What is Literature

What is Literature?
Literature refers to composition that deal with life experiences. It tells stories, dramatizes situations, expresses emotions, analyzes, and advocates ideas.

In the past, literary works were recited or sung, and were retained only as long as people performed these oral acts by which these literary traditions are handed down from generation to generation. In some societies, these oral traditions of literature still exist, with most poems and stories being spoken rather than read from the pages of a book. Even today parents delight their children with stories and poems; poets and story writers read their works to live children with stories and poems; poets and story writers read their works to live audiences; and plays and scripts are interpreted on stage or before cameras.

Literature helps us grow, both personally and intellectually. It links us with the broader society of which we are a part. It allows us to recognize human dreams and the struggles of different peoples and places. It helps us develop mature sensibility and compassion for all creations in the universe. It gives us the knowledge and perception to appreciate the beauty of order and arrangement. It enables us to see the worthiness in the aspirations of all people. It exercises our emotions through interest, concern, tension, excitement, hope, fear, regret, laughter, and sympathy.

Through our readings, literature shapes our goals and values by clarifying our own identities – both positively, through acceptance of the admirable in human beings, and negatively, through the rejection of the sinister. It enables us to develop a perspective on events occurring locally and globally. It encourages us to appreciate, recognize and support talented and creative people.

Types of Literature:
Imaginative Literature. Imaginative literature have distinguishing characteristics that includes Prose fiction, or narrative fiction, poetry and drama.

Prose fiction. Includes myths, parables, romances, novels, and short stories; refers to prose stories based on the author’s imagination.

The essence of fiction is narration – whereby events or action are recounted works of fiction focus on one or a few major characters who change in attitude as they interact with other characters and deal with problems. The main purpose of prose fiction is to interest, stimulate, instruct, and divert.

Poetry expresses a conversation or interchange of the deeply felt experiences of human beings. Poetry comes in many formal and informal shapes and lengths. It uses few words, as compared to prose fiction. It relies heavily on imagery, figurative language, and sound.

Drama is literature designed to be performed by actors. Like fiction, drama may focus on a single character or a small number of characters, and enacts fictional events to be witnessed by an audience.

“This three genres are just based on imaginations of the creators that includes magical events and mysterious existence of characters just to entertain the readers or the audiences.”

Realistic Literature. Nonfiction prose, as a literary genre is represented by news reports, feature articles, essays, editorials, historical and biographical works, and the like – all of which describe or interpret facts and present judgment and opinions. The major goals of nonfiction prose are truth in reporting and logic in reasoning.

“This is based upon the truth and the real happenings with the people around that stands the reality and experiences and the detailed events of the said situations.”

What is Poetry?
Poetry is an artistic expression of an idea in a rhythmical pattern. It stirs the emotions and stimulates the mind through its metric rhythm, musical lines, sense impression, and language.

Poetry is a universal language that can be written and enjoyed by individuals of all ages from all walks of life because of its simplicity of form.

Poetry speaks of experience – beautiful or ugly, strange or common, noble or ignoble, actual or imaginary. It speaks of the inner need to live more fully and have greater awareness of the experience of others, as well as to understand one’s own better. It gives soul to a simple narration of experience by adding more depth.

Poetry is the most condensed and concentrated form of literature. The individual lines of a good poem have more brilliance and power, word for word, packed into them, than those in any other literary form. It says more and says it more intensely.

Poetry is a multidimensional language. It has four (4) dimensions to communicate experience such as: it must be directed to the whole person not just at understanding: it must involve not only one’s intelligence but also one’s senses, emotions and imagination.

To the intellectual dimension poetry adds a sensuous dimension, an emotional dimension, and an imaginative dimension.

Poetry achieves extra dimension by packing more pressure into each word and creating greater tension by drawing richly on various language resources such as connotation, imagery, symbol, figures of speech, rhythm, and pattern.

Elements of Poetry
Poetry differs from prose in shape and in form. The basic units of structures for prose are the sentences and the paragraphs; whereas the unit structure for a poem are the lines and strictly marked stanzas which give the poem a definite and distinct pattern.

The fundamental components of poetry are connotation, imagery, rhythm, figurative language, and sound structure.

Denotation and Connotation
Denotation is the actual meaning of a word or the literal and dictionary meaning, whereas connotation refers to association and implications that go beyond a word’s literal meaning. It is the meaning suggested or implied beyond the actual meaning.

