Theory of Literature

A Compilation Series

https://id.pinterest.com
Sarif Syamsu Rizal

English Literature Study Program Faculty of Humanities

Universitas Dian Nuswantoro
Semarang
Theory of Literature
A Compilation Series

https://id.pinterest.com
Sarif Syamsu Rizal

English Literature Study Program Faculty of Humanities

Universitas Dian Nuswantoro
Semarang

ii
 Lesson Plan
Semester :5
Type of the course : classes
Number of classes per week : 1 x 100 minutes
Course completion requirements : written examination

Course Description
The course is organized around specific theoretical paradigms in Literature. The subject
includes Introduction: What is Literary Theory?, Scientific Philosophic Discourse of Literature,
Scope of Literature, Nature of Literature, Genre of Literature, Elements of Literary Work,
Concept of Poetry, Concept of Prose, Complexity of Drama, Literary Movements, Critical
Approaches of Literature, and Trinities in Discovering Meaning on Literature.

Aims
The main aim of the course is to provide students of English study program with knowledge and
terminology of theoretical paradigms in literature in the seventh semester. The course offers
for all students an important theoretical background for research in literature.

In the course the students learn how different theories of literature have emerged as responses
to particular issues in literature, in other theories of literature, and outside literature. The
students learn to frame literary issues using concepts in literary theory.

Relation to other courses

Within the School's curriculum, Theory of Literature course is a relation of the course of English
Poetry, English Prose, Poetry Appreciation, Prose Appreciation, Reseach Method of Literature,
and Seminar on Literature during the year of study.

Requirements
Students are required to participate actively in class discussion and pass term tests. Credit
requirements for the classes, and the details of the material covered during the classes may
vary depending on the teacher. Teachers are obliged to provide all details of the examination
and grading procedures at the beginning of the course.

Semarang, 15 September 2018

The Compiler

iii
 Table of Contents

Lesson Plan....................................................................................................................... ii
List of Contents................................................................................................................. iii

Unit 1 Introduction: What is Literary Studies................................................................... 1

Unit 2 Scientific Philosophic Discourse of Literature........................................................ 3
Unit 3 Scope of Literature................................................................................................. 15
Unit 4 Nature of Literature............................................................................................... 17
Unit 5 Genre of Literature................................................................................................. 23
Unit 6 Elements of Literary Work..................................................................................... 26
Unit 7 Concept of Poetry.................................................................................................. 29
Unit 8 Concept of Prose.................................................................................................... 52
Unit 9 Complexity of Drama.............................................................................................. 55
Unit 10 Literary Movements............................................................................................. 62
Unit 11 Critical Approaches of Literature......................................................................... 64
Unit 12 Trinities in Discovering Menings of Literature..................................................... 75

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 Unit 1
Introduction

What is Literary Theory and do we need to study it?

By John Phillips

It is possible, even now in the 21st century, to complete a degree course in Literature
without doing any literary theory. You might do perfectly well—even emerge as a star in the
firmament of literary study—without ever having to engage with any of the by now canonical
areas of literary theory, like formalism, structuralism, post structuralism, psychoanalysis and
deconstruction. You could even get by, with no damage at all to your credentials or to your
understanding and appreciation of literature, without doing any Marxism or feminism. Literary
study remains strong and identifiable in its own right and is composed today, just as it was 50,
100, 150 years ago (but not much further back than that), of all kinds of activities like editorial
work, criticism, appreciation and commentary that cope quite well on their own grounds
without any interference from what many students would recognize (with a groan) as theory.
Literary Theory might, therefore, be considered as something over and above the normal
requirements of literary study. In the least sanguine sense of this over and above, we might
charge it with superfluity. It is quite unnecessary for us to study theories of literature in order
to study literature. In another, more difficult sense (and here we are now beginning to actually
do some theory), theory’s superfluity to the normal requirements for reading and studying
literature has proved over the years to be a tremendously productive resource for more
adventurous readers and thinkers. So much so that the field—no matter how independent of
theory it remains—has nonetheless been transformed in all kinds of ways by the insistence of a
certain dogged theorizing that just goes on whether we like it or not.
So it would not be strictly necessary to take a course in Literary Theory. Against this, of
course, many programs insist on a minimum requirement—a core course in literary theory,
approaches to literature, critical theory, advanced critical reading—you find them everywhere,
indicating more than anything else a sense of its importance for people who plan courses,
guardians of institutions of literature who feel that without theory there is something not quite
valid about a course. But (and here I’m going to get all theoretical again) taking a course in
Literary Theory is often a frustrating experience and, as such, it would not necessarily be very
theoretical. I mean if theory is read in certain ways then no theorizing on the part of the
student goes on. Many people come into Literary Theory believing that there may be tools to
pick up, methods to apply (more or less mechanically perhaps) that help to unlock the
mysteries of the literary texts. In other words, despite recent history and the prevalence of
courses introducing you to literary theory, there is no guarantee that Literary Theory will be
produced. Oh, you can be sure that literary study, criticism, appreciation etc. will go on
unimpeded but the peculiar experience of having taken a course in Literary Theory without it
having made much sense and certainly not much difference to the way you read literature
remains common.
This is because Literary Theory needs to be regarded as a separate subject,
independently of what goes on in the other areas of departments of literature, before it can be
expected to change anything. The theory (or production of theories) of literature can be
regarded as a specialized pursuit and those who choose to follow it often read it for its own
intrinsic interest, not simply subordinating it to already extant ways of doing literary

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appreciation, criticism and commentary. Only then does it begin to contribute to literary
studies.

(Taken from: https://courses.nus.edu.sg/course/elljwp/literarytheory.htm)

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 Unit 2
Sceintific Philosophic Discourse of Literature: Ontology, Axiology,
and Epistemology on Literary Studies

SCEINTIFIC PHILOSOPHIC DISCOURSE OF LITERATURE:

ONTOLOGY, AXIOLOGY, AND EPISTEMOLOGY ON LITERARY STUDIES

Sarif Syamsu Rizal

Lecturer, English Study Program, Faculty of Humanities,
Universitas Dian Nuswantoro – Indonesia.
E-mail: [email protected]
Accepted 2 November 2015

ABSTRACT

One important reason of studying literature was to teach us about the world and other people,
as well as to reflect history and to see the future. This paper was an alternative philosophical
thought of understanding literature entitled “Scientific Philosophic Discourse of Literature:
Ontology, Axiology, and Epistemology on Literary Studies”.Tthe objective was understanding of
circumstantial interpretative about essence of object, target of benefit, and methodologies of
literary studies systemically-systematically-comprehensively so that it could be useful as
enrichment insight to study literature. Unit of analysis of this paper focused on the three
aspects: ontological, axiological, and epistemological principality of literature as a product of
science. Methods of this paper consist of descriptive-qualitative design in explaining the
discourse, library research in collecting data, and shared-understanding by interpretative
paradigm in answering the problem statement is that what the ontological, axiological, and
epistemological principality of literary studies is. This paper examined the principalities of a
science saying that there are three aspects which are reciprocal relevancy in process of
scientific development. Those are ontological, axiological, and epistemological aspect in
understanding literature. The contribution of this paper as the significant finding of the study
and its implication was that the trilogy principalities to comprehend the literary studies
nowadays and as helpfully comprehensive frame studying to literary teachers, learners, and
researchers.

Keywords: ontology, axiology, epistemology, literature, literary studies

INTRODUCTION
One assumption is why anyone is not interested in literature because he does not know
or does not understand its ontological, axiological, and epistemological aspects. Literature is a
term used to describe a written or spoken material and anything from creative writing,
speaking, or and thinking to more technical or scientific works, but the term is most commonly
used to refer to works of creative imagination, including works of fiction; prose, poetry, and
drama.
More than two thousand years ago, the Roman poet, Horace claimed that literature is
dulce et utile. This expression means to sweet and useful. Since then, literature has been
traditionally understood, at least in Western cultures, as having the dual purpose of

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entertaining and educating to its audience. In line with it, literature’s function, as cited in
Wellek and Warren (1990: 47), is to entertain and to educate. It is assumed useful because of
soul experience that is unfolded in story manifestation and told to please because of the way of
unfolding. Edgar Allan Poe stated in Wellek and Warren (1990: 76) that the function of
literature is didactic heresy, functioning as amusement, and at the same time teaching
something. On that account, if a literary work shows the nature of strong pleasant and being
useful, the literary work can be considered the valuable one.
Literature represents a language or a people involving culture and tradition, moreover
literature is more important than just historical or cultural artefacts. It introduces readers,
devotes of literary works, to new worlds of experience. Literature is part of cultural heritage
which is freely available to everyone, and which can enrich our lives in all kinds of ways. Once
people have broken barriers that appreciating or studying literature seems daunting, but
automatically, they trance facing that literary works can be entertaining, beautiful, funny, or
tragic. They can convey profundity of thoughts, richness of emotion, and insight into characters.
Special effect of appreciating literature takes us beyond our limited experience of life to show
other people’s life at other times. Appreciating literature stirs us intellectually and emotionally,
as well as deepens our understanding of history, society, and individual lives.
Aristotle, as cited in Noor, states that communication system indicates an interaction
among people. Literature is to please and to be useful, to be catharsis, and to be
communication media. It entangles three components, such as writer as a consignor of
message, literary work as a medium to message, and audience as a receiver of message (2006:
63)
From the statements above, literature can be comprehended that literature, in social
praxis, can be as a work of art and as a work of science. As a science, it is called as literary
studies. To comprehend its definition, it has three aspects which are reciprocal relevancy in
process of scientific development. In understanding literary studies, those are ontology,
axiology, and epistemology of literary studies.

STUDY OF LITERATURE
In English, literature term is etymologically derived from Latin, literatura (littera means
letter or masterpiece). There are three important terms related to literature, those are
literature as an art (art of literature) and literature as science (science of literature). Literature
as an art (art of literature) is a creativity. It means that literature is a creation represents
aesthetic language such as play, fiction, and poetry. Literature is creative activity or group of art
works. Diyarkara as cited in Taum (1997: 23) expresses that the art of literature represents a
culture area of the oldest human being, which precedes other culture branches. Before
existence of science and technique, artistry has attended as expression media of human being
aesthetic experience dealing with nature as incarnation of beauty.
Literature as a science has scientific characteristics; those consist of object, theory, and
method. It means that literature can act as object and subject of research. Being usable as
peripheral of theory taken as research appliance, it consists of literary theory, history of
literature, and literary criticism. Literary theory, literary criticism, and literary history are
domains of literature science. Literary theory is principal study, category, and criteria that are
able to start point under study of literature area. Studying to concrete literary work refers to
literary criticism and history of literature. The three of them influences and interconnects one
another. It is impossible if you, as literary researcher, compile literary theory without literary

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criticism and literary history; or literary criticism without literary theory and literary history
(Wellek and Warren, 1990:39).
In philosophically comprehending literature as a science, there are three principalities
which anyone must comprehend; those are ontology, axiology, and epistemology. Ontological
principality represents essence of study object. (Setiardja, 2005: 5-7).
Axiological principality represents target of science benefit for the shake of human
beings, its meaning that the science has to be exploited as medium to increase the human life
level (Setiardja, 2005: 41-55).
Epistemological principality represents scientific methodology. The methodology is a set
of administration to science which is systemic and systematic. Systemic and systematic
represent method criterion of the science. Systemic means in unity there is relevancy of inter-
elements and systematic means in unity there is logical sequence of inter-steps (Setiardja,
2005: 55-64).

