Introduction to English Literature: Introductory Lecture

Introduction to English Literature: Introductory Lecture

Compiled by Tamer Ali

Genre Definition

Genremeans the type of art, literature or music characterized by a specific form, content andstyle. For example, literature has four main genres;poetry,drama, fiction and non-fiction. All of these genres have particular features and functions that distinguish them from one another.

Narrative Definition

Narrative is a report of related events presented to the listeners or readers in words arranged in a logical sequence.

A story is taken as a synonym of narrative. A narrative or story is told by anarratorwho may be a direct part of that experience and he or she often shares the experience as a first-person narrator. Sometimes he or she may only observe the events as a third-person narrator and gives his or her verdict.

Plot Definition

Plot is a literary term used to describe the events that make up a story or the main part of a story. These events relate to each other in a pattern or a sequence. The structure of anoveldepends on the organization of events in the plot of the story.

Verisimilitude Definition

In a literary work,verisimilitudeis likeness to the truth i.e. resemblance of a fictitious work to a real event even if it is a far-fetched one.

Verisimilitude ensures that even afantasymust be rooted in reality, which means that events should be plausible to the extent that readers consider them credible enough to be able to relate them somehow to their experiences of real life.

Definition of Drama

Dramais a mode of fictional representation throughdialogueand performance. It is one of the literary genres, which is an imitation of some action. Drama is also a type of a play written for theaters, televisions, radios and films. In simple words, a drama is a composition inverseorprosepresenting a story in pantomime or dialogue, containingconflictof characters, particularly the ones who perform in front of audience on the stage. The person who writes drama for stage directions is known as a dramatist or playwright.

Tragedy is kind ofdramathat presents a serious subject matter about human suffering and corresponding terrible events in a dignified manner.

Comedy is a literarygenreand a type of dramatic work that is amusing and satirical in its tone, mostly having cheerful ending.

Adventure novel.A novel where exciting events are more important than character development and sometimes theme.

Autobiographical novel.A novel based on the author's life experience. Many novelists include in their books people and events from their own lives, often slightly or even dramatically altered.

Blank Verse.Unrhymed iambic pentameter. Shakespeare's plays are largely blank verse, as are other Renaissance plays.

Ballad: The word Ballad is of French provenance. It is a type ofpoetryorversewhich was basically used in dancesongsin the ancient France.

In literature, it is described as a didactic lesson given through some sort of animal story. Inproseand verse, a fable is described through plants, animals, forces of nature and inanimate objects by giving them human attributes wherein they demonstrate a moral lesson at the end.

A crow was sitting on a branch of a tree with a piece of cheese in her beak when a fox observed her and set his wits to work to discover some way of getting the cheese.

“Coming and standing under the tree he looked up and said, ‘What a noble bird I see above me! Herbeautyis without equal….. Down came the cheese and the fox, snatching it up, said, ‘You have avoice, madam, I see: what you want is wits….”

(The Fox and the Crowfrom Aesop’s Fables)

Definition of Free Verse

Freeverseis aliterary devicethat can be defined aspoetrythat is free from limitations of regularmeterorrhythmand does notrhymewith fixed forms. Such poems are without rhythms andrhymeschemes; do not follow regularrhyme schemerules and still provide artistic expression. In this way, the poet can give his own shape to a poem how he/she desires. However, it still allows poets to usealliteration, rhyme, cadences or rhythms to get the effects that they consider are suitable for the piece.

Arhymeis arepetitionof similar sounding words occurring at the end of lines in poems orsongs.

And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,…….
Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

I WANDERED lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze

Rhythm is aliterary devicewhich demonstrates the long and short patterns through stressed and unstressed syllables particularly inverseform

Children's novel.A novel written for children and discerned by one or more of these: (1) a child character or a character a child can identify with, (2) a theme or themes (often didactic) aimed at children, (3) vocabulary and sentence structure available to a young reader. Many "adult" novels, such asGulliver's Travels,are read by children. The test is that the book be interesting to and--at some level--accessible by children. Examples:

·  Mark Twain,Tom Sawyer

·  L. M. Montgomery,Anne of Green Gables

·  Booth Tarkington, Penrod and Sam

Coming-of-age story.A type of novel where the protagonist is initiated into adulthood through knowledge, experience, or both, often by a process of disillusionment. Understanding comes after the dropping of preconceptions, a destruction of a false sense of security, or in some way the loss of innocence. Some of the shifts that take place are these:

·  ignorance to knowledge

·  innocence to experience

·  false view of world to correct view

·  idealism to realism

·  immature responses to mature responses

Bildungsromanis a special kind ofnovelthat focuses on the psychological and moral growth of its main characterfrom his or her youth to adulthood

Detective novel.A novel focusing on the solving of a crime, often by a brilliant detective, and usually employing the elements of mystery and suspense. Examples:

·  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,The Hound of the Baskervilles

Dystopian novel.An anti-utopian novel where, instead of a paradise, everything has gone wrong in the attempt to create a perfect society. Seeutopian novel.Examples:

·  George Orwell,Nineteen Eighty-Four

·  Aldous Huxley,Brave New World

·  Allegoryis a figure of speech in which abstract ideas and principles are described in terms of characters, figures and events. It can be employed inproseandpoetryto tell a story with a purpose of teaching an idea and a principle or explaining an idea or a principle. The objective of its use is to preach some kind of a moral lesson.

