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INITIATION TO

(LICENCE 1)

TEACHER: N’GUESSAN KOUADIO GERMAIN Full Professor e-mail: [email protected]

Content

1- What is literature?

a- Written literature b- Oral literature

2- Major literary

a- / b- c-

3- Some components of the literary

a. The b. The author c. The narrator

 The first-person narrator  The second-person narrator  The third-person narrator

d. The

 Types of characters

Introduction

One of serious problems to overcome when teaching literature is the lack of skill at assessing the literary and artistic qualities of the written page. The words “artistic” and “literary” describe the aesthetic or “beauty” aspect of what one is to comment on. Judging the beauty of a piece of writing is a subjective exercise. The problem is how to best articulate in the students the skill to enter fully into the feelings and attitudes of the . It is accepted that the aim of literature, like music or art is to entertain. This is the case whether the written material (, drama, or poetry) is a prescribed examination text or an item for sale in a shop. Literature aims to give pleasure. Literary appreciation needs some skills and skill, often, is inborn and any improvement is in terms of its sharpening though the nurture of schooling. The student needs to be taught a few operators that would help him to achieve a quick synthesis of his own cultural background and that being presented to him by a set- for a fuller understanding. It is when this is done that the study will offer him a vital relevance not dependent upon whether or not the culture is European, African or Asian.

1- What is literature?

The desire to define “literature” is of great concern among intellectuals. Attempted definitions are mostly broad and vague, and they change over time. The truth about defining literature is that the definition will change. So do the concepts of what is literature. What may be considered ordinary and not worthy of comment in one period may be considered literary genius in another.

Most people have their own ideas about literature. When taking a literary class at university, one expects that everything on the reading list will be “literature”. All the same, one might expect everything from a given author to be literature, even though the quality of that author's work may vary from publication to publication. Perhaps one gets an idea just from looking at the cover on a book whether it is “literary” or “pulp”. Literature then, is a form of demarcation based on the premise that texts are not created equal. Some have or are given more value than others.

Most concerns about literature evolve around how literature works with the reader, rather than how the author manages to write it. It is the reception, not the writing, which is the object of enquiry. Largely, what we call “literature” is often a subjective value judgment, and naturally, value judgments, like literary tastes, change.

Etymologically, literature has to do with letters, the written material, as opposed to the spoken word, even though not everything that is written down is literature. Literature foregrounds language, and uses it in artistic ways. Terry Eagleton defines literature in its relationship to language. To him, “literature transforms and intensifies ordinary language, deviates systematically from everyday speech”. Just as architecture is the art form that arises out of man’s creative conscience to erect buildings, literature is the art form that arises out of man’s ability to create language. Literature commonly covers the major genres of poetry, drama, and novel/fiction. The term also implies literary quality and distinction.

Definitions of literature change because they describe and clarify a reality. They do not create the reality they describe. Also, definitions may tell what we ought to think literature should be. Because there is no single and fast definition of literature, it is more beneficial to seek an analysis instead. In analysing what literature is, it imports to look at some of the things that literature does. Literature is something that reflects society, makes us think about ourselves and our society, allows us to enjoy language and beauty. It can be didactic, and it reflects on “human condition.” It both reflects ideology and changes ideology. It has social and political effects. Literature is the creation of a world that we can only see through reading. There are two major types of literature. 1.1. Written literature

It is literature that is found in whose basis is a kind of conscious art, the creative art of weaving words and imagination. It is generally made up of poetry, short stories, , plays or drama. For literature to be really written literature, it must be individual or personal responsibility for its existence. Secondly, an identifiable individual must be known as the writer or creator of a story, poem, or a technique for any particular genre. However, it is not all the individual components which make up literature found in books that have individual known or unknown creators or . Some are from oral literature collected and committed to writing. Folktales, , ballads, etc. are examples. They can be written with the most artistic organization or ordering, but they remain oral literature with certain definite features that can never be lost by any reader.

