UNIT II

LITERARY PROSE AND DRAMA STYLISTICS

Overview

This unit shall discuss the essential concepts and applications of literary prose and
drama stylistics by reviewing the prose and drama genres, and critical literary views and
theories, by surveying prose authors/dramatists and their unique styles, by determining the
characteristics of prose and drama, by conferring prose and dramatic meaning, and proving
examples of stylistic analysis of prose.

Unit Objectives

At the end of these weeks, the preservice teacher (PST) should be able to:

a. review prose genres, literary views and theories, and devices/characteristics in the
light of stylistic study;
b. discuss a survey of prose authors, their unique styles and purposes of writing such
texts; and
c. create stylistic analyses of prose texts which are suitable for G7 to SHS English
Literature.

Expanding Your Knowledge

Review of Prose and Drama Genres

1. Prose

It is a form of language that has no formal metrical structure. It applies a

natural flow of speech, and ordinary grammatical structure, rather than rhythmic
structure, such as in the case of traditional poetry.

Normal everyday speech is spoken in prose, and most people think and write
in prose form. Prose comprises full grammatical sentences consisting of paragraphs
and forgoes aesthetic appeal in favor of clear, straightforward language. It can be said
to be the most reflective of conversational speech. Some prose works do have
versification and a blend of the two formats that is called “prose poetry.”

Example of a Poetry Verse vs. the Prose Form

Following is a poetry verse from a popular work of Robert Frost:

“The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.”
(Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, by Robert Frost)

Following is the same sentiment written in prose form:

“The woods look lovely against the setting darkness and as I gaze into the mysterious
depths of the forest, I feel like lingering here longer. However, I have pending
appointments to keep, and much distance to cover before I settle in for the night, or
else I will be late for all of them.”

The above paragraph conveys a similar message, but it is expressed in ordinary

language, without a formal metrical structure to bind it.

Some Common Types of Prose

a. Nonfictional Prose
It is a literary work that is mainly based on fact, though it may contain fictional
elements in certain cases. Examples include biographies and essays.

b. Fictional Prose
It is a literary work that is wholly or partly imagined or theoretical. Examples
are novels.

c. Heroic Prose
It is a literary work that may be written down or recited and employs many of
the formulaic expressions found in oral tradition. Examples are legends and
tales.

d. Prose Poetry
It is a literary work that exhibits poetic quality – using emotional effects and
heightened imagery – but written in prose instead of verse.

Examples of Prose in Literature

Prose in Novels

This is usually written in a narrative and maybe entirely a figment of the

author’s imagination.

Example #1: 1984 (By George Orwell)

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”

Example #2: David Copperfield (By Charles Dickens)

“Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be
held by anybody else, these pages must show.”

Example #3: Anna Karenina (By Leo Tolstoy)

“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

These examples of prose have been taken from novels, where the writers have
employed their imaginations. They are examples of fictional prose.

Prose in Speeches

Prose used in speeches often expresses the thoughts and ideas of the speaker.
 Example #4: No Easy Walk to Freedom speech (By Nelson Mandela)

“You can see that there is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will
have to pass through the valley of the shadow (of death) again and again before we
reach the mountain tops of our desires.”

Example #5: Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech (By Mother Teresa)

“The poor are very great people. They can teach us so many beautiful things.”

Example #6: Equal Rights for Women speech (By U.S. Congresswoman Shirley
Chisholm)

“As for the marriage laws, they are due for a sweeping reform, and an excellent
beginning would be to wipe the existing ones off the books.”

These prose examples have been taken from speeches where the writing is
often crisp and persuasive and suits the occasion to convey a specific message.

Prose in Plays

Prose written in plays aims to be dramatic and eventful.

Example #7: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (By Tennessee Williams)

“You can be young without money, but you can’t be old without it.”

Example #8: As You Like It (By William Shakespeare)

“All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players.”

Prose in plays is often in conversational mode and is delivered by a character.

However, its style stays the same throughout the play according to the personality of
the character.

Function of Prose

While there have been many critical debates over the correct and valid
construction of prose, the reason for its adoption can be attributed to its loosely-
defined structure, which most writers feel comfortable using when expressing or
conveying their ideas and thoughts. It is the standard writing style used for most
spoken dialogues, fictional and topical and factual writing, and discourses. It is also
the common language used in newspapers, magazines, literature, encyclopedias,
broadcasting, philosophy, law, history, the sciences, and many other communication
forms.

2. Drama

It is a mode of fictional representation through dialogue and performance. It

is one of the literary genres, which is an imitation of some action. Drama is also a type
of play written for theater, television, radio, and film.

In simple words, a drama is a composition in verse or prose presenting a story

in pantomime or dialogue. It contains conflict of characters, particularly the ones who
perform in front of the audience on the stage. The person who writes drama for stage
directions is known as a “dramatist” or “playwright.”
Types of Drama

Let us consider a few popular types of drama:

a. Comedy
Comedies are lighter in tone than ordinary works and provide a happy
conclusion. Dramatists in comedies intend to make their audience laugh.
Hence, they use quaint circumstances, unusual characters, and witty remarks.

b. Tragedy
Tragic dramas use darker themes, such as disaster, pain, and death.
Protagonists often have a tragic flaw — a characteristic that leads them to their
downfall.

c. Farce
Generally, a farce is a nonsensical genre of drama, which often overacts or
engages slapstick humor.

d. Melodrama
Melodrama is an exaggerated drama, which is sensational and appeals directly
to the senses of the audience. Like the farce, the characters are of a single
dimension and simple or stereotyped.

e. Musical Drama
In musical dramas, dramatists tell their stories through acting and dialogue
but through dance and music. Often the story may be comedic, though it may
also involve serious subjects.

Examples of Drama in Literature

Example #1: Much Ado About Nothing (By William Shakespeare)

Much Ado About Nothing is the most frequently performed Shakespearian

comedy in modern times. The play is romantically funny in that love between Hero
and Claudio is laughable, as they never even get a single chance to communicate on-
stage until they get married.

Their relationship lacks development and depth. They end up merely as

caricatures, exemplifying what people face in life when their relationships are
internally weak. Benedick and Beatrice’s love is amusing, as initially, their
communications are very sparky, and they hate each other. However, they all of a
sudden makeup and start loving each other.

Example #2: Oedipus Rex (By Sophocles)

Tragedy:

Sophocles’ mythical and immortal drama Oedipus Rex is thought to be his best
classical tragedy. Aristotle has adjudged this play as one of the greatest examples of
tragic drama in his book, Poetics, by giving the following reasons:

The play arouses emotions of pity and fear and achieves the tragic Catharsis.
It shows the downfall of an extraordinary man of high rank, Oedipus. The central
character suffers due to his tragic error called Hamartia; as he murders his real father,
 Laius, and then marries his real mother, Jocasta. Hubris is the cause of Oedipus’
downfall.

Example #3: The Importance of Being Earnest (By Oscar Wilde)

Farce:

Oscar Wilde’s play, The Importance of Being Earnest, is a very popular

example of Victorian farce. In this play, a man uses two identities: one as a serious
person, Jack (his actual name), which he uses for Cesily, his ward, and as a rogue
named Ernest for his beloved woman, Gwendolyn.

Unluckily, Gwendolyn loves him partially because she loves the name Ernest.
It is when Jack and Earnest must come on-stage together for Cesily, then Algernon
comes in to play Earnest’s role, and his ward immediately falls in love with the other
“Ernest.” Thus, two young women think that they love the same man – an occurrence
that amuses the audience.

Example #4: The Heiress (By Henry James)

Melodrama:

The Heiress is based on Henry James’ novel the Washington Square. Directed
for stage performance by William Wyler, this play shows an ungraceful and homely
daughter of a domineering and rich doctor. She falls in love with a young man, Morris
Townsend, and wishes to elope with him, but he leaves her in the lurch. The author
creates melodrama towards the end when Catherine teaches a lesson to Morris and
leaves him instead.

Function of Drama

Drama is one of the best literary forms through which dramatists can directly
speak to their readers or the audience, and they can receive instant feedback from
audiences. A few dramatists use their characters as a vehicle to convey their thoughts
and values, such as poets do with personas, and novelists do with narrators. Since
drama uses spoken words and dialogues, thus the language of characters plays a vital
role, as it may give clues to their feelings, personalities, backgrounds, and change in
feelings. In dramas, the characters live out a story without any author’s comments,
providing the audience a direct presentation of the characters’ life experiences.

Source: https://literarydevices.net

Survey of Prose Authors/Dramatists and Their Unique Styles

1. Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway is quite possibly one of the most well-known authors of all
time. He pioneered concise, objective prose in fiction—which had, up until then,
primarily been used in journalism. It is no surprise that Hemingway learned this
direct style as a reporter for The Kansas City Star. But his preference for objective
writing was strengthened after he returned from World War I. While 19th-century
European writing styles had been generally revered and imitated by authors
worldwide, the war put a sour taste in the mouths of many creatives. In the 1920s,
immediately after the war, a group of American authors who became “The Lost
Generation” rejected the flowery, descriptive language of European literature in favor
of straightforward, to-the-point stories. Hemingway spearheaded this movement by
 publishing novels and short stories using “The Iceberg Theory.” He believed the facts
of the story, which appeared on the surface, hinted at the symbolism lying
underneath—which didn’t have to be explained. His style is still widely used by
authors and journalists alike, and he even has an editing app named after him!

Example:

“She’s just having a bad time. The initial labor is usually protracted. She’s only having a
bad time. Afterward we’d say what a bad time and Catherine would say it wasn’t really
so bad. But what if she should die? She can’t die. Yes, but what if she should die? She
can’t, I tell you. Don’t be a fool. It’s just a bad time.”

-Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

2. James Joyce

James Joyce may not be as famous as Hemingway in America, but he is

Ireland’s pride and joy. His experimental style made him an influence in the
modernist avant-garde writing movement of the early 20th century. His novels are
defined by their elaborate stream-of-consciousness style, which is often very hard to
follow by novice readers, as it recounts every thought and action of the narrator in
exquisite detail. Joyce’s seminal work contains more vocabulary words than the
entire Shakespeare canon. Furthermore, his final book, Finnegans Wake, is
considered one of the most difficult works of fiction ever written in the English
language. Joyce was brilliant, studying Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and Dante at a very
young age. He was also known to speak 17 languages, including Sanskrit, Arabic, and
Greek. It is possible that his incredible knowledge of language influenced his unique
vocabulary and that his interest in philosophy and the many different styles of
literature he had read created an amalgamation of techniques that resulted in his
stream-of-consciousness writing.

Example:

“I took off all my things with the blinds down after my hours dressing and perfuming
and combing it like iron or some kind of thick crowbar standing all the time he must
have eaten oysters I think a few dozen he was in great singing voice no I never in all my
life felt anyone had one the size of that to make you feel full up…”

– James Joyce, Ulysses

3. Franz Kafka

Any time a creative piece explores existentialism and feelings of helplessness,

it is called “Kafkaesque.” Kafka revolutionized surrealist, nightmarish writing in
contemporary settings. He often wrote about bureaucracies overpowering people in
bizarre ways, like through a trial held without a clear crime committed. His style was
influenced by his upbringing as a Jewish man in late 19th century Germany, as a
socialist and possible anarchist, and as someone with deep-seated mental health
issues, which caused him to be withdrawn and skeptical of those around him—
elements that are prominent in his novels. While he wasn’t popular while alive, many
writers and filmmakers have adapted his style to their own works of science fiction
and horror.
 Example:

“He would have used his arms and his hands to push himself up; but instead of them he
only had all those little legs continuously moving in different directions, and which he
was moreover unable to control. If he wanted to bend one of them, then that was the
first one that would stretch itself out; and if he finally managed to do what he wanted
with that leg, all the others seemed to be set free and would move about painfully. “This
is something that can’t be done in bed,” Gregor said to himself, “so don’t keep trying to
do it.”

– Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

4. Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley grew up in an environment perfect for nurturing a brilliant

writer. Her father, William Godwin, was a philosopher, and her mother, Mary
Wollstonecraft, was a prolific journalist and advocate for women’s rights. She was
groomed and primed for literary greatness from birth. And then, she married Percy
Shelley, a famous poet in the Age of Romanticism. There is a rumor that Frankenstein
was created because of a bet between Mary Shelley, her husband, and Lord Byron. No
one can confirm this story, but the fact remains that many women did write novels
despite men, who said they couldn’t. Many 18th and 19th century works by women
were direct responses to novels that men have written. Ann Radcliffe’s The Italian
and Clara Reeve’s The Old English Baron were responses to Matthew Lewis’ The
Monk and Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, respectively. Shelley’s writing style
was influenced by the romanticism she observed in her husband’s writing and the
styles perpetuated by Gothic literature. She also infused her writing with
philosophical questions, which she learned from her father, and raw emotion, which
she experienced as a result of the early death of her mother, and which she could
express only through writing.

