Introduction to

Literature
 Literature
• Refers to writings having excellence of
form or expression and presenting ideas of
permanent or universal interest.
• It is the body of written works produced in
a particular language, country, or age.
 Types of Literature
• Prose – a literary medium distinguished from
poetry especially by its greater irregularity and
variety of rhythm and its closed resemblance to
the patterns of everyday speech.
• Poetry – writing that formulates a concentrated
imaginative awareness of experience in language
chosen and arranged to create a specific response
through its meaning, sound, and rhythm.
Major Literary Genres
 Short Story
• A brief fictional prose narrative usually
concerned with a single effect conveyed in
a single significant episode or scene and
involving a limited number of characters.
 Famous Short Story Writers
• Edgar Allan Poe • Anton Chekhov
– The Cask of – A Father
Amontillado – The Lottery Ticket
– Tell-Tale Heart
– The Fall of the House
of Usher
• Guy de Maupassant
– The Necklace
– The Jewels
 Drama
• A composition intended to portray life or
character or to tell a story usually
involving conflicts and emotions through
action and dialogue and typically designed
for theatrical performance.
 Essay
• An analytic, interpretative, or critical
literary composition usually much shorter
and less systematic and formal than a
dissertation or thesis and usually dealing
with its subject from a limited and often
personal point of view.
 Kinds of Essay
• Familiar Essay – an informal, light-hearted form
of the essay.
• Formal Essay – a serious form of the essay
– Michel de Montaigne – first applied to his prose
pieces the term essais in 1571
• The Profit of One Man is Damage to Another
– Francis Bacon – Famous essayist from England
• Of Studies
 Novel
• A fictional prose narrative of considerable
length and a certain complexity that deals
imaginatively with human experience
through a connected sequence of events
involving a group of people in a specific
setting.
 Kinds of Novels
• Picaresque Novel – an early form of the novel,
usually first person narrative, relating the
adventures of a lowborn adventurer who drifts
from place to place and from one social milieu to
another in an effort to survive.
– Don Quixote dela Mancha – Miguel de Cervantes
– The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
 Kinds of Novels
• Gothic Novel – European romantic,
pseudomedieval fiction having a prevailing
atmosphere of mystery and terror.
– Frankenstein – Mary Shelley
– Dracula – Bram Stoker
– Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
 Kinds of Novels
• Historical Novel – has its setting a period
in history that attempts to convey the spirit,
manners, and social conditions of a past
age with realistic detail and fidelity to
historical facts.
– War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
– Without Seeing the Dawn – Stevan Javellana
Other Kinds of Literature
 Epic
• A long narrative poem recounting the
deeds of a hero with supernatural powers.
 Famous Epics
• The Iliad – consists of 24 books covering
the last 49 days of the tenth year of the
Trojan War in the 10th century B.C. Most
of the books give detailed accounts of the
fierce battles waged on the plains of Troy.
 Famous Epics
• The Odyssey – also by Homer, consists
also of 24 books, is closely connected with
The Iliad inasmuch as it represents the
ten-year struggle of the Greek Ulysses
(Odysseus) to reach and save his own
kingdom, Ithaca, after the fall of Troy.
 Famous Epics
• The Aeneid – the great epic of Rome, was
written by Virgil in the first century A.D.
The story tells of how Aeneas is able to
establish the city of Rome.
 Famous Epics
• Beowulf – is England’s oldest epic. It is
about the heroic deeds of Beowulf who
helps save the kingdom of Heorot.
 Famous Epics
• The Shah Namah – is the great epic of
Persia. It was written by Firdausi, meaning
“Singer of Paradise.” The story tells of the
struggle of Persia to overthrow her
enemies.
 Famous Epics
• The Nibelungenlied – a folk epic
consisting of 39 parts called adventures. It
tells the story of Siegfried and how he
helped King Gunther win his bride. It is
also about the lack of union between rival,
kindred tribes.
