LITERATURE

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LITERATURE

• Introduction to Humanities

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LiteratureChapter 7

• Literature is an art whose medium is language
  used to affect the imagination.
• Words themselves can evoke a response even when
  they are spoken independently of a grammatical
  setting, such as a sentence.
• Fiction writers and poets share many of the
  techniques of literature because their effects
  depend on universal language art.

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Literature as spoken language

• Treating literature as spoken language points up
  its relationship to other serial arts such as
  music, dance, and film.
• Literature happens in time.
• In order to perceive it, we must be aware of what
  is happening now, remember what happed before and
  anticipate what is to come.

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A Work of Literature

• A work of literature is, in one sense, a
  construction of separable elements like
  architecture.
• The details of a scene, a character or event, or
  a symbol pattern can be conceived of as the
  bricks in the wall of literary structure.
• If one of these details is imperfectly
  understood, out understanding of the total
  structure will be imperfect.

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The Literary Theme

• The theme (main idea) of a literary work is
  usually structural, comparable to an
  architectural decision
• Is it a house, church, urban mall, airport, or
  garage?
• Once we have explored some of the basic
  structures of literature, we will examine some of
  the more important details.

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Literary Terms

• But in a work of literature language is rarely
  that simple.
• Language has denotation a literal level where
  words mean what they obviously say,
• And connotation a subtler level at which words
  mean more than they obviously say.

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Literary Terms

• The symbol, simile, metaphor, images, and diction
  (word choices) are the main details of literary
  language that we will examine.
• All these details are found in poetry, fiction,
  drama, and even the essay.

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LITERARY STRUCTURES

• The Narrative and the Narrator
• The narrative is a story told to an audience by a
  teller controlling the order of events and the
  emphasis those event receive.
• Most narratives concentrate upon the events.
• But some narratives have very little action
• They reveal depth of character through responses
  to action.

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Narrative Structures

• The term episodic narrative describes one of
  the oldest kinds of literature,
• Often used in the epic, as in Homers Odyssey.
• The overall structure of the story centering on
  the adventures of Odysseus, but each adventure is
  almost a complete structure in itself.

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Narratives contd

• We develop a sense of the character of Odysseus
  as we follow him in his adventures, but this does
  not always happen in episodic literature.
• Often the adventures are completely disconnected
  from one another, and the thread that is intended
  to connect everything the personality of the
  main character (protagonist) is not strong enough
  to keep thing together.

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Narratives contd

• The organic narrative connects every action and
  every character in subtle ways so that as the
  narrative unfolds,
• the reader is given more and more information
  about all the events of the story.

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THE QUEST NARRATIVE

• The quest narrative is simple enough on the
  surface a hero sets out in search of a valuable
  treasure that must be found and rescued at all
  cost.
• Such, in simple terms, is the plot of almost
  every adventure yarn and adventure film ever
  written.

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The Quest Narrative

• The quest structure in Ralph Ellisons Invisible
  Man is so deeply rooted in the novel that the
  protagonist has no name.
• We know a great deal about him because he
  narrates the story and tells us about himself.
• He is Black, southern, and as a young college
  student, ambitious.

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Contd

• His earliest heroes are George Washing Carver and
  Booker T. Washington.
• He craves the dignity and the opportunity he
  associates with their lives.
• But things go wrong. He is dismissed unjustly
  from his college in the south and must, like
  Odysseus, leave home to seek his fortune.

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• He imagines himself destined for better things
  and eagerly pursues his fate, finding a place to
  live and work up North, Beginning to find his
  identity as a black man.
• He discovers the sophisticated urban society of
  New York City, the political subtleties of
  communism, the pains of black nationalism, and
  the realities of his relationship to white
  people, to whom he is an invisible man.

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• Yet he does not hate the whites, and in his own
  image of himself he remains as invisible man.
• The novel ends with the protagonist in an
  underground place he has found and which he has
  lighted, by tapping the lines of the electric
  company, with almost 200 electric light bulbs.

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• Despite this colossal illumination, he still
  cannot think of himself as visible.
• He ends his quest with out discovering who he is
  beyond this fundamental fact he is invisible.
• Black or white, we can identify in many ways with
  this quest, for Ellison is showing us that
  invisibility is in all of us.

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THE LYRIC

• The lyric structure, virtually always a poem,
  primarily reveals a limited but deep feeling
  about something or event.
• The lyric is often associated with the feelings
  of the poet, although we have already seen that
  it is not difficult for poest to create narrators
  distinct from themselves and to explore
  hypothetical feelings.

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Lyriccontd

• If we participate we find ourselves caught up in
  the emotional situation of the lyric.
• Poets can understand and interpret emotions
  without necessarily undergoing them.
• The lyric has feeling emotion, passion, or mood
  as basic in its subject matter.

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LITERARY DETAILSTHE IMAGE

• An image in language asks us to imagine or
  picture what is referred to or being described.
• Most images appeal to our sense of sight, but
  sound, taste, odor, and touch are often involved.
• One of the most striking resources of language is
  its capacity to help us reconstruct in our
  imagination the reality of perceptions.

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The Metaphor

• Metaphor helps writers intensify language.
• Metaphor is a comparison designed to heighten our
  perception of the thing compared.
• Poets or writers will usually let us know which
  of the things compared is the main object of
  their attention.

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The Symbol

• The symbol is a further use of metaphor.
• Being a metaphor, it is a comparison between two
  things but unlike most perceptual and conceptual
  metaphors, only one of the things compared is
  clearly stated.
• The symbol is clearly stated, but what it is
  compared with (sometimes a very broad range of
  meanings) is only hinted at.

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Symbols contd

• For instance, the white whale in Herman
  Melvilles novel, Moby Dick, is a symbol both in
  the novel and in the mind of Captain Ahab, who
  sees the whale as a symbol of all the malevolence
  and evil in a world committed to evil.
• We may believer that the whale is simply a beast
  and not a symbol at all.

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Symbols contd

• Or, we may believe that the whale is a symbol for
  nature, which is constantly being threatened by
  human misunderstanding.
• Such a symbol can mean more than one thing.
• It is the peculiar quality of changing.
• Symbols are usually vague and ambiguous.

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MOTHER TO SON

• Well, son, Ill tell you
• Life for me aint been no crystal stair
• Its had tacks in it,
• And splinters,
• And boards torn up,
• And places with no carpet on the floor - -
• Bare.
• But all the time
• Ise been a Climbin on
• And reachin landins,
• And turnin corners
• And sometimes goin in the dark
• Where there aint been no light.
• So boy, dont you turn back.
• Dont you set down on the steps
• Cause you finds its kinder hard.
• Dont you fall now
• Ise still climbin,
• And life for me aint been no crystal stair.

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Symbols contd

• The most important thing to remember about the
  symbol is that it implies rather than explicitly
  states meaning.

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DICTION

• Diction refers to the choice of words.
• To be, or not to be.
• The careful use of diction can sometimes aid a
  satirist, whose intention is to say one thing and
  mean another.

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Summary

• Literature is not passive it does not sit on the
  page. It is engaged actively in the lives of
  those who give it a chance.
• Reading aloud a literary piece clarifies this
  point.
• The authors are especially interested in two
  aspects of literature its structure and its
  details.
• composed of an overall organization that
  gathers details into some kind of unity

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Summary continued

• Before we can understand how writers reveal the
  visions they have of their subject matter we need
  to be aware of how details are combined into
  structures.
• The use of image, metaphor, symbol, and diction,
  as well as other details, determines the content
  of a work of literature.
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