functional styles:
1) the style of imaginative literature
2) the style of science and scholarship
3) the style of official documents
4) the style of technical and commercial information.
5) the style of advertising and propaganda
-The language of literature (fiction) is a complex category. It may include literary (standard) language as well as many varieties of language: dialects, slang, etc. The language of literature may be didactic, philosophical, lyrical (poetic) and satirical. Language may be employed in fiction as a tool for retrospection and for the creation of specific imagery. Among the various functions of language, we should mention at least two: 1) communicative function and 2) phatic function.
Communicative function means that language is used for communication, i.e. For the exchange of information, feelings and thoughts. The phatic function of language is used in order to establish social contact and to express sociability rather than specific meaning. An example of the phatic function of language is a baby's babbling or the so-called small talk of adults, i.e. a conversation about everything and nothing in particular.
4 Content and form in a literary text.
Content is what a literary work says; what it is about. Form is the way in which it says it, how it is written. Content is thus the substance of a literary work which includes its theme, motif, subject matter and message. Form denotes the structure or the manner of construction of a literary work; it denotes the genre to which a literary work belongs, e.g. sonnet, ode, novel, short story, etc.
5 The theme of a literary work, spatial and temporal setting.
-Theme is the unifying and universal idea explored in a literary work. It may reappear in other literary works, e.g. tragic love, loneliness, death, etc. It may be explicit (directly stated) or implicit (indirectly stated, implied). Sometimes theme may be confused with motif. Theme is the subject of discourse. It usually contains some insight into the human condition. In a literary work of considerable length, the central theme is often accompanied by a number of lesser, related themes.
-(a) spatial setting which refers to place and (b) temporal setting which refers to time. For example, the spatial and temporal setting of E. A. Poe's poem “The Raven” is a gloomy room on a December night. Setting of can also be used as a symbol.
6 Plot, minor plot, major plot, plot structure (climactic, episodic structure), physical plot, psychological plot.
-The major plot refers to the main action whereas the minor plot develops parallel to the major one but it has secondary importance for the play. We may also distinguish between a physical plot and a psychological plot. The latter is an invisible chain of “mental” events or thoughts occurring in the mind of the protagonist. For example, the psychological plot in Hamlet concerns the thoughts of Prince Hamlet. Frequently, the physical and psychological plots are interwoven in a play.
Plot structure. There are several types of dramatic structure. The main two structures are called the climactic structure and the episodic structure.
Climactic structure. Its plot begins quite late in the story and there are a limited number of characters and scenes. The events have usually a cause-and-effect-structure.
Episodic structure involves a plot which covers an extended span of time, numerous locations, a large number of characters, diverse events (including comic and serious episodes) and parallel plots or subplots.
7 The high and low style in traditional literary theory.
The high or grand style was devoted to dignified themes in epic and lyric poetry as well as tragedy, and the low style was characteristic of comedy and satire. The difference between the high and low style is mainly in the use of language. The high style uses words and expressions rarely found in ordinary speech whereas the low style imitates colloquial speech with its characteristic coarseness.
8 Satire.
Satire (from Latin satura - a medley) is a form of writing whose main aim is to expose human follies and vices, ridicule and scorn people, institutions or events and customs. Satire may be an independent literary form or it may appear in other forms of literature, both in verse and prose. Direct satire openly ridicules its object whereas indirect satire, often found in poetry and prose, has to be deduced by the reader.
Some of stylistic techniques used in satire:
Invective (A lengthy invective is sometimes called a diatribe.);Caricature;Reductio ad absurdum; (A literary work may contain references to other works or real life through allusion, pun, parody and travesty.)
9 Alliteration and onomatopoeia.
Onomatopoeia is a combination of speech-sounds which aims at imitating some natural sounds, e.g. hiss, splash, buzz, cuckoo, mew, bow-wow, bang, roar, murmur, etc. However, many words are merely thought to be onomatopoeic although they are not clearly imitative of the thing they denote, e.g. horror, terror, thriller. Alliteration is a phonetic stylistic device which consists in the repetition of similar consonant sounds in close succession. It is used to create melody, establish mood, call attention to important words, and point out similarities and contrasts, e.g. `west wind'; `Love's Labour's Lost'; `Sense and Sensibility'; `Pride and Prejudice';
10 Simile and metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche.
Simile is a comparison between two things of unlike nature that have something in common. It is recognisable by the use of the word “like” or “as”. Similes frequently appear in verse and prose as well as in ordinary speech, e.g. “He fell like a stone”. “She looked like a doll”. Similes are also used in colloquial phrases, e.g. sly as a fox, busy as a bee, to work like a horse, stubborn as a mule, etc.