Example:

“There is something at work in my soul which I do not understand. I am practically

industrious — painstaking, a workman to execute with perseverance and labour — but
besides this there is a love for the marvellous, a belief in the marvellous, intertwined in
all my projects, which hurries me out of the common pathways of men, even to the wild
sea and unvisited regions I am about to explore.”

– Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

5. Agatha Christie

Another well-known and prolific writer, Agatha Christie, published over 60

literary works and is considered the master of contemporary detective novels. Her
style was heavily influenced by her time as a nurse in World War I and her personal
interest in archeology. Mentions of war, or plots related to the war, often appear in
her novels, and she used the knowledge she acquired as a nurse to inform her
mysteries. She utilized various poisons to carry out the murders in her stories and
used the psychological trauma of war and war recovery to deepen the emotional
connection between the audience and her characters. Her interest in archaeology
resulted in ancient artifacts and archaeologists being heavily featured in her novels,
often containing heavily symbolic meaning within the storylines. While Christie’s
novels border on formulaic, they were not considered to be so at the time of their
creation. Many mystery writers try to mimic her style to no avail. There’s only one
Christie.
 Example:

“It’s those little figures, sir. In the middle of the table. The little china figures. Ten of
them, there were. I’ll swear to that, ten of them,” sputters Mr. Rogers as he realizes that
after the deaths of Marston and Mrs. Rogers, the number has been reduced to eight.”

– Agatha Christie, And Then There Were None

6. Zora Neale Hurston

Hurston spent most of her childhood in Eatonville, Florida, one of the first all-
black towns incorporated into the United States. She later described Eatonville as a
place where African Americans could live freely and as they wanted—independent of
white society and without pervasive racism. Her experiences and culture contributed
to her writing style, which could be described as rhythmic and lyrical. She wrote in
colloquial Southern dialects that mimicked the language she grew up hearing.
Furthermore, since many African Americans were illiterate before the Reconstruction
Era, they told stories through song and speech. Hurston’s lyrical writing reflects that
kind of storytelling and the hymns she recited as a Baptist preacher’s daughter. Her
strong connection to her heritage and her unwavering dedication to uplifting black
writers and readers made her a pioneer of African American literature and the
Harlem Renaissance.

“Listen, Sam, if it was nature, nobody wouldn’t have tuh look out for babies touchin’
stoves, would they? ’Cause dey just naturally wouldn’t touch it. But dey sho will. So it’s
caution. Naw it ain’t, it’s nature, cause nature makes caution. It’s de strongest thing dat
God ever made, now. Fact is it’s de onliest thing God every made. He made nature and
nature made everything else.”

– Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

7. Hunter S. Thompson

A true revolutionary, Hunter S. Thompson believed in a no-bullshit attitude

when it came to writing while also greatly exaggerating events to make them more
entertaining. He was quite the character. Thompson is often credited with the
creation of “gonzo” journalism, which is journalism without objectivity. While he
originally studied authors like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway, he soon discovered
that objectivity just wasn’t for him. Thompson would insert himself into the stories
he had to write, if not physically, then emotionally—often using his experiences and
feelings on the topic to color his writing. His form of journalism often blurred the lines
between fact and fiction. One of his most famous pieces came from his time living as
a biker of the Hells Angels. He wrote about his experiences, even when they made him
out to be ugly, to expose society’s hypocrisy and corruption.

Example:

“Hallucinations are bad enough. But after a while you learn to cope with things like
seeing your dead grandmother crawling up your leg with a knife in her teeth. Most acid
fanciers can handle this sort of thing. But nobody can handle that other trip—the
possibility that any freak with $1.98 can walk into Circus Circus and suddenly appear in
the sky over downtown Las Vegas twelve times the size of God, howling anything that
comes into his mind. No, this is not a good town for psychedelic drugs. Reality itself is
too twisted.”

– Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

8. Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison is one of the most respected contemporary American writers.

She’s won the Pulitzer Prize, the American Book Award, and the Nobel Prize in
Literature. She had a tumultuous childhood, her parents deliberately setting fire to
their home when she was just two years old. Nevertheless, they raised her to be
driven, intelligent, and aware of her heritage. She was an ambitious student who read
Jane Austen and Leo Tolstoy’s likes when she was very young. Her writing style is
influenced by her African American culture, her life experiences, and the historical
significance of the time period she grew up in. She uses modern conventions like
varied sentence structures, descriptive analogies, and historical references to ground
the reader in the time period. Her writing has always been accessible to the masses
while still being incredibly complex and poignant.

Example:

“There is a loneliness that can be rocked. Arms crossed, knees drawn up; holding, holding
on, this motion, unlike a ship’s, smooths and contains the rocker. It’s an inside kind—
wrapped tight like skin. Then there is a loneliness that roams. No rocking can hold it
down. It is alive, on its own. A dry and spreading thing that makes the sound of one’s
own feet going seem to come from a far-off place.”

– Toni Morrison, Beloved

9. JK Rowling

Rowling’s writing style is not often analyzed because it falls under

“commercial fiction” rather than literary fiction. Literary critics do not tend to spend
time analyzing works that aren’t doing anything experimental with their writing style.
Commercial fiction is transparent in its prose and intent—to entertain and tell a good
story. Its main focus is on pleasing the audience. Rowling wrote Harry Potter for
children. The main characters began their journey at 11 years old. She obviously was
not creating some profound literary masterpiece. She knew what audience she
wanted to write for, and she went for it. She drew upon her knowledge of classical
literature and languages to build a world around the idea, but otherwise, she wrote
an accessible work of fiction that could be read by as many people as possible. Her
style definitely reflects her education and background, and the idea may be
considered revolutionary, but her writing style is certainly not.

Example:

“Mr. Dursley was the director of a firm called Grunnings, which made drills. He was a
big, beefy man with hardly any neck, although he did have a very large mustache. Mrs.
Dursley was thin and blonde and had nearly twice the usual amount of neck, which came
in very useful as she spent so much of her time craning over garden fences, spying on the
neighbors.”

– JK Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

10. Molière

Born Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, Molière is just a stage name; however, it holds

great significance in the French language, often referred to as the ‘language of
Molière.’ He started as an actor, which sufficiently prepared him for his life of theatre
writing to come. Molière combines refined French comedy with a twist of Italian
 commedia dell’arte, rendering his theatrical tone compelling and distinct. While
tragedy was Molière’s preferred theatre genre, his farces were also incredibly
popular amongst the French public, often performed as a single-act comic relief after
tragedy performances. While France is home to many of the world’s best playwrights
that have shaped theatre as we know it today, it’s safe to say that the influence of
Molière is one of the greatest the world of theatre has seen.

Recommended Molière play: The Miser (L’Avare)

11. Yukio Mishima

Yukio Mishima is a Tokyo-born playwright, poet, actor, model, and film

director – a true jack of all trades! Mishima’s literary journey began when he started
writing stories of his own at the tender age of twelve. He was greatly influenced by
authors such as Rainer Maria Rilke and Oscar Wilde and classical Japanese authors.
Mishima’s literature is known for its rich description and interest in the unity of
death, beauty, and eroticism while combining traditional Japanese literary styles with
more contemporary Western literary styles. Mishima wrote 50 plays, 24 novels, 25
short story collections, 35 essay collections, and one film in his life. His most famous
works include Confessions of a Mask, Thirst for Love, After the Banquet, and Madame
de Safe.

Recommended Mishima play: The Lady Aoi

12. Aristophanes

Taking it back to 446BC Athens, we have the birth of another one of our
favorite playwrights: Aristophanes. With a total of eleven of his 40 plays surviving
today, we’re able to gain a great insight into the career of the father of comedy’.
Aristophanes’ plays, belonging to the old comedy’ genre (a genre of comic drama),
often detailed and satirized political events occurring at the time. He was also known
to caricature political figures, such as populist Cleon and fellow artists, such as
Euripides. Surviving the Peloponnesian War, two oligarchic revolutions, and two
democratic restorations, it’s no wonder the great Greek playwright had so much
writing material!

Recommended Aristophanes play: Lysistrata

13. William Shakespeare

Last but no means least, we have William Shakespeare. Born in Stratford Upon
Avon in Warwickshire, Shakespeare was one of eight children and father to three.
Shakespeare is undeniably one of the most successful playwrights to ever live, with
theatres and schools being dedicated to him today – his works have been translated
into every living language and are more performed than those of any other playwright
in history. Shakespeare was known for his varying genres, which are commonly
grouped into tragedy, comedy, romance, and history, with comedy being the richest
genre. Between 1590 and 1613, Shakespeare wrote an estimated 154 sonnets, 6 long
poems, and 38 plays. His most notable works include Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and
Othello.

Recommended Shakespeare play: A Midsummer Night’s Dream

 Review of Critical Literary Views and Theories

“Literary theory” is the body of ideas and methods we use in the practical
reading of literature. By literary theory, we refer not to the meaning of a work of
literature but to the theories that reveal what literature can mean. Literary theory is
a description of the underlying principles; one might say the tools by which we
attempt to understand literature. All literary interpretation draws on a basis in theory
but can justify very different kinds of critical activity. It is literary theory that
formulates the relationship between author and works; literary theory develops the
significance of race, class, and gender for literary study, both from the standpoint of
the author’s biography and an analysis of their thematic presence within texts.
Literary theory offers varying approaches for understanding the role of the historical
context in interpretation and the relevance of linguistic and unconscious elements of
the text. Literary theorists trace the history and evolution of the different genres—
narrative, dramatic, lyric—and the more recent emergence of the novel and the short
story while also investigating the importance of formal elements of literary structure.
Lastly, in recent years, literary theory has sought to explain the degree to which the
text is more the product of a culture than an individual author and how those texts
help create the culture.

1. What Is Literary Theory?

“Literary theory,” sometimes designated “critical theory,” or “theory,” and now

undergoing a transformation into “cultural theory” within the discipline of literary
studies can be understood as the set of concepts and intellectual assumptions on
which rests the work of explaining or interpreting literary texts. Literary theory
refers to any principles derived from internal analysis of literary texts or from
knowledge external to the text that can be applied in multiple interpretive situations.
All critical practice regarding literature depends on an underlying structure of ideas
in at least two ways: theory provides a rationale for what constitutes the subject
matter of criticism— “the literary”—and the specific aims of critical practice—the act
of interpretation itself. For example, to speak of the “unity” of Oedipus the King
explicitly invokes Aristotle’s theoretical statements on poetics. To argue, as does
Chinua Achebe, that Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness fails to grant full
humanity to the Africans it depicts is a perspective informed by a postcolonial literary
theory that presupposes a history of exploitation and racism. Critics that explain the
climactic drowning of Edna Pontellier in The Awakening as a suicide generally call
upon a supporting architecture of feminist and gender theory. The structure of ideas
that enables criticism of a literary work may or may not be acknowledged by the critic
and the status of literary theory within the academic discipline of literary studies
continues to evolve.

Literary theory and the formal practice of literary interpretation runs a

parallel but less well-known course with the history of philosophy and is evident in
the historical record at least as far back as Plato. The Cratylus contains Plato’s
meditation on the relationship of words and the things to which they refer. Plato’s
skepticism about signification, i.e., that words bear no etymological relationship to
their meanings but are arbitrarily “imposed,” becomes a central concern in the
twentieth century to both “Structuralism” and “Poststructuralism.” However, a
persistent belief in “reference,” the notion that words and images refer to objective
reality, has provided epistemological (that is, having to do with theories of
knowledge) support for theories of literary representation throughout most of
Western history. Until the nineteenth century, Art, in Shakespeare’s phrase, held “a
mirror up to nature” and faithfully recorded an objectively real world independent of
the observer.
Modern literary theory gradually emerges in Europe during the nineteenth century.
In one of the earliest developments of literary theory, German “higher criticism”
subjected biblical texts to a radical historicizing that broke with traditional scriptural
interpretation. “Higher,” or “source criticism,” analyzed biblical tales in light of
comparable narratives from other cultures, an approach that anticipated some of the
method and spirit of twentieth-century theory, particularly “Structuralism” and “New
Historicism.” In France, the eminent literary critic Charles Augustin Saint Beuve
maintained that a work of literature could be explained entirely in terms of biography,
while novelist Marcel Proust devoted his life to refuting Saint Beuve in a massive
narrative in which he contended that the details of the life of the artist are utterly
transformed in the work of art. (This dispute was taken up anew by the French
theorist Roland Barthes in his famous declaration of the “Death of the Author.” See
“Structuralism” and “Poststructuralism.”) Perhaps the greatest nineteenth-century
influence on literary theory came from the deep epistemological suspicion of
Friedrich Nietzsche: that facts are not facts until they have been interpreted.
Nietzsche’s critique of knowledge has profoundly impacted literary studies and
helped usher in an era of intense literary theorizing that has yet to pass.