PRINCIPALITY OF ONTOLOGY, AXIOLOGY, AND EPISTEMOLOGY ON LITERARY STUDIES

The discussion delivers the principalities of the literature as a science saying that there
are three aspects which are reciprocal relevancy in process of scientific development. In
understanding literary studies, there is three principalities must be comprehended; those are
ontology, axiology, and epistemology of literary studies. Or, on the other hand, it gains
understanding of circumstantial interpretative about essence of study object, target of benefit,
and methodologies of literary studies systemically-systematically-comprehensively so that it
can be useful as enrichment insights of literary studies.

The Ontological Principality of Literary Studies

The ontological principality of literature means the essence of literary studies. Based on
this principality of science, the writer explains object of literary study. Setiardja (2005:4) states
that each science must have certain object. The essence of the study object consists of material
object and formal object. The material object indicates study material of its pertinent science
such as linguistics, semiotics, stylistics, narratology, ideology, sociology, psychology and
contemporary many more. Because of the pertinent science, the literary study is
interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary study. Besides material object, the science has formal
object. The formal object is facets of evaluating a pertinent science; meaning is the science has
to look for causes its material object. The science, of exact, social, and humanities always look
for how structure or formation building of its object forming science. The material object of
literary studies is literature relates to literary work such as universe, artist, and audience. It
means that things exist and possible things exist in the literature.
Ontologically, literature can be as ‘art’ and ‘science’. Literature as the art can be seen
from the aspect of its aesthetics, it means representing a product of creativity such as poetry,
prose, and play to enjoy. Literature as the science can be seen from the characteristic of
scientific aspects; objective, theoretical, and methodological. The scientific aspects can be
studied from three branches of literary studies; those are theory of literature, history of
literature, and literary criticism.

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 Art Aesthetic Subjective Literary Work:
Poetry
Prose
Play
Literature

Literary Studies:
Objective
Theoretic Literary theory
Science Scientific History of literature
Methodic
Literary criticism

Figure 1 Objects of Literature

Source: The writer

Literature, furthermore, represents one of artistic form using language upon its activity.
This activity is literary symptom. But, the use of language in the literary activity differs from the
use of language of other activity. This difference gives special impression to the activity. In
literary activity, language used in a particular way, language might possibly digress from rule of
grammar and have ambiguous meaning even though a man of letters (authors, poets, and
playwrights) pass his work in order to submit any messages to audiences.
Literary activity according to way of its delivering can be spoken (oral), written and or
audio-visual. From those symptoms, it can be seen forms such as literary work and any related
to its production process, its reproduction process, its writer (author, poet, playwright), its
reader (audience), and its context (the influencing pertinent environmental fact/ universe)
The spoken (oral) literature can be in the form of folklore, charm or chant, folksong, and
traditional theatre. The written major genres of literary work are poem (poetry), prose, and
drama (play). The audio-visual literature is in the form of film representing transformation of
the oral literature and or the written one into the audio-visual literature.

Spoken Literary Work:

Folklore
Folksong
Charm
Traditional theatre Audio-Visual
Literary Work Literary Work:
Film
Written Literary Work:
Poetry
Prose
Play

Figure 2 Forms of Literature

Source: The writer

Being seen from its production process of building literary work, it is formed upon two
elements; those are intrinsic element and extrinsic element. The intrinsic element is element
developing literary work structurally and this element can be detectable inside of the literary
work building structurally. Each genre contains intrinsic element which is some are the same
and some are different one another. The intrinsic elements of poem (poetry) are such as line,
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metre, stanza, rhyme, rhythm, persona (voice), theme, and imagery. The intrinsic elements of
prose are such as plot, character, characterization, setting, conflict, theme, message, and
narrative perspective (Staton, 2007: 22-52). The intrinsic elements in drama (play) are for
instance character, dialogue, and plot.
Evaluating this intrinsic element in theory of literature is conceived as understanding of
autonomous structuralism. The extrinsic element is element from outside of the literary work
influencing and colouring its contents. This element covers some aspects like religion,
economics, culture, politics, biography, law, sociology, and psychology (Noor, 2006: 37-65).
Evaluation the extrinsic element in theory of literature is conceived as understanding of
genetic structuralism and as understanding of dynamic structuralism.
Besides the two elements, literary work in its production process cannot get out of the
universe (environmental fact/ context), artist/ writer (authors, poets, playwrights), and
audience (readers). Therefore, the production process of literary work can be mapped in
specified orientation of literary studies like the following Figure.

Universe

Work

Artist Audience

Figure 3 Critical Orientation on Literary Studies

Source: The Mirror and the Lamp (Abrams, 1971: 6-7)

Simply in literary studies, visible symptom can be found from the object of the study
which is related to. On the other words, it can be studied based on the object orientation.
Literary studies can be conducted by seeing from the form focusing upon four orientations,
those are the study focusing on the reader (reader-oriented approaches). It can be studied from
pragmatics study, focusing on the writer (author-oriented approaches). It can be studied from
expressive study, focusing on the environment fact/ universe (context-oriented approaches). It
can be studied from mimetic study, and focusing on the literary work (text-oriented
approaches). It can be studied from the objective study (Klarer, 1999: 75-100).

reader-oreinted approaches pragmatics study

Orientation

Orientation author-oriented approches expressive study

Approaches of Orientation
Literary Studies
context-oriented approaches mimetic study
Orientation
text-oriented approaches objective study
Orientation
Figure 4 Orientations of Literary Studies
Source: The writer

From the four orientations, the study area can develop into broader coverage, such as
on sociology of literature and on psychology of literature.

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 The former can be studied from four studies; the first is expressive socio-literary study.
This study centres the analysis on social phenomenon of the writer. The concentration of
course does not discharge its relevancy with the writing work because studying social
phenomenon of writer reflected in his work. The second is pragmatic socio-literary study. This
study centres the analysis on social phenomenon of the reader related to literary reception.
The concentration does not discharge its relevancy with the reading work. The third is socio-
context of production-consumption literary study. This study centres the analysis on its
relevancy among literary work with social system. Production of literature is not such an
individual production, but social production. The production has long networking system. The
networking covers writer, mediator, publisher, distributor, sponsor, censor, and others. In that
existence of literature is very influenced by social system around. As well the consumption of is
not an individual consumption but social consumption. The consumption covers social institute
such as education, study group, group of critic and others. The forth is objective socio-literary
study. This study centres the analysis on intrinsically social problems narrated in literary work.
The problems come into structure and detail element of the work. The structure and element
of the work can be analyzed by sociological objective based on intrinsic social items structural
objectively (Harsono, 2000: 6-11)
The latter is on psychology of literature. This study is based on an assumption that
literary work always discusses event of human life with its various behaviour, and to recognize
human being exhaustively needing psychology. The domain of on psychology of literature
covers; the first is expressive psycho-literary study. This study centres the analysis on
psychological condition of writer and his creative process. In course of creative process, there
are direct or indirect relevancy between the psychological condition of writer and the process
of literary creation. Creative process relates to actions and inner experiences of the writer. The
second is pragmatic psycho-literary study that centres the analysis on psychological condition
of reader. Each literary work has relation psychologically to its reader. The relation can be
pragmatic, receptive, and therapeutic. Being pragmatic means how far the literary work can
influence psychological condition of its reader. Being receptive means how psychological
condition of reader happening in process of interpretation. Being therapeutic means function
of the literary work as catharsis medium of its reader. The function can clean psychological
emotion of its reader. The third is objective psycho-literary study. This study centres the
analysis on psychological problems in the work intrinsically.
In this case, on psychology of literature has characteristic of autonomous, studying
literature is rid of the writer, the reader and the universe. This study covers structure and
psychological items in the work as well the psychological meanings inside (Harsono, 2000:16-
23) The other literary symptom can be seen from sign and its significance in the work can be
studied from the study semiotics on literatures (Wardoyo, 2004: 1-26).
From the literary symptoms above, it can be figured the ontology of literary studies as
the following.

Pragmatics study Reader-oriented approaches of lit.

Expressive study Author-oriented approaches of lit.
Mimetic study Context-oriented approaches of lit.
Objective study Text-oriented approaches of lit.
Pragmatic socio-literary study On sociology of literature
Expressive socio-literary study On sociology of literature
Socio-context of production-consumption literary study On sociology of literature
Objective socio-literary study On sociology of literature
Pragmatic psycho-literary study On psychology of literature
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 Expressive psycho-literary study On psychology of literature
Objective psycho-literary study On psychology of literature
Semiotics study Sign and significance on literature

Literary Studies Approaches of Literary Studies

Figure 5 Approaches of Literary Studies

Source: The writer

The literary symptom basically is universal, because all of society has literary work. In
addition to, there are a number of differences, among the literary works; there are same
characteristics in general. Therefore, the literary studies) can take the objects from any
language literary work. But, of course, literary researcher at foreign study program must
present and justify report process and his result of study in the foreign language as according to
his study program. Even though, appreciation given will be more as the foreign literary
researcher studies the literary work written in foreign, by foreign nation, and in background of
foreign socio-culture.

The Axiological Principality of Literary Studies

At this discussion, the writer refers to Axiological principality represents target of
science benefit for the shake of human beings, its meaning that the science has to be exploited
as medium to increase the human life level (Setiardja, 2005: 41-55) and Farkhan (2007: 1-139)
explains an understanding of circumstantial interpretative about the benefit and way of good
presentation of the literary studies as the following.
The axiological principality of literary studies means the target of literary studies
benefits. Target of literary studies benefit is for the shake of human being. It means that literary
studies must be exploited as medium to increase the human life level. To axiological
principality, activity in the study can aim to produce a verified knowledge, to obtain generate
deep-understanding, and to offer a counter interpretation.
Target of literary studies benefit is for the shake of human being. It means that literary
studies must be exploited as medium to increase the human life level. To axiological
principality, activity in the study can aim to produce a verified knowledge, to obtain generate
deep-understanding, and to offer a counter interpretation). Based on the target of its benefit,
the literary studies can be figured as the followings.