1.2. Oral literature

It is literature whose existence is associated with the beginning of social organization, when man began to live in communities. As human community developed and man got more relief from fear of anxieties about existence, man began to develop and pursue more personal pleasures like drawing, drumming or music-making. Man also started up social orders like rulership, economics about marriage, birth, death, etc. Every community in the world has its own folktales, stories, proverbs, usages that may differ from place to place but their application is almost universal. These together make up oral literature. They are said to be oral because they came into being before man began the art of writing and also because their of transmission was by word to mouth. The stories depend on the irrational for their very existence.

The difference between written literature and oral literature is that written literature is a conscious creation by an individual according to certain modes or styles and so could be judged as being good or bad on the canons of these modes whereas oral literature has no individual creators. It has a collective authorship. Its components are spontaneous. The forms are not consciously decided by anybody but are nonetheless identifiable. They are popular and intimately bound up with living cultures of peoples.

2- Major literary genres

There are different literary genres. The major ones are:

a- Fiction/novel

Fiction is literary work based on the imagination of an author. Though many writers base their works of fiction on a real-life event or characters, they write original scenes and dialog and invent or change aspects of the plot, setting, and character interactions. When fiction writers tell the story of people they have met, most often, those characters are composites of several people they know or have researched. When they base their characters on historical figures, they bring them to life with imagined and factual words and participation in events. Many fiction writers like fictionalizing true events because this practice allows them to easily and freely explore those events and the people involved. Writers are often concerned with imagining events and characters that fit societal trends. Although one of the objectives for writing fiction is to inform, it must contain a good story, one with characters in whom we are invested and situations where something important is at stake.

Why do writers write fiction?

Some writers explain they write to answer questions that people used to ask themselves. Many fiction writers assert that characters present themselves to be written and tell the author their stories. When we write personal essays and memoir about our experience, we relate real events and circumstances about our lives and those people close to us. While deciding to write fiction, authors imagine their way into others' lives, changing the circumstances and crafting storylines and outcomes. Fiction writers have the freedom to change all the elements of a story to meet their needs. They can raise and explore facts that they did not experience in their own lives.

By following invented characters as they confront and overcome obstacles, the fiction writer observes behavior and finds out what could have been true in "real" life. Many fiction writers report that by fictionalizing intense situations, they can cope in a way that truth makes prohibitive. But as in all writing, even as writers know what they would like to see happen, the characters' lives and situations begin to dictate new events and thoughts.

b- Drama

Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an , presupposes collaborative modes of production and a collective form of reception. The structure of dramatic texts, unlike other forms of literature, is directly influenced by this collaborative production and collective reception.

Drama is a that shares many features of other forms of literature, but possesses a characteristic that makes it distinct. Like novels and short stories, dramatic works tell a story by employing the seven elements of fiction: a setting, characters, a problem, a plot, , a point of view, and a . However, what sets drama apart from other literary genres is that it is performed by actors on a stage or in a film in front of an audience. The performers speak the dialogue, perform the actions of their characters and wear costumes to help portray their characters. To set the of the play or film, the stage is decorated to make the setting look like the setting of the story. In addition, lighting is used to draw attention to certain characters or parts of the stage and influence the of the dramatic work, and music is used to influence the mood as well.

Drama can be a very entertaining form of literature. In to reading literature, where the story is visualized in the reader’s mind, watching a drama unfold before one’s eyes is quite interesting and is a different experience. If a play or film has a talented cast who portray their characters well, and has a well-designed set, in addition to lighting and music that fit the dramatic work well, it can be a spectacle to watch.

However, one thing about drama that makes it less enjoyable than other literary genres is that it does not allow us to visualize the story with our imagination. When we read books, we are free to imagine the appearance of the setting, what characters look like, and the actions of characters. But, in drama, all of these things are determined for us and may not be as fascinating as we imagined. Essentially, drama differs from other literary genres because it is performed in front of an audience by actors to tell a story, along with the use of a set, lighting, music, and costumes.

c- Poetry

Poetry is an imaginative awareness of experience expressed through meaning, sound, and rhythmic language choices so as to evoke an emotional response from the reader. The definition of poetry varies according to . Perhaps the most plausible definition of this literary genre is its unwillingness to be defined, labeled, or nailed down. Poetry is the chiseled marble of language. Wordsworth defined poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings." Emily Dickinson said: "If I read a book and it makes my body so cold no fire ever can warm me, I know that is poetry." For Dylan Thomas, "Poetry is what makes me laugh or cry or yawn, what makes my toenails twinkle, what makes me want to do this or that or nothing." Poetry is a lot of things to a lot of people.