 Famous Epics
• The Song of Roland – the great epic of
France was probably written near the end
of the 11th century. The story depicted the
great struggle of Christian knights of
France under Charlemagne against the
Moors or the Mohammedans.
 Famous Epics
• El Cid – is the great folk-epic of Spain,
written about 1200 A.D. The story tells of
the deeds of the great Cid or lord Rodrigo
in his wars with the Moors.
 Famous Epics
• The Divine Comedy – written by Dante, is
the great epic of Italy and of Medieval
Christianity. The epic has three parts:
Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. The
great purpose to be accomplished in the
epic is the salvation of the soul.
 Metrical Romance
• A long rambling love story in verse. It is
the popular type of literature during the
Middle Ages. Chivalry, romantic love,
religion predominate. Wonderful and
impossible adventures are set forth.
– Le Morte de Arthur
– Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
 Ballad
• A short narrative poem which could be
sung. It’s very short and told in great
rapidity. It tells a simple, serious story
which usually has a tragic ending. Love,
tragedy, and the supernatural predominate.
– Lord Randal
– Richard Cory
 Metrical Tale
• A short story in verse. It deals with any emotion
or phase of life. Its story is told in as simple,
straightforward, and realistic a manner as
possible.
– The Canterbury Tales – written by Geoffrey
Chaucer; a collection of isolated stories about
different people of Medieval England.
– The Decameron – written by Giovanni Boccaccio; a
collection of tales told by a group of young people
escaping the Black Death from the city.
 Dramatic Poetry
• Dramas written in verse form. The poetic
form is used to set forth life and character
by means of speech and action.
– Oedipus Rex (Sophocles), Medea (Euripedes)
– The dramas of Shakespeare
 Dramatic Monologue
• Has but one one speaker and is not adapted
for regular stage presentation. It is,
however, sometimes used for declamatory
purposes.
– My Last Duchess (Robert Browning)
 Comedy
• Dramatic literature that deals with the light
or amusing or with the serious and
profound in a light, familiar, or satirical
manner.
 Satire
• Topical literary composition holding up
human or individual vices, folly, abuses, or
shortcomings to censure by means of
ridicule, irony, or other methods,
sometimes with an intent to bring about
improvement.
– Plays of Aristophanes
– Wanted: A Chaperon (Wilfrido Ma.
Guerrero)
 Lyric Poetry
• Derives its name from the musical instrument,
the lyre, and was primarily intended to be sung. It
expresses the author’s own moods, emotions, and
reflections in musical language.
– Ode
– Elegy
– Sonnet
– Simple Lyric
 Ode
• The most majestic type of lyric poetry. It
expresses enthusiasm, lofty praise of some
person or thing, deep reflection or
restrained feeling.
– Ode to the West Wind (Percy Bysshe
Shelley)
– Ode to Duty (William Wordsworth)
– Ode to a Nightingale (John Keats)
 Elegy
• A lyric poem that voices the author’s
personal grief for a loved one or a
meditation on death. It is a poem of
lamentation.
– Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
(Thomas Gray)
– She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways
(William Wordsworth)
– Break, Break, Break (Alfred Lord Tennyson)
 Sonnet
• Composed of 14 iambic pentameter lines.
The Italian writer Petrarch was the first to
write the sonnets. In England, Shakespeare,
Spencer, Sidney, and others wrote them.
– Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets (Sonnets 14, 18,
and 29 are the most popular)
– How Do I Love Thee (Elizabeth Barrett
Browning)
 Simple Lyric
• Touches every mood and emotion of the
human heart. All the other poems that do
not properly belong under any of the types
of lyrics are called simple lyric poems.
– The Tiger (William Blake)
– The Road Not Taken, Stopping by Woods
on a Snowy Evening (Robert Frost)
– Gitanjali (Rabindranath Tagore)
Figures of Speech
 Figures of Speech
• A form of expression used to convey
meaning or heighten effect by comparing
or identifying one thing with another that
has a meaning or connotation familiar to
the reader or listener.