To produce a verified knowledge

To generate deep-understanding
To offer a counter interpretation

Benefit of Literary Studies

Figure 6 Literary Studies Benefit

Source: The writer

First, literary studies aim(s) to produce four types of knowledge; those are exploratory
knowledge, descriptive knowledge, explanatory knowledge, and predictive knowledge. Literary
studies yields knowledge which can be formulated with sentence and selected pursuant to its
types of knowledge. Thus, the study aiming to produce the knowledge such as to produce an
exploratory knowledge on..., to produce a descriptive knowledge on..., to produce an
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explanatory knowledge on...), and to produce a predictive knowledge on... about the object of
study.

Exploratory knowledge
Descriptive knowledge
Explanatory knowledge
Predictive knowledge

Knowledge of Literary Studies

Figure 7 Knowledges of Literary Studies

Source: The writer

Second, literary studies aims to produce circumstantial knowledge can be selected from
five types of understanding: those are understanding on spoken or written text (textual
understanding), understanding on speaker or writer (intentional understanding), understanding
audience or reader (receptive or experiential understanding), understanding on researcher
(interpretative understanding), and understanding among speaker or writer, audience or
reader, and researcher ( shared-understanding).
The understanding on spoken or written text is an understanding which is solely based
on what is said or what is written. This understanding is discharged at all from its speaker or
writer. The understanding on speaker or writer is an understanding as meant by he speaker or
the writer. The spoken or written is assumed inseparable its speaker or its writer. The
understanding on audience or reader is an understanding experienced by audience or reader.
Real meaning of meaning (significance) is contained in message received or got by that
audience or that reader. The understanding on researcher is an understanding concluded by
interpreter conducted systematically-comprehensively. The share-understanding is crisscross of
the understanding according to the spoken or written text, according to the speaker or writer,
according to the audience or reader, and the interpretation given by the researcher.
Based on the consideration above, literary studies produce(s) knowledge which can be
formulated with sentence and selected on its types of understanding. Thus, the study aims to
produce; the textual understanding( to generate a textual understanding on...), the intentional
understanding (to generate an intentional understanding on...), receptive or experimental
understanding (to generate an experiential understanding on...), the interpretative
understanding (to generate an interpretative understanding on...), and share understanding (to
generate a shared-understanding on...) about the object of study.

textual understanding
intentional understanding
receptive or experiential understanding
interpretative understanding
shared-understanding

Understandings of Literary Studies

Figure 8 Understandings of Literary Studies

Source: The writer
The Epistemological Principality of Literary Studies
The epistemological principality of literary studies means the methodology of literary
studies. Based on this principality of science, the writer explains that epistemological
10
principality represents scientific methodology. The methodology is a set of administration to
science which is systemic and systematic. Systemic and systematic represent method criterion
of the science. Systemic means in unity there is relevancy of inter-elements and systematic
means in unity there is logical sequence of inter-steps (Setiardja, 2005:4)

STEPS AND PARADIGMS IN LITERARY STUDIES

Starting from how study of scientific conducted, the writer, based on the
epistemological principality, shares science methodology of literary studies. The scientific
methodology is a set of administration to produce scientific knowledge systemically and
systematically. Systemically means there is relevancy of inter-elements, while systematically
means there is logical sequence of inter-steps.
There are steps which must be done in conducting a study. Before taking choice of
approach, method, techniques and or ways and instruments as well, literary researcher
beforehand specifies point of view used to object and benefit target of study. This point of view
refers to paradigm of inquiry. On the other words, the paradigm is fundamental viewpoint
regarding to subject matter of, target of, and nature of analyzed object. In a paradigm is
consisted of a number of approaches. In an approach is consisted of a number of methods. In a
method is consisted of a number of techniques. Hereinafter in a technique, there are some
ways and instruments.

Step I Paradigm of Inquiry

Step II Approach
Step III Method
Step IV Technique
Step V Way and Instrument

Figure 9 Steps on Conducting Literary Studies

The methodology of literary studies recognizes three major paradigms; those are
positivistic paradigm, interpretative paradigm, and reflexive paradigm. In this case, positivistic
paradigm is the same as quantitative research design, interpretive paradigm is the same as
qualitative research design, and reflexive paradigm is the same as critical research design.
Based on the methodologies above, the literary research can be selected from the existing
paradigms.

positivistic paradigm/ quantitative research design

interpretative paradigm/ qualitative research design
reflexive paradigm / critical research design

Figure 10 Paradigms in Literary Studies

The followings are distinction and brief clarification of the three types of the paradigm.
The first is target of benefit. According to the positivistic paradigm, every study has to find a law
enabling human being forecast and control reality. The interpretive paradigm has to
understand and interpret meaning of reality. The reflexive paradigm has to empower and
liberate human being from a shackle of spurious awareness or understanding.
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 The second is basic nature of reality. According to positivistic paradigm, reality is stable
and patterned, so that the reality can be found or formulated. Interpretative paradigm assumes
that reality is melting and streaming, so that the reality represents result of agreement and
interaction of human being. Whereas, according to reflexive paradigm, reality is full of
oppositions and influenced by under covered structure constituting it.
The third is nature of human being base. According to positivistic paradigm, nature of
human being base is rational and personal interest, and also influenced by outside strength.
Interpretative paradigm assumes that human being is capable to form and give meaning to
their world. While reflexive paradigm assumes that human being is creative and adaptive, but
tending oppressed by spurious awareness, so that they are less capable to present their
potency.
The fourth is common sense role. According to positivistic paradigm, common sense
differs from knowledge of science. Interpretative paradigm assumes that common sense
represents a set of theory used to benefit for certain people. While reflexive paradigm assumes
that common sense represents spurious beliefs covering up substantive reality.
The fifth is theory. According to positivistic paradigm, theory represents deductively
logical system, and depict interrelated among a number of definition, axiom, and law.
Interpretative paradigm interprets theory as a set of explanation of how meaning
interpretation produced and maintained.
Any paradigm selected by literary researcher, literary research must be conducted
systematically, relied on data, based on theory, presented explicitly, encouraged by reflective
action, and covered by open-ended.
In conducting literary studies which is pursuant to positivistic paradigm, steps of the
study as the followings. 1) determining problem statement, covering choosing up eligibility
problem and 2) making up framework in proffering hypothesis, including observation of theory
and result report of previous study 3) formulating hypothesis, as temporary answer to
problems 4) electing or developing study design 5) developing instruments and data collecting
device 6) collecting data 7) processing data to test hypothesis 8) interpreting result of study 9)
concluding based on data processing result, 10) integrating result of study into previous
knowledge structure, and also suggesting to next study.
If the study does not produce explanatory knowledge, but knowledge exploratory,
descriptive and predictive, hence the steps related to proffering and examining hypothesis are
not needed, because the study which does not test hypothesis, theory study and analysis of
previous study result are only needed to clarify and formulate variable or concept tested, and
also give picture about how far the study in the topic had been studied by other researcher.
Any study of literature, study activity of positivistic paradigm has to comply with the
following criteria, those are 1) validity, it proves that what being collected is true (factual) as
according to what really will be collected; 2) reliability, it proves that whenever and by whoever
data collected, will give the same more or less result; 3) objectivity, it proves that there no
personal influence of researcher to study result; and 4) generality, it proves that inference or
conclusion of the study can be generally accepted.
In conducting literary studies which is pursuant to the interpretative paradigm, the
study activities strike 1) determining study focus including choosing up to eligible and meaning
problem, 2) developing theoretical sensitivity with relevant to book materials observation and
result of previous study, 3) determining materials study, covering choosing where and who
from the data obtained, 4) developing protocol of data acquirement and processing, including
determining apparatus, steps, and technique in data acquirement and processing used, 5)
12
executing the acquirement, consisted of field data collection or studied text reading, 6)
processing the data acquirement, covering coding, categorizing, comparing , and discussing, 7)
negotiating the result of study with study subject, and 8) formulating conclusion, covering
interpreting and integrating findings into previous knowledge building, and suggestion to the
next study.
Because nature of the study materials and the target reached, the framework steps can
be altered as according to field dynamics. Study focus is for the example; it is possible repeating
sharpening and formulating after conducting field investigating. It can be done as long as the
data availability to increase the meaning of study. Thus, the interpretative paradigm must
requires the following criteria 1) credibility, proving that the data acquirement and conclusion
are believable, 2) dependability, proving that findings and conclusion relies on the raw data, 3)
conformability, proving that the findings and conclusion can be traced on the data
acquirement, and transferability, proving that the findings and conclusion can be gone into the
same effect to other cases having equal markings.
In conducting literary studies which is pursuant to the reflexive paradigm, the study
activities strike 1) determining topic of study, including choosing and formulating valuable
problem to arose human being awareness, 2) stipulating philosophy or ideological perspective,
covering observing relevant idea and formulating explicitly specific or basic idea used as basis
for proffering critics, 3) electing cases or materials, by determining where and who from the
data obtained 4) developing strategy of data acquirement and data processing, consisted of
determining data apparatus, steps, and techniques used, 5) executing the acquirement,
consisted of field data collection or studied text reading, 6) processing the data acquirement,
covering coding, categorizing, contrasting , and discussing, 7) formulating conclusion,
conducted according to reflexive thinking, and 8) proffering recommend either to advance
study or to next empowerment agenda.
Like two types of previous study, the study of reflexive paradigm claims to the following
requirements such as credibility, dependency, conformability, and transferability. Besides,
because of the especial aspiration of the reflexive paradigm is to awaken awareness of change,
therefore the counter interpretation must present eligible criteria, covering 1) relevance
proving that the selected topic and or ideological perspective is relevant to human challenge or
problem, 2) coherence proving that the entire building of offered interpretation does not
interfere each other, 3) criticalness proving that the observation succeed to unload an
discourse till to the root, and 4) reasonableness) proving that reflexive thinking has logical
thinking base.

CONCLUSION
To understanding of circumstantial interpretative about essence of object, target of
benefit, and methodologies of literature systemically-systematically-comprehensively can be
useful as enrichment insight to study literature. To comprehend its definition, it has three
aspects which are reciprocal relevancy in process of scientific development. In understanding
literary studies, those are ontology, axiology, and epistemology of literary studies.
In ontological principality, literature can be as ‘art’ and ‘science’. Literature as the art
can be seen from the aspect of its aesthetics, it means representing a product of creativity such
as poetry, prose, and play to enjoy. Literature as the science can be seen from the characteristic
of scientific aspects; objective, theoretical, and methodological. The scientific aspects can be
studied from three branches of literary studies; those are theory of literature, history of
literature, and literary criticism.
13
 To axiological principality, activity in the study can aim to produce a verified knowledge,
to obtain generate deep-understanding, and to offer a counter interpretation such as benefit,
knowledge, and understandings of literary studies.
The epistemological principality represents scientific methodology. The methodology is
a set of administration to science which is systemic and systematic. Systemic and systematic
represent method criterion of the science. Systemic means in unity there is relevancy of inter-
elements and systematic means in unity there is logical sequence of inter-steps and paradigms
in literary studies.

