DEFINITION OF LITERATURE

-Literature liberates people from political oppression, social injustice, economic inequality, and
emotional inhibition as reflected in short stories, novels, dramas, essays, and other literary
genres.

LITERATURE AS AN ART FORM

- Literature is the art-form of language, and words are its tools. As a painter uses paint, as a
musician uses musical instruments, as a sculptor uses stone-and-chisel, so a writer uses words.

ESSENCE AND SIGNIFICANCE OF LITERATURE

The essence of literature is the war between emotion and intellect, life and death, etc. The
significance is that it reflects the culture at the time and preserves it for future generations.

LITERARY STANDARDS
1. Artistry
- It is a quality that appeals to the readers standard of beauty. In terms of painting or literature, its
elements work together to express its intended meaning.
2. Intellectual Value
- It appeals to our intellect. An artwork of inflames critical thinking. It helps you uncover
indispensable truths about life and human nature.
3. Suggestiveness
- It appeals to our emotion. It makes us sympathize or emphathize with the people involved in an
artwork.
4. Spiritual Value
- It appeals to our sense of morality by making us undergo self-realization that makes us better
persons.
5. Permanence
- An excellent artwork lasts. It stands the test of time. It can be read on several occasions with
the feeling that you are reading it for the first time for each reading provides new insights about
the world we live in.
6. Universality
- A superb artwork is timeless and timely; it is forever relevant; it appeals to all regardless of
one’s race, educational attainment, gender, religious affiliation, and social status because it deals
with elemental feelings, fundamental truths, and universal conditions.
7. Style
- An artwork manifests the artist’s ingenuity and originality. He deviates from the usual
convention, but he is able to showcase his talent beyond mediocrity.

ROLES OF LITERATURE

 demonstrate that you are a well-informed scholar with expertise and knowledge in the
field by giving an overview of the current state of the literature
 find a gap in the literature, or address a business or professional issue, depending on your
doctoral study program; the literature review will illustrate how your research contributes
to the scholarly conversation
 provide a synthesis of the issues, trends, and concepts surrounding your research

GENRE OF LITERATURE
1. Prose Fiction
- Presents a story that is invented and not literally “true”. It is written to be read rather than acted
or performed, and the events depicted are told us by a narrator, not enacted or dramatized.
2. Poetry
- is piece of written by a poet in meter or verse expressing various emotions which are expressed
by the use of variety of techniques including metaphors, similes and onomatopoeia.
3. Drama
- comes from the Greek word “dran” which means “to do” or “to act”. It is a story acted out. It
shows people going through some eventful period in their lives, seriously or humorously.
4. Nonfiction Prose
- Presents factual information or expresses a viewpoint.

REASONS STUDYING LITERATURE

1. Imagination: Reading literature cultivates the imagination. That’s one reason why tyrants and
dictators hate literature, banning or strictly controlling it. From the ancient Greeks to the present
day, cultures steeped in literary study have thrived on creativity and innovation.

2. Communication: Writing and talking about literature helps prepare students to write and talk
about anything. Not only are they working with words, with carefully considered language, but
they are also considering how different kinds of people think and react to and understand words.
3. Analysis: Literary works—whether fiction, poetry, drama, creative nonfiction—challenge
readers to make connections, to weigh evidence, to question, to notice details, to make sense out
of a rich experience. These analytical abilities are fundamental life skills.

4. Empathy: Because literature allows us to inhabit different perspectives (What’s it like to be a

teenage girl, a Jew, in Nazi Germany? How would you feel if you thought your father had been
murdered but no one else believed that?), in different times and places, we learn to think about
how other people see the world. We can understand and persuade and accept and help these
others more effectively and fully.

5. Understanding: We think in terms of stories: this happens, and then that happens, and what’s
the connection between these events, and what is going to happen next? People who’ve
experienced more stories are better able to think about actions and consequences. Experience is
the best teacher; literature is the best vehicle for vastly enlarging our possible experiences.