Attention to the etymology of the term “theory” from the Greek “theoria,”
alerts us to the partial nature of theoretical approaches to literature. “Theoria”
indicates a view or perspective of the Greek stage. This is precisely what literary
theory offers, though specific theories often claim to present a complete system for
understanding literature. The current state of theory is such that there are many
overlapping areas of influence, and older schools of theory, though no longer enjoying
their previous eminence, continue to exert an influence on the whole. The once
widely-held conviction (an implicit theory) that literature is a repository of all that is
meaningful and ennobling in the human experience, a view championed by the Leavis
School in Britain, may no longer be acknowledged by name but remains an essential
justification for the current structure of American universities and liberal arts
curricula. The moment of “Deconstruction” may have passed, but its emphasis on the
indeterminacy of signs (that we are unable to establish exclusively what a word
means when used in a given situation) and thus of texts, remains significant. Many
critics may not embrace the label “feminist,” but the premise that gender is a social
construct, one of theoretical feminisms distinguishing insights, is now axiomatic in a
number of theoretical perspectives.

While literary theory has always implied or directly expressed a conception of

the world outside the text, in the twentieth century three movements—”Marxist
theory” of the Frankfurt School, “Feminism,” and “Postmodernism”—have opened the
field of literary studies into a broader area of inquiry. Marxist approaches to literature
require an understanding of the primary economic and social bases of culture since
Marxist aesthetic theory sees the work of art as a product, directly or indirectly, of the
base structure of society. Feminist thought and practice analyzes the production of
literature and literary representation within the framework that includes all social
and cultural formations as they pertain to the role of women in history. Postmodern
thought consists of both aesthetic and epistemological strands. Postmodernism in art
has included a move toward non-referential, non-linear, abstract forms; a heightened
degree of self-referentiality; and the collapse of categories and conventions that had
traditionally governed art. Postmodern thought has led to the serious questioning of
the so-called metanarratives of history, science, philosophy, and economic and sexual
reproduction. Under postmodernity, all knowledge comes to be seen as “constructed”
within historical self-contained systems of understanding. Marxist, feminist, and
postmodern thought have brought about the incorporation of all human discourses
(that is, interlocking fields of language and knowledge) as a subject matter for
analysis by the literary theorist. Using the various poststructuralist and postmodern
theories that often draw on disciplines other than the literary—linguistic,
 anthropological, psychoanalytic, and philosophical—for their primary insights,
literary theory has become an interdisciplinary body of cultural theory. Taking as its
premise that human societies and knowledge consist of texts in one form or another,
cultural theory (for better or worse) is now applied to the varieties of texts,
ambitiously undertaking to become the preeminent model of inquiry into the human
condition.

Literary theory is a site of theories: some theories, like “Queer Theory,” are
“in;” other literary theories, like “Deconstruction,” are “out” but continue to exert an
influence on the field. “Traditional literary criticism,” “New Criticism,” and
“Structuralism” are alike in that they held to the view that the study of literature has
an objective body of knowledge under its scrutiny. The other schools of literary
theory, to varying degrees, embrace a postmodern view of language and reality that
calls into serious question the objective referent of literary studies. The following
categories are certainly not exhaustive, nor are they mutually exclusive, but they
represent the major trends in literary theory of this century.

2. Traditional Literary Criticism

Academic literary criticism prior to the rise of “New Criticism” in the United
States tended to practice traditional literary history: tracking influence, establishing
the canon of major writers in the literary periods, and clarifying historical context and
allusions within the text. Literary biography was and still is an important interpretive
method in and out of the academy; versions of moral criticism, not unlike the Leavis
School in Britain, and aesthetic (e.g., genre studies) criticism were also generally
influential literary practices. Perhaps the key unifying feature of traditional literary
criticism was the consensus within the academy as to both the literary canon (that is,
the books all educated persons should read) and the aims and purposes of literature.
What literature was, and why we read literature, and what we read were questions
that subsequent movements in literary theory were to raise.

3. Formalism and New Criticism

“Formalism” is, as the name implies, an interpretive approach that emphasizes

literary form and the study of literary devices within the text. The work of the
Formalists had a general impact on later developments in “Structuralism” and other
theories of narrative. “Formalism,” like “Structuralism,” sought to place the study of
literature on a scientific basis through objective analysis of the motifs, devices,
techniques, and other “functions” that comprise the literary work. The Formalists
placed great importance on the literariness of texts, those qualities that distinguished
the literary from other kinds of writing. Neither author nor context was essential for
the Formalists; it was the narrative that spoke, the “hero-function,” for example, that
had meaning. Form was the content. A plot device or narrative strategy was examined
for how it functioned and compared to how it had functioned in other literary works.
Of the Russian Formalist critics, Roman Jakobson and Viktor Shklovsky are probably
the most well-known.

The Formalist adage that the purpose of literature was “to make the stones
stonier” nicely expresses their notion of literariness. “Formalism” is perhaps best
known as Shklovsky’s concept of “defamiliarization.” The routine of ordinary
experience, Shklovsky contended, rendered invisible the uniqueness and
particularity of the objects of existence. Literary language, partly by calling attention
to itself as language, estranged the reader from the familiar and made fresh daily life
experience.
 The “New Criticism,” so designated as to indicate a break with traditional
methods, was a product of the American University in the 1930s and 40s. “New
Criticism” stressed close reading of the text itself, much like the French pedagogical
precept “explication du texte.” As a strategy of reading, “New Criticism” viewed the
work of literature as an aesthetic object independent of historical context and as a
unified whole that reflected the unified sensibility of the artist. T.S. Eliot, though not
explicitly associated with the movement, expressed a similar critical-aesthetic
philosophy in his essays on John Donne and the metaphysical poets, writers who Eliot
believed experienced a complete integration of thought and feeling. New Critics like
Cleanth Brooks, John Crowe Ransom, Robert Penn Warren and W.K. Wimsatt placed
a similar focus on the metaphysical poets and poetry in general, a genre well suited
to New Critical practice. “New Criticism” aimed at bringing a greater intellectual rigor
to literary studies, confining itself to careful scrutiny of the text alone and the formal
structures of paradox, ambiguity, irony, and metaphor, among others. “New
Criticism” was fired by the conviction that their readings of poetry would yield a
humanizing influence on readers and thus counter the alienating tendencies of
modern, industrial life. “New Criticism” in this regard bears an affinity to the Southern
Agrarian movement whose manifesto, I’ll Take My Stand, contained essays by two
New Critics, Ransom and Warren. Perhaps the enduring legacy of “New Criticism” can
be found in the college classroom, in which the verbal texture of the poem on the page
remains a primary object of literary study.

4. Marxism and Critical Theory

Marxist literary theories tend to focus on the representation of class conflict

and the reinforcement of class distinctions through the medium of literature. Marxist
theorists use traditional literary analysis techniques but subordinate aesthetic
concerns to the final social and political meanings of literature. Marxist theorists often
champion authors sympathetic to the working classes and authors whose work
challenges economic equalities found in capitalist societies. In keeping with the
totalizing spirit of Marxism, literary theories arising from the Marxist paradigm have
sought new ways of understanding the relationship between economic production
and literature and all cultural production. Marxist analyses of society and history have
profoundly affected the literary theory and practical criticism, most notably in the
development of “New Historicism” and “Cultural Materialism.”

The Hungarian theorist Georg Lukacs contributed to an understanding of the

relationship between historical materialism and literary form, in particular with
realism and the historical novel. Walter Benjamin broke new ground in his work in
his study of aesthetics and the reproduction of the work of art. The Frankfurt School
of philosophers, including most notably Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and
Herbert Marcuse—after their emigration to the United States—played a key role in
introducing Marxist assessments of culture into the mainstream of American
academic life. These thinkers became associated with what is known as “Critical
theory,” one of the constituent components of which was a critique of the
instrumental use of reason in advanced capitalist culture. “Critical theory” held to a
distinction between the high cultural heritage of Europe and the mass culture
produced by capitalist societies as an instrument of domination. “Critical theory” sees
in the structure of mass cultural forms—jazz, Hollywood film, advertising—a
replication of the structure of the factory and the workplace. Creativity and cultural
production in advanced capitalist societies were always already co-opted by the
entertainment needs of an economic system that requires sensory stimulation and
recognizable cliché and suppressed the tendency for sustained deliberation.

The major Marxist influences on literary theory since the Frankfurt School
have been Raymond Williams and Terry Eagleton in Great Britain and Frank
 Lentricchia and Fredric Jameson in the United States. Williams is associated with the
New Left political movement in Great Britain and the development of “Cultural
Materialism” and the Cultural Studies Movement, originating in the 1960s at
Birmingham University’s Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies. Eagleton is
known both as a Marxist theorist and as a popularizer of theory by means of his
widely read overview, Literary Theory. Lentricchia likewise became influential
through his account of trends in theory, After the New Criticism. Jameson is a more
diverse theorist, known both for his impact on Marxist theories of culture and for his
position as one of the leading figures in theoretical postmodernism. Jameson’s work
on consumer culture, architecture, film, literature and other areas, typifies the
collapse of disciplinary boundaries taking place in the realm of Marxist and
postmodern cultural theory. Jameson’s work investigates the way the structural
features of late capitalism—particularly the transformation of all culture into
commodity form—are now deeply embedded in all of our ways of communicating.

5. Structuralism and Poststructuralism

Like the “New Criticism,” “Structuralism” sought to bring to literary studies a

set of objective criteria for analysis and a new intellectual rigor. “Structuralism” can
be viewed as an extension of “Formalism” in that that both “Structuralism” and
“Formalism” devoted their attention to matters of literary form (i.e., structure) rather
than social or historical content; and that both bodies of thought were intended to put
the study of literature on a scientific, objective basis. “Structuralism” relied initially
on the ideas of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. Like Plato, Saussure
regarded the signifier (words, marks, symbols) as arbitrary and unrelated to the
concept, the signified, to which it referred. Within the way a particular society uses
language and signs, meaning was constituted by a system of “differences” between
units of the language. Particular meanings were of less interest than the underlying
structures of signification that made meaning itself possible, often expressed as an
emphasis on “langue” rather than “parole.” “Structuralism” was to be a metalanguage,
a language about languages, used to decode actual languages or systems of
signification. The work of the “Formalist” Roman Jakobson contributed to
“Structuralist” thought, and the more prominent Structuralists included Claude Levi-
Strauss in anthropology, Tzvetan Todorov, A.J. Greimas, Gerard Genette, and Barthes.

The philosopher Roland Barthes proved to be a key figure on the divide

between “Structuralism” and “Poststructuralism.” “Poststructuralism” is less unified
as a theoretical movement than its precursor; indeed, the work of its advocates
known by the term “Deconstruction” calls into question the possibility of the
coherence of discourse or the capacity for language to communicate.
“Deconstruction,” Semiotic theory (a study of signs with close connections to
“Structuralism,” “Reader-response theory” in America (“Reception theory” in
Europe), and “Gender theory” informed by the psychoanalysts Jacques Lacan and Julia
Kristeva are areas of inquiry that can be located under the banner of
“Poststructuralism.” If signifier and signified are both cultural concepts, as they are in
“Poststructuralism,” reference to an empirically certifiable reality is no longer
guaranteed by language. “Deconstruction” argues that this loss of reference causes an
endless deferral of meaning, a system of differences between units of language that
has no resting place or final signifier that would enable the other signifiers to hold
their meaning. The most important theorist of “Deconstruction,” Jacques Derrida, has
asserted, “There is no getting outside the text,” indicating a kind of free play of
signification in which no fixed, stable meaning is possible. “Poststructuralism” in
America was originally identified with a group of Yale academics, the Yale School of
“Deconstruction:” J. Hillis Miller, Geoffrey Hartmann, and Paul de Man. Other
tendencies at the moment after “Deconstruction” that share some of the intellectual
 tendencies of “Poststructuralism” would include the “Reader response” theories of
Stanley Fish, Jane Tompkins, and Wolfgang Iser.

Lacanian psychoanalysis, an updating of the work of Sigmund Freud, extends

“Postructuralism” to the human subject with further consequences for literary theory.
According to Lacan, the fixed, stable self is a Romantic fiction; like the text in
“Deconstruction,” the self is a decentered mass of traces left by our encounter with
signs, visual symbols, language, etc. For Lacan, the self is constituted by language, a
language that is never one’s own, always another’s, always already in use. Barthes
applies these currents of thought in his famous declaration of the “death” of the
Author: “writing is the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin” while also
applying a similar “Poststructuralist” view to the Reader: “the reader is without
history, biography, psychology; he is simply that someone who holds together in a
single field all the traces by which the written text is constituted.”

Michel Foucault is another philosopher, like Barthes, whose ideas inform

much of poststructuralist literary theory. Foucault played a critical role in the
development of the postmodern perspective that knowledge is constructed in
concrete historical situations in the form of discourse; knowledge is not
communicated by discourse but is discourse itself, can only be encountered textually.
Following Nietzsche, Foucault performs what he calls “genealogies,” attempts at
deconstructing the unacknowledged operation of power and knowledge to reveal the
ideologies that make domination of one group by another seem “natural.” Foucaldian
investigations of discourse and power were to provide much of the intellectual
impetus for a new way of looking at history and doing textual studies that came to be
known as the “New Historicism.”