Critical reading requires the ability to understand the connotation as well as the denotation of words.

There are two types of connotation. These are personal connotation and general connotation.
The personal connotation of a word is related to the experiences of the person who uses or reads/hears it. The “strength” or “power” one meaning over another will depend on the user/reader/listener’s experience with it. The negativeness and positiveness of one’s meaning of the word “authority” will depend upon one’s experience related to this concept.

The general connotation of a word is based on one’s general experiences; hence, a relationship exists between personal and general connotation. General connotation refers to the general reaction of a majority of people to a certain word. For example, the words “mother,” “father,” “baby,” and “native land” have connotative meanings depending upon the accumulated experiences in the collective subconscious of the race.

Words, therefore, elicit both objectives and emotional responses.

Connotation is very important in poetry because it is the means by which the poet can concentrate or enriching the meaning by saying more in fewer words.

Language has many varieties, and poets may choose from them all. Their words may be romantic or realistic, archaic or modern, grandiose or humble, technical or ordinary. The skillful use of these word varietis would surprise and elicit an increment of meaning for the reader.

Imagery
Imagery in poetry appeals our senses on the surface level, or directly through its music and rhythm. Indirectly, it appeals through our senses through imagery, the representation to the imagination of some experiences. It suggests a mental picture.

Visual imagery is the kind of imagery that occurs most frequently in poetry. An image may also represent a sound (auditory imagery); an odor (olfactory imagery); a flavor (gustatory imagery); hardness, softness, wetness, or heat or cold (tactile imagery); an internal sensation, such as hunger, thirst fatigue or nausea (organic imagery); or movement or tension in the muscles or joints (kinesthetic imagery).

Imagery evokes vivid experience. It conveys emotion, suggests ideas and causes a mental reproduction of sensations. A poem, however, cannot be evaluated by the amount or quality of its imagery alone. Sense impression is only one of the elements of experience. Poetry may attain its ends by other means. A poem is judged in reference to total intention.

Diction and Tone
It is partly by the diction that the speaker of the poem is known. The choice of words and grammatical construction will reflect for instance, whether the poet is far removed from the common life or is on the other hand, very sophisticated. It is also a means by which the tone of a certain subject or situation is created by the speaker.

Speakers reveal their attitudes toward themselves, their subjects and their audience (consciously or unconsciously) and they choose their words, pitch, and modulation according. All these shape the tone.

The choice of words of the poet govern the response of the reader to the characters and situations in the poem. The denotations and connotations, overstatement, and other rhetorical tools that the poet employs also shape the responses of the reader.

In written literature, the reader detects the tone, not by the ear, but by noticing the selection and sequence of words – the way in which they are meant to be heard – I,e., is playfully, angrily, confidently, sarcastically, etc.

Tone speaks more about the methods and techniques by which attitudes are created and revealed.

Tone and expression are important forms of communication. Writers may speak of the same subject, but details (situation, language, action, background) reveal different attitudes like satisfaction, indignation, love, contempt, deference, and command.

Figure of speech
A figure of speech is a way of saying something other than the ordinary way. One does this to make assertions about an external reality, or to present some insights of realities that cannot be fully expressed in any logical language.

Through the use of figures of speech, the poet communicates not only a state of mind but also calls to mind the image of some things that interest the reader. A figure of speech, then, cannot be taken literally.

Metaphor and Simile are both used as means of comparing things that are essentially alike. The only distinction between them is in a simile, the comparison is expressed by the use of some word or phrase, such as “like,” “as,” “than,” similar to, “resembles,” or “seems,” in a metaphor, the comparison is implied – that is, the figurative term is substituted for or identified with the literal term. Metaphors assert the identicality of dissimilar things. They transform people, places, objects and ideas into whatever the poet imagines them to be. Metaphor may either be implied or extended. It is implied when it does not explicitly identify; it is extended when all of the poem consist of a series of related metaphors or similies.

A figure of speech is a way of saying something other than the ordinary way. One does this to make assertions about an external reality, or to present some insights of realities that cannot be fully expressed in any logical language.

Through the use of figures of speech, the poet communicates not only a state of mind but also calls to mind the image of some things that interest the reader. A figure of speech, then, cannot be taken literally.