One of the most definable characteristics of the poetic form is economy of language. Poets are miserly and unrelentingly critical in the way they dole out words to a page. Carefully selecting words for conciseness and clarity is standard, even for writers of prose, but poets go well beyond this, considering a word's emotive qualities, musical value, spacing, and even its special relationship to the page. The , through innovation in both word choice and form, seemingly gives significance from thin air.

One may use prose to narrate, describe, argue, or define. There are equally numerous reasons for writing poetry. But poetry, unlike prose, often has an underlying and over-arching purpose that goes beyond the literal. Poetry is evocative. It typically evokes in the reader an intense emotion: joy, sorrow, anger, catharsis, love... Alternatively, poetry has the ability to surprise the reader with an Ah Ha! Experience -- revelation, insight, further understanding of elemental truth and beauty.

Because of its nature of emphasizing linguistic form rather than using language purely for its content, poetry is difficult to translate from one language into another. In most poetry, it is the connotations and the weight of words that are most important. These shades and nuances of meaning can be difficult to interpret and can cause different readers to "hear" a particular piece of poetry differently. While there are reasonable interpretations, there can never be a definite interpretation.

Nature of poetry

Most of the time, poetry can differ from prose, which is language meant to convey meaning in a more expansive and less condensed way, frequently using more complete logical or narrative structures than poetry does. This shows that poetry is often created from the need to escape the logical, as well as expressing feelings and other expressions in a tight, condensed manner.

What is known as "great" poetry is debatable in many cases. "Great" poetry generally captures images vividly and in an original, refreshing way, while weaving together an intricate combination of elements like theme tension, complex emotion, and profound reflective thought. A poet is one who creates and poetry is what the poet creates. The underlying concept of the poet as creator is not uncommon.

Sound in poetry

The most vital element of sound in poetry is rhythm. Often the rhythm of each line is arranged in a particular meter. In the case of free , the rhythm of lines is often organized into looser units of cadence. These are well seen when scanning the poem. In fact, scanning a poem and identifying the meter, stanza, and rhyme scheme are only the first steps in analyzing its rhythm. Below are the steps that are most useful for poems that employ regular meters.

1. Divide the words into syllables, mark the stressed and unstressed syllables, and identify the most common type of metric unit (“foot”); determine whether the poem uses a “rising” or “falling” rhythm.

 Rising meters are predominantly iambic or anapestic:  Iamb: 2 syllables (unstressed, stressed): to-day.  Anapest: 3 syllables (unstressed, unstressed, stressed): in-ter-vene.

 Falling meters are predominantly trochaic or dactylic:

 Trochee : 2 syllables (stressed, unstressed): dai-ly.  Dactyl: 3 syllables (stressed, unstressed, unstressed): yes-ter-day.

PS: a spondee (two stressed syllables in a single foot: usually two monosyllabic words) can occasionally be substituted for iambs or trochees in various meters.

2. Name the line accordingly to the number of metric feet (e.x. monometer, dimeter, trimeter, tetrameter, pentameter, hexameter, heptameter, octameter).

3. Describe the stanza pattern, including rhyme scheme (indicated alphabetically: e.x. abba cdc or abcb; etc.).

The following is a recapitulation of the above:

Oh weep for Adonais-he is dead! (a) (line or verse) Wake, melancholy Mother, wake and weep! (b) Yet wherefore? Quench within their burning bed (a) Thy fiery tears, and let thy loud heart keep, (b) Like his, a mute and uncomplaining sleep; (b) STANZA For he is gone where all things wise and fair (c) Descend. Oh dream not that the amorous deep (b) Will yet restore him to the vital air; (c) Death feeds on his mute voice, and laughs at our despair. (c)

Rhyme at the end of lines is the basis of a number of common poetic forms, such as ballads, and rhyming couplets. However, the use of rhyme is not universal.

Form in poetry

Compared with prose, poetry depends less on the linguistic units of sentences and paragraphs, and more on units of organization that are purely poetic. The typical structural elements are the line, couplet, strophe, stanza, and verse paragraph.

