ENG 4U Creative Fiction/Short Story PDF

ENG 4U [email protected] Unit 2: Creative Fiction/Short Story Overview of Literary Periods and Techniques Age of Reason: 17th century [we won’t be reading any literature from this period] 1. Literature that is character...

ENG 4U [email protected] Unit 2: Creative Fiction/Short Story Overview of Literary Periods and Techniques Age of Reason: 17th century [we won’t be reading any literature from this period] 1. Literature that is characterized by an overarching argument or purpose and follows a sequence or series of points that help prove the author’s point. 2. Writers were preoccupied with changing the current state of social institutions because of rampant corruption or inequalities that were based on merit systems; the use of satire and irony were tools that they used to criticize these existing systems. Institutions were made to seem ridiculous or tyrannical, completely disconnected from the experiences of the common man. 3. Truth was attained through logical computation and thought. The ability to know oneself and the world was considered attainable. Science was considered progressive. 4. Literary genres: narrative in the form of letters, long sentences that incorporated technical terms and ‘fancy’ language (intentionally difficult to navigate through), arguments that often read as treatises. Romanticism: Late 1700- 1820s 1. Spirit of the individual, celebrating subjectivity- ushered in through events like the American and French Revolution; political movements that dismantled monarchical governments were rooted in ideals of progressing humanistic values. 2. Thematically, literature tended to move more ‘inward’- self-reflection and relationship with the outer world were key subject matter for the Romantics- poetry celebrated the subjective ‘I’. Heroism, chivalry, loyalty are linked to romantic ideals. 3. Form: Movement away structure, where sentences would be highly descriptive and long, expressive and emotional (e.x. ballads, odes, sonnets) 4. If Scientific Revolution led to the rise of industrialization, the Romantics moved away from society, industry; rural life was celebrated, nature was worshipped (i.e. the sublime), and pathetic fallacy was often used as metaphor to extend and link human emotions to the natural world. Gothicism: 1800s 1. Subgenre of Romanticism, dealing with the supernatural; the setting and environment takes on a supernatural realm (often personified)- this could be either evil/demonic, or sublime/godly. 2. Themes dealt with the way ‘too much’ science or progress, especially in the wrong hands, could have tragic consequences. 3. The desire to overcome the natural life was often seen as futile; science and playing God often allowed people to think they could move beyond their human capacities. 4. Form: Sentence structures were extremely descriptive and detailed. Paragraphs are often spent showcasing the structure of a building. These descriptions provide the backdrop to the gothic ‘effect’. 5. Clear progression in plot line (linear structure), with suspenseful elements leading to dreadful ending. 6. Focus on melodrama and inner turmoil of the characters; flawed characters that seek to tamper or fix something beyond their scope or moral capacity. 7. The ‘birth’ of short fiction and the novella ☺ ENG 4U [email protected] Unit 2: Creative Fiction/Short Story Victorian: 1810-1900 1. The focus on progress and science is good, but a sense that it must be balanced so as not to compromise our moral conscience. 2. Industrial setting is often depicted as hostile and but necessary; 3. Emphasis on realism and details on material objects; descriptions of the mechanical functions and processes become more common place. 4. Language and sentence structures are still long and descriptive, but without the supernatural emphasis or focus on personifying the inanimate. 5. Stories often had a moral bent- didactic in function Modernism: 1880-1920 1. Characterized by experimentation in sentence structures. Stream of consciousness writing that reflects the train of thought (i.e. absence of punctuation, syntax, deconstruction of words). 2. Perspectives are often from multiple narrators/characters, and narrator is often unreliable and subjective. Reality is always subjective. 3. Morality is never absolute; stories no longer attempt to be didactic (teach a lesson or be preachy), but simply present the world as it is, good or bad. 4. Protagonist usually undergoes some sort of epiphany by the end of the story, although this may not be good (i.e. in “Araby”, the protagonist comes to realize that he cannot purchase the gift for Mangan’s sister and that even this small happiness is inaccessible to him). 5. Stories do not follow a linear plot progression but often get interrupted by flashbacks, or intertextuality so that chronology is confused. Post Modernism: 1930+ 1. Fragment is embraced; the human condition as being fragmented is celebrated and made meaningful. No longer seen as tragic. 2. Stories are a culmination of different stories and references; ideas are borrowed to make a ‘new story’. 3. Subjectivity is celebrated and seen as a means to universal experience (i.e. the first person perspective but of someone else’s experience) 4. Truth is not objective but subjected to our own ideas; multiple truths are possible. 5. Hierarchy of literature styles and genres are challenged. 6. Settings are multiplied and diverse; microcosm of an everywhere. 7. Plot begins at the end of the story and works backward. 8. Twist endings that make you reevaluate everything presented in the story (multiple meanings of a symbol/motif). 9. Anti-hero as the protagonist; a sympathetic villain. Characters are never one-dimensional. Canadian Literature: 1. Nationalistic literature spawned fiction that often had a thematic focus on survival, especially shown through the conflict between humans and the environment in earlier literature. 2. Earlier Canlit attempted to show the struggle of the pioneer in a hostile environment, where the environment was demonized and unyielding; provincial or rural settings 3. Often references to Canadian locales. Writers tend to be deeply connected to their environments, whether or not this is portrayed in a good or bad way. 4. Contemporary Canlit portrays multiculturalism, multiple voices, fragment as celebration and the sense that one place is every place; on the extreme, a rejection of static (national) identity