6. New Historicism and Cultural Materialism

“New Historicism,” a term coined by Stephen Greenblatt, designates a body of

theoretical and interpretive practices that began largely with the study of early
modern literature in the United States. “New Historicism” in America had been
somewhat anticipated by the theorists of “Cultural Materialism” in Britain, which, in
the words of their leading advocate, Raymond Williams, describes “the analysis of all
forms of signification, including quite centrally writing, within the actual means and
conditions of their production.” Both “New Historicism” and “Cultural Materialism”
seek to understand literary texts historically and reject the formalizing influence of
previous literary studies, including “New Criticism,” “Structuralism” and
“Deconstruction,” all of which in varying ways privilege the literary text and place
only secondary emphasis on the historical and social context. According to “New
Historicism,” the circulation of literary and non-literary texts produces relations of
social power within a culture. New Historicist thought differs from traditional
historicism in literary studies in several crucial ways. Rejecting traditional
historicism’s premise of neutral inquiry, “New Historicism” accepts the necessity of
making historical value judgments. According to “New Historicism,” we can only
know the textual history of the past because it is “embedded,” a key term, in the
textuality of the present and its concerns. Text and context are less clearly distinct in
New Historicist practice. Traditional separations of literary and non-literary texts,
“great” literature and popular literature, are also fundamentally challenged. For the
“New Historicist,” all acts of expression are embedded in the material conditions of
culture. Texts are examined with an eye for how they reveal the economic and social
realities, especially as they produce ideology and represent power or subversion. Like
much of the emergent European social history of the 1980s, “New Historicism” takes
a particular interest in representations of marginal/marginalized groups and non-
normative behaviors—witchcraft, cross-dressing, peasant revolts, and exorcisms—
 as exemplary of the need for power to represent subversive alternatives, the Other,
to legitimize itself.

Louis Montrose, another major innovator and exponent of “New Historicism,”

describes a fundamental axiom of the movement as an intellectual belief in “the
textuality of history and the historicity of texts.” “New Historicism” draws on the work
of Levi-Strauss, in particular his notion of culture as a “self-regulating system.” The
Foucaldian premise that power is ubiquitous and cannot be equated with state or
economic power and Gramsci’s conception of “hegemony,” i.e., that domination is
often achieved through culturally-orchestrated consent rather than force, are critical
underpinnings to the “New Historicist” perspective. The translation of the work of
Mikhail Bakhtin on carnival coincided with the rise of the “New Historicism” and
“Cultural Materialism” and left a legacy in the work of other theorists of influence like
Peter Stallybrass and Jonathan Dollimore. In its period of ascendancy during the
1980s, “New Historicism” drew criticism from the political left for its depiction of
counter-cultural expression as always co-opted by the dominant discourses. Equally,
“New Historicism’s” lack of emphasis on “literariness” and formal literary concerns
brought disdain from traditional literary scholars. However, “New Historicism”
continues to exercise a major influence in the humanities and in the extended
conception of literary studies.

7. Ethnic Studies and Postcolonial Criticism

“Ethnic Studies,” sometimes referred to as “Minority Studies,” has an obvious

historical relationship with “Postcolonial Criticism” in that Euro-American
imperialism and colonization in the last four centuries, whether external (empire) or
internal (slavery), has been directed at recognizable ethnic groups: African and
African-American, Chinese, the subaltern peoples of India, Irish, Latino, Native
American, and Philipino, among others. “Ethnic Studies” concerns itself generally
with art and literature produced by identifiable ethnic groups either marginalized or
in a subordinate position to a dominant culture. “Postcolonial Criticism” investigates
the relationships between colonizers and colonized in the period post-colonization.
Though the two fields are increasingly finding points of intersection—the work of bell
hooks, for example—and are both activist intellectual enterprises, “Ethnic Studies
and “Postcolonial Criticism” have significant differences in their history and ideas.

“Ethnic Studies” has had a considerable impact on literary studies in the

United States and Britain. In W.E.B. Dubois, we find an early attempt to theorize the
position of African-Americans within a dominant white culture through his concept
of “double consciousness,” a dual identity including both “American” and “Negro.”
Dubois and theorists after him seek an understanding of how that double experience
both creates identity and reveals itself in culture. Afro-Caribbean and African
writers—Aime Cesaire, Frantz Fanon, Chinua Achebe—have made significant early
contributions to the theory and practice of ethnic criticism that explores the
traditions, sometimes suppressed or underground, of ethnic literary activity while
providing a critique of representations of ethnic identity as found within the majority
culture. Ethnic and minority literary theory emphasizes the relationship of cultural
identity to individual identity in historical circumstances of overt racial oppression.
More recently, scholars and writers such as Henry Louis Gates, Toni Morrison, and
Kwame Anthony Appiah have brought attention to the problems inherent in applying
theoretical models derived from Euro-centric paradigms (that is, structures of
thought) to minority works of literature while at the same time exploring new
interpretive strategies for understanding the vernacular (common speech) traditions
of racial groups that have been historically marginalized by dominant cultures.
 Though not the first writer to explore the historical condition of
postcolonialism, the Palestinian literary theorist Edward Said’s book Orientalism is
generally regarded as having inaugurated the field of explicitly “Postcolonial
Criticism” in the West. Said argues that the concept of “the Orient” was produced by
the “imaginative geography” of Western scholarship and has been instrumental in the
colonization and domination of non-Western societies. “Postcolonial” theory reverses
the historical center/margin direction of cultural inquiry: critiques of the metropolis
and capital now emanate from the former colonies. Moreover, theorists like Homi K.
Bhabha have questioned the binary thought that produces the dichotomies—
center/margin, white/black, and colonizer/colonized—by which colonial practices
are justified. The work of Gayatri C. Spivak has focused attention on the question of
who speaks for the colonial “Other” and the relation of the ownership of discourse
and representation to the development of the postcolonial subjectivity. Like feminist
and ethnic theory, “Postcolonial Criticism” pursues not merely the inclusion of the
marginalized literature of colonial peoples into the dominant canon and discourse.
“Postcolonial Criticism” offers a fundamental critique of the ideology of colonial
domination and at the same time seeks to undo the “imaginative geography” of
Orientalist thought that produced conceptual as well as economic divides between
West and East, civilized and uncivilized, First and Third Worlds. In this respect,
“Postcolonial Criticism” is activist and adversarial in its basic aims. Postcolonial
theory has brought fresh perspectives to the role of colonial peoples—their wealth,
labor, and culture—in the development of modern European nation-states. While
“Postcolonial Criticism” emerged in the historical moment following the collapse of
the modern colonial empires, the increasing globalization of culture, including the
neo-colonialism of multinational capitalism, suggests a continued relevance for this
field of inquiry.

8. Gender Studies and Queer Theory

Gender theory came to the forefront of the theoretical scene first as a feminist
theory but had subsequently included the investigation of all gender and sexual
categories and identities. Feminist gender theory followed slightly behind the
reemergence of political feminism in the United States and Western Europe during
the 1960s. Political feminism of the so-called “second wave” had as its emphasis
practical concerns with women’s rights in contemporary societies, women’s identity,
and the representation of women in media and culture. These causes converged with
early literary feminist practice, characterized by Elaine Showalter as “gynocriticism,”
which emphasized the study and canonical inclusion of works by female authors as
well as the depiction of women in male-authored canonical texts.

Feminist gender theory is postmodern in that it challenges the paradigms and

intellectual premises of western thought but also takes an activist stance by
proposing frequent interventions and alternative epistemological positions meant to
change the social order. In the context of postmodernism, gender theorists, led by the
work of Judith Butler, initially viewed the category of “gender” as a human construct
enacted by a vast repetition of social performance. The biological distinction between
man and woman eventually came under the same scrutiny by theorists who reached
a similar conclusion: the sexual categories are products of culture and, as such, help
create social reality rather than simply reflect it. Gender theory achieved a wide
readership and acquired much its initial theoretical rigor through the work of a group
of French feminist theorists that included Simone de Beauvoir, Luce Irigaray, Helene
Cixous, and Julia Kristeva, who while Bulgarian rather than French, made her mark
writing in French. French feminist thought is based on the assumption that the
Western philosophical tradition represses the experience of women in the structure
of its ideas. As an important consequence of this systematic intellectual repression
and exclusion, women’s lives and bodies in historical societies are subject to
 repression as well. In the creative/critical work of Cixous, we find the history of
Western thought depicted as binary oppositions: “speech/writing; Nature/Art,
Nature/History, Nature/Mind, Passion/Action.” For Cixous and Irigaray as well, these
binaries are less a function of any objective reality they describe than the male-
dominated discourse of the Western tradition that produced them. Their work
beyond the descriptive stage becomes an intervention in the history of theoretical
discourse, an attempt to alter the existing categories and systems of thought that
found Western rationality. French feminism, and perhaps all feminism after Beauvoir,
has been in conversation with the psychoanalytic revision of Freud in the work of
Jacques Lacan. Kristeva’s work draws heavily on Lacan. Two concepts from
Kristeva—the “semiotic” and “abjection”—have had a significant influence on literary
theory. Kristeva’s “semiotic” refers to the gaps, silences, spaces, and bodily presence
within the language/symbol system of a culture in which there might be a space for a
women’s language, different in kind as it would be from the male-dominated
discourse.

Masculine gender theory as a separate enterprise has focused largely on social,

literary, and historical accounts of the construction of male gender identities. Such
work generally lacks feminisms’ activist stance and tends to serve primarily as an
indictment rather than a validation of male gender practices and masculinity. The so-
called “Men’s Movement,” inspired by the work of Robert Bly among others, was more
practical than theoretical and has had only limited impact on gender discourse. The
impetus for the “Men’s Movement” came largely as a response to the critique of
masculinity and male domination that runs throughout feminism and the upheaval of
the 1960s, a period of crisis in American social ideology that has required a
reconsideration of gender roles. Having long served as the de facto “subject” of
Western thought, male identity and masculine gender theory awaits serious
investigation as a particular, and no longer universally representative, field of inquiry.

Much of what theoretical energy of masculine gender theory currently

possesses comes from its ambiguous relationship with the field of “Queer theory.”
“Queer theory” is not synonymous with gender theory, nor even with the overlapping
fields of gay and lesbian studies, but does share many of their concerns with
normative definitions of man, woman, and sexuality. “Queer theory” questions the
fixed categories of sexual identity and the cognitive paradigms generated by
normative (that is, what is considered “normal”) sexual ideology. To “queer” becomes
an act by which stable boundaries of sexual identity are transgressed, reversed,
mimicked, or otherwise critiqued. “Queering” can be enacted on behalf of all non-
normative sexualities and identities as well, all that is considered by the dominant
paradigms of culture to be alien, strange, unfamiliar, transgressive, odd—in short,
queer. Michel Foucault’s work on sexuality anticipates and informs the Queer
theoretical movement in a role similar to the way his writing on power and discourse
prepared the ground for “New Historicism.” Judith Butler contends that heterosexual
identity long held to be a normative ground of sexuality is actually produced by the
suppression of homoerotic possibility. Eve Sedgwick is another pioneering theorist of
“Queer theory,” and like Butler, Sedgwick maintains that the dominance of
heterosexual culture conceals the extensive presence of homosocial relations. For
Sedgwick, the standard histories of western societies are presented in exclusively in
terms of heterosexual identity: “Inheritance, Marriage, Dynasty, Family, Domesticity,
Population,” and thus conceiving of homosexual identity within this framework is
already problematic.

9. Cultural Studies

Much of the intellectual legacy of “New Historicism” and “Cultural

Materialism” can now be felt in the “Cultural Studies” movement in departments of
 literature, a movement not identifiable in terms of a single theoretical school but one
that embraces a wide array of perspectives—media studies, social criticism,
anthropology, and literary theory—as they apply to the general study of culture.
“Cultural Studies” arose quite self-consciously in the 80s to provide a means of the
analysis of the rapidly expanding global culture industry that includes entertainment,
advertising, publishing, television, film, computers, and the Internet. “Cultural
Studies” brings scrutiny not only to these varied categories of culture and not only to
the decreasing margins of difference between these realms of expression but just as
important to the politics and ideology that make contemporary culture possible.
“Cultural Studies” became notorious in the 90s for its emphasis on pop music icons
and music video in place of canonical literature, and extends the ideas of the Frankfurt
School on the transition from truly popular culture to mass culture in late capitalist
societies, emphasizing the significance of the patterns of consumption of cultural
artifacts. “Cultural Studies” has been interdisciplinary, even antidisciplinary, from its
inception; indeed, “Cultural Studies” can be understood as a set of sometimes
conflicting methods and approaches applied to questioning of current cultural
categories. Stuart Hall, Meaghan Morris, Tony Bennett, and Simon During are some of
the important advocates of “Cultural Studies” that seek to displace the traditional
model of literary studies.

