Literary Elements Setting

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Literary ElementsSetting

• is the time and place of a storys action.
• Setting refers not only to time of day or season
  but also to the historical period and
  circumstances, weather conditions, and
  circumstances of place.

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Elements of Setting

• Holmans A Handbook to Literature divides setting
  into four main elements
• Actual geographical location
• Occupations and daily manner of living of
  characters
• Time or period in which the action takes place
• The general environment of the characters
  religious, mental, moral, social, emotional

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Thinking about setting

• I like to think of setting in a story as the
  combination of all the elements which go into the
  making of a scene elements that give the story
  a visual impact and a sense of being real.
• Such elements might include not only the large
  circumstances but also the props.

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Props

• When I consider setting, I think of the staging
  of the story, not only of time, place, and
  weather, for example, but also of props or
  stage set furniture, accessories important to
  the story, floor plans.
• Imagining that I am a stage manager, I ask myself
  what parts of the set are crucial to the story or
  if there are parts which can be omitted without
  vast change to the story.

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Setting and Symbolism

• Writers often use setting in a symbolic way a
  desert may convey sterility, for example, or a
  thunderous downpour may show new life or growth.
• Example In Kate Chopins The Story of an Hour,
  the stairs indicate up and down, or rise and fall
  Mrs. Mallards rise to freedom and victory or
  her descent to death and defeat. (See textbook,
  pp. 444-446.) What do the doors in the story seem
  to represent?
• When a setting seems to be particularly symbolic,
  we might consider its examination important to
  discovery of ideas about the storys theme.

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Atmosphere

• A word often associated with setting is
  atmosphere, the emotional aura that helps to
  establish the readers expectations and
  attitudes (Atmosphere).
• A master of atmosphere is Edgar Allan Poe, whose
  tales evoke a sense of forboding or impending
  catastrophe.Poe takes great care in creating and
  describing his scenes in order to influence the
  readers response to a particular setting or
  situation.
• Consider the atmosphere of the following places
  you might go in your everyday life a church, a
  tavern, a greenhouse.

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Works Cited
Kennedy, X. J. and Dana Gioia, eds. Literature
An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama.
New York Longman, 1999. 175-177. Setting. A
Handbook to Literature. Holman, C. Hugh and
William Harmon, eds. New York MacMillan, 1986.