A metaphor compares two unlike objects having something in common. In Greek, this word meant “transfer” because it transfers meaning from one word to another. The metaphor can convey experience which would otherwise be hard to name. Thus instead of saying X we say Y having in mind X. For example, when Shakespeare says “the eye of heaven”, he means the sun. The metaphor may deal with a person, object, process, or situation. It allows expression of an individual outlook. Metaphors may be genuine or trite (dead). Genuine metaphors can be usually found in good poetry, e.g. “The leaves fell sorrowfully”.Trite metaphors, on the other hand, are to be found in popular literature, newspapers, and scientific prose.
Metonymy is the association of one object with another, e.g. “crown” may mean kingdom; bottle means wine; “I've drunk a cup” (i.e. a cup of tea). Synecdoche is a trope similar to metonymy in which part is used to signify the whole, e.g. a farm hand means a farm labourer; sail means ship.
11 The characteristic features of epic and lyric poetry.
Narrative (epic) poetry deals with gods, demigods and legendary heroes. The narrative poem is based on what has happened (history) or what men think has happened (legend or myth). Narrative poetry is simple in construction and its metre is uniform. It includes epic, ballad (folk and literary ballads), saga and romance.
An epic poem is a long narrative in high (elevated) style recounting the deeds of a legendary or historical hero. The epic tells an adventurous story which has no explicit moral message and no comment on the actions described. The action of an epic poem has a grand scale. Lyric poetry is the most extensive category of poetic expression. It is usually concerned with the manifestation of personal moods, feelings or meditations. Lyric poems deal with many existential problems, e.g. love, death, loneliness, etc. The
characteristic features of a lyric poem are its unified structure, melodius tone and spontaneously expressed subjective emotions. Lyric poetry can also be subdivided into: religious, love, patriotic and philosophical lyric.
12 Ballad, ode, sonnet, pastoral poetry.
-Ballad One of the oldest forms of poetry is a special kind of narrative poem known as the ballad. These anonymous stories in songs were concerned with sharp conflicts and deep human emotion. The first ballads were sung by minstrels who travelled from town to town to entertain people. The language of the early ballads was quite simple because they were composed, as a rule, by uneducated people. Ballads differ from ordinary narrative poems in these ways:
1. They usually involve common, everyday people (although there are ballads about nobles, too).
2. They ordinarily deal with physical courage and/or tragic love.
3. They contain little characterisation or description; the action moves forward mainly through dialogue. Much of the story is told indirectly.
4. They deal with a single dramatic event, e.g. sudden death.
-Pastoral poetry celebrates idealised rural life and love between shepherds and shepherdesses.
-The sonnet is one of the most popular forms of English poetry. Its most frequent theme is love, although some sonnets may focus on life, religion and even politics. T here are two main forms of the sonnet in English poetry: the Petrarchan, or Italian sonnet, and the English, or Shakespearean sonnet.
Ode is a lengthy, song-like poem with an elaborate stanzaic structure and elevated style. The ode often praises people, music and poetry, natural scenes, or abstract concepts.
13 Iambic pentametre.
-Iambic pentametre: one of the most common metrical forms in English poetry, consisting of lines with five feet in which the iamb (unstressed and stressed syllable) is the dominant foot.
14 Rhythm and rhyme. Internal rhyme, assonance.
-Rhythm is a flow of speech characterised by regular recurrence of certain phonetic elements such as beat or accent. It is based on the opposition of stressed and unstressed syllables. Rhythm may be regular or varied.
-Rhyme is the repetition of identical or similar syllable sounds. There are three kinds of rhymes: single or masculine rhymes between words ending in stressed syllable: day/say, awake/forsake; double or feminine rhymes between words in which the first syllable is stressed and the last is unstressed, e.g. daily/gaily; triple rhymes between words in which the first syllable is stressed and the last two are unstressed, e.g. tenderly/slenderly. Rhymes can be full or complete, e.g. deep/sleep or incomplete, e.g. flesh/fresh. Rhymes are arranged within a stanza. We may distinguish between end-of-line rhymes and internal rhymes.
-Internal rhymes occur inside a verse. For example: “Once upon a midnight dreary while I pondered weak and weary...”
-Assonance, also known as vocalic rhyme is a similarity of sounds, especially
vowels, between words or syllables, e.g. born/warm.