Characteristics of Prose and Drama

1. Characters and Characterization

Character

All stories need certain necessary elements. Without these elements, literary
works often fail to make sense. For instance, one of the essential elements of every
story is a plot with a series of events. Another important element is character. A
character can be any person, a figure, an inanimate object, or animal. There are
different types of characters, and each serves its unique function in a story or a piece
of literature.

Types of Character

There are many types of characters which include:

a. Confidante

A confidante is someone in whom the main character confides. He

reveals the central character’s thoughts, intentions, and personality traits.
However, a confidante need not necessarily be a person. An animal can also be
a confidante.

b. Dynamic Character

A dynamic character changes during the course of a novel or a story.

This change in character or his/her outlook is permanent. That is why
sometimes a dynamic character is also called a “developing character.”

c. Static Character

A static character remains the same throughout the whole story. Even
the events in a story or novel do not change a character’s outlook, perceptions,
habits, personality, or motivations.
 d. Antagonist

An antagonist is a bad guy or an opponent of the protagonist or the

main character. The action in the story arises from a conflict between the
protagonist and the antagonist. The antagonist can be a person, an inanimate
object, an animal, or nature itself.

e. Protagonist

Every story has a protagonist, the main character, who creates the
plot’s action and engages readers, arousing their empathy and interest. The
protagonist is often a hero or heroine of the story, as the whole plot moves
around him or her.

f. Round Character

The round characters are well-developed and complex figures in a

story. They are more realistic and demonstrate more depth in their
personalities. They can make surprising or puzzling decisions and attract
readers’ attention. Many factors may affect them, and round characters react
to such factors realistically.

g. Flat Character

A flat character does not change during a story. Also, he or she usually
only reveals one or two personality traits.

h. Stock Character

A stock character is a flat character that is instantly recognizable by

readers. Like a flat character, the stock character does not undergo any
development throughout the story.

Examples of Character in Literature

Example #1: The Lord of the Rings trilogy (By J. R. R.)

In The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Frodo and his friend Sam discover their
unexpected personal commitment, emotional and physical strength, and dedication
to the cause. Gandalf discovers that his trust was broken by his fellow wizards; thus,
he transforms into a magician with a stronger character. Aragorn, an heir to the line
of kings, gives up his title; however, over the period of time, he discovers his
leadership skills and decides to regain his crown. All of these characters provide us
with good examples of round characters, each having depth of personality and
abilities to surprise the readers.

Example #2: A Christmas Carol (by Charles Dickens)

In Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge is a tightfisted

person. He forces his workers to work hard but gives them peanuts in return.
However, after undergoing some very strange and disturbing experiences with the
ghosts, he changes his ways – paying his employees more than their fair wages, giving
them days off work, and even gives gifts. This transformation makes him fit into the
role of a dynamic character.
Example #3: Hedda Gabler (by Henrik Ibsen)

Hedda Gabler is manipulative, cold, and “demonic,” even though she is the title
character – the focus of the play. She is the most complex and psychologically
compelling character, the reason that she is a dynamic character.

Example #4: Othello (by William Shakespeare)

At some points, it seems that Iago is the protagonist since he dominates the
entire play and delivers soliloquies. However, he does not change at all, and most of
the protagonists undergo some sort of change during a play. Also, in the opening lines,
Iago describes himself as someone who wishes to destroy Othello. Thus, his actions
transform him into a tragic antagonistic type of character, though he is the central
character of the play.

Function of Character

The main function of a character in a story is to extend or prolong the plot,

make it readable and interesting. Many stories use multiple characters, and every
story has a main character that affects the plot a great deal. The main character could
be a protagonist, an antagonist, a dynamic, a static, a flat, or a round character.
Readers feel that the characters given in the literary pieces exist, and they enjoy
reading their real and lifelike figures and actions.

Characterization

Characterization is a literary device that is used step-by-step in the literature

to highlight and explain the details about a character in a story. It is in the initial stage
in which the writer introduces the character with noticeable emergence. After
introducing the character, the writer often talks about his behavior; then, as the story
progresses, the thought-processes of the character.

The next stage involves the character expressing his opinions and ideas and
getting into conversations with the rest of the characters. The final part shows how
others in the story respond to the character’s personality.

Characterization as a literary tool was coined in the mid 15th century.

Aristotle, in his Poetics, argued that “tragedy is a representation, not of men, but of
action and life.” Thus the assertion of the dominance of plot over characters, termed
“plot-driven narrative,” is unmistakable. This point of view was later abandoned by
many because, in the 19th century, the dominance of character over plot became clear
through petty-bourgeois novels.

Types of Characterization

An author can use two approaches to deliver information about a character

and build an image of it. These two types of characterization include:

Direct or explicit characterization

This kind of characterization takes a direct approach towards building the

character. It uses another character, narrator, or the protagonist himself to tell the
readers or audience about the subject.
Indirect or implicit characterization

This is a more subtle way of introducing the character to the audience. The
audience has to deduce for themselves the characteristics of the character by
observing his/her thought process, behavior, speech, way of talking, appearance, and
manner of communication with other characters, as well as by discerning the
response of other characters.

Characterization in Drama

On stage or in front of the camera, actors usually do not have much time to
characterize. For this reason, the character faces the risk of coming across as
underdeveloped. In dramaturgy, realists take a different approach by relying on
implied characterization. This is pivotal to the theme of their character-driven
narrative. Examples of these playwrights are Anton Chekhov, Henrik Ibsen, and
August Strindberg.

Classic psychological characterization examples, such as The Seagull, usually

build the main character in a more indirect manner. This approach is considered
more effective because it slowly discloses the inner turmoil of the character, over the
course of the show and lets the audience connect better.

The actors who act in such roles usually work on them profoundly to get an in-
depth idea of the personalities of their respective characters. Often, during such
shows, plays, or dramas, no direct statements about the character’s nature are found.
This kind of realism needs the actors to build the character from their own
perspective initially. This is why realistic characterization is more of a subtle art,
which cannot directly be recognized.

Examples of Characterization in Literature

Example #1: The Great Gatsby (By F. Scott Fitzgerald)

There are many examples of characterization in literature. The Great Gatsby is

probably the best. In this particular book, the main idea revolves around the social
status of each character. The major character of the book, Mr. Gatsby, is perceptibly
rich, but he does not belong to the upper stratum of society. This means that he cannot
have Daisy. Tom is essentially defined by his wealth and the abusive nature that he
portrays every now and then, while Daisy is explained by Gatsby as having a voice
“full of money.”

Another technique to highlight the qualities of a character is to put them in

certain areas that are symbolic of a social status. In the novel, Gatsby resides in the
West Egg, which is considered less trendy than East Egg, where Daisy lives. This
difference points out the gap between Jay’s and Daisy’s social statuses. Moreover, you
might also notice that Tom, Jordan, and Daisy live in East Egg while Gatsby and Nick
reside in West Egg, which again highlights the difference in their financial
background. This division is reinforced at the end of the novel when Nick supports
Gatsby against the rest of the folk.

Occupations have also been used very tactfully in the novel to highlight
characteristics of certain protagonists. The prime example is Gatsby who, despite
being so rich, is known by his profession: bootlegging. He had an illegal job that
earned him a fortune, but failed to get him into the upper class of New York society.
In contrast, Nick has a clean and fair job of a “bond man” that defines his character.
 The poor guy Wilson, who fixes rich people’s cars, befriends his wife; and then there
is Jordon, who is presented as a dishonest golf pro.

Function of Characterization

Characterization is an essential component in writing good literature. Modern

fiction, in particular, has taken great advantage of this literary device. Understanding
the role of characterization in storytelling is very important for any writer. To put it
briefly, it helps us make sense of the behavior of any character in a story by helping
us understand their thought processes. Good use of characterization always leads the
readers or audience to relate better to the events taking place in the story. Dialogues
play a very important role in developing a character because they give us an
opportunity to examine the motivations and actions of the characters more deeply.

2. Setting and Conflict

Setting

Setting is an environment or surrounding in which an event or story takes

place. It may provide particular information about placement and timing, such as New
York, America, in the year 1820. Setting could be simply descriptive, like a lonely
cottage on a mountain. Social conditions, historical time, geographical locations,
weather, immediate surroundings, and timing are all different aspects of setting.

There are three major components to setting: social environment, place, and
time. Moreover, setting could be an actual region, or a city made larger than life, as
James Joyce characterizes Dublin in Ulysses. Or, it could be a work of the author’s
imagination, such as Vladimir Nabokov’s imaginative place, space-time continuum in
Ada.

Types of Setting

There are two main types of setting:

Backdrop Setting

Backdrop setting emerges when it is not important for a story, and it could
happen in any setting. For instance, A. A. Milne’s story Winnie-the-Pooh could take
place in any type of setting.

Integral Setting

It is when the place and time influence the theme, character, and action of a
story—this type of setting controls the characters. By confining a certain character to
a particular setting, the writer defines the character. Beatrix Potter’s short story The
Tail of Peter Rabbit is an example of an integral setting, in which the behavior of Peter
becomes an integral part of the setting. Another good example of this type of setting
can be seen in E. B. White’s novel Charlotte’s Web.

Examples of Setting in Literature

Example #1: Wuthering Heights (By Emily Bronte)

In Emily Bronte’s novel Wuthering Heights, its setting plays a vital role, as it
reflects the mood of major characters and their actions while contributing to its
overall atmosphere. The novel has three main settings:
 The Moors
Wuthering Heights
Thrushcross Grange

The Moors symbolize wilderness and freedom, as nobody owns them, and
everyone can freely move about anytime. Wuthering Heights depicts the weather
around this house, which is stormy and gloomy. The characters are cruel and
extremely passionate. Thrushcross Grange, on the other hand, is contrary to
Wuthering Heights because its weather is calm, while its inhabitants are dull and
weak.

Example #2: The Passionate Shepherd to His Love (By Christopher Marlowe)

Christopher Marlowe’s poem The Passionate Shepherd to His Love is set in the
countryside in the springtime. The springtime has a double purpose, as it refers to
baby animals and budding flowers, and the fifth month of the year. Then the month
of May sets the scene as well as emphasize fertility and new life linked with
springtime. Thus, the poet has idealized the image of rural life in the background of
his personal emotions, while time is stationary in the poem.

Example #3: Heart of Darkness (By Joseph Conrad)

In Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness, the leading character Marlow goes
to different places and settings that influence his imagination, which adds to the
themes of the story. The title, Heart of Darkness, refers to the center of the jungle on
the African continent, where Marlowe travels to find Kurtz. The darkness not only
applies to the shadowy jungle but also to the behavior and actions of the civilized
people it affects, and they become savage like Kurtz. The setting is also symbolic of
imperialistic forces that have made black men their slaves.

Example #4: Lord of the Flies (By William Golding)

In William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies, weather plays a very important
role, as it represents the mood, behavior, and attitudes of young boys throughout the
storyline. During the day, the beach looks bright, while the ocean is calm, and there is
no conflict. The author describes the dense areas of the jungle as scary and dark. One
night, when Simon is killed, there comes a violent storm, and the ocean looks very
rough in the black night. Thus, its setting includes weather conditions and the ocean
representing dark forces of nature present in human nature.

Function of Setting

The function of setting in a fictional, poetic, and prose work is of great

importance. It has an immense effect on plots and characters, as it could act as an
antagonist, post a conflict that characters need to resolve or shed light upon
characters. It can also present symbolic persons, objects, places, actions, or situations.
Setting can establish the mood or atmosphere of a scene or story and develop the plot
into a more realistic form, resulting in more convincing characters. By establishing
mood, setting also helps the audience relate themselves to the characters in a story.

Conflict

In literature, conflict is a literary element that involves a struggle between two

opposing forces, usually a protagonist and an antagonist.
Internal and External Conflicts

Careful examination of some conflict examples will help us realize that they
may be internal or external.

An internal or psychological conflict arises as soon as a character experiences

two opposite emotions or desires – usually virtue and vice, or good and evil – inside
him. This disagreement causes the character to suffer mental agony, and it develops
a unique tension in a storyline marked by a lack of action.

On the other hand, external conflict is marked by a characteristic involvement

of an action wherein a character finds himself struggling with those outside forces
that hamper his progress. The most common type of external conflict is where a
protagonist fights back against the antagonist’s tactics that impede his or her
advancement.

Examples of Conflict in Literature

Example #1: Hamlet (By William Shakespeare)

Hamlet’s internal conflict is the main driver in William Shakespeare’s play

Hamlet.” It decides his tragic downfall. He reveals his state of mind in the following
lines from Act 3, Scene 1 of the play:

“To be, or not to be – that is the question:

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep…”

The conflict here is that Hamlet wants to kill his father’s murderer, Claudius,
but he also looks for proof to justify his action. This ultimately ruins his life and the
lives of his loved ones. Due to his internal conflict, Hamlet spoils his relationship with
his mother and sends Ophelia (Hamlet’s love interest) into such a state of despair that
she commits suicide.