REFERENCES
Abrams, M.H. (1971). The mirror and the lamp: romantic theory and the critical tradition.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Farkhan, Muhammad (2007). Proposal penelitian bahasa dan sastra. Jakarta: CV. Fasco Jaya.
Harsono, Siswo (2000). Sosiologi dan psikologi sastra. Semarang: Deaparamartha.
Klarer, Mario (1999). An introduction to literary studies. London: Rutledge.
Noor, Redyanto (2006). Pengantar pengkjian sastra. Semarang: Fasindo.
Setiardja, A Gunawan (2005). “Telaah filsafat atas manusia yang menekuni ilmu pengetahuan”
in manusia dan ilmu. Semarang: Diponegoro University.
Staton, Robert (1965). An introduction to fiction. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Taum, Yoseph Yapi (1997). “Ekspresivisme, strukturalisme, pascastrukturalisme,
sosiologi, resepsi” in pengantar teori sastra. Bogor: Mardiyuana.
Wardoyo, Subur Laksmono (2004). Teori dan praktik semiotika sastra. Semarang:
Diponegoro University.
Wellek, Rene Austin Warren (1977). Theory of literature. New York: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, cop.

14
 Unit 3
Scope of Literary Studies

RUANG LINGKUP ILMU SASTRA

Ilmu sastra sudah merupakan ilmu yang cukup tua usianya. Ilmu ini sudah berawal pada
abad ke-3 SM, yaitu pada saat Aristoteles (384-322 SM) menulis bukunya yang berjudul Poetica
yang memuat tentang teori drama tragedi. Istilah poetica sebagai teori ilmu sastra, lambat
laun digunakan dengan beberapa istilah lain oleh para teoretikus sastra seperti The Study of
Literatur, oleh W.H. Hudson, Theory of Literatur Rene Wellek dan Austin Warren, Literary
Scholarship Andre Lafavere, serta Literary Knowledge (ilmu sastra) oleh A. Teeuw.
Ilmu sastra meliputi ilmu teori sastra, kritik sastra, dan sejarah sastra. Ketiga disiplin
ilmu tersebut saling terkait dalam pengkajian karya sastra. Dalam perkembangan ilmu sastra,
pernah timbul teori yang memisahkan antara ketiga disiplin ilmu tersebut. Khususnya bagi
sejarah sastra dikatakan bahwa pengkajian sejarah sastra bersifat objektif sedangkan kritik
sastra bersifat subjektif. Di samping itu, pengkajian sejarah sastra menggunakan pendekatan
kesewaktuan, sejarah sastra hanya dapat didekati dengan penilaian atau kriteria yang pada
zaman itu. Bahkan dikatakan tidak terdapat kesinambungan karya sastra suatu periode dengan
periode berikutnya karena dia mewakili masa tertentu. Walaupun teori ini mendapat kritikan
yang cukup kuat dari teoretikus sejarah sastra, namun pendekatan ini sempat berkembang dari
Jerman ke Inggris dan Amerika. Namun demikian, dalam prakteknya, pada waktu seseorang
melakukan pengkajian karya sastra, antara ketiga disiplin ilmu tersebut saling terkait.

Pengertian Teori Sastra, Kritik Sastra, Dan Sejarah Sastra

Teori sastra ialah cabang ilmu sastra yang mempelajari tentang prinsip-prinsip, hukum,
kategori, kriteria karya sastra yang membedakannya dengan yang bukan sastra. Secara umum
yang dimaksud dengan teori adalah suatu sistem ilmiah atau pengetahuan sistematik yang
menerapkan pola pengaturan hubungan antara gejala-gejala yang diamati. Teori berisi konsep/
uraian tentang hukum-hukum umum suatu objek ilmu pengetahuan dari suatu titik pandang
tertentu.
Suatu teori dapat dideduksi secara logis dan dicek kebenarannya (diverifikasi) atau
dibantah kesahihannya pada objek atau gejala-gejala yang diamati tersebut.
Kritik sastra juga bagian dari ilmu sastra. Istilah lain yang digunakan para pengkaji
sastra ialah telaah sastra, kajian sastra, analisis sastra, dan penelitian sastra.
Untuk membuat suatu kritik yang baik, diperlukan kemampuan mengapresiasi sastra,
pengalaman yang banyak dalam menelaah, menganalisis, mengulas karya sastra, penguasaan
dan pengalaman yang cukup dalam kehidupan yang bersifat nonliterer, serta tentunya
penguasaan tentang teori sastra.
Sejarah sastra bagian dari ilmu sastra yang mempelajari perkembangan sastra dari
waktu ke waktu. Di dalamnya dipelajari ciri-ciri karya sastra pada masa tertentu, para
sastrawan yang mengisi arena sastra, puncak-puncak karya sastra yang menghiasi dunia
sastra, serta peristiwa-peristiwa yang terjadi di seputar masalah sastra. Sebagai suatu kegiatan
keilmuan sastra, seorang sejarawan sastra harus mendokumentasikan karya sastra
berdasarkan ciri, klasifikasi, gaya, gejala-gejala yang ada, pengaruh yang melatarbelakanginya,
karakteristik isi dan tematik.

15
Hubungan Teori Sastra dengan Kritik Sastra dan Sejarah Sastra
Pada hakikatnya, teori sastra membahas secara rinci aspek-aspek yang terdapat di
dalam karya sastra baik konvensi bahasa yang meliputi makna, gaya,struktur, pilihan kata,
maupun konvensi sastra yang meliputi tema, tokoh, penokohan, alur, latar, dan lainnya yang
membangun keutuhan sebuah karya sastra. Di sisi lain, kritik sastra merupakan ilmu sastra
yang mengkaji, menelaah, mengulas, memberi pertimbangan, serta memberikan penilaian
tentang keunggulan dan kelemahan atau kekurangan karya sastra. Sasaran kerja kritikus sastra
adalah penulis karya sastra dan sekaligus pembaca karya sastra. Untuk memberikan
pertimbangan atas karya sastra kritikus sastra bekerja sesuai dengan konvensi bahasa dan
konvensi sastra yang melingkupi karya sastra.
Demikian juga terjadi hubungan antara teori sastra dengan sejarah sastra. Sejarah
sastra adalah bagian dari ilmu sastra yang mempelajari perkembangan sastra dari waktu ke
waktu, periode ke periode sebagai bagian dari pemahaman terhadap budaya bangsa.
Perkembangan sejarah sastra suatu bangsa, suatu daerah, suatu kebudayaan, diperoleh
dari penelitian karya sastra yang dihasilkan para peneliti sastra yang menunjukkan terjadinya
perbedaan-perbedaan atau persamaan-persamaan karya sastra pada periode-periode tertentu.
Secara keseluruhan dalam pengkajian karya sastra, antara teori sastra, sejarah sastra
dan kritik sastra terjalin keterkaitan.

Daftar Pustaka
Arya, Putu. (1983). Apresiasi Puisi dan Prosa. Ende Flores: Nusa Indah.
Effendi. S. (1982). Bimbingan Apresiasi Puisi. Jakarta: Tangga Mustika Alam.
Fananie, Zainuddin. (1982). Telaah Sastra. Surakarta: Muhamadiyah University Press.
Luxemburg, et.al. (1982). Pengantar Ilmu Sastra. Terjemahan Dick Hartoko. Jakarta: Gramedia.
Mido, Frans. (1982). Cerita Rekaan dan Seluk Beluknya. Ende, Flores: Nusa Indah 1994.
Semi Atar M. (1992). Anatomi Sastra. Bandung: Rosda Karya.
Sudjiman, Panuti. (1992). Memahami Cerita Rekaan. Bandung: Remaja Rosda Karya.
Suyitno. Sastra. (1986). Tata Nilai dan Eksegesis. Yogyakarta: Hanindita.
Tarigan Guntur H. (1986). Prinsip-prinsip Dasar Sastra. Bandung: Angkasa.
Tjahjono Libertus, T. (1986). Sastra Indonesia: Pengantar Teori dan Apresiasi. Ende, Flores: Nusa
Indah.
Waluyo, Herman. (1986). Pengkajian Prosa Fiksi. Surakarta: UNS.
Wellek & Warren A. (1986). Teori Kesusastraan (Diindonesiakan Melami Budianta).

(Diambil dari: http://karya-anak-diksatrasia.blogspot.co.id/2011/11/ruang-lingkup-ilmu-

sastra.html)

16
 Unit 4
Nature of Literature

The Nature of Literature

By Michelle Scalise Sugiyama
A review of Madame Bovary’s Ovaries
by David and Nanelle Barash; Delacorte Press, 2005