15 Blank verse and free verse.
Blank verse, also called heroic verse, in unrhymed iambic pentametre, is one of the most common metrical patterns in English poetry. Poems written in blank verse are divided into `verse paragraphs' of varying lengths.
Free verse is a typical form of modern poetry. It usually has no regular stanza and metric pattern. The poem is written in free verse in a form of an interior monologue (the stream of consciousness technique),
16 Types of irony.
We can distinguish the following types of irony:
1. verbal irony,
2. irony of situation,
3. cosmic irony or irony of fate,
4. dramatic irony,
5. Socratic irony.
In verbal irony the author usually expresses an attitude opposite to what he feels. The irony of situation is based on the difference between the actual course of events presented in a literary work and the reader's expectations. In cosmic irony or the irony of fate, misfortune is the result of fate or chance. In dramatic irony the audience knows more than the characters in the play. For example, in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, the audience knows that Juliet is not dead, whereas Romeo does not. Socratic irony, named after Socrates' teaching method, assumes ignorance and openness to opposing points of view which turn out to be foolish. Irony is often confused with sarcasm and satire.
17 Classical literary genres and some new literary genres.
-epic, lyric, comedy, tragedy, satire, tragicomedy,
-melodrama, fantasy, science-fiction, detective, spy, roamance,
18 Monologue, dialogue, soliloquy, aside (in a drama).
Dialogue is what characters say to each other. Dialogue is essential in a drama because it (1) advances the plot, (2) reveals characters, their moods, relationships to each other, (3) foreshadows events, etc. Dialogue is often rich in subtext. Sometimes a character makes a comment, known as an aside, which other characters are not supposed to hear. A monologue is when a character speaks alone. A special kind of monologue in a traditional drama is soliloquy when a character steps to the side of the stage to think aloud.
19 The origins of drama. The medieval dramatic genres.
It seems that drama developed from ritual, first in Greece and then in its revived form in the Middle Ages. The first works of dramatic literature date back to the 6th century BC. The origins of ancient Greek drama can be found in:
1. folk celebrations,
2. myths,
3. seasonal festivals with appropriate symbolic actions.
However, we cannot find continuity between the origins of European drama in the Middle Ages and the drama of ancient Greece and Rome. In the Middle Ages, drama emerged from liturgy. Dramatic performances in vernacular were usually staged inside or outside churches, especially during the Easter season. Dramatic performances, known as miracles, mysteries and moralities, showed the lives of the saints, stories from the Bible, or moral allegories in order to teach or reinforce Church doctrine. Medieval comic drama included interludes and farces
Masque was a kind of court theatrical entertainment popular in England in the late 16th and 17th centuries. It dramatised a mythological episode with allusions to an honoured person, e.g. a king, queen or noble man, including songs, dances and startling stage effects. Heroic drama was specific to the Restoration period. It was written in blank verse and presented exaggerated characters and situations. The style of heroic drama was
bombastic.
Comedy of humours focuses on one or more characters, each of whom has one dominant trait or `humour' that characterises their personality and conduct. Pastoral comedy presents idyllic images of country living.
Romantic comedy is a loose term which refers to comic plays about a love story that ends happily
`revenge' tragedy/domestic tragedy,
20 The main elements of a dramatic play.
We can distinguish the following elements of drama: story, plot, characters, dialogue, monologue and soliloquy, theme and motifs, conflict, setting and staging.
21 Explain the difference between the climactic and episodic structure of a dramatic play.
Climactic structure (as in climax). Its plot begins quite late in the story and there are a limited number of characters and scenes. The events have usually a cause-and-effect-structure. (___/\_ form)
Episodic structure involves a plot which covers an extended span of time, numerous locations, a large number of characters, diverse events (including comic and serious episodes) and parallel plots or subplots. (--- ===--__-- form)
22 Features of tragedy. Tragic vision.
Human will and human action come in conflict with a higher power. This conflict and the final overthrow of the individual make up a tragic drama Tragedy has a solemn theme and plot. In general, tragedy involves the fall (death) of the leading characters. Tragedy is designed to create sympathy or empathy for this character. Tragic vision is based on the following interrelated elements:
1. The conclusion is catastrophic and inevitable.
2. The protagonist's fall is caused by some uncontrollable forces (fate, fortune or
chance).
3. The protagonist's fall reveals his or her powerlessness and limitations.
4. Tragedy reveals not only man's liability to suffering but also to greatness and
nobility.
5. Suffering is an enduring and often inexplicable force in human life. The protagonist's suffering often seems disproportionate to his or her culpability.
6. Suffering is often but not always redemptive, bringing out the capacity for accepting
moral responsibility.