Hamlet’s indecisiveness almost got everyone killed at the end of the play. The
resolution came when he killed Claudius by assuming fake madness so that he would
not be asked for any justification. In the same play, we find Hamlet engaged in an
external conflict with his uncle Claudius.

Example #2: Doctor Faustus (By Christopher Marlowe)

Another example of an internal conflict is found in the character of Doctor

Faustus in Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. Faustus has an ambitious nature. In spite of
being a respected scholar, he sold his soul to Lucifer by signing a contract with his
blood in order to achieve ultimate power and limitless pleasure in this world. He
learns the art of black magic and defies Christianity.

After the aforementioned action, we see Faustus suffering from an internal

conflict where he thinks honestly about repenting, acting upon the advice of “the good
angel,” but “the bad angel” or the evil inside him distracts him by saying it is all too
late. In conclusion, the resolution comes when devils take his soul away to Hell, and
he suffers eternal damnation because of his over-ambition.
 Example #3: The Lord of the Flies Farm (By William Golding)

The most straightforward type of external conflict is when a character in a

story struggles against another character physically. In William Golding’s novel The
Lord of the Flies, for example, Ralph (the leader of the “good guys”) steadily comes
into conflict with Jack – a bully who later forms a “tribe” of hunters. Jack and his tribe
give in to their savage instinct and make attempts to hunt or kill the civilized batch of
boys led by Ralph.

Example #4: To Kill a Mockingbird (By Harper Lee)

Another kind of external conflict sets a character against the evil that
dominates society. In this case, a character may confront a dominant group with
opposing priorities. For instance, in Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird, an
honest lawyer, Atticus Finch, goes up against the racist society in which he lives.
Atticus has the courage to defend a black man, Tom Robinson, who has been falsely
accused of rape. Though Atticus has the support of a few like-minded people, most of
the townspeople express their disapproval of his defense of a black man.

Function of Conflict

Both internal and external conflicts are essential elements of a storyline. It is

essential for a writer to introduce and develop them, whether internal, external, or
both, in his storyline in order to achieve the story’s goal. Resolution of the conflict
entertains the readers.

3. Point of View

Point of view is the angle of considering things, which shows us the opinion or
feelings of the individuals involved in a situation. In literature, point of view is the
mode of narration that an author employs to let the readers “hear” and “see” what
takes place in a story, poem, or essay.

Point of view is a reflection of the opinion an individual from real life or fiction
has. Examples of point of view belong to one of these three major kinds:

a. First person point of view involves the use of either of the two pronouns “I” or
“we.” “I felt like I was getting drowned with shame and disgrace.”

b. Second person point of view employs the pronoun “you.” “Sometimes you
cannot clearly discern between anger and frustration.”

c. Third person point of view uses pronouns like “he,” “she,” “it,” “they,” or a
name. “ Stewart is a principled man. He acts by the book and never lets you
deceive him easily.”

Examples of Point of View in Literature

Example #1: Hamlet (By William Shakespeare)

Hamlet, the protagonist, explains the feeling of melancholy that afflicts him
after his father’s death:

“I have of late, — but wherefore I know not, — lost all my mirth, forgone all custom
of exercises; and indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame,
the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory.”
 This is one of the best first-person point-of-view examples in literature. The
use of the first-person point of view gives us a glimpse into the real inner feelings of
frustration of the character. The writer has utilized the first-person point of view to
expose Hamlet’s feelings in a detailed way.

Example #2: Daffodils (By William Wordsworth)

“I gazed – and gazed – but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought.”

Notice how William Wordsworth uses the first-person point of view to express
his subjective feelings about the scene of daffodils in his famous poem. The use of the
pronoun “I” gives a special quality to the feelings expressed in these lines. The reader
can see that the poet has employed the first-person point of view to share with us his
own personal emotions.

Example #3: The Sun Also Rises (By Ernest Hemingway)

Ernest Hemingway, in The Sun Also Rises, employs the first-person point of
view, which is peculiar to his style.

“I could picture it. I have a habit of imagining the conversations between my friends.
We went out to the Cafe Napolitain to have an aperitif and watch the evening crowd
on the Boulevard.”

The use of two first-person pronouns, “I” and “we,” gives these lines the quality
of having a first-person point of view. The reader can feel like he or she is hearing the
dialogue directly from the characters.

Example #4: Bright Lights, Big City (By Jay Mclnemey)

“You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the
morning. But here you are, and you cannot say that the terrain is entirely unfamiliar,
although the details are fuzzy.”

Here, the writer illustrates the use of second-person point of view with the use
of the pronoun “you.” This technique may be less common, but it has its own strength
of hooking the reader right from the start.

Example #5: Pride and Prejudice (By Jane Austen)

“When Jane and Elizabeth were alone, the former, who had been cautious in her praise
of Mr. Bingley before, expressed to her sister how very much she admired him.”

“He is just what a young man ought to be,” said she, “sensible, good humoured, lively;
and I never saw such happy manners! — so much ease, with such perfect good
breeding!”

These lines demonstrate a fine use of the third-person point of view. The
excerpt shows the reader two different ways of using third-person point of view. Jane
Austen first presents two leading characters –Jane and Elizabeth – from the third-
person point of view, and then shows us that the two characters are talking about
Bingley from their own third-person point of view. This can be a good example of the
use of dual third person point of view – first by the author, and then by the characters.
 Function of Point of View

Point of view is an integral tool of description in the author’s hands to portray

personal emotions or characters’ feelings about an experience or situation. Writers
use a point of view to express effectively what they want to convey to their readers.

4. Plot

Plot is a literary term used to describe the events that make up a story or the
main part of a story. These events relate to each other in a pattern or a sequence. The
structure of a novel depends on the organization of events in the plot of the story.

Plot is known as the foundation of a novel or story, around which the

characters and settings are built. It is meant to organize information and events in a
logical manner. When writing the plot of a piece of literature, the author has to be
careful that it does not dominate the other parts of the story.

Primary Elements of a Plot

There are five main elements in a plot.

a. Exposition or Introduction

This is the beginning of the story, where characters and setting are
established. The conflict or main problem is introduced as well.

b. Rising Action

Rising action occurs when a series of events build-up to the conflict.

The main characters are established by the time the rising action of a plot
occurs, and at the same time, events begin to get complicated. It is during this
part of a story that excitement, tension, or crisis is encountered.

c. Climax

In the climax or the main point of the plot, there is a turning point in
the story. This is meant to be the moment of highest interest and emotion,
leaving the reader wondering what is going to happen next.

d. Falling Action

Falling action, or the winding up of the story, occurs when events and
complications begin to resolve. The result of the actions of the main characters
is put forward.

e. Resolution
Resolution, or the conclusion, is the end of a story, which may occur
with either a happy or a tragic ending.

Examples of Plot in Literature

Example #1: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (By J. K. Rowling)

Among the examples of plot in modern literature, Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer’s Stone is probably the most familiar to both readers and moviegoers. The
plot of the story begins when Harry learns that Professor Snape is after the Sorcerer’s
 Stone. The Professor lets loose a troll, who nearly kills Harry and his friends. In
addition, Harry finds out that Hagrid let out the secret of the giant dog to a stranger
in return for a dragon, which means that Snape can now reach the Sorcerer’s Stone.

Example #2: Pride and Prejudice (By Jane Austen)

A very good plot example in romantic fiction appears in the book Pride and
Prejudice by Jane Austen. The plot of the story begins when Lizzie’s sister, Jane, falls
in love with Darcy’s friend named Mr. Bingley. Lizzie develops an interest in Mr.
Wickham, who accuses Darcy of destroying him financially.

When Lizzie goes to meet her friend, she runs into Mr. Darcy, who proposes,
and Lizzie rejects him. She then writes him a letter telling him why she dislikes him.
He writes back, clearing up all misunderstandings and accusations. Jane runs away
with Mr. Wickham, and Lizzie realizes that Mr. Darcy is not as bad a man as she had
thought him to be.

Function of Plot

A plot is one of the most important parts of a story and has many different
purposes. Firstly, the plot focuses attention on the important characters and their
roles in the story. It motivates the characters to affect the story, and connects the
events in an orderly manner. The plot creates a desire for the reader to go on reading
by absorbing them in the middle of the story, ensuring they want to know what
happens next.

The plot leads to the climax, but by gradually releasing the story in order to
maintain readers’ interest. During the plot of a book, a reader gets emotionally
involved, connecting with the book, not allowing himself to put the book down.
Eventually, the plot reveals the entire story, giving the reader a sense of completion
that he has finished the story and reached a conclusion.

The plot is what forms a memory in readers’ minds, allowing them to think
about the book and even making them want to read it again. By identifying and
understanding the plot, the reader is able to understand the message being conveyed
by the author, and the explicit or implicit moral of the story.

5. Theme

Theme is defined as the main idea or an underlying meaning of a literary work,

which may be stated directly or indirectly.

Major and Minor Themes

Major and minor themes are two types of themes that appear in literary works.
A major theme is an idea that a writer repeats in his literary work, making it the most
significant idea in the work. A minor theme, on the other hand, refers to an idea that
appears in a work briefly, giving way to another minor theme. Examples of theme in
Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” are matrimony, love, friendship, and affection.
The whole narrative revolves around the major theme of matrimony. Its minor
themes are love, friendship, affectation etc.

Difference Between a Theme and a Subject

It is important not to confuse a theme of a literary work with its subject.

Subject is a topic that acts as a foundation for a literary work, while a theme is an
opinion expressed on the subject. For example, a writer may choose a subject of war
for his story, and the theme may be his personal opinion that war is a curse for
humanity. Usually, it is up to the readers to explore the theme of a literary work by
analyzing characters, plot, and other literary devices.

Presentation of Themes

A writer presents themes in a literary work through several means. A writer

may express a theme through the feelings of his main character about the subject he
has chosen to write about. Similarly, themes are presented through thoughts and
conversations of different characters. Moreover, the experiences of the main
character in the course of a literary work give us an idea about its theme. Finally, the
actions and events taking place in a narrative are consequential in determining its
theme.

Short Examples of Theme

• When the astronaut landed on the moon, he felt loneliness. Thinking there was
no one else, he became a little forlorned, though the view of Earth was
stunningly beautiful. (Theme of lonesomeness)

• The space travelers were travelling to the moon, when their spaceship
suddenly ran out of fuel. They were all frightened to learn that they wouldn’t
be able to return to Earth, and could only land on the moon. (Theme of fear)

• The bus was travelling at a great speed when it was stopped by a gang of
robbers. The passengers were ordered to get out, leaving their precious
belongings in the bus. (Theme of fear)

• Their marriage ceremony was taking place in a grand hotel. All the eminent
people of the city were invited, the reason that the celebration was excellent.
(Theme of happiness)

• As soon as the clock struck 12 at noon, the jubilations started. It travelled from
East to West on the first day of the year. (Theme of felicitation)

• The religious leader was leading a huge congregation of followers, praying

with utmost humility. (Theme of religiosity)

• All the family members were dressed in black, with somber faces. They were
participating in the funeral ceremony of their deceased relative. (Theme of
gloom)

• The cricket match was reaching a highpoint, the fans of both teams screaming
their support. It was an excellent game. (Theme of cheerfulness)

• The teacher said that she hoped all of her students would pass with good
grades. (Theme of optimism)

• The father of the slowwitted student said he had no false hopes about his son’s
future. (Theme of pessimism)

• The immigrant looked around to talk to somebody, but could find no one who
spoke his language. He felt claustrophobic and desolate. (Theme of
hopelessness)
 • Only the laborers were working on Labor Day. (Theme of irony)

• The conference was in full swing, with scholars delivering knowledgeable

lectures on varying subjects. The audience enjoyed it immensely. (Theme of
learning)

• The politician was delivering a speech on the need for peace between two
neighboring states. He said through peace they could achieve what not
possible through war. (Theme of peace)

• The general commanded his troops to open fire at the enemy, and to kill each
and every soldier of the combatants. (Theme of war)

Examples of Theme in Literature

Example #1: Love and Friendship Theme

Love and friendship are frequently occurring themes in literature. They

generate emotional twists and turns in a narrative and can lead to a variety of
endings: happy, sad, or bittersweet. The following are famous literary works with love
and friendship themes:

Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Example #2: War Theme

The theme of war has been explored in literature since ancient times. Literary
works utilizing this theme may either glorify or criticize the idea of war. Most recent
literary works portray war as a curse for humanity due to the suffering it inflicts.
Some famous examples include:

Iliad and Odyssey by Homer

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
Arms and the Man by Bernard Shaw
A Band of Brothers: Stories from Vietnam by Walter McDonald

Example #3: Crime and Mystery Themes

Crime and mystery are utilized in detective novels. Such narratives also
include sub-themes, such as “crimes cannot be hidden,” “evil is always punished,” and
others. Some well-known crime and mystery theme examples include:

The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe

Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
 Example #4: Revenge Theme

Revenge is another recurrent theme found in many popular literary works. A

character comes across certain circumstances that make him aware of his need for
revenge. The outcome of his action is often bitter, but sometimes they may end up
being satisfied. Examples are:

Hamlet and Macbeth by William Shakespeare

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larsson
A Time to Kill by John Grisham

Example #5: Annabel Lee (By Edgar Allan Poe)

“I was a child and she was a child,

In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
I and my Annabel Lee—
With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven
Coveted her and me.”