Fifteen years ago, I wrote a dissertation prospectus in which I dared to suggest that
there was such a thing as human nature, that this human nature was the equivalent of evolved
human psychology, that literary characters were representations of this evolved psychology,
and that literary analysis should therefore be founded on an understanding of evolutionary
psychology. These ideas were seen by the literary establishment as being racist, sexist, and—
worst of all—reductionistic. It took me over a year to find three people in the UC Santa Barbara
English Department who were willing to serve on my dissertation committee.
Unbeknownst to me at the time, a handful of other literary renegades had reached the
same conclusion regarding literature, psychology, and human evolution: Joe Carroll in Missouri,
Bob Storey in Pennsylvania, Nancy Easterlin in New Orleans, Brett Cooke in Texas, Judith
Saunders in New York, John Constable in Japan, and Dennis Dutton in New Zealand. Farther
along in their careers than I was, these people had jobs, but none of them had been hired as an
evolutionary literary scholar. And despite the reverence for theory that oozes from the halls of
literary study, there are still no positions in English departments for evolutionary literary
theorists.
It is against this backdrop that David and Nanelle Barash’s Madame Bovary’s Ovaries can
best be appreciated. Here is a book that doesn’t say much that the abovementioned bunch
hasn’t already said, and doesn’t really advance the field of evolutionary literary study. And yet
it is a brilliant effort, for what it does do is attempt to bypass the intellectual arteriosclerosis
afflicting mainstream literary scholarship and infuse evolutionary literary theory directly into
the body public. Thus far it’s been easy for said mainstream to ignore half a dozen scholars
publishing in journals with which their discipline is not conversant (e.g., Human Nature,
Evolution and Human Behavior). But a popular book about evolutionary literary theory might
jolt the literary establishment out of its anti-science complacency, especially if undergrads start
asking, “Yo, Professor, what did you think of that book about Madame Bovary’s ovaries?”
Thus, even though the authors claim that their “concern is not with the official, scholarly
establishment of theorists and critics” (249), their book might be of use to literary scholars
genuinely interested in opening the doors of perception. A warning, however, to those long
immersed in hegemonic literary discourse: do not be put off by the very accessible—even
colloquial—language of Madame Bovary’s Ovaries. This reaction against plain, Anglo-Saxon
English is now known to be caused by repeated exposure to the writings of European post-
modernists. This result of this contagion is a fallacy of epidemic proportions, whereby
polysyllabic diction, serpentine sentences, and nebulous logic are equated with complexity of
thought. Happily, the remedy for this affliction is close at hand: simply pause to reflect that
string theory—far more complex than Deconstruction or French Feminism—can be explained in
terms that a ten-year-old can understand. It helps to remember that, by definition, analysis
involves taking complex ideas or phenomena and breaking them down into simpler
parts. Barash and Barash do an excellent job of simplifying the fundamentals of evolutionary
psychology.
17
 Their book is modest in scope: its aim is to show how human nature is reflected in the
stories humans read and write. The authors parse human nature into various adaptive
problems (e.g., mate selection, adultery, parent-offspring conflict, kin selection), which form
the basis for the chapter divisions. Each chapter adroitly fuses biology (a description of the
featured adaptive problem and associated cognitive adaptations) with literary analysis (a
discussion of literary works whose main conflict centers on the featured adaptive problem). In
Chapter 5, for example, female infidelity is discussed in relation to a variety of texts, including
Le Mort d’Arthur, The Scarlet Letter, Madame Bovary, The Golden Bowl, Anna Karenina, The
Awakening, and Ulysses. The book thus serves to acquaint the reader not only with the
premises of evolutionary literary analysis, but with some rudiments of evolutionary psychology
as well.
In so doing, Madame Bovary’s Ovaries offers English professors suffering from
occupational ennui the opportunity to get in touch with their inner scholar: the self who has
heard the term Darwinian literary criticism or evolutionary psychology, and despite the post-
modern pooh-poohing of senior colleagues, secretly longs to know what these things mean.
(Where did you see that article? The New York Times Review of Books? Nature? Science? If
you guessed all three, you’d be right.) The only danger is that the book might leave that self
wanting more.
Which brings me to my chief concern with Barash and Barash’s study. What happens to
the reader who, upon finishing the book, wants a deeper understanding of the foundations of
evolutionary literary theory? How will that person know to read Carroll’s Evolution and Literary
Theory (1995)? And what about the person seeking a biology-based view of narrative
representation? How will that person find Storey’s Mimesis and the Human Animal (1996)?
And what about the person who wants to know why humans tell stories in the first place? I’ve
written a thing or two on that subject, as have Pinker (1997), Miller (2000), and Tooby and
Cosmides (2001), but you’d never know it from reading Barash and Barash’s book. It is no
crime that the authors do not traverse these avenues of inquiry: it is not what they set out to
accomplish. But they could have paused briefly to give the reader directions.
At the very least they could have appended a list of further reading. Instead, they give
the reader the impression that their work is unprecedented: “We believe that the current
offering is new” (13) is the claim with which they conclude the introductory chapter. They
qualify this statement--in a footnote!—as follows:
Well, not entirely new. As already mentioned some scholars—such as Brian Boyd,
Joseph Carroll, Ellen Dissanayake, Nancy Easterlin, Jonathan Gottschall, and Michelle
Sugiyama—have begun exploring the potential of “Darwinian literary criticism,” but thus far
their work has been directed toward a technical audience, and they certainly represent a
minority, even among scholars. (13)
“As already mentioned” refers to a single line, in which they observe that “there is a
nascent movement among a tiny minority of humanities professors to take Darwin seriously at
last” (11). Say what? The earliest efforts to examine the relationship between evolutionary
theory and literary study began over fifteen years ago, and the field is neither nascent nor in
the exploration stage. Moreover, the fact that this group of scholars constitute a minority and
that their work has been directed toward a technical audience has no bearing on whether or
not Barash and Barash’s work is new. As noted above, the majority of it is not. The Cinderella
motif was first discussed in relation to step-parenthood by Daly and Wilson in 1988 and again in
1998. The topics of female adultery, mate choice, and mating strategies have been addressed
by several evolutionary literary scholars (Nesse 1995; Scalise Sugiyama 1996a, 1997; Whissell
18
1996), while male long- and short-term mating strategies have been addressed by Jobling
(2002) and Kruger et al. (2003). Fox (1995) and Gottschall (2001) have written about male
intrasexual competition in the epics, and Cooke (1999) has written about cuckoldry and male
sexual jealousy in Pushkin’s work. These are but a few examples that come to mind as I type,
but there is much, much more. Adding insult to injury, Barash and Barash drop names of
evolutionary biologists and psychologists like hot potatoes in their discussions of evolutionary
theory. It is professionally irresponsible and discourteous not to do the same for evolutionary
literary scholars. What would Miss Manners say?
In presenting their work as new, Barash and Barash give the impression that
evolutionary literary study consists entirely of the human-nature approach they have chosen to
take. Certainly, evolutionary literary study began with—and remains rooted in—the twin
premises that (1) story characters are representations of the evolved human psyche, and (2)
setting and action evoke real-world adaptive problems and constraints. But coming to this
realization—as my Darwinian compadres and I did in the late 80s and early 90s—begs the
question, Where do we go from here? The most obvious avenue of inquiry—for the
adaptationist, anyway—is the question of narrative function, which has been examined by both
evolutionary psychologists and literary scholars (e.g., Scalise Sugiyama 1996b, 2001a, 2005,
2006; Pinker 1997; Miller 2000; Tooby & Cosmides 2001; Carroll 2004; Boyd 2005). A second
avenue explores the possibility of using literature as a database for testing hypotheses
regarding evolved psychological mechanisms (e.g., Gottschall 2003; Stiller et al. 2003). Yet
another quantitative approach uses statistical analysis to elucidate cross-cultural patterns in
narrative themes and character types, against which hypotheses implicit in literary theory can
be tested (Gottschall 2005). And a fourth avenue has led to the development of an interpretive
paradigm based on the motivational structure of our evolved psychology (Carroll 2005).
So the book’s foundations aren’t new, but they are solid—as far as they go. It is indeed
the case that understanding our evolved psychology and the problems it is designed to solve
better enables us to understand human nature, which in turn better enables us to understand
the motives and actions of story characters. It is also the case that a biologically informed
approach to literature helps to dispel fuzzy logic passing itself off as theory, such as the notion
that little boys want to kill their fathers and have sex with their mothers (Scalise Sugiyama
2001b). But evolutionary literary interpretation consists of more than finding expressions of
adaptive problems or evolved psychological mechanisms in literature. As Easterlin points out,
“if we assume that such unconscious mechanisms . . . provide a universal key to the
interpretation of specific works, evolutionary literary criticism will become nothing more than a
latter-day Freudianism, performing its ritual unveilings of psychic secrets in hunter-gatherer
dress” (2001:256). Stories do not simply reflect adaptive problems and the cognitive
mechanisms that have evolved to solve them. Complex adaptations are facultative: they are
sensitive to environmental variation, capable of generating different responses to different
environmental inputs. Stories enact the facultative nature of our evolved psychology. A given
story takes a set of people, each with a different phenotype (i.e., different personality traits, life
experiences, fitness attributes and goals), places them in a particular set of historical, cultural,
and geographical conditions, then plays out one possible version of the interaction of these
variables over a certain length of time (see Pinker 1997; Scalise Sugiyama 2003). This simulation
is produced and mediated by the mind of yet another phenotype—the author—whose
particular traits, experiences, attributes, and fitness goals add another filter to the lens through
which the reader interprets the actions, beliefs and desires of the story characters (see
especially Carroll 2001; Easterlin 2001).
19
 Barash and Barash’s discussion of Huckleberry Finn in relation to parent-offspring
conflict illustrates the interpretive pitfalls of thinking too generally about adaptive problems
and psychological adaptations. Their exegesis is problematic from the get-go, for Huck’s
mother is dead and his father is not a big influence in his life. The authors circumvent this
difficulty by arguing that Huck has many substitute parents—Jim, the Widow Douglas, Judge
Thatcher, Miss Watson, Aunt Polly, and so on. However, these parent figures are not genetic
relatives, and parental investment theory is grounded in genetic relatedness: parent-offspring
conflict arises because a child is 100% related to itself but only 50% related to its
siblings. Therefore, from the child’s perspective, she should get twice as much parental
investment as her sibling. A parent, in contrast, is equally related to all offspring, and should
therefore invest in them equally. Further complicating matters, parents must divide their
investment between existing offspring and future reproductive effort, and therein lies the
conflict between parent and offspring. This is not the type of conflict Huck experiences with
the “parent” figures in his life—he would be perfectly happy if these figures did not invest in
him at all. Huck’s crisis is rooted in the difficulties of group living: the adults in Huck’s world
want him to play by a certain set of rules, and he must choose whether to cooperate or
defect. Characterizing Huck’s resistance as parent-offspring conflict misses the particular
environmental conditions (antebellum America) to which a particular phenotype (Huck’s) is
responding: a society that tacitly prescribes cruelty, violence and injustice (e.g., slavery,
chicanery, feuding), but proscribes minor vices such as pipe-smoking, cursing, and playing
hooky.
Don’t get me wrong. If you have no idea what biology and evolution could possibly have
to do with the study of literature, Barash and Barash’s book is worth reading. It presents a
straightforward introduction to both a scientific and a literary revolution, and how often do you
get that in 250 pages of reader-friendly prose? But understand that, in tailoring their message
for a “non-technical” audience, the authors have sacrificed some precision. Consider, for
example, the authors’ claim that, “The ancient Romans evidently understood evolutionary
genetics as well as the Godfather, since additional manifestations of kin selection abound
throughout The Aeneid” (147). The authors are attempting levity here, but truth always trumps
style, and their claim is false: the relationship between genes, heredity, and evolution was not
understood until the significance of Mendel’s experiments was realized in the first half of the
20th century. The fact that ancient literature features characters who behave nepotistically is
not evidence that the ancients understood evolutionary genetics; it is merely evidence that
they had observed or could imagine human beings behaving nepotistically—evidence, in other
words, that they understood human nature. The authors’ phrasing here presents a false picture
of the relationship between cognition and behavior. We need not understand or even be
aware of evolved psychological structures to be motivated by them; no understanding of
evolutionary processes is necessary for humans to respond to the world in the ways those
processes have designed them to.
Admittedly, these are the complaints of an evolutionary literary scholar: fifteen years of
addressing a “technical” audience makes one obsessed with getting it right. The bad news,
then, from my particular phenotypic perspective, is that there are more things in evolutionary
literary study than are dreamt of in this book’s philosophy. The good news is that, whereas past
efforts have failed, this book might actually inspire people to go out and find them. <

20
Michelle Scalise Sugiyama received her PhD from UC Santa Barbara, where she combined
literary study with training at the Center for Evolutionary Psychology. Her work examines
narrative as behavior; she is particularly interested in why and when humans began telling and
listening to stories. To this end, her work examines the oral traditions of small-scale societies
against the exigencies of hunter-gatherer life. She has published numerous articles on the
origin, function, and design of narrative, in both literary (e.g., Philosophy and Literature,
Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, Mosaic) and social science (Human Nature, Evolution and
Human Behavior) journals. Currently affiliated with the Institute for Cognitive and Decision
Sciences and the English Department at the University of Oregon, Eugene, she teaches classes
on the prehistory of narrative and art behavior.

