Understanding Literary Texts

Literature

• Acquiring the habit of reading and surrounding oneself with books constructs a moral refuge, protecting from life's miseries.

Characteristics of Literary Texts

• Literature aims to create beauty through language, expressing culture and national heritage.
• A writer uses words to reflect social influences and aspects of life through characters.
• Literature serves as the most authentic expression of a people through literary works produced in specific locations and times.
• Literature is an ordered series of thoughts conveyed through language with a purpose.
• Literature entails a set of norms for readers to comprehend a literary work's structure and content.
• Literature can be particular (belonging to a specific era), national (from a specific nation), or universal (encompassing all of humanity).
• The most common forms of literary writing are narrative, dramaturgy, and lyrical, each having unique characteristics.

Narrative

• Narrative involves telling or relating a story that includes epic, short story, legend, and novel forms.
• These forms are narrations based on their content.
• In narrative, events are interconnected, with each form having distinct characteristics.

Epic

• Takes subjects from the past, with heroic themes.

Novel

• A narrative with freedom of expression which describes events with details and numerous characters.
• As complete narratives, novels demonstrate human behaviors, attitudes, and relationships, presenting a macrocosm.
• Since the 19th century, the novel has evolved into multiple subgenres like historical, sentimental, psychological, realistic, fantastic, and adventure novels.
• Novels share a similar structure to short stories.

Short Story

• A generally short narrative dealing with a single issue, creating a single atmosphere with a limited number of characters.
• Short stories have an introduction, development, and resolution.
• Understanding is aided by addressing questions about the story's protagonists, setting, timing, events, and causes.
• Stories present obstacles for the main character: inconveniences, dangers, conflicts, and suspense.
• Short stories are classified by length: conventional (2,000-30,000 words), short (1,000-2,000 words), very short (200-1,000 words), and ultra-short (1-200 words).

Legend

• Legends relate events known through popular tradition, occurring in the past and passed down through generations, usually originating from real happenings.

Dramaturgy

• Dramaturgy consists of literary creations for stage representation, primarily tragedy and comedy.

Lyrical

• Lyrical is a literary form focusing on feelings, expressed in poetry.

What is a Literary Genre?

• A literary genre is a thematic grouping of literary works sharing common traits in structure, theme, and language.
• Aristotle studied literary genres, focusing on the theme.
• New literary proposals emerged over time, leading to new genre classifications, particularly in the 18th century with Romanticism.
• Recognizable structure with writers choosing unique forms, with storytellers using prose and poets using verse.
• Thematic differences: a horror story differs greatly in theme from science fiction by Isaac Asimov.
• Linguistic adaptation to the theme, with a varying language based on the era, setting, and environment in which a work was created.
• Literature is traditionally classified into epic, lyrical, and dramatic genres.

Epic Genre

• Epic, derived from the Greek "epos" (narration), is objective in style, narrating external events unrelated to spiritual themes.
• Epic works set characters and situations in the past, with the argument being the most important, guiding thread.
• The use of epithets is a characteristic feature, which are adjectives used for aesthetic purposes.
• They express qualities of the noun and are placed before or after the name.
• Epithets served as mnemonic devices and completed the verse's meter, also providing information about character origins, family, or abilities.

Epic Forms

• Epics in verse include Homer's "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey", and Valmiki's "The Ramayana", which evoke heroic figures who change history through their actions.
• The epic poem includes Virgil's "The Aeneid" and Alonso de Ercilla's "La Araucana" which honor patriotic, religious, or moral values and have extensive content.
• "Cantares de gesta" includes "El Cantar del Mio Cid" and "The Song of Roland", written in the medieval period, narrating actions of famous characters like Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, intended to be sung.
• "Romances" include "The Romance of King Rodrigo or the Loss of Spain", centered on reconquering Spain, with novelistic or lyrical themes, written in the 14th century.

Epic In Prose

• The short story has been cultivated since the 11th century, with Boccaccio as a major exponent where short, ingenious stories can be fantastic or based in reality.
• The novel has multiplied its subgenres since the 19th century as the most prolific genre.