6. Agility: Literary works often ask us to think in complex ways, to hold sometimes
contradictory, or apparently conflicting ideas in our minds. As brain imaging has shown, this
kind of processing helps us to be more mentally flexible and agile—open to new ideas.

7. Meaningfulness: Literary works often challenge us to think about our place in the world,
about the significance of what we are trying to do. Literary study encourages an “examined”
life—a richer life. It provides us with an almost unlimited number of test cases, allowing us to
think about the motivations and values of various characters and their interactions.

8. Travel: Literature allows us to visit places and times and encounter cultures that we would
otherwise never experience. Such literary travel can be profoundly life-enhancing.

9. Inspiration: Writers use words in ways that move us. Readers throughout the ages have found
reasons to live, and ways to live, in literature.

10. Fun: When students read literature that is appropriate for them, it’s intensely fun. Movies are
enjoyable, but oftentimes the written version, readers will say, is more powerful and engrossing.
Students who don’t find literature to be a whole lot of fun are almost certainly reading the wrong
things (too difficult, too removed from their interests), and not reading enough (perhaps they are
slogging line by line, week by week, through a text beyond their growing capabilities). When
students do discover the fun of literature, they will read more and more, vaulting forward in
verbal skills and reasoning abilities, and becoming better readers and writers of other kinds of
texts (letters, memos, legal briefs, political speeches, etc.)
ELEMENTS OF FICTION
1. Plot
2. Character
3. Setting
4. Point of View
5. Theme
6. Style

POETRY
-is piece of written by a poet in meter or verse expressing various emotions which are expressed
by the use of variety of techniques including metaphors, similes and onomatopoeia.

Elements of Poetry
1. Stanza 6.Alliteration
2. Lines 7.Repetition
3. Rhythm 8.Rhyme scheme
4. Rhyme 9. Onomatopoeia
5. Imagery

Types of Poetry
1. Lyric Poetry
Example: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
2. Narrative Poetry
Example: The Ballad of the harp weaver
3. Dramatic Poetry
Example: The death of the hired man
LITERARY DEVICES IN POETRY
1. Meter 6. Repetition
2. Rhyme 7. Consonance
3. Rhythm 8. Assonance
4. Symbolism 9. Alliteration
5. Imagery 10. Enjambment

Examples:
Example #1
Old pond . . .
a frog leaps in
water’s sound
(Haiku by Basho)
One of the most famous haiku poems ever written, the above translation is from the noted
Japanese haiku writer Basho. The familiar conventions of haiku writing can be seen here,
including the number of “on” in each line (like syllables) of 5-7-5, the focus on natural imagery,
and the change from the literal to the sublime in the third line.
Example #2
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
(“Sonnet 116” by William Shakespeare)
William Shakespeare was famous for his sonnets, of which he is known to have written 154. We
can see all of the conventions of this form at work, including the number of lines (fourteen,
broken into three quatrains and a final rhyming couplet), the rhyme scheme
(ABABCDCDEFEFGG), and the meter (iambic pentameter).
Example #3
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.”
(“The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe)
Edgar Allen Poe used a number of literary devices in his famous poem “The Raven.” The
majority of the lines in each stanza is written in the somewhat unusual meter of trochaic
octameter, with a final sixth line written in trochaic tetrameter. He also uses a rhyme scheme of
ABCBBB as well as internal rhyme. We can also find assonance, consonance, sibilance, and
alliteration throughout the poem.
Example #4
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
(“The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost)
In Robert Frost’s poem example “The Road Not Taken” we can find many devices at work, such
as rhyme scheme (ABABB) and symbolism. Though Frost seems to be simply describing
something he has come across in his travels, indeed there is deep meaning to his contemplation
of which path he took.
Example #5
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
(“The Red Wheelbarrow” by William Carlos Williams)
William Carlos Williams challenged old notions of what a poem could look like in English. He
does away with meter, rhyme scheme, and other devices that writers would use to show that their
work of literature was a poem. Instead, he presents a simple scene and asks the reader to develop
the significance therein. This technique is somewhat similar to what haiku writers achieved as
well.
Example #6
Backward Bill, Backward Bill,
He lives way up on Backward Hill,
Which is really a hole in the sandy ground
(But that’s a hill turned upside down).
(“Backward Bill” by Shel Silverstein)
Poem examples do not all have to be serious. There are many famous humorous poets such as
Dr. Seuss, Ogden Nash, and Shel Silverstein. In the above opening stanza from Silverstein’s
“Backward Bill” we can see the fun he’s having with rhyme scheme, juxtaposition, contrast, and
consonance. Though the theme of the poem is light, Silverstein does an excellent job using
formal poetic devices.