Works Cited
Boyd, Brian. 2005. Evolutionary theories of art. The Literary Animal. Ed. Jonathan Gottschall
and David Sloan Wilson, pp. 147-176. Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP.
Carroll, Joseph. 1995. Evolution and literary theory. Columbia: University of Missouri Press.
---. 2001. The ecology of Victorian fiction. Philosophy and Literature 25(2): 295-313.
---. 2004. Literary Darwinism: Evolution, human nature, and literature. New York: Routledge.
---. 2005. Human nature and literary meaning: A theoretical model illustrated with a critique of
Pride and Prejudice. The literary animal. Ed. Jonathan Gottschall and David Sloan Wilson, pp.
76-106. Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP.
Cooke, Brett. 1999. Sexual property in Pushkin’s ‘The Snowstorm’: A Darwinist perspective.
Biopoetics, ed. Brett Cooke and Frederick Turner, pp. 175-204. Lexington, KY: ICUS.
Daly, Martin and Margo Wilson. 1988. Homicide. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
---. 1998. The truth about Cinderella: A Darwinian view of parental love. New Haven: Yale UP.
Easterlin, Nancy. 2001. Hans Christian Andersen’s fish out of water. Philosophy and Literature
25(2): 251-277.
Gottschall, Jonathan. 2001. Homer’s human animal: Ritual combat in the Iliad. Philosophy
and Literature 25(2):278-294.
---. 2003. Patterns of characterization in folk tales across geographic regions and levels of
cultural complexity: Literature as a neglected source of quantitative data. Human
Nature 14(4):365-382.
---. 2005. Quantitative literary study: A modest manifesto and testing the hypotheses of
feminist fairy tale studies. The literary animal. Ed. Jonathan Gottschall and David Sloan
Wilson, pp. 199-224. Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP.
Jobling, Ian. 2002. Byron as cad. Philosophy and Literature 26:296-311.
Kruger, D., M. Fisher, and I. Jobling. 2003. Proper and dark heroes as dads and cads:
alternative mating strategies in British and Romantic literature. Human Nature 14:305-
317.
Miller, Geoffrey. 2000. The Mating Mind. New York: Doubleday.
Nesse, Margaret. 1995. Guinevere’s choice. Human Nature 6:145-63.
Stiller, James, Daniel Nettle, and Robin I. M. Dunbar. 2003. The small world of Shakespeare’s
plays. Human Nature 14(4):397-408.
Pinker, Steven. 1997. How the mind works. New York: Norton.
Scalise Sugiyama, Michelle. 1996a. “What’s Love Got to Do with It? An Evolutionary Analysis
of ‘The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,’” Hemingway Review 15(2):15-32.
---. 1996b. On the origins of narrative: Storyteller bias as a fitness-enhancing strategy. Human
Nature 7:403-25.
21
 ---. 1997. “Feminine Nature: An Evolutionary Analysis of Hemingway’s Women Characters,”
dissertation, University of California, Santa Barbara.
---. 2001a. Food, foragers, and folklore: The role of narrative in human subsistence. Evolution
and Human Behavior 22: 221-40.
---. 2001b. “New Science, Old Myth: An Evolutionary Critique of the Oedipal Paradigm,”
Mosaic 34.1 (March 2001):121-36.
---. 2003. Cultural variation is part of human nature: Literary universals, context-sensitivity
and ‘Shakespeare in the Bush.’ Human Nature 14:383-396.
---. 2005. Reverse-engineering narrative. The literary animal. Ed. Jonathan Gottschall and
David Sloan Wilson. Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP.
---. 2006. Lions and tigers and bears: Predators as a folklore universal. Heuristiken der
literaturwissenschaft: Disziplinextrene perspektiven auf literature. Ed. Uta Klein, Katja
Mellmann, and Steffanie Metzger, pp. 319-331. Paderborn: Mentis.
Storey, Robert. 1996. Mimesis and the human animal: On the biogenetic foundations of
literary representation. Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP.
Tooby, John and Leda Cosmides. 2001. Does beauty build adaptive minds? Toward an
evolutionary theory of aesthetics, fiction, and the arts. Substance 94/95:6-27.
Whissell, Cynthia. 1996. Mate selection in popular women’s fiction. Human Nature 7:427-447.

(Accessed at http://www.entelechyjournal.com/michellescalisesugiyama.html)

22
 Unit 5
Genre of Literature

I. Prose
It consists of those written within the common flow of conversation in sentence and
paragraphs. Prose is a form of language which applies ordinary grammatical structure and
natural flow of speech rather than rhythmic structure (as in traditional poetry).

II. Type of Prose

1. Novel
This is long narrative divided into chapters. The events are taken from to life
stories and spam long period of time.
2. Short Story
It is a narrative involving one or more characters, one plot and one single
impression.
3. Plays
This is presented on stage, is divided into acts and has many scenes.
4. Legends
These are fictitious narratives, usually about origins.
5. Fables
These are also fictitious, they deal animals and imitate things that speak and act
like people, and their purpose is to enlighten the minds of children to events that
can mold their ways and attitudes.
6. Anecdotes
A merely product of the writer’s imagination and the main aim is to bring out
lessons to the readers and attitudes.
7. Essay
This is expresses the viewpoint of the writer about a particular problem or event.
8. Biography
It is Deals with the life of a person, which may be about himself, his
autobiography or that of others.
9. News
It is Report of everyday events in society, government, science and industry and
accidents, happening nationally or not.
10. Oration
A formal treatment of a subject and is intended to be spoken in public. It appeals
to the intellect, to the will or to the emotions of the audience.

III. Poetry
Comes from the Greek poiesis — with a broad meaning of a "making", seen also in such
terms as "hemopoiesis"; more narrowly, the making of poetry. It is refers to those expressions
in verse, with measure and rhyme, line and stanza and has a more melodious tone.

IV. Types of poetry

Narrative Poetry - describes important events in life real or imaginary.
Lyric Poetry - refers to that king of poetry meant to be song to the accompaniment of a lyre,
but now this applies to any type of poetry that expresses emotions and fillings of the poet.
23
 1. Types of Narrative Poetry
a) Epic
An extended narrative about heroic exploits often under supernatural
control. It may deal with heroes and gods.
b) Metrical Tale
A Narrative, which is written in verse and can be classified either as a
ballad or as a metrical romance.
c) Balads
Of the narrative poems, this is the shortest and simplest. It has a simple
structure and tells of a single incident.

2. Types of Lyric Poetry

a) Folksongs
These are short poems intended to be sung. The common theme is love,
despair, grief, doubt, joy, hope and sorrow.
b) Sonnets
A lyric poem of 14 lines dealing with an emotion, a feeling of an idea.
c) Elegy
This is a lyric poem, which express feelings of grief and melancholy and
whose theme is death.
d) Ode
A poem of noble feeling, expressed with dignity, with no definite syllables
or definite number of lines in a stanza.
e) Psalm (Dalit)
It is a sound praising god or the Virgin Mary and containing a philosophy
of life.
f) Awit (Song)
Measures of a 12 (do decasyllabic) and slowly sung to the
accompaniment of a guitar or Banduria.
g) Corrido
Have measure of eight (octosyllabic) and recited to a martial beat.
V. Drama
Drama is the theatrical dialogue performed on stage, it consists of 5 acts.

VI. Types of Drama

1. Comedy
It is comes from the Greek “komos” meaning festivity or revelry. This is
usually light and written with the purpose of amusing, and usually has a
happy ending.
2. Melodrama
It is usually used in musical plays with opera. It arouses immediate and
intense emotions and is usually sad but there is a happy ending for the
principal character.

24
 3. Tragedy
Involves the hero struggling mightily against dynamic forces; he meets death
or ruin without success and satisfaction obtained by the protagonist in a
comedy.
4. Farce
Exaggerated comedy, situations are too ridiculous to be true; and the
characters seem to be caricatures and the motives undignified and absurd.

Reference
http://renzpaz.blogspot.com/2008/12/general-types-of-literature.html
http://ghalegomez-philippineliterature.blogspot.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literature_of_the_Philippines#Prose

