ENLIT 12 Lecture Notes A.Y. 2024 - 2025

ENLIT 12 Lecture Notes A.Y. 2024 - 2025 | Semester 1 MODULE 1: Reading Literature and the Practice of ➔ Why Close Reading? Close Reading - Compa...

ENLIT 12 Lecture Notes A.Y. 2024 - 2025 | Semester 1 MODULE 1: Reading Literature and the Practice of ➔ Why Close Reading? Close Reading - Comparison of writers’ works and style of writing Mimetic - Grasp an idea of literary tradition - Imitates, represents, mimics - Discover development of - In our ordinary understanding, literature techniques in language represents life; it holds up, as it were, a - Explore diverse representation of mirror to nature and is thus ‘mimetic’ reality Literariness ➔ A few caveats in close reading: - Formalist Theory (Early and Mid-Twentieth - Analysis, not summary and Century): Debunks the previous notion and paraphrase points that, “literariness” (or ‘poeticity’) - Reading between the lines may renders literature distinctive and special lead to misinterpretation - Literariness: The language of literature - Start with minor details (e.g. manifest “poetic” i.e. tropes and figures diction) and not with major ones (e.g. plot) - Authorial Intent (i.e. author’s view, social, and political background) is not the focus of close reading; meaning can be found in the text and is detached from the author, according to New Critics. - “Death of the Author” by Roland Barthes (mid 20th century) ➔ How to Do Close Reading? 1. Read and re-read. Look for key ideas. 2. Annotate. Examine the structure Literature and craft of a literary text. - Literature is mimetic. 3. Find Meaning. Zoom in and out, and - It represents reality that is grounded in explore the meaning of a prose or convention. poem - Literature represents and refracts reality. Language constitutes reality, as much as it Signposts constitutes distortions ❖ Contrasts and Contradictions - Sharp differences between what Close Reading we expect characters to do, and - New Criticism, 1920s (I.A. Richards, F.R. what they actually do Leavis) ❖ Aha Moments - Close analysis of the literary text - Realizations that shift characters' - Ambiguities, paradoxes, tone, imagery, actions or understanding assonance, alliteration, rhythm ❖ Tough Questions - The process of close reading does not - Questions characters raise that initially require a correct and precise answer. reveal their inner struggles It is in the process of doing so that we discover and unravel the meaning/s embedded in the literary text  ❖ Words of the Wiser Poetry - Advice or insights wiser characters - Poetry is the universal truth in thought or offer about life feeling transmuted by imagination into ❖ Again and Again fitting images and expressed in a beautiful - Events, images, or particular words and usually patterned language that recur throughout a text of an - “Poetry is the supreme fiction” - Wallace essential portion of it Stevens ❖ Memory Moments - It shares the ancient fictional purpose “to - Recollections by a character that inform and delight.” interrupt the forward progress of the story The Characteristics and Features of Poetry Annotation is the Key ❖ Emotional element - When annotating a poem or a short story or - Poetry deals with emotions as they a novel, examine the following: are aroused by some scene, ➔ Vocabulary/ Diction: choice of experience, attachment words, language - According to William Wordsworth in ➔ Syntax: are the concepts his Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1801), coherent? Explore the unity of the poetry is the “spontaneous test. Are the ideas focused on the overflow of powerful feelings: it subject of the text? takes its origin from emotion ➔ Structure: talk about the sequence recollected in tranquility.” of events, cause and effect ❖ It has significance relationship, conflict and resolution - Poetry adds to our store of ➔ Other Important Elements: POV, knowledge Figures of Speech, Historical/ - According to Matthew Arnold, Cultural References poetry is a “criticism of life” - “A poem should not mean/ But be.” Guide Questions Archibald Macleish. Ars poetica - Questions that can be answered by way of ❖ Beauty going back to the text - Poetry deals with beauty, both in - Questions that are not based on your content and form. personal experience - It expresses beauty and arouses - Questions that serve as an impetus for a beautiful and noble responses from discourse us. - Questions that cannot be answered by a - "It should strike the reader as a commentary wording of his own highest - Do meanings change after your first and thoughts, and appear almost a second and third reading? remembrance."- John Keats - What are noticeable shifts in the text - "Poetry turns all things to loveliness; - Did you discover a distinct pattern in the it exalts the beauty of that which is text? most beautiful, and it adds beauty to that which is most deformed." - MODULE 2: Introduction to Poetry and Fiction Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Defence of Poetry Rainer Maria Rilke ❖ Imaginative element - Born in Prague, Czech Republic He - The function of poetry is to present published a volume of poetry after he left images concretely school - The words used must be rich in - He lived in Russia and Paris, and traveled to connotative value and carrying Spain, Tunisia, Egypt, Germany, and Austria implications of sound, color, and - He introduces dinggedicht (object poem) action - Major themes of Rilke’s works: love, the - The language of poetry is rich in the woman, death, childhood, and the matter of figure of speech “God -  - “History has reference to the - Images appeal to one or more of memory, poetry to the imagination, our senses and trigger our philosophy to the reason.” - Francis imaginative re-enactment of Bacon sensory experience. ❖ Subtlety - Images may be visual, aural, tactile, Poetry should never be obvious. olfactory, or gustatory The meaning is never directly - Imagery refers to a collection of stated. It is cryptic and enigmatic images within a literary work or a However, Robert Frost warns that unit of a literary work “poetry is what gets lost in the ❖ Figures of Speech translation” - Languages can be conveniently ❖ Spontaneity