What is Literature?

Question 1

Definition

Answer 1

Described using terms like “aesthetic” or “artistic”

Not limited to one form: includes fiction, drama, poetry, essay, and oral traditions

Etymology: From Latin litteratura (letter), suggesting the written word; English word “text” ties to “textile” (fabric metaphor = the weaving of words)

Literaturen evolves with society

Early forms include oral poetry, pictograms, and evolving modern forms like hypertext literature

Early texts were deeply tied to religion (e.g., The Epic of Gilgamesh, Bible stories)

Forms: Poetry, prose, and drama overlap but maintain distinct conventions

Question 2

Genres

Answer 2

Broad categories like epic, drama, and lyric poetry

Subgenres such as Gothic fiction, detective novels, and science fiction

Drama subgenres: Comedy, tragedy, history plays, absurdist theater

Question 3

Text types

Answer 3

Not all texts are literary (e.g., instruction manuals, obituaries)

Hybrids include works like essays with literary flair (e.g., Virginia Woolf’s essays)

Question 4

Discourse

Answer 4

Broader communication frameworks

Includes ideological dimensions: political, philosophical, economic, and literary

Question 5

Primary Literature

Answer 5

The original literary works (prose, drama, and poetry)

Question 6

Secondary Literature

Answer 6

Criticism, reviews, essays, monographs, glosses

Question 7

Fiction (key concepts)

Answer 7

1. plot
   > stems from Aristotle: plot = mythos; beginning, middle, and an end
   > traditional structure: exposition, rising action / complication / conflict, climax / turning-point, falling action, resolution / denouement
   > postmodern plots often disrupt this (e.g. non-linear timelines)
   > devices include flashback, foreshadowing, and multiple perspectives
2. characters
   > flat vs. round characters
   > flat = simple, unchanging
   > round = complex, evolving
   > protagonists and antagonists: central figures with opposing goals
   > stock characters (represent specific stereotypes): classical Roman comedy (ridiculous) soldier (miles glorious)
   > evolving individualisation in modern literature
3. narrative situations
   > authorial (omniscient 3rd-person)
   > first-person (protagonist’s POV)
   > figural: indirect access through characters; seen indirectly through characters’ experiences
4. focalisation: who sees? POV
   > internal: narrator restricted to a single character’s knowledge and matches their view
   > external: narrator observes from outside and is less knowledgable
   > zero (omniscient): omniscient narrator with full access and complete knowledge

Question 8

Key sub-genres of the novel (prose)

Answer 8

Picaresque novels: Episodic tales of a roguish protagonist (Don Quixote)

Bildungsroman: Focus on personal growth (Jane Eyre)

Epistolary novels: Told through letters (Frankenstein)

Utopian / dystopian fiction: Imaginary worlds with societal critique (1984)

Historical novels

Science fiction novels

Gothic novels: a style of writing characterized by elements of fear, horror, death, and gloom, as well as romantic elements, such as nature, individuality, and high emotion (e.g. fear and suspense)

Question 9

Poetry (key concepts)

Answer 9

Origins: Greek lyra (lyre), linked to oral and music traditions
> rooted in oral tradition and music (lyric poetry from lyra)
> defined by its lineation (arrangement of text into lines)

3 dimensions
> verbal: diction (choice of words), rhetorical devices, imagery
> visual: shape (concrete poetry (poem makes itself into an object), emblem poetry), form, layout
> rhythmic-acoustic: rhyme, meter, rhythm

meter and rhythm:
> common feet: iamb (unstressed/stressed), Trochee (^.), Anapest (..^), Dactyl (^..)
> most common in English poetry: iambic pentameter
> based on metrical feet

key techniques
> Imagery: Focus on clear, vivid imagery (Ezra Pound), evoking sensory experiences

Symbolism: Private vs. Conventional symbols. Use of symbols, both conventional (e.g., dove for peace) and private (e.g., James Joyce’s use of “brown” in Dubliners)

Question 10

Types of poems

Answer 10

Sonnet: 14 lines (e.g., Shakespearean, Italian) and specific rhyme schemes

Elegy: Mournful poem (e.g., Auden’s “Stop All the Clocks”)

Ode: formal, ceremonious/celebratory poem that celebrates a person, thing, or idea (e.g., Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn”)

Ballad: narrative poetry often sung (e.g., Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner)

Other
> charms (OE); magic, cult-like; used as a magical spell to get rid of warts or to keep them away
> riddles
> love poems (from Middle Ages onwards)
> elegy: a poem written to someone who has died

Question 11

Drama (key concepts)

Answer 11

Elements
> dialogue, monologue, stage directions, soliloquy, monologue setting, plot
> setting often shifts between scenes

classical roots
> Greek origins: Aristotelian unities (time, place, action)
> tragedy evokes catharsis (pity and fear)
> comedy uses humor, satire, and resolution
> Greek tragedies/comedy (e.g. Sophocles, Aristophanes)
> catharsis: emotional cleansing in tragedies

renaissance drama
> Shakespearean categories: comedy, tragedy, and history

modern drama
> realism: naturalistic representation (Chekhov)
> anti-realism: absurdism

theatrical evolution
> Greek amphitheater > Elizabethan Glove > Modern minimalist stages

genres
> tragedy: downfall of protagonists (e.g. Oedipus Rex)
> comedy: ends in harmony (e.g. Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night)
> modern drama: realism (A Doll’s House) vs. Absurdism (Waiting for Godot)

Question 12

Interpretation and Literary Theory

Answer 12

1. Text-focused
   > formalism: focus on literariness (structure, style, imagery)
   > new criticism: close reading; unity, emphasises paradox, irony
   > semiotics: study of signs; signifier (word) vs. signified (concept)
2. author-focused
   > biographic criticism: context of author’s life
   > psychoanalytical: analyses subconscious motives (e.g. Freud, Kafka’s father dynamics)
3. reader-focused
   > reception theory: importance of audience interpretation
   > interpretation shaped by the reader’s context
4. context-focused
   > historical: embeds texts in historical/cultural framework a.k.a. socio-historical context
   > marxist: analyses class (struggle) and ideology
   > gender: feminist and queer readings
   > postcolonial: critique of power dynamics in colonial texts

Question 13

Essential Literary Terms

Answer 13

Metaphor: Comparison without “like” or “as” (e.g., “time is a thief”).