Greek Epopee

• Greece lies in southeastern Europe, on the southern Balkan Peninsula, composed of continental and island regions in the Aegean Sea.
• The region was originally inhabited since the Paleolithic era by stone carvers and bronze workers, forming the civilization of the Aegean.
• The Aegean civilization reached a high cultural level from the 3rd millennium B.C.
• Crete (Minoan) and Helladic (Mycenaean) civilizations were two significant centers in Aegean civilization.
• The Minoan culture declined around 1500 B.C., and Mycenae became the dominant civilization.
• Successive waves from the Danube region invaded the area, speaking an Indo-European language and assimilating the Mycenaean culture, competing for regional hegemony.
• These people, identifying as "Hellenes" after Heleno, linked to heroes of character that are semidivine.
• The term "Greek" was applied by foreigners to the Hellenic peoples, derived from "Graecia".

Greek Epic Poetry

• Greek epic Poetry relays events of national relevance, expressing a people's character or ideals during critical times.
• The central figure is the hero, a superhuman character, often noble, brave, and of semidivine origin, focused solely on one individual, maintaining unity.
• In the epic other non-human characters like deities and fantastic creatures are involved.
• Descriptions of battles and body combats are frequent in the epic.
• The narration style is solemn and majestic.
• The epic is an extensive narrative, generally divided into cantos.
• In ancient Greece, "Rapsodas" were traveling singers of poems featuring mythical battles of gods and men.
• Homer, a possible rhapsode, structured and composed "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey."

Lirical Genre

• Lyrical is subjective in expressing moods, sentiments, and experiences through words.
• Derived from the Greek "lyre," referring to the tradition of accompanying poetry with music in ancient Greece.
• Poets find themes in human emotions, with love, sadness, hatred, joy, and life as common subjects.
• Lyrical form requires attention to the manner of writing, embellishing the language, incorporating poetic figures.
• Poetic language uses words with diverse meanings, deduced from the context.
• Traditionally there are 3 genres: epic poetry, dramatic poetry, and lyrical poetry.

Epic Poetry

• The poet narrates events external to themselves, offering an interpretation or commentary.

Dramatic Poetry

• The poet presents events through characters that bring a theatrical work to life
• García Lorca frequently uses dialogues.

Lyrical Poetry

• The poet speaks of themselves, evoking affections and disappointments.
• The art of poetry involves perceiving and expressing the beautiful through language using poetic rules.
• A poetic text is structured with verses and stanzas.

Elements Of Verse

• Elements of a verse are meter, rhyme, and rhythm.

Meter

• Meter is the measure of each verse which has a limited number of syllables.
• According to the number of poetic syllables, verses are divided into minor and major art.
• Minor art verses have 2 to 8 syllables, and major art verses have 9 to 16 syllables.

Verses syllables

• Bisílabos has 2 syllables
• Trisílabos has 3 syllables
• Cuatrisílabos has 4 syllables
• Pentasílabos has 5 syllables
• Hexasílabos has 6 syllables
• Heptasílabos has 7 syllables
• Octosílabos has 8 syllables.
• Eneasílabos has 9 syllables
• Decasílabos has 10 syllables
• Endecasílabos has 11 syllables
• Dodecasílabos has 12 syllables
• Tredecasílabos has 13 syllables
• Tetradecasílabos has 14 syllables
• Pentadecasílabos has 15 syllables
• Hexadecasílabos has 16 syllables.
• To know the type of verse, count the number of poetic syllables.
• Dividing a verse into poetic syllables is similar to grammatical division.
• Poetry uses certain resources to maintain balance in verses, known as metric licenses.

Sinalefa

• Sinalefa consists of joining the final vowel of a word with the initial vowel of another.
• In the examples given, syllables are combined resulting in a total of eight syllables.

Hiato

• Hiato is the separation of two vowels in a word.

Sinéresis

• Sinéresis is a diphthong where there is none.

Dieresis

• Dieresis undoes a diphthong, making poetic syllables.

Agudas

• When a verse ends in an aguda word, one is added to the total syllables.

Esdrújulas

• If the verse ends in a word esdrújula, one syllable is subtracted from the total.

Rhyme

• Rhyme is the equality or similarity between verses using the last accented vowel, existing in two types: consonant rhyme and assonant rhyme.

Consonant Rhyme

• Consonant rhyme is when the equality includes consonants and vowels.

Assonant Rhyme

• Assonant rhyme is when only the vowels are equal.

Rhyme Scheme

• Rhyme scheme is represented by assigning letters to verses with matching end sounds.

Rhythm

• Rhythm is an element creating musicality in a verse, producing an aesthetic effect through the placement of accents in various syllables, or rhythmic motion.