25
 Unit 6
Elements of Literary Work

The structure of a work of literary art is its internal and external organization, and the
ways in which its constituent elements are connected.
Structure integrates a literary work and enables it to embody and communicate its content.
When a literary work is first apprehended, its structure is not consciously perceived and
identified, since the work is apprehended as an entity. But when literary scholarship poses the
task of studying “how a work is made,” it becomes necessary to identify the work’s structure
and to make a profound study both of the structure and of its role in the creation and
perception of the work.
All scholarly studies of works of literature and art contain structural analyses. However,
in the 20th century, owing to the development of structural analysis, the study of a work’s
structure has become a specialized methodological trend in art studies and in literary theory
and criticism. This trend has acquired a number of theoretical bases as a result of the prevalent
methodological orientation in scholarship; an example is the development of structuralism in
literary criticism.
The dissociation of structural analysis from the study of content is inherent in the
phenomenological aesthetics of N. Hartmann and R. Ingarden, philosophers who studied works
of art primarily in terms of their structural “layers.” Structural analysis was also separated from
the study of content in a number of studies by members of the Society for the Study of Poetic
Language (OPOIAZ) that analyzed systems of “devices” used to create a literary work.
Contemporary Soviet literary theorists have sought to overcome the limitations of structural
analysis existing in the legacy of the formalist school. Although these theorists have not yet
achieved a unified concept of structure, of methods of analyzing structure, and of the role of
these methods in art studies and in literary theory and criticism, the chief ways of resolving this
task can be outlined.
However distinctive the structure of a given work of literature or art, the structure has
features in common with the structural principles of other works of the same genre. A work’s
structure defines not only the work’s form and content, but also the general features
characteristic of genre, style, a specific literary trend, literature as an art form, and, finally, art
as a whole.
Whereas aesthetics seeks to construct a model of a literary work as an integrated
system of images, literary theory must indicate the ways in which the unchanging structural
principles that are common to all the arts apply to works of literary art. At the same time,
literary theory must take into account the flexibility of the structural principles of literary
works, both in terms of morphological (genre) trends and of historical trends—those trends
engendered by shifts in literary methods, styles, and schools.
The structural model of a literary work may be represented as a nucleus surrounded by
several outer layers. The literary material constituting the work forms the outermost layer. This
material, examined independently, is a text which, being a selection from the colloquial or
literary language of a nation is generally written in a certain style. Examples are the loftiness of
M. V. Lomonosov’s odes, the refined, fashionable vocabulary of I. Severianin’s poetry, and the
deliberate coarseness of V. V. Mayakovsky’s vocabulary. The text as such, however, does not
have literary meaning. A work’s outer layers become artistically meaningful only to the extent
that they are symbolic, that is, to the extent that they express their own inner meaning and
radiate the poetic energy emanating from the work’s nucleus of content.
26
 In contrast to the content of everyday, business, scientific, and scholarly texts, the
nucleus of a literary work, which includes the work’s subject and idea, has a bilateral structure.
This structure is composed of both intellectual and emotional elements, since art both
apprehends and evaluates life. Since the literary outer layer of a work must be united with the
spiritual nucleus, and since the outer layer must be as lucid, expressive, and poetically
meaningful as possible, the work has two intermediate layers, usually called the inner and outer
form.
A literary work’s inner form is a system of images which, like the work’s content, are
entirely ideal in nature. At the same time, these images have an emotional element and
consequently appeal to the reader’s imagination, in the form of characters and their interaction
(the plot). The work’s outer form is another level at which the work’s content is presented to
the conscious mind, not to the imagination.
In literature, the outer form is a system of means by which the material of language is
organized so as to activate the text’s phonic aspect. In poetry, these means include rhyme,
assonance, and alliteration. The outer form gives a work its rhythmic, stylistic, and
compositional structure. In poetry, this structure is expressed in meter and rhythm. In terms of
style and composition, structure is expressed in a work’s architectonics, in the consecutive or
reversed development of the action, in the means of achieving transitions, in dialogue, and in
authorial speech. The sum of the ways in which the outer form structures a work makes the
text the source of new, suprasemantic content, which is found in the work’s subtextual
meaning.
Thus, the structure of a literary work embraces the work’s characters, theme, plot,
composition, and architectonics. A work’s structure reveals these elements individually and in
terms of their coordination and interdependence within the work as a whole. This is of
significance insofar as the work’s structure is hierarchical in nature. The work’s content (its
nucleus of ideas and themes) functions as a controlling subsystem that communicates
information from level to level until this information permeates the work’s literary substratum.
At the same time, as in every self-governing system, there is a reciprocal connection as well—
the reciprocal influence of form on content. The structuring of literary material into a work’s
outer form and the subsequent emergence of the inner form from the outer form alter the
instructions coming from the nucleus of content and sometimes change this nucleus to a
significant extent.
Thus, the study of a literary work’s structure is not in opposition to traditional analysis in
terms of content and form; rather, it develops and gives precision to analysis, since it reveals
the inner structure both of the work’s content and form. The structural approach also helps
elucidate the morphological, historical, and methodological diversity of literary forms, diversity
related to variations in the principles governing the construction of works of literary art.
Each structural element is of greater or lesser relative importance within a given work.
In poetry, for example, the outer form is of considerably greater importance than in prose; in
the detective novel, the plot is immeasurably more important than in other genres. The lyric
and the epic differ in the mutual relationship of their content’s intellectual and emotional
aspects. On the other hand, the structural distinctions between the classical drama of Corneille,
the romantic drama of J. L. Tieck, and the realistic drama of Chekhov are entirely apparent.
In conclusion, the analysis of a literary work’s structure presupposes knowledge of the
structural principles of works of art; knowledge of the application of these principles to
literature and to specific literary genres, trends, and styles; and, finally, the ability to detect and

27
reveal the structural uniqueness of the work under study, a uniqueness engendered by the
distinctiveness of the task resolved by the writer.

References
Vygotskii, L. S. Psikhologiia iskusstva, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1968.
Hartmann, N. Estetika. Moscow. 1958. (Translated from German.)
Ingarden, R. Issledovaniia po estetike. Moscow, 1962. (Translated from Polish.)
Teoriia literatury: Osnovnye problemy v istoricheskom osveshchenii [book 1]. Moscow, 1962.
Strukturno-lipologicheskie issledovanniia. Moscow, 1962.
Gei, N. K. Iskusstvo slova. Moscow, 1967.
Sokolov, A. N. “Struktura khudozhestvennogo proizvedeniia.” In Teoriia stilia. Moscow, 1968.
Lotman, Iu. M. Struktura khudozhestvennogo teksta. Moscow, 1970.
Uspenskii, B. A. Poetika kompozitsii: Struktura khudozhestvennogo teksta i tipologiia
kompozitsionnoi formy. Moscow, 1970.
Problemy khudozhestvennoi formy sotsialisticheskogo realizma, vols. 1–2. Moscow, 1971.
Kagan, M. S. Morfologiia iskusstva, parts 1–2. Leningrad, 1972.
Utitz, E. Grundlegung der allgemeinen Kunstwissenschaft, vols. 1–2. Stuttgart, 1914–20.
Wellek, R., and A. Warren. Theory of Literature, 3rd ed. New York, 1963. (Contains
bibliography.)
Poetica. Poetyka. Poetika [vols. 1–2]. Warsaw-Paris-The Hague, 1964–66.
Structure in Art and Science. New York, 1970.

(Taken from: http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Structure+of+a+Literary+Work)

28
 Unit 7
Concept of Poetry

Definition of Poetry
1. metrical writing : verse : the productions of a poet : poems
2. writing that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience in language
chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound,
and rhythm
3. something likened to poetry especially in beauty of expression : poetic quality or aspect
the poetry of dance

(https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/poetry)

Poetry and Poem

Poetry is writing that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience in
language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning,
sound, and rhythm.
(Ref: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/poetry)
In English there are two words, namely poem /’pəʊ.ɪm/, /’poʊ.əm/ and poetry /’pō-ə-
trē/, /‘pȯ )i-trē/.

Poetry (’pō-ə-trē)
(1) (Poetry) a composition in verse, usually characterized by concentrated and heightened
language in which words are chosen for their sound and suggestive power as well as for their
sense, and using such techniques as metre, rhyme, and alliteration, (2) Literary & Literary
Critical Terms) a literary composition that is not in verse but exhibits the intensity of
imagination and language common to it: a prose poem. (3) Anything resembling a poem in
beauty, effect, etc
[C16: from Latin poēma, from Greek, variant of poiēma something composed, created, from
poiein to make] Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014©
HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

(1) a piece of writing in which the words are arranged in separate lines, often ending in rhyme,
and are chosen for their sound and for the images and ideas they suggest. (2 )a piece of writing
that usually has figurative language and that is written in separate lines that often have a
repeated rhythm and sometimes rhyme (Definition of poem from the Cambridge Advanced
Learner’s Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

Poem (pō′əm)
(1)A verbal composition designed to convey experiences, ideas, or emotions in a vivid and
imaginative way, characterized by the use of language chosen for its sound and suggestive
power and by the use of literary techniques such as meter, metaphor, and rhyme. (2)A
composition in verse rather than in prose: wrote both prose and poems. (3) A literary
composition written with an intensity or beauty of language more characteristic of poetry than
of prose.

29
Reference: [French poème, from Old French, from Latin poēma, from Greek poiēma, from
poiein, to create; see kwei- in Indo-European roots.]; American Heritage® Dictionary of the
English Language, Fifth Edition; Copyright © 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing
Company- Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
From the definitions above, it can be understood that poetry is one of form of literary
works besides prose and drama. Literature is a result of creativity of author sourced from
human life directly through imagination by language as its media (Retno Winarni, 2009: 7).
Something referred as a text of literature if (1) the text is not always made arrangements for a
practical communicative target or temporary, (2) the text contain element ficioulity, (3) the text
causes readers taking distance, (4) its substance is processed specially, and (5) having
interpretation openness.
Poetry, according to Campbel Slann, Joanna (2011) is that the easiest way to recognize
poetry is that it usually looks like poetry (remember what they say about ducks). While prose is
organized with sentences and paragraphs, poetry is normally organized into lines. Moreover,
poetry represents the oldest literary works and was first time written by human being.
According to Herman J. Waluyo (2010: 1) poetry is literary works with compacted language,
taken a short cut, and given with rhythm solidly sound and figurative words election
(imaginative). Words in poetry are really solid and chosen so that very beautiful when being
read.
Others say, Easterling, (2011: 99) noted that “Poetry was, to be sure, the acknowledged
“genre of genres” of the time and found a wide audience among the literate. The Prominent
literary men of the day, however, were of note of taken with the pursuits of literature and
poetry alone”. Slamet Muljana in Rakhmat Djoko Pradopo (2002: 113) defines poetry as
literature form in repetition voice or words producing rhyme, rhytm, and musicality. Poetry
expresses opinion awakening feelings that stimulates the five senses in imagination musically.
All represent important something that, what is recorded and attractively expressed and gives
an impression on. Poetry represents one of literary works forms which also need appreciated.
Poetry is the earliest literary works written by human being (Herman J. Waluyo, 2010: 1).
Besides, as view of life, contemplative, and opinion, feeling or emotion representing the
element of poetry structure, Wordsworth (in Luxemburg, 1986:169-170), mentioning poem
shall be as follows. “The spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”: (an expression of strong
feeling), it does not mean that poem can be considered to be passion dismissal. Exactly it
is,“powerful feelings” not uncontrollably final purpose poem, but it is the meaning and picture
medium implied in that picture more intensively and led into more eminent target: that
states “the depth, and not the tumult of the soul”.

Some Examples
“The time is out of joint, O cursed spite
That ever I was born to set it right!”

William Shakespeare’s Hamlet

Reference: http://literarydevices.net/couplet/

On a branch
floating downriver
a cricket, singing.

By translated by Jane Hirshfield

30
 Humans' True Nature
Poem by Mihaela Pirjol
we are becoming
slaves to self-created selves —
delve into your depths

Reference: http://simplyhaiku.com/SHv4n3/senryu/senryu.html

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there’s some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

(Stopping by Woods On a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost)

Reference: http://literarydevices.net/quatrain/

My mum
Is so caring
She always helpful
She is so beautiful and kind
Love you

Reference: http://examples.yourdictionary.com/cinquain-examples.html

Beautiful mountains
Rivers with cold, cold water.
White cold snow on rocks
Trees over the place with frost
White sparkly snow everywhere.

Pretty colored trees

That are orange, red and yellow
In the Autumn air
An old barn by the water
With a white fence around it.