Poetry and

Rhetorical devices such as simile and are frequently used in poetry.

 Simile: Rhetorical figure expressing comparison or likeness between two objects by means of connective words such as like, as, so, than, or a verb such as resemble. Although similes and are generally interchangeable, similes acknowledge the imperfections and limitations of the comparative relationship to a greater extent than metaphors. Similes also protect the author against outrageous, incomplete, or unfair comparison. Generally, metaphor is the stronger and more encompassing of the two forms of rhetorical analogies.

 Metaphor: in which a term or phrase is used for something to which it is not literally applicable in order to suggest a resemblance. Ex: A mighty fortress is our God. 3- Some components of the literary genre

a. The plot

The plot is defined as the events that make up a story, particularly as they relate to one another in a pattern, in a sequence, through cause and effect, how the reader views the story, or simply by coincidence. A plot "insures that you get your character from point A to point Z." One is generally interested in how well this pattern of events accomplishes some artistic or emotional effect. An intricate, complicated plot is called an imbroglio. But the simplest statements of plot may include multiple inferences. Following are the different sequences generally found in a plot:

The exposition introduces all of the main characters in the story. It shows their relationships, their goals and motivations, and the kind of person they are. The audience may have questions about any of these things, which get settled, but if they have them, they are specific and well-focused questions. Most importantly, in the exposition, the audience gets to know the main character or , and the protagonist gets to know his or her main goal and what is at stake if he or she fails to attain this goal and if he or she eventually attains this goal. This phase ends, and the next begins, with the introduction of .

 Rising

Rising action starts with the “death” of the characters or a conflict. The building of the events until the is involved in the rising action. Generally, in this phase, the protagonist understands his or her goal and begins to work toward it. Smaller problems thwart their initial success and progress is directed primarily against these secondary obstacles. This phase shows how the protagonist overcomes these obstacles.

 Conflict

This is when a disagreement between two or more people/groups occurs. This disagreement leads to the climax.

 Climax

The climax is the turning point of the story. Here the main character makes the greatest decision that defines the outcome of the story and who he or she is as a person. The beginning of this phase is marked by the protagonist finally having overcome away the preliminary barriers and being ready to engage with the adversary. Usually, entering this phase, both the protagonist and the have a plan to win against the other. For the first time, we see them going against one another in either direct or nearly direct conflict. What is particular with this central struggle between both characters is that the protagonist makes a decision which shows his quality, and ultimately determines his fate. The climax often contains much of the action in a story. The ″climax″ is the highest point of the story.

 Falling action

In this phase, the events in the story usually lead to a happy ending. They consist of the actions of characters resolving the problem. The protagonist has never been further from accomplishing his goal. The question is which side he or she has put himself or herself on, and this may not be immediately clear to the reader.

 Denouement

The Resolution: it is where the story's mystery is solved. In this stage, all patterns of events accomplish some artistic or emotional effect.

Diagram of a plot in a work of fiction

Some aspects in a plot

 Chronological order

All the events occur in the text in the order they happen. There may be references to events from the past or future, however the events are written in time order.

It is an interjected scene that takes the narrative back in time from the current point the story has reached. Flashbacks are often used to recount events that happened prior to the story's primary sequence of events or to fill in crucial .

 Setting

This is the location and time of a story. It is often listed as one of the fundamental elements of fiction. Sometimes setting is referred to as milieu, to include a context (such as society) beyond the immediate surroundings of the story.

 Theme

It is a conceptual distillation of the story often listed as one of the fundamental elements of fiction. It is the central idea or insight serving as a unifying element, creating cohesion and is an answer to the question about what you learned from the piece of work.