7. Man is responsible for his actions.
23 Features of comedy, farce, tragicomedy, modern tragicomedy (theatre of absurd).
Comedy is a literary work that takes a cheerful view of life. It usually begins in adversity and ends in prosperity and happiness. Comedy is based on comic characters or comic situations or on both and it usually
has a happy endingComedy often reveals the absurdity of man's ideas of himself and the world. It often emphasises wit, intelligence and sympathy. Comic plays often lack plausibility; they are usually based on coincidences, improbable disguises, mistaken identities, etc. The purpose of comedy is to make the
audience laugh and - at the same time - to reveal human nature and human weaknesses.
Farce is a type of comedy that relies entirely on highly improbable actions and situations which involve ridiculous complications without regard for human values.
Tragicomedy is a blending of tragic and comic elements. Unlike comedy, tragicomedy reveals deep emotions and deals with the problems of human suffering, mortality and death. Unlike tragedy, tragicomedy rejects the inevitability of catastrophe, the need for heroism and sacrifice, and the role of destiny.
Modern tragicomedy. In the 20th century, many theorists do not make a sharp distinction between the comic and the tragic. Modern tragicomedy and the Theatre of the Absurd have blurred the traditional distinction between the two dramatic genres.
24 Flashback, foreshadowing.
Foreshadowing is the technique of giving the reader a hint of what is to come sometime later in the story, while flashback is an interruption in the action of a story to show an episode that happened at an earlier time. A flashback provides background information necessary to an understanding of the characters or the plot.
25 Physical & psychological plot.
We may also distinguish between a physical plot and a psychological plot. The latter is an invisible chain of “mental” events or thoughts occurring in the mind of the protagonist. For example, the psychological plot in Hamlet concerns the thoughts of Prince Hamlet. Frequently, the physical and psychological plots are interwoven in a play.
26 Protagonist and antagonist (in tragedy).
Protagonist: The main character of the story.
Antagonist: a character who opposes the main hero or protagonist.
27 Symbol and symbolism.
Symbolism may be understood as representation of reality by symbols or a system of symbols or symbolic meaning in a literary text.
It is not easy to define a symbol. Poetry makes an extensive use of symbols, but they can also be found in drama and prose fiction. A symbol may be an object or image that stands for something else. Many symbols are deeply rooted in cultural heritage, e.g. the cross is the symbol of Christianity; birds may mean flight, freedom; rose means beauty, delicacy, fragility, shortness of life; rain may signify fertility; night may symbolise death or evil. Some symbols are created by authors and it is difficult to understand their meaning and significance unless we have studied critical analyses.
28 Catharsis, comic relief (in tragedy), tragic relief (in comedy), dramatic irony, deux ex machina.
-Tragedy arouses in us both pity and fear. This feeling is called catharsis, i.e. purgation.
-Comic relief: comic dialogue or scenes that provide distraction or offer relief from the serious events of a tragedy.
-Tragic relief: a tragic or near-tragic episode in a comedy.
-Dramatic irony: dramatic irony occurs when the audience knows something that a character has not realised.
-Deus ex machina: a Latin phrase meaning `god from the machine', referring to the practice in ancient theatre of lowering a deity onto the stage to resolve a crisis in the plot. The phrase is now applied to any improbable event, chance or coincidence used by a dramatist to rescue characters from an impossible situation.
29 Novel, types of novels, short story, fable, tale, fairy tale.
The novel is an extended fictional narrative in prose. The novel, much more than any other literary genre, can give a sense of the uniqueness and mysteriousness of the human personality. It is a record of the consciousness of a writer who attempts in an anthropomorphic way (i.e. with man as the centre of interest) to imitate and recreate reality. The novel combines the characteristics of other forms of writing, such as travel accounts, memoirs, histories, letters, religious, political, and philosophical essays. Some critics claim that the novel is not an independent work of art but it combines features of other literary genres.
***Adventure novel; Autobiographical novel, or semi-autobiographical novel; Campus novel; Christian novel; Detective novel; Dystopian novel; Epistolary novel, or novel of letters; Ethnic or multicultural novel; Fantasy novel; Gothic novel; Historical novel; Nouveau roman; Novel of apprenticeship (Bildungsroman); Novel of manners; Panoramic novel; Pastoral novel; Picaresque novel; Roman a clef;Realist novel; Romance novel; Romantic novel; Sentimental novel; Social novel; Utopian novel.