SETTING: The setting provides the reader with relevant information about the location and time of the story. The author usually gives a description of the time and place. A discussion of the setting is important to prepare the readers for the story.

CHARACTERS: At the beginning of the story, along with the setting, the main characters are introduced. The goals of the main characters drive the plot of the story (i.e., goals, attempt/actions, and outcomes).

In fictional literature, authors use many different types of characters to tell their stories. Different types of characters fulfill different roles in the narrative process, and with a little bit of analysis, you can usually detect some or all of the types below.

·  Major or centralcharacters are vital to the development and resolution of the conflict. In other words, the plot and resolution of conflict revolves around these characters.

·  Minor charactersserve to complement the major characters and help move the plot events forward.

·  Dynamic- A dynamic character is a person whochanges over time, usually as a result of resolving a central conflict or facing a major crisis. Most dynamic characters tend to be central rather than peripheral characters, because resolving the conflict is the major role of central characters.

·  Static- A static character is someone whodoes not change over time; his or her personality does not transform or evolve.

·  Round- A rounded character is anyone who has acomplex personality; he or she is often portrayed as a conflicted and contradictory person.

·  Flat- A flat character is the opposite of a round character. This literary personality is notable forone kind of personality trait or characteristic.

·  Stock- Stock characters are those types of characters who have becomeconventional or stereotypicalthroughrepeated usein particular types of stories. Stock characters are instantly recognizable to readers or audience members (e.g. the femme fatale, the cynical but moral private eye, the mad scientist, the geeky boy with glasses, and the faithful sidekick). Stock characters are normally one-dimensionalflatcharacters, but sometimes stock personalities are deeply conflicted, rounded characters (e.g. the "Hamlet" type).

·  Protagonist- The protagonist is the central person in a story, and is often referred to as the story's main character. He or she (or they) is faced with a conflict that must be resolved. The protagonist may not always be admirable (e.g. an anti-hero); nevertheless s/he must command involvement on the part of the reader, or better yet, empathy.

·  Antagonist- The antagonist is the character(s) (or situation) that represents the opposition against which the protagonist must contend. In other words, the antagonist is an obstacle that the protagonist must overcome.

There are four primary types of plots (modified from Anderson, 2006, & Lukens, 2007):

1.  Linear – plot is constructed logically and not by coincidence. There are three major parts to a linear plot:

·  Beginning – the characters and setting are introduced, and the central conflict/problem of the story is revealed. Usually the main character sets a goal to overcome the conflict/problem, or s/he may set a goal that creates a conflict/problem.

·  Middle – the main character participates in a series of events or attempts to reach the goal that leads to a resolution of the conflict/problem.

·  End – the main character may or may not reach his/her goal, thus resolving the conflict/problem. The linear plot is common in folktales, such as Goldilocks and the Three Bears, as well as realistic fiction (e.g., Make Way for Duckling, McCloskey, 1941) and fantasy (e.g., The Rainbow Fish, Pfister, 1992).

2-  Episodic – “one incident or short episode is linked to another by common characters or a unified theme” (Lukens, 2007, p. 121).

a.  An episodic plot features distinct episodes that are related to one another but that also can be read individually, almost as stories by themselves (e.g., the chapters in Frog and Toad All Year, Lobel, 1976). The chapters of short books with episodic structure like Frog and Toad can be used to teach narrative structure as one would with a picture storybook, because each chapter functions like a story that can stand alone.

b.  Most novels involve more complex plots, in which the story builds on itself, so that each episode evolves out of a previous one and produces another one (e.g., Beverly Cleary books, such as Ramona the Brave, and Judy Blume books, such as Superfudge, etc.).

3.Cumulative – plots with lots of repetition of phrases, sentences, or events with one new aspect added with each repetition. The Gingerbread Man and The Great, Big, Enormous Turnip are examples of cumulative plots.

4.Circular – the characters in the story end up in the same place that they were at the beginning of the story. Examples of circular stories are If You Give a Mouse a Cookie (Numeroff, 1985) and Where the Wild Things Are (Sendak, 1963).

A cliffhanger is a type ofnarrativeor a plot device in which the end is curiously abrupt so that the main characters are left in a difficult situation without offering any resolution of conflicts.

Nonlinear narrative,disjointed narrativeordisrupted narrativeis anarrative technique, sometimes used inliterature, film,hypertextwebsites and other narratives, where events are portrayed, for example out ofchronologicalorder, or in other ways where the narrative does not follow the direct causality pattern of the events featured, such as parallel distinctive plot lines, dream immersions or narrating another story inside the main plot-line.