Metaphor and Simile are both used as means of comparing things that are essentially alike. The only distinction between them is that in a simile, the comparison is expressed by the use of some word or phrase, such as “like,” “as,” “than,” “similar to,” “resembles,” or “seems,” in a metaphor, the comparison is implied – that is, the figurative term is substituted for or identified with the literal term. Metaphors assert the identicality of dissimilar things. They transform people, places, objects and ideas into whatever the poet imagines them to be. Metaphors may either be implied or extended. It is implied when it does not explicitly identify; it is extended when all of the poem consist of a series of related metaphors or similes.

The basic characteristic of metaphor is comparison most of the poem bears this type of metaphor for this are the most common used to express things.

Two types of Metaphor:
Metonymy- in metonymy, something is named to replace something closely related to it.
For example:
- “city hall” is sometimes used to stand for the municipal authority.
- “feathers in my hair,” – for rich and famous to which they are related.
Synedoche - in synedoche, the whole is replaced by the part, or the part by the whole.
For example:
- “grave” in “Would I be farther from the grave?” of the poem Paradox by Angela Manalang- Gloria, replaces “death”.

Personification is the attribution of human characteristics to an animal, an object, or a concept. It is a subtype of the metaphor, an implied comparison in which the figurative term of the comparison is always a human being. Personification differs from simple metaphor in the degree to which the reader is asked to vizualize the literal term as taking on a human form/trait.

Apostrophe is closely related to personification and is characterized by the addressing of someone absent, dead, or nonhuman as if that person or thing were present and alive and could reply to what is being said.

Personification and apostrophe are both ways of giving life and immediacy to one’s language. But since neither requires great imaginative skill on the part of the poet, care must taken so that these – especially the apostrophe – do not degenerate into mere mannerism.

A Paradox is an apparent contradiction which may be a situation or a statement. In paradoxical statement, the contradiction usually comes from one of the words used figuratively. For example, parents are busy earning a living, but forget the very essence of life. It is paradoxical that parents are busy in order to live, and yet forget what life really is about.

Hyperbole, or overstatement, is simply exaggeration – but exaggeration based on truth. When you say, “Filipino women are the domestic helpers of the word,” you don’t mean all Filipinos and the entire world. You are adding emphasis to what it really means. If you say, “The President needs a high chair,” you are exaggerating his short stature. If you say,”… then they heard no more, but a deafening silence,” you are saying that the silence was unbearable. “Deafening silence” is also an oxymoron/s contradiction.

Truth can be emphasized not only by overstatement but also by understatement. It means saying less than what one means. For example, you enter a room and you find strangers inside and you say, “This is indeed an empty room.”

Verbal Irony is saying the opposite of what one means. Most often, this is confused with sarcasm and with satire. Sarcasm and satire both simply ridicule.

Sarcasm is simply a bitter or cutting speech, intended to hurt feelings.

Satire is a formal term, usually applied to written literature rather than to speech and ordinarily implies a high motive. It is ridicule(either bitter or gentle) of human folly or vice, with the purpose of bringing about reform or at least of keeping other people from falling into similar folly or vice.

Irony, may be used without either sarcastic or satirical intent; and sarcasm and satire may exist without irony. For example, a student raises his hand and complains he does not understand the lesson. The teacher replies in a disgusting voice that it is not a surprise to him. The teacher is sarcastic, but not ironic. He means exactly what he says and intends to be unkind and cruel. But, when the teacher comes to class and announces that he has some bad news for the class and proceeds to say that everybody got excellent grades in the subject, he is being ironic, but not sarcastic. Satire is both cruel and unkind. It gives hurt in the interest of somebody, society or an institution. Irony is neither cruel or kind: it is simply a device.

The term “irony” implies some sort of discrepancy or incongruity. In verbal irony, the discrepancy is between what is said and what is meant. Other forms of discrepancy may be between appearance and reality, or between expectation and fulfillment.

These forms come into two types. These are dramatic irony and situational irony. In dramatic irony, the discrepancy is not between what the speaker says and what the speaker means, but between what the speaker says and what the author means. The speaker’s words may be straightforward, byt the author, by putting these words in a particular speaker’s mouth, may be indication to the reader ideas or attitudes quite opposed to those the speaker is voicing. For example, in Sophocles play Oedipus the King, everyone -- other characters and readers alike – knows the truth long, before Oedipus knows it. In situational irony, the discrepancy exists between the actual circumstances and what would seem appropriate, or between what one anticipates and what actually comes to pass. For example, In “The Fift of The Magi”, the wife cut her long and beautiful hair which her husband liked most. She sold this to buy a gift for her husband; whereas, the husband sold his gold watch, his most prized possession just to give his wife a gift. In another situation, King Midas wished that what he touched would turn to gold> Ironically though, he could not eat anymore because everything that he touched became gold.