 Style

It is not so much what is written, but how it is written and interpreted. Style refers to language conventions used to construct the story or article. A writer may manipulate , sentence structure, phrasing, dialogue, and other aspects of language to create style or mood. The communicative effect created by the author's style is sometimes referred to as the story's voice. Every writer has his or her own unique style, or voice. Style is sometimes listed as one of the fundamental elements of a work.

b. The author

Broadly, the author is the person who writes the story, he or she who creates the story. However, in , critics find complications in the term "author." To Roland Barthes, a text can be attributed to any single author. He writes in "Death of the Author" (1968) that "it is language which speaks, not the author." Barthes argues that the words and language of a text itself determine and expose meaning and not someone possessing legal responsibility for the process of its production. Every line of a written text is a mere reflection of references from any of a multitude of traditions, or, as he puts it, "the text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centers of culture"; it is never original. With this, the perspective of the author is removed from the text, and the limits formerly imposed by the idea of one authorial voice, one ultimate and universal meaning, are destroyed. As for Michel Foucault in "What is an author?" (1969), all authors are writers, but not all writers are authors. He states that "a private letter may have a signatory—it does not have an author." For a reader to assign the title of author upon any written work is to attribute certain standards upon the text which, for Foucault, is working in conjunction with the idea of "the author function". Foucault's author function is the idea that an author exists only as a function of a written work, a part of its structure, but not necessarily part of the interpretive process. Instead, readers should allow a text to be interpreted in terms of the language as "author."

c. The narrator

A crucial element of any work of fiction is the NARRATOR, the person who is telling the story. He is different from the AUTHOR, the person who actually wrote the story. There are different types of narrators. Critics usually distinguish narrators by person:

 A FIRST-PERSON narrator: it an "I" (occasionally a "we") who speaks from her/his subject position. This narrator is usually a character in the story, a character interacting with other characters. We see those interactions through the narrator's eyes, and we cannot know anything the narrator does not know. This type of narrator is commonly seen in autobiographies as a genre. Here, the narrator is the author's projection of himself in the work, and is not always equivalent to the real flesh-and-blood author.

 A SECOND-PERSON narrator: this narrator speaks in "you." This is an extremely rare case in American literature.

 A THIRD-PERSON narrator: this is not a character in the story, but an "observer" outside the action being described. A third-person narrator might be omniscient (ie, able to tell what all the characters are thinking), but that is not always the case. Third-person may also be focalized through a particular character, meaning that the narrator tells us how that character sees the world, but cannot, or at least does not, read the mind of all the characters this way.

 Levels of Narration

There are several levels or layers of narration. The following illustration shows these different levels:

P r author o ↓ d implied author u ↓ c narrator t ↓ i character {speaker(s)} o ↓ n

R e character {listener(s)} c ↓ e narratee p ↓ t implied reader i ↓ o reader n

 The Narratee

The narratee is the personage the narrator relates the story to. In first-person , the narratee is the character the narrator tells the story to. If this personage is absent, the implied reader may be regarded as the narratee: this is especially evident when the first-person narrator uses second person pronouns to address the implied reader.

 The implied reader

This term incorporates both the prestructuring of the potential meaning by the text, and the reader’s actualization of this potential through the reading process. The novel pulls the reader into another world, guiding and making him draw his own conclusions. This interaction between author and reader is at the center of the idea of the implied reader. In third-person narratives, the narratee exists when there is a narrator telling the story to another imaginary personage. This imaginary personage is the narratee.

 The implied author

The implied author differs from the narrator in that he does not recount events or dialogue, but instead is present through ideology. This ideology can be discerned through word choice, humor, and the manner in which characters are introduced. The implied author works "behind the scenes" shaping the values that the narrative projects onto his audience.

d. The character

Characterization is one of the fundamental elements of fiction. A character is a participant in the story, and is usually a person, but may be any personal identity, or entity whose existence stems from a fictional work or performance.  Types of characters

Characters may be of several types:

 Point-of-view character: The character from whose perspective (theme) the audience experiences the story. He represents the point of view the audience empathizes or sympathies with. As such, he is the "Main" Character.  Protagonist: The driver of the action of the story and therefore responsible for achieving the story's Objective Story Goal. In western storytelling tradition the Protagonist is usually the main character.  Antagonist: A person, or a group of people who oppose the main character(s). The Antagonist rarely succeeds the end of the book.  Static character: A character who does not significantly change during the course of a story.  Dynamic character: A character who undergoes character development during the course of a story.  : The character that contrasts to the protagonist in a way that illuminates their personality or characteristic.  : A character that plays a part in the plot, but is not major  Minor character: A character in a bit part. He does not have a major role in the story.

Bibliography

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