INITIATION TO LITERATURE (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 genres a- Fiction/novel b- Drama c- Poetry 3- Some components of the literary genre a. The plot b. The author c. The narrator The first-person narrator The second-person narrator The third-person narrator d. The character 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 writer. It is accepted that the aim of literature, like music or art is to entertain. This is the case whether the written material (prose, 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-book 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 books 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, novels, 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, play 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 writers. Some are from oral literature collected and committed to writing. Folktales, legends, 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 setting 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 mode 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 storytelling 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 audience, 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 literary genre 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, suspense, a point of view, and a theme. 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.