classified as either literal or Poetry should appear artless and figurative effortless. It should look sound and - Metaphor, SImile, Hyperbole, fluid Apostrophe, Personification, “That of poetry comes not as Metonymy, Oxymoron naturally as the leaves to a tree, it ❖ Symbolism and Allegory had better not come at all” - John - A symbol is any object or action that Keats means more than itself, any object ❖ Universality or action that represents - It is not a fad or a fashion that goes something beyond itself out of style - Allegory is a form of an extended - The idea and truths that it presents metaphor in which objects, and the sentiments that it persons, and actions are equated expresses are timeless, as well, as with meanings that lie outside the timely work itself ❖ Syntax The Elements of Poetry - It is from the Greek word meaning “to arrange together” ❖ Voice: Speaker and Tone - It refers to the grammatical - When we read or hear a poem, we structure of words in sentence and hear a speaker’s voice the deployment of sentences in - Tone is an abstraction we make loner units throughout the poem from the details of a poem’s ❖ Sound: Rhyme, Alliteration, Assonance language: the use of the meter and - Rhyme is the matching of final rhyme vowel and consonant sounds in two - When we listen to a poem’s or more words language and hear the voice of its - Alliteration is the repetition of speaker, we catch its tone and consonant sounds, especially at feeling and ultimately its meaning the beginning of words. ❖ Diction - Assonance is the repetition of - Because poets often hint indirectly middle vowel sounds. at more than their words directly - Consonance is the repetition of state, it is necessary to develop the inner or end consonant sounds habit of considering the ❖ Rhythm and Meter connotation of words as well as - It is the one feature that their denotations. distinguishes poetry from prose ❖ Imagery - Rhythm refers to the regular - An image is a concrete recurrence of the accent or stress representation of a sense at regular intervals in what has the impression, feeling, or idea effect of repeated patterns - Meter is the measure or patterned count of a poetic line. It is the count of the stresses we feel in the poem’s rhythm  Forms of Fiction 1. Parable 2. Fables 3. Tale 4. Myths and Legends 5. Drama 6. Anecdote Fiction and Non-Fiction In the 19th century, fiction was channeled in the direction of realism or a detailed representation of everyday life, typically the lives and experiences familiar to middle-class individuals. Short stories typically reveal characters in dramatic scenes, in moments of action and in exchanges of dialogue detailed enough to represent the surface of life. It is a fictional prose narrative read comfortably in a single sitting. It may range in length from 500-12,000 to 15,000 words. These stories, in ❖ Structure: Closed Form and Open Form one form or another, have existed throughout history, - Form exists in poems on many since 3000-4000 BC. It came to us in Oral Tradition. levels from patterns of sound and It developed and became popular in the 19th image to structures of syntax and of century. thought; it is as much a matter of phrase and line as of stanza and the Novel whole poem - The novel, obviously, is much longer. - A poem with a closed or fixed form - The novel tends to show character is strictly constrained developing as a result of actions and under ❖ Theme the impact of events - It is an abstraction or generalization - It has one major plot and several subplots drawn from the details of a literary - Because of its length, it is divided into books selection or chapters - It refers to an idea or intellectually - In terms of number or characters, the novel apprehensible meaning inherent can afford to include and develop more and implicit in a work characters Prose Short Story - Prosa Oratio - The short story because of its brevity can be - Straightforward or direct speech read in a single sitting - Modern Prose: 1688, Bloodless Revolution - Short stories tend to reveal character - Prose is subdivided into fiction and through a series of actions or ordeals non-fiction - It has only one plot - It is usually uninterrupted in the formal flow Fiction of the narrative - Fictum - Imaginative nature James Joyce - It is written narrative inspired by the author’s - Called the short story an “epiphany” imagination rather than from history or fact because of the quality of the revelation of its characters The Typical Features of the Modern Realistic Short - Parts of Plot: Story Exposition is the beginning - Its plot is based on probability, illustrating a of the plot. It provides the sequence of causally related incidents background information - Its characters are recognizably human, and we need to make sense of identifiable social and psychological forces the action, describes the motivate them setting, and introduces the - Its time and space are clearly established major characters. with realistic rather than fantastic settings Complications or - Its element—plot, character, setting, style, Intensification of the point of view, irony, symbol, and theme— conflict lead to a point of work toward a single effect, making the great tension. This is found story unified in the rising action part of the structure of the plot. Standard Ways of Beginning a Short Story Crisis or Turning Point or - Dramatic introduction of character Climax is a moment of - Beginning of action greatest tension that fixes - Thematic beginning the outcome Falling Action is the part of Types of Short Story the plot where the 1. Emphasizes plot complications are sorted - Stories of dramatic incident, stories out of theme, stories of adventure Resolution or Denouement 2. Emphasizes character is where the conflict has - Psychological stories, character been resolved stories 3. Emphasizes setting ❖ Characters - Stories of atmosphere and - The imaginary people that writers impression create - Characterization is the means by Novel which writers present and reveal - “The novel is the most significant form of art characters distinguished for its large, free character of - Characters in fiction be an immense and exquisite