Fables (from Latin `fabula' - `telling') are short allegorical stories about animals and objects which have human and mysterious qualities. They contain a distinct moral message, e.g. they illustrate the consequences of human weaknesses or foils, such as greed, envy, laziness, etc. Fables usually have two levels of meaning. On the surface level, the fable tells about animals, but on the hidden level, these animals stand for types of people or ideas.
Fairy tales are traditional stories with elements of fantasy. They are usually set in a fantasy land and present stock characters such as `a princess', `a cruel stepmother', `the greedy king', a `good' or `bad' giant, as well as supernatural objects, such as the magic tablecloth, golden eggetc. Fairy tales frequently present a
violent conflict with the use of magic.
The term short story usually refers to short fiction written since the mid 19th century. A short story differs from the novel by the fact that it is much shorter in length. This limitation in length also imposes differences in the organisation of the narrative and selection of elements of fiction. A short story introduces a limited number of characters. As a rule, it has one central character and very few others. Exposition and the details of setting are minimised. Frequently, a short story is limited to a single episode and the denouement is
sometimes described in a few sentences. There is a distinct climax in a short story.
Tale The habit of telling stories is characteristic of both primitive and civilised societies. At the outset, tales were passed from generation to generation in an oral form and subsequently, with the development of writing they were written down.
30 Rhetorical question.
Rhetorical question: a question which is not intended to obtain information but for emphasis
31 Conceit, oxymoron.
Conceit (an old word for concept) is a kind of complex metaphor which draws a parallel between two very distant concepts.
Oxymoron is a combination of two words whose meanings are opposite, e.g. awfully nice, sweet sorrows, darkness visible, little big man.
32 Verisimilitude.
Verisimilitude: the appearance of being true or real; plausibility.
33 Mock epic poetry.
The mock epic is a type of epic poetry which satirises some contemporary issues, e.g. “The Rape of the Lock” (1712-14) by Alexander Pope. The story of the poem is as follows: Belinda wakes up from unpleasant sleep, gets dressed, goes out in public, plays cards, has a lock of her hair cut and gets upset.
34 Dramatic monologue.
Dramatic monologue, developed by Robert Browning is a type of lyric poetry in which a speaker addresses not the reader but a silent (hypothetical) listener.
35 Characters; flat (static) and round (dynamic characters).
Characters or Dramatis Personae may usually be classified as protagonists and antagonists. We can also distinguish between active (dynamic) and static (passive) characters. The latter are usually stock characters. Characters in a tragedy are as a rule more complex than in a comedy. The visible elements of a dramatic character include physical features, clothing, movements and gestures.
Characters are invented persons in a work of fiction. Flat characters may also be called stock characters or types. The flat or stock character reveals one simple idea or quality. Round characters - complex characters
36 Dialogue, monologue and soliloquy (in drama)
See q.18
37Hamartia, hubris, peripeteia, three unities (in a drama).
The protagonist becomes tragic due to what the Greeks called hamartia, i.e. the `tragic flaw' or `tragic error
in judgement'. One of the forms of hamartia is hubris, i.e. pride or overconfidence which leads a man to overlook a divine warning or to break a moral law. Peripeteia (Greek for reversal): reversal of fortune for the protagonist, from failure to success or from success to failure.
Unities. In the Poetics, Aristotle said that a tragedy should have a single action, take place within a short time, and be confined to one location (one day, one major action and one setting).
38 Narration, narrator (omniscient, non-omniscient).
Narration or narrative, is the process of relating a sequence of events. Narration is distinguished from other kinds of writing, i.e. dialogue, description, commentary which may be included in the narrative telling of some true or fictitious events.
The omniscient narrator knows everything about the characters, including their thoughts and feelings. When a narrator allows the reader to make his or her own judgments about characters or the events, it is called neutral omniscience. When the narrator has omniscient knowledge about one or two characters, but not all, we call it limited omniscience.
Narration may be limited and told from the point of view of one character in either third person or in first person; The first-person narrator appears as “I” in the story, and he knows only the facts he has seen or heard of. He is involved either as a witness or as participant in the events of the story.
39Frame narrative (or frame story).
It is a story which is contained within another story. Frame is thus a narrative structure that provides a setting and exposition for the main narrative. The purpose of such narration is to give the reader a freedom of
opinion.
40Stream-of-consciousness or interior monologue.
Stream-of-consciousness or interior monologue is a narrative technique characteristic of the modern novel. The term, stream of consciousness was created by the American psychologist William James in Principles of Psychology (1890). With reference to the novel, it denotes the flow of thoughts and feelings which pass through a character's mind.