Axis Rhythm

• Axis Rhythm is the accented penultimate syllable in the last word of each verse.

Rhythm Accent

• Rhythm Accent is the dominant accent in a verse that coincides with the axis.

Verse Elements

• Classic verses have meter, rhyme, and rhythm.
• Blank verses contain meter and rhythm.
• Free verses include only rhythm.

Tropos

• In lyrical works, the author aims to express feelings and move the reader with an elegant language, using linguistic devices called tropos, applying language with a different sense.
• The word trope originates from the Greek "trepo," meaning to turn or transfer.

Metaphor

• Metaphor is the transference of a term's proper sense to a figurative one, seeking to move through the associations of ideas.

Simile

• Simile compares two things using the words like, looks like, same as, finding a similarity between two distinct objects for a common purpose.

Rhetorical Figures

• Allegory is a description with a figurative sense, a continuous metaphor using chained metaphors, parables, apologues, and fables.
• Paradox presents irreconcilable qualities and attributes united in a single object, using seemingly contradictory expressions to convey an idea.
• Hyperbole is an exaggeration, increasing or decreasing what is talked about.
• Anaphora is the repetition of one or more words at the beginning of a series of verses or sentences.
• Alliteration is the repetition of one or more sounds within the same word or phrase.
• Hyperbaton involves altering the order of words in a sentence, which Baroque authors adopted from Latin syntax.
• Prosopopoeia attributes characteristics and qualities of animated beings to inanimate or abstract objects, giving irrational beings rational attitudes, or making dead or absent people speak.

Dramatic Genre

• Theater originated in Greek culture around 535 a.C. as part of festivals dedicated to Dionysus, where a male goat was sacrificed and the dithyramb hymn chanted.
• Dramatic texts are literary works for stage representation, with actors responsible for giving life to characters imagined by the playwright.
• A little of a narrator is present because The actor expresses with an author´s dialogs, monologues and movements through the lips.
• Dramatic text includes annotations, guiding descriptions of the setting, actors' attitudes, specified movements, and other directions.
• Dramatic dialogue is divided into speeches, with each character having a series of interventions interacting with others, making the author irrelevant to the story.

Essential Elements of the Dramatic Genre

• Tension arises when opposing forces clash, which is essential in dramatic fiction.
• Direct dialogue with characters having their own voice.
• Characterizations are predetermined, with physical appearance, attire, emotional state, and set design known from the beginning.
• Action is the main element in dramatic fiction: exposition, development, and resolution.
• Dramatic fiction presents events while seeking to convince and stir emotions, thus having a subjective-objective character.

Types of Dramatic Fiction

• Main subgenres are tragedy, drama, and comedy, while opera, zarzuela, and operetta exist, main focus is on the three.

Tragedy

• The main character is destroyed physically or morally, unable to escape a fate predetermined by the gods.

Drama

• Presents a serious and tense conflict affecting the characters.
• A character can choose and solve the conflict, with a happy ending.

Comedy

• Presents a comic problem rising from an error or confusion.
• Humor prevails, seeks entertainment, and always has a happy end.

External Division of a Dramatic Work

• The work is divided into acts, indicating moments of action from presentation, climax, to resolution. followed by the scene.

Expressive Forms of Dramatic

• Direct dialogue is the direct exchange of words between characters.
• Monologue is a character speaking alone, allowing insight into their thoughts.
• Theater viewpoint in dramatic fiction shows the characters having their own voice.
• The author is shown through the annotations, speaking through:
• The chorus who addresses the audience for preparation or reflection on the work's background.
• The prologue details where the story takes place and summarizing acts.
• Annotations provide details for characterization, costumes, and movements.
• Details that are provided are:
• the cast with character data, names, ages, social status, and relationships.
• scenery specifying the action space including furniture, doors, windows, stairs, etc.
• special effects includes changes of lights and sounds.
• acting indicating when actors enter, exit, their movements, attitudes, and tone.

Resources of Dramatic Language

• The author seeks a moving language, full of aesthetic richness using such elements as: adjectives, comparisons, metaphors, imagery, opposite games, meaning games, word play, adaptation of language.

Use of Adjetives

• The use of this is varied, according to the style of the author.
• Sometimes they gather two or three to qualify people or objects.

Comparisons

• Literary form that compares two things seemingly and using the word “as”.

Metaphor

• This figure which is the expression consists of transferring the property of a term in another is figurative.

