21ST CENTURY REVIEWER

TWO TYPES OF LITERARY TEXT:

● Internal Context – details included by the author, such as backstory, characterization or setting
● External Context – the time period of the works publication, the author’s literary influences, and
even their personal history

Contextual Reading

Utilizing all possible resources: argument of the passage or flow of thought, idiosyncratic
vocabulary (unique words) and syntax (the arrangement of words and phrases to create well-
formed sentences in a language), historical-cultural backgrounds, and so forth.

Objectives: Contextual Reading Approaches

- Identify the different ways of evaluating a literary text, specifically by examining its biographical
context, sociocultural context, and linguistic context;
- Distinguish various critical reading strategies; and
- Analyze different literary texts through different contexts using different critical reading
strategies.

Contextual Reading Approaches:

1. Literary Reading through a Biographical Context

2. Literary Reading through a Sociocultural Context

3. Literary Reading though a Linguistic Context

Literary Reading through a Biographical Context

● Biography
● Autobiography

Reasons to read literature through the biographical context (Gioia and Kennedy 2007)

- Understanding the author’s life can help you understand his or her work thoroughly.
- Reading the author’s biography or autobiography helps us see how much his/her experiences
shape his or her work directly and indirectly.

Biographical Strategies to Use:

● Research on what the author believes in and also what he or she does not.
● Analyze how the author’s belief system is reflected in his or her work.
● Look at the author’s other works and analyze if there is a pattern with regard to the theme that
is indicative of his or her life and beliefs.
→ The present century that began on January 1, 2001 and will last to December 31, 2100

4 Categories/Genres of Literature

1.Prose fiction – novels, short stories, myths, parables, romances, epics

- Based on the imagination of the author

- Essence is narration, the relating or recounting of a sequence of events or actions
- Focused on one or few major characters

● undergo change as they interact with other characters and as they deal with problems

2. Poetry – relies on:

- imagery
- figurative language
- sound

3. Drama – designed to be performed by actors

4. Nonfiction prose – aims to present truth and logic in reasoning

- News reports
- Newspaper articles
- Textbooks
- Historical/biographical works

Other Categories/Genres of Literature

1.Hyperpoetry
- digital poetry
- poets publish them on the internet along with images or movements.

2. Poetry Blogs
- Best blogging platform for poetry
- Commaful.
- Instagram.
- HelloPoetry.
- Tumblr.
- AllPoetry.
- Medium.
- Twitter.
- Wattpad.
3. Mobile phone Textula
- genre of poetry read in mobile phones and has originated as a traditional Tagalog version of
haiku, which is the tanaga (Aldeguer, 2017)
- Mobile textula was introduced in the Philippines in a way of an annual contest since 2002.

4. Chick lit
- a genre of fiction concentrating on young working women and their emotional lives.

5. Speculative fiction
- all fiction that is non-realist
- Sci-fi and fantasy, cyberpunk, science fiction, steampunk, fantasy, horror, weird fiction, magical
realism

6. Flash fiction
- any story that is very short with around 3,000 words.

Literature

● What makes us (or some other society) treat something as literature?

● What makes literature “Literature”?

→ When language is foregrounded (state-of-the-art)

→ When the language of the text catches our attention
→When the language makes us think about how something is being said
→ When language is integrated to form what is being referred as “sound is echo to the sense”

Literary Reading through a Sociocultural Context

Vocabulary:

● Literary theory – refers to different schools of thought and body of ideas that can be used as a
tool in understanding literary context.
● Sociocultural – of, or relating to, or involving a combination of cultural and social factors

Cultural – ideas, customs, social behavior / relating to arts and to intellectual achievements
Social – relating to society or its organization

In noting the year or period a literary text was written, readers would be able to:

● identify the historical events that took place in that year

● find out the roots of an event’s cause
● know the reasons behind the character’s motives and interests

→ 1521 – Discovery of Philippines by Magellan

→ 1898 – Declaration of Independence for the Philippines
→ 1972 – Declaration of Martial Law (temporary substitution of military authority for civilian rule,
usually invoked in time of war, rebellion, or natural disaster; and there is a suspension of normal
civil rights)
→ 1986 – EDSA People Power Revolution
→ 2022 – Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, Jr. was elected the 17th President of the Philippines

In reading and analyzing literary pieces using the sociocultural context, you will:

● examine the factors that affect the writing of the literary text; and
● how the work was received by the readers during the time it was written.

The following reasons to read literature through socialcultural context (Gioia and Kennedy 2007):
- Reading using the sociocultural context helps you understand the social, economic, political,
and cultural forces affecting the work that you are reading.
- Analyzing the sociocultural context of the text makes you examine the role of the audience
(readers) in shaping literature.

Perspective and Explanation:

Marxism
- According to the Marxist perspective, literature shows class struggle and materialism. Thus, it
looks into the social classes portrayed in the work. It also looks into how the text serves as a
propaganda material. It also examines oppression, social conflicts, and solution to these
struggles as shown in the literary

Feminism
- This examines the role of the women in the literature. It looks into how the female
character may be empowered or discriminated against.

Queer Theory
- The queer perspective is concerned with the queer or the third gender. The perspective itself
was named in 1991. Under this perspective, the third gender, meaning the gay, lesbians, and
other characters or persona in literature that may fall under queer are being examined.

Historicism
- This is a perspective dealing with the history that influenced the writing of literature.

Postcolonialism
- This looks into the changes in the attitude of the post colonies after the colonial period. Through
this perspective, the dependence of independence of decolonized countries or people are
being examined.

New Historicism
- It focuses not only on the history when the literary text was written, but also how the history
happened. In New Historicism, the abovementioned perspectives can be integrated with each
other.
Formalist Criticism
- Particular interest to the formalist critic are the elements of form – style, structure, tone, imagery,
etc. – that are found within the text. Primary goal is to determine how such elements work
together with the text’s content to shape its effects upon readers.

New Criticism
- New critics suggest that detailed analysis of the language of a literary text can uncover
important layers of meaning in that work.
This criticism downplays the historical influences, authorial intentions, and social contexts that
surround texts in order to focus on extremely close textual analysis.

Biographical Criticism
- Biographical critic focuses on explicating the literary work by using the insight provided by
knowledge of the author’s life. Biographical data amplify the meaning of the text

Historical Criticism
- This seeks to understand a literary work by investigating the social, cultural, and intellectual
context that produced it – a context that necessarily includes the artist’s biography and milieu.

Gender criticism
- Examines how sexual identity influences the creation and reception of literary works.

Psychological Criticism
- Psychological criticism focuses primarily on the characters, and on what psychological forces
influence and shape them throughout the work.

Sociological Criticism
- Examines literature in the cultural, economic and political context in which it is written or
received.

Mythological Criticism
- Explores the artist’s common humanity by tracing how the individual imagination uses myths
and symbols common to different cultures and epochs.

Readers-Response Criticism
- This attempt to describe what happens in the reader’s mind while interpreting a text and
reflects that reading, like writing is a creative process.

Structuralism
- This examines how literary texts arrive at their meanings, rather than the meanings themselves.
This critics regard language as a fundamentally unstable medium – and therefore, because
literature is made up of words, literature possesses no fixed, single meaning.

Cultural Criticism
- Focuses on the historical as well as social, political, and economic contexts of a work.

New Historicism
- Emphasizes the interaction between the historic context of the work and a modern reader’s
understanding and interpretation of the work.
Postcolonial Criticism
- This refers to the analysis of literary works written by writers from countries and cultures that at
one time have been controlled by colonizing powers.