This short extract, taken from Poe’s poem, depicts the theme of love.

Example #6: The Charge of the Light Brigade (By Alfred Tennyson)

“Half a league, half a league,

Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
‘Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!’ he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.”

This extract from a poem by Tennyson has two interwoven themes. War is the
main theme of the poem, which naturally leads to death — while the theme of death
is interwoven with the theme of war.

Function of Theme

Theme is an element of a story that binds together various essential elements

of a narrative. It is often a truth that exhibits universality and stands true for people
of all cultures. Theme gives readers a better understanding of the main character’s
conflicts, experiences, discoveries, and emotions as they are derived from them.
Through themes, a writer tries to give his readers an insight into how the world works
or how he or she views human life.

6. Prose and Dramatic Techniques

Literary techniques are used in literature for a variety of purposes. Certain

literary techniques are used to increase the dramatic tension in a novel or short story.
This can be done by placing the characters in time-sensitive situations, diverting the
reader's attention, or appealing directly to the reader's emotion to elicit sympathy for
the main character.
 a. Cliffhanger

The cliffhanger was popularized with serialized fiction and occurs

when characters are left in precipitous situations or have a revelation as an
episode of the serial ends. For example, at the end of an episode of Thomas
Hardy's 1873 serial novel "A Pair of Blue Eyes," the main character is left
literally hanging off a cliff.

b. Foreshadowing

Foreshadowing, also referred to as Chekhov's gun or formal patterning

is a literary technique in which a reference is made to something that will play
an important role in future events of the story. Foreshadowing can be as subtle
as an unrelated reference to a loaded gun on the wall or occur through the use
of an oracle, as in Sophocles' oracles in "Oedipus the King."

c. Pathos

Pathos is a literary technique in which the author directly appeals to

the emotion and imagination of the reader to elicit sympathy for a character
in the story or the writer's perspective. For instance, Charlotte Bronte uses
pathos in "Jane Eyre" when the protagonist must leave her lover for moral
reasons as soon as their affair begins.

d. Plot Twist

A plot twist occurs when a sudden, unexpected change happens that

has a direct impact on the outcome of the story. A plot twist can occur during
any portion of the narrative, but it also frequently happens as a surprise
ending.

e. Ticking Clock Scenario

The ticking clock scenario elicits dramatic tension by placing a

character in a dangerous, or otherwise intense situation, in which time is of
the essence. As time passes, the stakes of the outcome of the story are raised,
increasing dramatic tension.

f. Red Herring

A red herring is a literary technique in which the reader's attention is

drawn to insignificant details in order to divert attention from what is actually
occurring in the plot. The red herring is commonly used in mystery fiction and
can lead to a plot twist at the end of the work of literature.

7. Drama Script

A drama script is different from a novel, a short story, or a poem. In novels and
short stories, the reader will be given a detailed description of a situation and the
background for a particular event, whereas, in a drama script, the reader will be given
only an overview of a particular situation and the location or place. The dialogue will
deliver the message and thoughts of the author. This is what distinguishes drama
from other literary works.

Indeed, the nature of a drama is driven by dialogue. The author’s thoughts or

ideas are conveyed through dialogue by the actors (characters) interacting in a
 drama. A good drama script will be able to give a clear picture of the author's thoughts
through the dialogue. Dramatic element means the diction or expressions that can
create conflict in a drama, such as dialogue that elicits feelings of anger, delight,
amusement, etc. A good drama should have an element of suspense, tension and
arouse its reader or audience's curiosity.

Stylistic Analysis of Prose

Methodology checksheet

This checksheet is based on the 'Checklist of Linguistic and Stylistic Categories'

which is in Leech and Short Style in Fiction, on pages 75-82. You will find that this
checksheet is somewhat simpler than that list in that we have included only those
elements of each item that are familiar to you at this stage. As you progress, it will
become increasingly appropriate to use the Leech and Short checklist than to use this
one; but this one will always be enough for basic information.

In this Methodology Checksheet, we give you a series of questions you can ask
about the different elements of text. Answering the questions helps you specify the
nature of each element so that you can then consider the effects of the element on
your interpretation of the text. Answering all the questions will involve using all the
skills you have so far accumulated, but it is sensible to select which questions are most
appropriate for any given text.

We cover four major areas:

I. Lexis
II. Grammar
III. Foregrounded features (including figures of speech)
IV. Cohesion and Context

I. LEXIS
(1) General

Examine the Open Class words in the text.

(i) Is the vocabulary simple or complex (i.e., many or few syllables in each word)? Is it
descriptive or evaluative? Is it general or specific?

(ii) Does the writer make the greatest use of referential or denotative (central/core)
meanings, or do you have to think about connotations or other emotive senses of the
words?

(iii) Are there idioms in the text (i.e., non-literal phrases, such as under the weather)? If so,
are they associated with a particular register or dialect?

(iv) Are there any unusual words - archaic, rare, or specialized vocabulary?

(v) Do the words fall into groups that form noticeable semantic fields?

(2) Specific

(i) NOUNS. Are they abstract or concrete? If abstract, do they refer to similar kinds of
element, e.g., events, perceptions, processes, moral qualities, social qualities? Are there
proper names or collective nouns?
(ii) ADJECTIVES. Do they occur frequently? What kinds of attributes do they embody
(physical, emotional, visual, color, etc.)? Do they occur in comparative or superlative
forms? Do they occur singly or in groups?

(iii) VERBS. How frequently do they occur? Are they linking, transitive or intransitive? Are
they stative (referring to states) or dynamic (referring to actions, events)? Do they refer
to physical movement, psychological states or activities, perception, etc.? Are there more
finite (complete-sense) verbs or more participles (present or past)?

(iv) ADVERBS. Do they occur frequently? What kinds of meaning do they have (i.e., do
they describe manner, place, direction, frequency, degree, place, etc.)? Do they occur in
comparative or superlative forms?
II: GRAMMAR
(1) General

Are any general types of grammatical construction used to special effect, e.g., comparative
or superlative constructions, parallelisms, listing, interjections, or other speech-like
phenomena?

(2) Specific

(i) SENTENCES. Are they statements, questions, commands, etc., or are they like speech-
type sentences, e.g., without a predicator? Are they simple, compound, or complex? How
long are they? Are there striking contrasts in sentence length or structure at any point in
the text? If the sentences are long, is their length due to embedding, co-ordination, long
phrases acting as single SPOCA elements, or other causes?

(ii) CLAUSES. What types of clauses are noticeably favored (e.g., relative, adverbial, noun
clauses, etc.)? Is there anything special about the clauses, e.g., a frequent and unusual
placement of adverbials or 'fronting' of object or complement? Are there clauses with
'dummy subjects' (i.e., there, it)?

(iii) PHRASES

(a) NOUN PHRASES: are they simple or complex? If complex, is this due to the frequency
of premodifiers (adjectives, noun-modifiers, etc.), or is it due to postmodification
(prepositional phrases, relative clauses, complement clauses, etc.)?

(b) VERB PHRASES: what is the tense? present or past? Are there sections of apparent
narration where the tense is other than the simple past tense (e.g., continuous past,
present, perfect, or where modal auxiliaries such as can, must, should, etc. occur)?

(c) OTHER PHRASES: are there any remarkable features about other phrases (i.e.,
prepositional, adverbial, adjectival)?

(iv) WORD CLASSES. Do the Closed Class words (i.e., prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions,
determiners, auxiliaries, interjections) play any significant role in the text?. Is there
frequent or striking use of, e.g., the first person pronouns (I, we), negative words (no, not,
neither), or the definite or indefinite article (the, a(n))?
III: FOREGROUNDED FEATURES (Figures of speech, etc.)
Figures of speech can be divided up into types related to the language levels and language
patterns (parallelism, deviation, foregrounding) we discussed earlier in the course. They
are of two major types: Schemes, which are constituted by 'foregrounded repetitions of
expression' and Tropes, or 'foregrounded irregularities of content' (see Leech and Short,
p.82 and Leech, Linguistic Guide to English Poetry chs. 4 and 5 for a fuller discussion).
SCHEMES

(1) GRAMMATICAL AND LEXICAL SCHEMES. Is there any formal or structural repetition
(anaphora, parallelism) or any 'mirror-image' patterning (chiasmus)? If so, do these
schemes bring about effects of antithesis, reinforcement, climax, anticlimax, etc.?

(2) PHONOLOGICAL SCHEMES. Are there any patterns of sound (rhyme, half-rhyme,
alliteration, assonance) or rhythm? Are there noticeably frequent occurrences of the same
or similar sound-clusters? Is there sound symbolism, or are there musical devices that
affect interpretation?

TROPES

(1) Are there any obvious violations of or departures from the 'normal' linguistic code?

(2) Are there neologisms or deviant lexical collocations?

(3) If there are deviations on other language levels (semantic, syntactic, phonological,
graphological), do they lead you to interpret in terms of such figures of speech as metaphor
or irony? Do they lead you to see other features such as personification, concretization,
synaesthetic effects, etc.? (See A Linguistic Guide to English Poetry, p.158.)
IV: CONTEXT AND COHESION
COHESION is the name given to those language features which do the job of holding
together a text; these can cover a wide range of linguistic and stylistic devices.

CONTEXT can be 'internal' or 'external'. External context might include very broad
cultural and historical information about the author, the period of writing, etc. However,
for our purposes, external context will, like internal context, be concerned with TEXTUAL
RELATIONS, i.e., with the apparent relationships between persons inside and outside the
text (e.g., the author and the reader, the author and the characters, one character and
another).

(1) COHESION

(Refer to Style in Fiction, Ch. 7, pop.243-254.) (i) Does the text contain logical or other links
between sentences (e.g., and, or, but, and so, then, etc.), or does it rely on implicit
connections (e.g., juxtaposition, sequence)?

(ii) Is there a lot of cross-reference by means of pronouns or ellipsis? Or is there 'elegant

variation' - the use of different ways of describing the same thing/person (so as to avoid
repetition or to give you an idea of whose view of the thing/person you are getting)?

(iii) Are meaning connections made by means of lexical repetition or by the frequent use
of words from the same semantic field?

(2) CONTEXT

(i) Does the writer address the reader directly or through the words or thoughts of a
fictional character?

(ii) What language features are there which tell you who is "speaking" (e.g., first person or
third person pronouns)?

(iii) Can you sense the author's attitude to his subject? Is it revealed explicitly, or can you
infer it from the way he writes?
(iv) If a character's words/thoughts are represented, how is this done: by direct quotation
(direct speech) or by some other means (indirect or free indirect speech) (Refer to Style in
Fiction, Ch.10, pp. 318-334)? Are there noticeable changes of style according to who is
supposed to be speaking/thinking.

Example:

In the remainder of this unit, the above categories shall be applied to the
opening passage of Joseph Conrad’s short story entitled The Secret Sharer. The
procedure in each case will be, to begin with some general first impression of the
passage and then to make selective use of the checklist in order to bring to readers’
attention what appear to be the most significant style markers of each. These style
markers, in turn, will be related to other style markers within the context of the
passage’s literary function.

From Joseph Conrad, The Secret Sharer:

On my right hand there were lines of fishing-stakes resembling a

mysterious system of half-submerged bamboo fences, incomprehensible in its
division of the domain of tropical fishes, and crazy of aspect as if abandoned
forever by some nomad tribe of fishermen now gone to the other end of the
ocean; for there was no sign of human habitation as far as the eye could reach
(1). To the left a group of barren islets, suggesting ruins of stone walls, towers
and block houses, had its foundations set in a blue sea that itself looked solid,
so still and stable did it lie below my feet; even the track of light from the
westering sun shone smoothly, without that animated glitter which tells of an
imperceptible ripple (2). And when I turned my head to take a parting glance
at the tug which had just left us anchored outside the bar, I saw the straight
line of the flat shore joined to the stable sea, edge to edge, with a perfect and
unmarked closeness, in one levelled floor half brown, half blue under the
enormous dome of the sky (3). Corresponding in their insignificance to the
islets of the sea, two small clumps of trees, one on each side of the only fault in
the impeccable joint, marked the mouth of the river Meinam we had just left
on the first preparatory stage of our homeward journey; and, far back on the
inland level, a larger and loftier mass, the grove surrounding the great Paknam
pagoda, was the only thing on which the eye could rest from the vain task of
exploring the monotonous sweep of the horizon (4). Here and there gleams as
of a few scattered pieces of silver marked the windings of the great river; and
on the nearest of them, just within the bar, the tug steaming right into the land
became lost to my sight, hull and funnel and masts, as though the impassive
earth had swallowed her up without an effort, without a tremor (5). My eye
followed the light cloud of her smoke, now here, now there, above the plain,
according to the devious curves of the stream, but always fainter and farther
away, till I lost it at last behind the mitre-shaped hill of the great pagoda (6).
And then I was left alone with my ship, anchored at the head of the Gulf of Siam
(7).

