What is Literature ????

Literature is referred to as the entirety of written expression with the restriction that not every written document can be categorized as literature The definitions, therefore, usually include additional adjectives such as “aesthetic” or “artistic” to distinguish literary work from texts of everyday use such as telephone books, newspapers, legal documents and scholarly writings. (Klaer, 1998, 1)

Literary Genre

1.   Narrative Fiction

A narrative is an account of series of events, usually fictional, although sometimes fictional events may be tied to events that are genuinely historical

Example of narrative fiction:

◦      The most common: Short story and novel

◦       Myths, parable, romances, and epic

1.2 Division of Fiction

•  Fabel : The story about animal and human being, have moral lesson.

•  Legend: The story related to the existence of certain place

• Folktale: traditional related to supernatural events or person. Ex. Aladin

• Fairly tale: Untrue story. Ex. Snow White

•  Epic : Heroism

1.3 Modern Fiction

• Novel: relatively long (more than 100 pages)

•   Short Story: Relatively short, several pages

1.3.1 Sub genre of Novel:

• Epistolary novel : novel in the form of letter ex. Richardson’s Pamela and Clarissa

• Picaresque novel: relates the experience of vagrant rouge in his conflict with the social norms of the society. Structured as an episodic narrative, the picaresque novel tries to lay bare social injustice in a satirical way.

• Bildungsroman: embodied presuppositions about when and how people mature and in turn encourage its reader to see that process of maturation in the terms the novel itself has established.

•   Historical Novel: tell about story with certain historical background

•   New Journalism : the genre of the novel based on real events

•   Satirical Novel :Criticize something (social, politic) ex. Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver travel

•   Gothic Novel: Tell about a strange story related to the beliefs of the Goths. Ex. Dracula

•   Detective Novel: Tell about crime and investigation with the purpose of finding criminal. Ex. Murder in Orient Express (Agatha Christy)

2.   Poetry

Poetry is compress and highly emotional form of expression. Poetry might be defined as a kind of language that says more and says it more intensely than does ordinary language.

2.1 Elements in poetry

1.   Imagery

The word image perhaps most often suggests a mental picture, something seen in the mind’s eye. Visual image is the kind of imagery that occurs most frequently in poetry. An image may also represent a sound (auditory imagery), smell (olfactory imagery), a taste (gustatory imagery), touch such as hardness, softness, wetness, or heat or cold (tactile imagery), an intra sensation, such as hunger, thirst, fatigue (organic imagery), or movement or tension in muscle or joints (kinesthetic imagery)

2.   Figurative Language

Figure of speech is any way of saying something other than the ordinary way. More narrowly, it is defined as a way of saying one thing and meaning another.

—  Metaphor and Simile are both used as a means of comparing things that are essentially unlike.  Example  for simile: As smooth as silk, as fast as the wind. Quick like a lightning bolt. Metaphor is an implicit comparison without like or as: You're such an airhead. It's bursting with flavor.

—  Synecdoche is the use of the part for the whole. Ex. Let me give you a hand.

—  Hyperbole :Exaggerating statement. Ex. In order to get my assignment done, I'll have to burn the midnight oil.

—  Personification : Giving something a human quality. Ex. The sun smiled down on me...The leaves danced in the wind.

—  Onomatopoeia: A word imitating a real sound (e.g. tick-tock or boom)

—  allusion: An indirect reference to another work of literature or art

3.   Symbol and allegory

A symbol defined as something that means more than what it is.

a.    Ex. Red means brave

b.    American bald eagle is often thought of as the symbol of the United States,

Allegory is considered as an extended metaphor. It is an indirect or passing reference to some event, person, place, or artistic work, the nature and relevance of which is not explained by the writer but relies on the reader's familiarity with what is thus mentioned. The technique of allusion is an economical means of calling upon the history or the literary tradition that author and reader are assumed to share

4.   Meter

In the Western poetic tradition, meters are customarily grouped according to a characteristic metrical foot and the number of feet per line. The most important feet :

·         Iambus

·         Anapest

·         Trochee

·         Dactyl

3.    Drama

Drama or play is designed to be performed on a stage by live actors. It consists of dialog together with the direction of action. Drama does not rely on narration, however, presents you with speech and action.

3.1       Type of Drama

• Aristotle divided all drama into tragedy and comedy.
• Tragedy recounts the fall of an individual; its begins in prosperity and ends in adversity.
• Comedy describes the regeneration or reformation of a group of a society; it begins with the adversity and resolves in prosperity

3.2       Other form of drama

·         Farce : it is a form of comedy crammed full of humorous actions and dialogue; shift in action are usually very rapid. Ex. Chekhov’s the Bear

·         Melodrama: it is a debased of tragedy with happy ending. The adversities in melodrama all grow out of plot rather than character. Ex. The mortgage is due, the family business is falling. The hero always arrives just in time to pay the mortgage, save business and rescue the heroine.

·         Social drama: it sometimes called problem plays, evolved in the nineteenth century and dominated the stage through the early part of the twentieth century. It explore social problems and individual’s place in society. Ex. Susan Glaspell’s Trifles, Miller’s Death of Salesman.

·         Full-length plays are drama that usually contain either three to five separate act. Ex. Hamlet or long story of discreet scene, ex. The glass Menagerie

·         One act play are rarely subdivided

4.   Non-Fiction

Nonfiction Prose → Essay and articles in a short form and longer non-fictional and non-dramatic works. The essay or article is a form designed primarily to express idea, interpretation and description. The topic is wide range; they may be social, political, artistic, scientific and other subject. In an essay an author focuses on one topic.