PROSE
- the ordinary form of spoken or written language, without metrical structure, as
distinguished from poetry or verse.

Types of Prose
1. Short Story
Example: A town mouse and a country mouse
2. Fable
Example: The Ants and the Grasshopper
3. Parable
Example: The obstacle in our Path
4. Fairy Tale
Example: Cinderella
5. Novel
Example: Little Women
DRAMA
- is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc,
performed in a theatre, or on radio or television.

Elements of Drama
1. Visual Element 5. Dialog
2. Music 6. Characters
3. Performance 7. Plot
4. Setting 8. Theme

Types of Drama
1. Tragedies
Example: Romeo and Juliet
2. Comedies
Example: When Harry met Sally

ESSAY
- a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument.

Types of Essay
1. Narrative Essay
Example: The Manager. The Leader.
2. Descriptive Essay
Example: Moving North Became the Dream Come True
3. Expository Essay
Example: The Traditional Native American Use of Tobacco
4. Persuasive Essay
Example: Why Women Should Not Have an Abortion
THEATRE
- is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers, typically actors or actresses, to
present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often
a stage.

Kinds of Theatre
1. Arena
2. Trust
3. End stage
Theatre Terms
Accent Audience
Ad Libbing Avenue Staging
Against type Back stage
Antagonist Blackout
Anti-naturalism Blocking
Apron Body Language
Aside Business

Philippine Literature
- is the literature associated with the Philippines and includes the legends of prehistory, and
the colonial legacy of the Philippines.
 PHILIPPINE LITERATURE

LESLY ANN V. DE GUZMAN

BSBA-II

Submitted to: Michelle Ramos

 THE PAST THAT WE HAVE TO PRESERVE

The Literature of the past is still has a relationship to our present because the
Culture, Traditions and Beliefs that we have in our country are not still fully forgotten by people,
maybe some of Traditions, Beliefs and Culture was forgotten by other people like in our
province the other people in this new generation they don’t know now how to do the honouring
gesture ( mano ) to their parents and to other people that older than them when they got home
from school or anywhere they came from before going home. I just want to tell that that is one of
our traditions that our ancestries teach to us to give respect to the people older than us that this
generation already forgotten. By the Help of Literature it help us to know what kind of life our
ancestries have before and how they interact/socialize to other people before and what habits
they have before and how a man court a women before and courting a women before is not like
how a man court now because courting a women now is so easy not like the traditional way
before it’s really hard for a man to get a Yes to a women before because he have to court first the
family of the girl and also there is process in courting like (Pag iigib ng tubig, pag sibak ng
kahoy etc. And also in literature we can study what instruments they are using to compose a
songs, what Traditional songs they have and what Traditional Dances they have before that other
cities or places still dancing their traditional dances in festivals also Festivals is also one of our
traditions that we have to preserve because we don’t know what will happen in the future if
technology will become worst for our history, the way how our ancestries life before the values
they teach to us maybe they will forgotten it all, by the new generation or the worst generation
we have to teach them to preserve our Traditions, Beliefs and culture and also we have to
preserve the novels and poems that made of our National heroes and also the Fictional stories
that made by famous Filipinos that we can learn from their stories some makes us happy and
some teach us values.