 Simile
• A comparison between two unlike entities.
The resemblance is explicitly indicated by
the words “like” or “as.”
– He eats like a pig.
– I wandered lonely as a cloud.
 Metaphor
• A word or phrase that denotes one kind of
object or action used in place of another to
suggest a likeness or analogy between
them.
– You are the apple of my eyes.
– What is a sonnet? ‘Tis the early shell that
murmurs of the far-off murmuring sea; A
precious jewel carved most curiously; it is a
little picture painted well.
 Personification
• Human characteristics are attributed to an
abstract quality, animal, or inanimate
object.
– Death lays his icy hand on kings.
– The windy waves were dancing.
 Hyperbole
• An intentional exaggeration for emphasis
or comic effect.
– I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.
– It’s raining cats and dogs.
 Synecdoche
• A part represents the whole.
– Hired hands
– No roving foot shall crush thee here.
 Metonymy
• Using the name of one thing for something
else with which it is associated.
– The eye of heaven
– Lands belonging to the crown
 Antonomasia
• Some defining word or phrase is
substituted for a person’s proper name.
– The Bard of Avon (William Shakespeare)
– The Brain of the Katipunan (Emilio Jacinto)
 Oxymoron
• A word or group of words that is self-
contradicting.
– Bittersweet
– Cruel Kindness
 Allegory
• An extended metaphor.
• A more or less symbolic fictional narrative that
conveys a secondary meaning or meanings not
explicitly set forth in the literal narrative.
– Allegory of the Cave (Socrates)
– The Little Prince (Anton de Saint Exuperry)
– Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow (Aurelio
Tolentino)
 Apostrophe
• A speaker turns from the audience as a
whole to address a single person or thing.
– O Death, be not proud!
– Break, break, break, on thy cold grey stones, O
Sea!
 Assonance
• Relatively close juxtaposition of similar
sounds, especially of vowels. This is also
called vowel rhyme.
– I arise from dreams of thee.
– In the first sweet sleep of night
 Alliteration
• The repetition of consonant sounds in two
or more neighboring words or syllables.
– The splendor falls on castle walls.
 Anaphora
• Repetition of a word or words at the
beginning of two or more successive
clauses or verses.
– “For everything there is a season, and a time
for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up
what is planted…”
 Allusion
• An implied or indirect reference to a
person, event, thing, or a part of another
text.
– I’m not Lazarus, nor Prince of Hamlet.
– Literature is my Achilles’ Heel.
– Beware of Greeks bearing gifts
 Literary Devices
• Stream of Consciousness Technique – a
narrative technique in non-dramatic fiction
intended to render the flow of myriad
impressions – visual, auditory, physical,
associative, and subliminal.
– The Sound and the Fury (William Faulkner)
– The Waves (Virginia Woolf)
– May Day Eve (Nick Joaquin)
 Literary Devices
• Foreshadowing – the organization and
presentation of events and scenes in a work
of fiction or drama so that the reader or
observer is prepared to some degree for
what occurs later in the work.
 Literary Devices
• Flashback – a literary or theatrical
technique used also in motion pictures and
television that involves interruption of the
chronological sequence of events by
interjection of events or scenes of earlier
occurrence.
 Quotable Quotes
• “A little learning is a dangerous thing.”
– Essay on Criticism (Alexander Pope)
 Quotable Quotes
• “If eyes are made for seeing, then beauty is
its own excuse for being.”
– The Rhodora (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
 Quotable Quotes
• “Early to bed, early to rise makes a man
healthy, wealthy and wise.”
– Poor Richard’s Almanac (Benjamin
Franklin)
 Quotable Quotes
• “Water, water everywhere, but not a drop
to drink.”
– The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (Samuel
Taylor Coleridge)
 Quotable Quotes
• “To see the world in a Grain of Sand and a
heaven in a Wild flower, hold Infinity in
the palm of your hand, and Eternity in an
hour.”
– Auguries of Innocence (William Blake)