Literary Theory and Metaphors Quiz

Module 1: Literature

• Literary studies investigate the central role of storytelling and imagination in life and society.
• They expand language competencies, allowing understanding of diverse perspectives and cultures.

What is Literature?

• Literature traditionally encompasses written texts but also includes oral and audiovisual forms.

What does Literary Study Encompass?

• Literary study involves criticism and theory, analyzing texts for literary merit.
• History is also critical for contextualizing literary works and trends over time.

Literary Criticism

• Literary criticism focuses on analyzing texts, how they work and create meaning.
• It interprets how texts represent various ideas and qualities.
• Hermeneutics plays a key part in literary criticism by interpreting meaning in context.
• Key aspects of literary criticism involves understanding texts in relation to historical, social, and cultural forces.

Literary History

• It meticulously documents the development and changes in literature over time.
• Concepts of periods and transitions trace the influence of authors and works.
• Interactions with wider cultural contexts are studied.

Genre

• Genre identifies a type of literature.
• Prose, poetry, and drama are major genres, encompassing many subgenres (e.g., novels, short stories, poems, plays).
• Genres are defined by conventions and codes, influencing writing and interpretation.

Literature as Representation

• Literary texts are studied as representations of people, events, and concepts in specific times and places.
• Key is to understand the culturally produced aspect of these texts.
• Not to directly consider that they are the real equivalent of historical reality.

Prose Narrative

• Stories shape interpretation and understanding.
• Stories have a form, as discourse, of events.
• Storytelling can include different roles.
• Narrative communication offers significant insight into social dynamics among individuals.

Narrator and Narratee

• Communication between narrators and narrattes must be taken in account when analyzing texts.
• Key components of analysis include the who, how, and why.
• The perspective and positioning of the narrator also play a key role.

Focalization

• Focalization denotes point of view characterization.
• Internal focalization conveys character's thoughts.
• External focalization reports characters' behavior and actions.
• Zero focalization is a lack of any restriction on perspective.

Narrative Representation of Characters

• Direct insight into a character and their thoughts is different from Indirect narration.
• Narrative reports of thought, or indirect thought, provide a different perspective.
• Free direct thought reveals a character's mental processes.

Story and Discourse Time

• Story time refers to time of events occurring in a narrative.
• Discourse time is the time taken or the actual time required to read or hear the story.
• Various devices like Ellipsis, Summary, or Scene are used when analyzing story time and discourse time.

Characterization

• Characters are defined by traits, appearance, activities (internal and external).
• Characterization can be analyzed in relationship to social contexts, perspectives, etc.
• Types of characters such as round, flat, static, etc., have different importance within the text structure.

Action

• Minimal action has a three state structure (situation, action's potential, success/failure).
• Action ending in a text is relevant to closure (character achieving goals, conflict resolution) or open ending (missing closure, unfinished/ambiguous plots).
• Suspense is a tool in the narrative structure when analyzing how the reader's expectations are manipulated by the author.

Poetry

• Poetry has distinct forms (rhyme schemes, meter, stanza forms).
• Figurative language (e.g., metaphors, simile, etc) plays an integral part in the study of poetry.
• Different poetic forms provide diversity in how authors convey various sentiments or experiences.

Drama

• Drama is text intended for performance.
• Study involves analysis of the primary (dialogue), and secondary text (stage directions, characters, etc.).
• Theatrical communication examines how the performance is presented (actors, space/locale, time).
• Internal/external communication components of drama are analyzed.

Specific Dramatic Subgenres

• Tragedy: Elevated characters, fate & necessity, transgression, poetic justice, catharsis, etc...
• Comedy: Ordinary characters, chance, reconciliation, happy ending , etc.
• Significant is how dramatic performance differs from other performance art forms/genres.