Images

• They are resources that describe details with sensory impressions, being able to be: tactile, olfactory, visual, auditory and taste.

Opposite Games

• It is used when in one there is a phrase that used two concepts in the same signature.

Meaning Games

• A single word is in two or more senses.

Word Game

• An association is formed a word that in turn of concepts that create an interpretation of double meaning.

Adaptation of Language

• Each character which is a living, is that they have their own way of communicating, Therefore, the author which adapts this to the social of each, their own culture, character or age.

Narrative Genre

• The novel and the tale are the most forms of narrative.
• A novel is a complete story, the extension shows attitudes and human relations, and the narrator is presenting the reader with a macrocosm.

Narrarating

• Narrating means reporting or counting.
• Its origin is the word "Epos", Which denotes narrative.

Definition of Narrative

• The narrative of events with the appearance of reality presented to a is by means of fictional facts.

Narrative Subgenres

• Inside of the narrative different exist genres, And in that way there are principales.
• Novela, Cuento, Leyenda, Mito

Novel

• It has an extensive is freedom the expression.
• There is a account facts with details and complexity.
• She is many utilizing characters.
• A macrocosm, is presented.
• Psychological Novel which deeper into the relationship the character they take.
• Is for a Novel the compromises in which a defense made of a concept such as, religion, the life political or filosófica.
• Adventure Novel there's account of the vicissitudes of the characters.
• Fantastic Novel relating extraordinary what is.
• a Novel Autobiographical in which is One narrative that with a mark of intimacy has tone, With a high the individualism where hypocrisies are the is what it is protesting to protest as the Unique as Love rights and norm.
• Novel epistolary This is a narrative in what by being able to know the fillings thanks to letters that sent is mutually.
• Historical Novel. It's a pure genre which is romantic and with special has taste for is to the from time ago what related can be of them Landscapes etc.

Tale

• Short explanation.
• Only creates area by one.
• There is characters, are being utilized few.
• Only treats affair to one.
• A small is the presented to microcosm.

Leyend

• The stories of events are fantastic those that in other come epoch.
• They have in form or from by the in transfer generations.
• They are by tradition, diffused.

Mito

• Myth which is The narrative is traditionally what alludes to extraordinary events which for fantastic or beings are is what is referred characters which is extraordinary or such as the God, or a Demi-God.

The Characters of a Work Narrative

• The characters are beings from who is imagined by the author. which in the it's an is where they give in ideas. And emotions are shown.
• The characteristics that an author gives them are, that what in a natural are, with both psychology, the physical.

Ranking the Characters

• Which for importance they have the.
• The main of this, what do is make actions those where a problem can be confronted. Those who help are to do what is well known and which is secondary.
• which characters what is incidental them in a scenario are portrayed.

Which For is The Is Characteristics

• Individual with such characteristics a person with what are qualities which present the sentiments. And that is by what it may be complejo.
• Having a character is with good the portrayal good to say with psychology is one is, the reactions and has preferences.
• This character of a Type, needs no depiction.

Role Act Play

• The of One is The Star. That tension. Its that as who does stand the test. Its opposite it.
• A person is Which The antagonist of the.

Psychology is What with The Characters

• Conduct is The and to with What are The reactions to those characters being studied with all which each traits.
• The What which that each is character the values in those vices of temperament etc.

The Action

• The lines All those narratives an action line which contact with what is done to interlock those, Is there.
• An order action is the has with explanation, has knot with termination.
• The to Know situation Explanation has. A simple which is tension.
• To Start Nudo development being complicated of which the is work. Is what make sub the tension, The a raise to start with.
• Then there Which is when a moment becomes maximum of action which in the climax comes with.
• Is finally When solution to this to give Resolution.

Humor

• The moments In tension, the that come to relax moments, those humorous is.

Dramatic Tension

• It is result which is opposite of among in confrontation, tension can be to from where to from which it goes for a the the most and come in as far in that is explanation climax. The happens in where dramas.

The Opposite The forces, in Where Are

• Is the man the with. The man with the man. The nature. The nature What supernatural. Or is against, what it "I." calls own.

Kinds of Narrator

• Self Explanatory.
• Enounce what is said by by whom has lived to the that protagonist a is the story.
• First Or A Intradiagetic Person which and what is inner it.
• Characters That Is those for, it's said to That which of the Narrators Those who is or are are to show, judge act.
• MetaDiégetico or Etradiegético
• From where of those narratives, what is form.