correspondence conveniently classifies as: with life.” – Henry James, The Art of Fiction Major Character is an - In the 20th century, the English novel important figure at the focused more on the human mind (e.g. center of the story’s action Virginia Woolf and James Joyce’s or theme. The major stream-of-consciousness novels) character is sometimes called the protagonist Elements of Fiction whose conflict with an antagonist may spark the ❖ Plot story’s conflict - The action element in fiction, is the Minor or secondary arrangement of events that make characters support and up a story partly illuminate the major - Causality is an important feature of characters. They are often realistic fictional plots; it simply static and unchanging: means that one thing happens they remain the same from because of—as a result beginning to end of—something else. - Many fictional plots turn on a conflict, or struggle between opposing forces, that is usually resolved by the end of the story  - The Major Methods of Revealing Third-person: A point of Character in Fiction: view that takes us inside a Narrative summary without character’s consciousness judgment or remains objective. It Narrative description with does not assume the implies or explicit perspective of any judgment character. This point of Surface details of dress view may be limited or and physical appearance omniscient Characters’ actions—what Unreliable Narrator: A they do speaker or voice whose Characters’ speech—what vision or version of the they say and how they say details of the story is it consciously or Characters’ consciousness unconsciously deceiving —what they think and feel ❖ Theme ❖ Setting - The generalized, abstract - The writers’ description of the world paraphrase of the inferred central they know, its sights and sounds, its or dominant idea of the story. colors, textures and accents Moreover, the subject is the - It is the place or location of a story’s concrete and literal description of action along with the time in which it what the story is about. occurs - Plot summary is a description of the - It is essential to meaning, arrangement of the action in the functioning as more than a simple order in which it actually appears in backdrop for action a story - It provides a historical and cultural context that enhances our ❖ Language and Style understanding of the characters - Style is determined by the way a - It can symbolize the emotional writer chooses his words and state of the characters arranges them in sentences. It is the verbal identity of a writer ❖ Point of View - Diction is the kind of word choices a - Refers to the author’s decision writer makes about who is to tell the story and - Syntax is the order the words how it is to be told assume in sentences - It is the focus; the point from which the people, events and other ❖ Irony and Symbol details in the story are viewed - They are two additional facets in - The term is both used to include fiction focus and voice - Both aspects of fiction allow writers - Types of Point of View: to compress a great deal of First person: The narrator meaning into a brief space. participates in the action - If we overlook a story’s symbols, we Centered: Consciousness may underestimate its achievement is a limited point of view, and oversimplify its significance tied to a single character - Irony always involves a contrast or throughout the story discrepancy between one thing and another. The contrast may be between what is said and what is meant or between what happens and what is expected to happen  Verbal Irony (Antiphrasis) Person vs Society (including is to say the opposite of political issues what we mean Person vs Supernatural (paranormal Irony of Circumstance or events) situation refers to the Person vs Technology (products of discrepancies of what science and technology) seems to be and what is. It also refers to occasions Resolution when an individual expects - Denouement (When the conflict has been one thing to occur only to finally resolved) discover that the opposite - What comes out of a confrontation or an happens internal/external struggle that usually Dramatic Irony is the satisfies the readers (or something leads discrepancy between what them to bigger questions) characters know and what - It does not always have to be a favorable readers know ending. It can sometimes be a sad ending or - Symbols in fiction are simply an open-ended resolution objects, actions, or events that convey meaning. The meaning they Mobility Studies convert extends beyond their literal - An emergent interdisciplinary field that significance, beyond their more explains the dynamic relationships between obvious actual reason for being the combined movement of bodies, included in the story objects, and ideas. - The field emphasizes the ethical dimensions Non-Fiction of these mobilities and their associated - Factual prose writing immobilities. As such, the field focuses on - Different Forms of Non-Fiction: “the embodies practice of movement and Essay: non-exhaustive short prose their representations, ideologies and (speculative essay, argumentative meanings attached to both movement and essay, narrative essay, expository stillness” essay) - The field creates a relational ontology Autobiography: Description of a life between social concerns of inequality, written by the person who has lived power, and hierarchies, with spatial it (e.g. memoirs) concerns—territory, borders, scales, in Biography: prose work about the addition to cultural concerns of discourses, life of one person written by representation, and schemes another - Factors Affecting Mobility Speeches - homily, orations Identity Epistles - letters Environment / Nature Colonization MODULE 3: Conflict and Resolution Movement Government Policy Conflict Legal Status - Confrontation, obstacle/ struggle, Gender opposition Employment - Complicates character development in stories through internal and external conflicts - Challenges readers to critique of text and lead the reader to a realization of the rising action, climax, and turning point in narratives Person vs Person (major and minor characters Person vs Nature (environment) Person vs Self (inner conflict)