Dramatic irony and situational irony are powerful devices for poetry. Like symbols, they suggest meanings without stating them – to communicate a great deal more than what is said.

Understanding a Poem

To understand a poem better, ask important questions such as: “Who is the speaker?” and “What is the occasion?” The speaker who uses “I,” “my,” “mine” is not necessarily the poet.

When poets write their thoughts, they present a version of themselves. They present a person who, in many way, is like themselves, but who consciously or unconsciously, is shaped to fit the needs of the poem. Caution must be observed in identifying the poem with the biography of the poet. This does not, however, prohibit the association of events and ideas in the poem with those in the poet’s own life. Knowledge of the poet’s life may, in fact, help one understand a poem.

Another important question to ask would be, “What is the central purpose of the poem?” The purpose may be to tell a story, to reveal a human character, to impart a vivid impression of a scene, to express a mood or an emotion, or to convey some idea or attitude vividly.

It is only by relating the various details in the poem to the central purpose or theme that their function and meanings can be fully understood.

In “Change” the speaker is a woman, the occasion is having outgrown the favorite things she passionately loved to do and which preoccupied her childhood days – until she met the person with whom she fell in love. But she seems apprehesnsive that even her love for the person would change in favor of something or someone new. She believes that change is her very nature. What matters most at present thought, is her deep love for the person.

The central purpose is change which connotes freedom the very essence of life.

After identifying the central purpose of the poem, consider another question which asks, “By what means is the purpose achieved?” This can be partially answered by describing the poem’s dramatic framework, if it has any.

Paraphrasing a Poem

One starting point for understanding a poem is the paraphrasing of its content or part of its context. To paraphrase a poem is to restate a text in another form or other words so as to make its prose sense as plain as possible. The paraphrase may be longer or shorter than a poem, but it should contain all the ideas. Figurative language should be transformed into the literal language, metaphor into similes, inverted statements into normal prose order. It is not necessary to use the words in the original; the resulution paraphrase should be clearer and more direct. However, the paraphrase should retain the speaker’s use of the first, second, and third person, and the verbs tenses originally employed.

The central purpose or theme of “Vanity poem is approximately this: the wishing to have the physical features someone from a race other than her own because she does not appreciate her own beauty.

Reading and Understanding A Poem

To understand a poem, you need to understand the poem’s meaning and organization. As you read and reread the poem, study to following:
1. The Title. The title is almost always informative. The title “The Poverty of The Woman who turned Herself into Stone” indicates both subject and circumstance. The poem “Change” establishes the poem’s situation.
2. The Speaker or Persona. Poems are dramatic, having points of view just like prose fiction. First-person speakers talk from the “inside” because they are directly involved in the action as in the poem, “Open-End Quality”. Other speakers are “outside” observers, like the third –person limited point of view, (in which the author confineds or limits attention to a major character) as in “The Spouse.” And “The Widow.”
3. Meanings of all words (familiar or unfamiliar). The words in many poems are immediately clear, as with “The Widow,” but other poems may contain unfamiliar words that need looking up. You will need to consult dictionaries, encyclopedia and other sources until you gain a fairly good grasp of the poem’s content.
4. Setting and Situations. Some poems establish their setting and circumstances vividly. For example “Amira” tells us of the speaker outside of her country, leaving an infant behind. Not all poems are so clear, you should learn as much as you can about setting and situation in every poem you read.
5. Basic Forms and Development. Poems may be in a form of narrative, personal statements or speeches ro another person. They may be in sonnet form, or may contain stanzas, each of which is unified by a particular action or thought. Try to determine the form and to trace the way in which the poem unfolds, part by part.
6. Subject and Theme. The subject indicates the general or specific topic, while the theme refers to the idea or ideas that the poem explores. Lina Sagaral- Reyes announces her subject in her poem “The Poverty of the Woman who Turned Herself into Stone”. However, you must usually infer the theme. In this poem, it is about the sickening ugliness of poverty that eventually hardens a person and no longer sees the brighter side of life.