Simile: Comparison using “like” or “as.”

Allegory: Extended metaphor (e.g., Animal Farm as political allegory).

Irony: Contrast between appearance and reality (dramatic, verbal, situational)
> Verbal: Saying the opposite of what is meant.
> Dramatic: Audience knows more than characters

Symbol: An object representing an abstract idea

Foreshadowing: Hints about what will happen later in a narrative

Question 14

Modes of presentation

Answer 14

Telling: via a narrator

Showing: doing away with a narrator and character shown through their words and actions (some sort of objective narrative established thereby) e.g. Hemingway

Question 15

Inner world of the character

Answer 15

Stream-of-consciousness technique
→ a narrative mode or method that attempts “to depict the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind” of a narrator

Question 16

The short story

Answer 16

Story, myth, ‘tale’ from ‘to tell’

(novella, novelette)

frame narrative = series of little stories

18C onwards: in parallel to the emergence of novels and newspapers

Features
> often opens at a climax in medias res (in the middle of things) as they have to get to the point quickly
> reconstructs plot and context through flashbacks
> due to length, often more suggestive than descriptive

Question 17

The transcendence of drama

Answer 17

1. Text
   > dialogue, monologue, plot, setting, stage directions

> Spoken word provides foundation for dialogue, monologue, soliloquy, aside (gestures towards audience and directed towards them)
Plot: exposition, complication, climax, dénoument (cf. prose fiction)
‘The Three Unities’ (in tragedy): time (24 hours; from sunrise until sunset), place / location (the same), action (consistent, linear); (but in 16th and 17th C misreadings of Aristotle here)
Europe followed these rules more strictly than England
Importance of Shakespeare breaking these rules has meant English tradition less conformist here cf. mainland Europe
Elizabeth carry-over of classical Five Acts (and scenes), with a reducing tendency to four (19th C), then three

20C violation of most rules … Post-WW2 Absurd Theatre
> Waiting for Godot (Beckett): no traditional plot (nothing happens)
> Main character (Godot) never appears
> No character development or significant plot development when other characters than Vladimir or Estragon appear
> No logical message message or climax
> Violation of audience’s traditional message
> Increasing use of non-verbal techniques

2. Transformation
   > directing, stage, props, lighting

> i.e. involves all logistical, conceptual steps between text and performance
i.e. the directing (choice of script, casting, staging, props, costumes, rehearsals, etc.)
Entire artistic coordination
Vague role, directing, until 19th C
Increasing realism
Famous directors Stanislavksy
Led to Lee Strasberg school of acting in New York
Max Reinhardt, Austrian, also famous
In UK directing centred around RSC (Royal Shakespeare Company; thetres in Stratford & London) and later from 1963 National Theatre
Expressionism, Theatre of the Absurd, Experimental Theatre has meant increasing role of director

History of the theatre building
Greek amphitheatre with orchestra and a stage building (or skene) up to 15.000
Elizabethan theatre very different: up to 2.000; Octagonal Globe; uncovered courtyard with visible sky (cheap), then three tiers of seats, with balconies; upper and lower stages (see R&J)
Post-renaissance: proscenium stage theatre, e.g. drawing room settings of GBS, Wilde, later in US Eugene O’Neill ‘Long Day’s Journey Into Night’
Shift with expressionism (theatre and film): move away from realism to minimalism (Godot: park bench and stylized tree)
Stoppard’s ‘After Magritte’ uses a staging of Magritte’s surrealist paintings
Non-mainstream, alternative = ‘fringe’ theatre (GB), (Off-)Off-Broadway (US)

3. Performance
   > actors, methods, gestures, facial expressions, voice

> Actors, only ever been formally trained (methodologically) in last 100 years or so
Breathing, posture, body movement, psychological ways-in
External method (imitation, impersonation, simulation); internal method (individual identification with the role rather than impersonation) = “The Method” (being, not showing) cf. Marlon Brando, James Dean

Question 18

Dramatic personae (characters)

Answer 18

> Greek Chorus (with an orchestra, describing a story and praying to the Gods; used to be the only operating thing), then later after 5C BC, new character individuation (individual becomes distinct) (max. 3): dialogue

> Cf. choir in Shakespeare - musical interludes

> Flat and round characters for drama, too - stock characters (boastful soldier, miles gloriosus), cranky old man, crafty servant
Greek characters wore masks (immobile, but multiplicity of roles possible)

> Gender: Greek and Elizabethan men only; female roles played by young men (cross-dressing)

> E.g. as you like it, female characters played by men dress up as men (cross-dressing)

> Only abolished with Restoration

> Also in modern theatre, ‘breeches role’ (breeches (trousers) = woman playing a man)

> But cinema provides the ultimate form of transformation through its special effects