Our first impression of this passage is of a meticulously detailed setting of the

scene for the story. The description is clearly etched, so that we can reconstruct, in
our mind’s eye, the whole topography. But more than this, we have a vivid sense of
the loneliness of the human observer, set apart from his surroundings, and of ‘a mind
energetically stretching to subdue a dazzling experience outside the self, in a way that
has innumerable counterparts elsewhere in Conrad’.
A: Lexical features

Nouns

As a physical description, we expect the passage to contain a large number of

physical, concrete nouns (stakes, bamboo, fences, fishermen, ruins, etc.) but what is
more striking is that these concrete nouns are matched by nouns which are more
abstract in one way or another. Significantly, these tend to occur as heads of major
noun phrases (‘lines of . . . stakes’, ‘system of . . . fences’), so that concreteness is
subordinated to abstraction (20, 21).

First, we may notice that almost half the concrete nouns refer to general
topographical features which, as it were, divide the field of vision into geographical
areas and points of focus: domain, ocean, islets, sea, shore, sky, river, earth, cloud, gulf,
etc. Also contributing to this effect are what may be called ‘abstract locative’ nouns,
indicating geometrical features: lines, division, end, track, head, line, edge, joint,
sweep, curves, etc. All these nouns refer to objects of vision: the other senses are
excluded. Perhaps this is one reason why the observer seems to stand apart from the
scene he experiences.

General

Other comments on lexis cut across word class divisions. It is important to

note that we are given not simply a description of a scene, but an account of the
relation between the visual world and its observer, who strives to comprehend and
interpret it. This relational emphasis is found in the repetition of the word eye itself,
in abstract nouns implying perception (aspect, sign, glitter, ripple, glance, etc.), and in
verbs such as see, mark, and look. The passage is concerned not only with objects of
perception, but with the process of perceiving them; the occurrence of first-person
pronouns (over half of the personal pronouns are of this type) is a symptom of this
(37).

On the other hand, Conrad avoids using verbs with a human agent. The ‘eye’,
as if with a will of its own, becomes the subject-agent in ‘as far as the eye could reach’
(1), ‘My eye followed the light cloud’ (6), ‘the only thing on which the eye could rest’
(4). The only example of an agentive verb with a human subject is ‘I turned my head’
(3). Other verbs which could involve agency are deprived of their active meaning by
being used in the passive participle form: abandoned, anchored (55); whereas stative
verbs are quite frequent: resembling, looked, lie, shone, marked, etc. (22). The general
feeling is that the narrator, although acutely alive to his environment, is detached and
powerless in the face of its immensity.

Another, related, tendency is in the occurrence of adjectives which express

strangeness or lack of definition, often by the use of negatives: half-submerged,
mysterious, incomprehensible, unmarked, devious. To these may be added other
negative expressions such as insignificance, no sign, without a tremor. Other
adjectives, such as still, monotonous, stable, also have a negative element of meaning
(‘not moving’, ‘not varied’, ‘not easily moved’) stressing the uncanny featurelessness
of the scene. These contrast with a few words which suggest a faint potential
disturbance of the underlying calmness: animated, glitter, gleams, ripple. There is a
congruity between the eye to which things are ‘imperceptible’ and the mind to which
things are ‘incomprehensible’.
 B: Grammatical features

Sentence length

It is perhaps significant, in this opening paragraph, that the sentences move to

a peak of length in sentence (4), and thence slope down to the final brevity of (7). (The
progression of sentence lengths in words is: 66 – 59 – 61– 88 – 61 – 44 – 18.) The
effect of placing the short sentence at the end is powerful: whereas other sentences
relate the setting to the observer, this one relates the observer to his setting, and
thereby summarises what has been implied in the rest of the paragraph. Since this
sentence explains the context for what precedes, we might think it more natural to
place it (deprived of the connecting words ‘And then’) at the beginning of the
paragraph. But in that case the expression ‘I was alone’ would have been banal: it is
only after we have felt the isolation of the speaker in all its particularity, and have
seen the last vestige of human life disappear over the horizon, that we can understand
the force of the simple statement.

Sentence structure

Sentences (1)–(6) are all quite complex, and have a certain similarity of
structure. All except (6) have an introductory adverbial clause or phrase providing a
point of orientation before we launch into a main clause. From here, each sentence is
elaborated by coordination and subordination – by progressive elaboration of
‘trailing constituents’ (see sections 7.5.3–7.5.4), as if to imitate the movement from
the observer’s eye towards the distance. Sentence (1) illustrates this characteristic
‘reaching out’ effect. ‘On my right hand’ establishes the observer as the point of
reference. This sentence structure then develops as set out in Figure 3.1.

Figure 3.1 shows six degrees of subordination (A–F), each representing, as it were, a
further step away from the starting point towards the remotest horizon, and even beyond
(for the observer’s imagination takes him ‘to the other end of the ocean’). Accompanying this
progressive distancing, there is a distancing from graspable reality, an increasing emphasis
on what cannot be known or explained: ‘resembling . . . mysterious . . . incomprehensible . . .
crazy of aspect as if abandoned . . . no sign . . .’. Other sentences have a similar type of
structure, and tend to end in a similar evocation of vastness and remoteness, as the eye
reaches its limit of vision: ‘under the enormous dome of the sky’; ‘the monotonous sweep of
the horizon’; ‘as if the impassive earth had swallowed her up without an effort, without a
tremor’; ‘till I lost it at last behind the mitre-shaped hill of the great pagoda’.

Prepositions

The passage has an unusually large number of prepositions (9), particularly

prepositions of place and direction, such as on and to, and the preposition of (40). In fact, a
large part of the syntactic complexity of the sentence comes from the use of prepositional
phrases. The role of of, in particular, is to relate two noun-expressions together, and the
former of these expressions is always an abstract noun – if we include as ‘abstract’
geometrical and topographical nouns like ‘the straight line of the flat shore’, ‘the devious
curves of the stream’ – and collective nouns such as ‘a group of barren islets’, ‘two small
clumps of trees’. What this suggests is that perception and cognition go hand in hand (as
indeed they do in modern psychological theories): the eye does not passively record objects
in the raw, but structures and schematises them in cognitively coded groupings. For Conrad,
this is as it should be: that see means both to perceive and to comprehend is more than an
accident of metaphor. In his struggle with the alien and threatening ‘beyondness’, a man
must faithfully use his full sensibility, in which his senses and his understanding are
indissolubly joined.

C: Figures of speech etc.

Quasi-simile

Although Conrad does not use conventional similes of the kind ‘X is like Y’, he uses a
range of constructions which express or imply similitude: ‘resembling some mysterious
system . . .’ (1), ‘as if abandoned forever.’ (1), ‘suggesting ruins of stone walls . . .’ (2), ‘looked
solid . . .’ (2), ‘Corresponding in their insignificance’ (4), ‘as of a few scattered pieces of silver
. . .’ (5), ‘as though the impassive earth had swallowed her up . . .’ (5), ‘mitre-shaped’ (6).
Unlike orthodox similes, a number of these constructions suggest an ‘explanation’ which we
know is not true. These, coupled with the element of mystery and unfathomability,
strengthen the impression of a mind stretched to explore and understand. Again, the eye’s
exploration of the panorama is not inert, but active and imaginative: ‘looking at’ something
means grasping what it ‘looks like’.

Metaphor

This analogising faculty is also revealed through metaphor. The feeling that the vista,
for all its peacefulness, is disquieting, comes to us partly through two diverse types of
metaphor: the ‘civilising’ metaphor which allows islands (already compared to man-made
buildings) to have foundations (2), the sea to be stable (3), the sea and land to constitute a
floor (3), and the sky a dome (3). Such metaphors indicate an unreal calm, because they
render the immensities of nature in terms of things which are familiar, solid and manmade.
In contrast, other metaphors make reference to an animacy which seems to threaten by its
very absence. Except for that of the tug being ‘swallowed up’, these metaphors are expressed
through modifying adjectives. They are therefore subdued, and scarcely noticeable to a
casual reader: the ‘animated glitter’ (2), the ‘impassive earth’ (5), the ‘devious curves’ (6)
(the fact that the earth is impassive, or devoid of feeling, suggests that it has capabilities in
that direction). These small hints of life give an uneasy impression that what is apparently
so lifeless may have undisclosed resources of power and activity.

Other metaphors are associated with the observer’s eye: unlike the observer himself,
his eye behaves like an independent agent: it ‘reaches’ (1), it seeks ‘rest’ from the ‘vain task
of exploring’ (4), and it ‘follows’ the cloud of smoke of the tug (6). Although the metaphor
whereby perception is equated with movement towards the object perceived is
commonplace, the effect of making the eye, rather than the observer himself, the subject of
these verbs is to disassociate the observer, as if in contemplative detachment, from the eye,
which is restless and energetic. We sense the alienation of the man who experiences his
surroundings without participation: even his observations seem to come from some
extrinsic impulse.

Schemes

The passage somehow communicates its visual experience not only with intense
realization, but with a sense of wonder. This comes in part from patterns which have an
emotively reinforcing effect, particularly pairings of like-sounding words and phrases:
‘larger and loftier’ (4), ‘without an effort, without a tremor’ (5), ‘fainter and farther’ (6).
Rhythmic parallelism accompanies the parallelism of grammar. These couplings stress the
dominant dimensions of the experience: immensity, stillness, distance. Occasionally
consonant and vowel repetitions are employed in a way which lends force to semantic
connections: ‘solid, so still and stable’ (2), ‘sun shone smoothly’ (2). There is onomatopoeia
in the alliteration, assonance, and quickening rhythm of ‘animated glitter’(/ x x x / x) and
‘imperceptible ripple’ (x x / x x / x). The speeding-up effect is caused partly by the number
of unstressed syllables, partly by short vowels, and partly by the brevity of the stop
consonants /p/ and /t/. We may contrast these with the broadening, expansive effect of the
long vowels and monosyllables in ‘enormous dome of the sky’ (3). These are not gratuitous
embellishments: they integrate into the sound texture of the language the extremes of
infinite space and microscopic detail between which the description so remarkably ranges.

D: Cohesion and context

Cohesion

The passage does not make conspicuous use of logical and referential links between
sentences: for example, there are no cross-referring demonstratives or linking adverbials,
and few third-person pronouns (38). The definite article is sometimes a mark of co-
reference: for instance, ‘the islets of the sea’ (4) refers back to ‘a group of barren islets’ (2)
and ‘the great river’ (5) refers back to ‘the river Meinam’ (4). But continuity between the
parts of the description depends largely on the observer, whose vantage point is the pivot
around which the cycloramic picture unfolds. Thus most sentences begin with a reference,
actual or implied, to the first-person narrator: ‘On my right hand . . .’ (1), ‘To the left . . .’ (2),
‘And when I turned my head . . .’ (3), ‘My eye followed . . .’ (6), ‘And then I was left alone . . .’
(7). Through this progression, we build up a vista in the round, the lone figure of the narrator
at its centre; then, in (4) and (5), the eye focuses on a particular point: the distant river and
vanishing tug, whose disappearance from the scene reinforces the narrator’s isolation. In the
final sentence our attention is abruptly brought back from the remote horizon to the
observer himself.
Synthesizing Your Knowledge

ACTIVITY 1

Directions: Write a stylistic analysis of a prose/drama text on style, genre, characteristics,

and other stylistic elements.

ACTIVITY 2

Directions: Discuss your stylistic analysis's suitability for English literature learners
(according to grade level and/or age).

References

Burke, M. (2018). The Routledge handbook of stylistics. Routledge.

Galperin. (1977). Stylistics. Moscow Higher School.

Hoover, D. L. (2007). Stylistics: prospect & retrospect. Rodopi.

Leech, G. N., & Short, M. (2015). Style in fiction: a linguistic introduction to English fictional
prose. Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.

Methodology checksheet. Ling 131 - Topic 10 (session A).

https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/fass/projects/stylistics/topic10/12method.htm.

Nørgaard, N., Montoro Rocío, & Busse, B. (2010). Key terms in stylistics. Continuum.

Palgrave Macmillan. (2014). Literature and stylistics for language learners: theory and
practice.

Simpson, P. (2014). Stylistics: a resource book for students. Routledge.