The leaves change colour

When the fall winds start to blow,
Yellow, orange and brown
Are the colours of fall leaves,
Slowly falling from the trees.

Reference:
http://www.edu.pe.ca/stjean/playing%20with%20poetry/Hennessey/tanka.htm
http://www.shadowpoetry.com/resources/wip/tanka.html

31
 From Visions
Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374)

Being one day at my window all alone,

So manie strange things happened me to see,
As much as it grieveth me to thinke thereon.
At my right hand a hynde appear’d to mee,
So faire as mote the greatest god delite;
Two eager dogs did her pursue in chace.
Of which the one was blacke, the other white:
With deadly force so in their cruell race
They pincht the haunches of that gentle beast,
That at the last, and in short time, I spide,
Under a rocke, where she alas, opprest,
Fell to the ground, and there untimely dide.
Cruell death vanquishing so noble beautie
Oft makes me wayle so hard a desire.

(Trans. Edmund Spenser)

Sonnet
Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)

Ye ladies, walking past me piteous-eyed,

Who is the lady that lies prostrate here?
Can this be even she my heart holds dear?
Nay, if it be so, speak, and nothing hide.
Her very aspect seems itself beside,
And all her features of such altered cheer
That to my thinking they do not appear
Hers who makes others seem beatified.
‘If thou forget to know our lady thus,
Whom grief o'ercomes, we wonder in no wise,
For also the same thing befalleth us,
Yet if thou watch the movement of her eyes,
Of her thou shalt be straightaway conscious.
O weep no more; thou art all wan with sighs.

(Trans. D.G. Rossetti)

Reference:
http://www.webexhibits.org/poetry/explore_famous_sonnet_examples.html

Structural Aspects of Poetry

The structure of poetry can be observed from three sides, those are FLS: Form, Line, and
Stanza.
1. FORM is the appearance of the words on the page
2. LINE is a group of words together on one line of the poem
3. STANZA is a group of lines arranged together

32
FORM OF POEM
A poem may or may not have a specific number of lines, rhyme scheme and/or metrical
pattern, but it can still be labeled according to its form or style.

A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.

I say it just
Begins to live
That day.

The followings are the three most common types of poetry according to form:
1. Lyric Poetry: It is any poem with one speaker (not necessarily the poet) who expresses
strong thoughts and feelings. Most poems, especially modern ones, are lyric poems.
2. Narrative Poem: It is a poem that tells a story; its structure resembles the plot line of a
story [i.e. the introduction of conflict and characters, rising action, climax and the
denouement].
3. Descriptive Poem: It is a poem that describes the world that surrounds the speaker. It uses
elaborate imagery and adjectives. While emotional, it is more "outward-focused" than lyric
poetry, which is more personal and introspective.

On the other understandings, forms of poetry can be categorized based on two sides,
those are as the followings.
1. On Line and Stanza (Structure)
2. On Mood and Tone (Essence/ content)

Forms of Poem on Line and Stanza: Line and Stanza Relationship

Line is a group of words together on one line of the poem and stanzas are a series of
lines grouped together and separated by an empty line from other stanzas. They are the
equivalent of a paragraph in an essay. One way to identify a stanza is to count the number of
lines. Thus:
• Most poems are written in lines.
• A group of lines in a poem is called a stanza.
• Stanzas separate ideas in a poem. They act like paragraphs.
• This poem has two stanzas.

March
By Eleanor Farjeon

A blue day
A blue jay
And a good beginning.

One crow,
Melting snow –
Spring’s winning!

33
 A stanza is a set of lines in a poem grouped together and set apart from other stanzas in
the poem either by a double space or by different indentation. Poems may contain any number
of stanzas, depending on the author’s wishes and structure in which the poet is writing. There
are many strict poetic forms that designate the exact number of stanzas. Those can be:
1. Couplet = a two line stanza
2. Triplet (Tercet) = a three line stanza
3. Quatrain = a four line stanza
4. Quintet = a five line stanza
5. Sestet (Sextet) = a six line stanza
6. Septet = a seven line stanza
7. Octave = an eight line stanza

Some poem examples based on the line and stanza as the followings.
Couplet
A couplet is a literary device which can be defined as having two successive rhyming
lines in a verse and has the same meter to form a complete thought. It is marked by a usual
rhythm, rhyme scheme and incorporation of specific utterances. This type of poem is two lines
which may be rhymed or unrhymed.
One of the commonly used couplet examples are these two lines from William Shakespeare’s
Hamlet.

“The time is out of joint, O cursed spite

That ever I was born to set it right!”

Reference: https://literarydevices.net/couplet/

Cinquain
It is a five line poem containing 22 syllables Poetry with five lines. Line 1 has one word
(the title). Line 2 has two words that describe the title. Line 3 has three words that tell the
action. Line 4 has four words that express the feeling, and line 5 has one word which recalls the
title.

Line 1. Two Syllables How frail

Line 2. Four Syllables Above the bulk
Line 3. Six Syllables Of crashing water hangs
Line 4. Eight Syllables Autumnal, evanescent, wan
Line 5. Two Syllables The moon.

A cinquain is a five-line poem that was invented by Adelaide Crapsey. She was an
American poet who took her inspiration from Japanese haiku and tanka. A collection of poems,
titled Verse, was published in 1915 and included 28 cinquains.
Cinquains are particularly vivid in their imagery and are meant to convey a certain mood or
emotion.
Line 1 – 2 syllables My mum 2
Line 2 – 4 Syllables Is so caring 4
Line 3 – 6 Syllables She is always helpful 6
Line 4 – 8 syllables She is so beautiful and kind 8
Line 5 – 2 Syllables Love you. 2
Reference: http://examples.yourdictionary.com/cinquain-examples.html
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Concrete
In concrete poems, the words are arranged to create a picture that relates to the content of the
poem. It is also known as "size poetry". Concrete poetry uses typographical arrangements to
display an element of the poem. This can either be through re-arrangement of letters of a word
or by arranging the words as a shape.

Reference: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CknhDOqWsAAMN-e.jpg

Haiku (or Hokku)

A Japanese verse form of three unrhyming lines in five, seven, and five syllables. It
creates a single, memorable image, as in these lines by Kobayashi Issa, translated by Jane
Hirshfield:
On a branch
floating downriver
a cricket, singing.

(In translating from Japanese to English, Hirshfield compresses the number of syllables.)
Reference:http://www.poetryfoundation.org/resources/learning/glossaryterms/ =haiku

A haiku poem has three lines, where the first and last lines have five moras, while the
middle line has seven. The pattern in Japanese genre is 5-7-5. The mora is another name of a
sound unit, which is like a syllable, but it is different from a syllable. As the moras cannot be
translated into English, they are modified and syllables are used instead. The lines of such
poems rarely rhyme with each other.
Reference: http://literarydevices.net/haiku/

It is a Japanese poem written in three lines consisting on being composed of three

unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables, usually containing a season word.

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 Line 1. Five Syllables An old silent pond,
Line 2. Seven Syllables A frog jumps into the pond.
Line 3. Five Syllables Splash! Silence again.

Limerick
It is a short sometimes vulgar, humorous poem consisting of five anapestic lines. Lines 1,
2, and 5 have seven to ten syllables, rhyme and have the same verbal rhythm. The 3rd and 4th
lines have five to seven syllables, rhyme and have the same rhythm.

There was a young lady of station

“I love man” was her sole exclamation
But when men cried, “You flatter”
She replied, “Oh! no matter
Isle of Man is the true explanation.

(From To Miss Vera Beringer by Lewis Carroll)

This limerick contains five lines with rhyme scheme aabba. Here we can notice the first,
second and fifth lines rhyme together with three feet, whereas third and fourth lines contain
two feet and rhyme together.

There was an Old Man with a beard,

Who said, ‘It is just as I feared!
Two Owls and a Hen,
Four Larks and a Wren,
Have all built their nests in my beard!

(From “There was an Old Man with a Beard” by Edward Lear)

Name
It is a poem that tells about the word. It uses the letters of the word for the first letter of
each line. Here are some examples:

CANDY CATS FEAR SPRING

Crunchy chewy Cuddly Frightening Sunny days

Awesome Acrobatic Eerie and strange Plants awakening
Nice and sweet Tenacious and terrifying Anxiety rises Raindrops on the roof
Delightful and delicious Softly purring Ready to flee Interesting clouds
Yummy treat New flowers
Gray skies

HOUSE

Home
Open and inviting
Universal
Safe and warm
Everything

Reference: http://examples.yourdictionary.com/acrostic-poem-examples.html

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Quatrain
A quatrain is a verse with four lines, or even a full poem containing four lines, having an
independent and separate theme. Often one line consists of alternating rhyme. It exists in a
variety of forms. We can trace back quatrains in poems of poetic traditions by different ancient
civilizations such as China, Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece and continue to appear in twenty
first century. During dark ages in Europe, Middle East and Iran polymath poets like Omar
Khayyam popularized this type of poetry, which gained its popularity with the name of Rubai in
Iran and have possible rhyme scheme as, aabb, aaaa and abab.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there’s some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

(Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost)

Reference: http://literarydevices.net/quatrain/

It is a stanza or poem consisting of four lines. Lines 2 and 4 must rhyme while having a
similar number of syllables.

Hope is the Thing with Feathers, by Emily Dickinson

"Hope" is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all,

Reference: http://www.examplesinpoetry.com/quatrain-poetry-examples-definition

Sonnet
The word sonnet is derived from the Italian word “sonetto”. It means a small or little
song or lyric. In poetry, a sonnet has 14 fourteen lines and is written in iambic pentameter.
Each line has 10 syllables. It has a specific rhyme scheme and a “volta” or a specific turn.
Reference: http://literarydevices.net/sonnet/

From Visions Sonnet

Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374) Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)
Being one day at my window all alone, Ye ladies, walking past me piteous-eyed,
So manie strange things happened me to see, Who is the lady that lies prostrate here?
As much as it grieveth me to thinke thereon. Can this be even she my heart holds dear?
At my right hand a hynde appear’d to mee, Nay, if it be so, speak, and nothing hide.
So faire as mote the greatest god delite; Her very aspect seems itself beside,
Two eager dogs did her pursue in chace. And all her features of such altered cheer
Of which the one was blacke, the other white: That to my thinking they do not appear
With deadly force so in their cruell race Hers who makes others seem beatified.
They pincht the haunches of that gentle beast, ‘If thou forget to know our lady thus,
That at the last, and in short time, I spide, Whom grief o'ercomes, we wonder in no wise,
Under a rocke, where she alas, opprest, For also the same thing befalleth us,
Fell to the ground, and there untimely dide. Yet if thou watch the movement of her eyes,
Cruell death vanquishing so noble beautie Of her thou shalt be straightaway conscious.
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Oft makes me wayle so hard a desire. O weep no more; thou art all wan with sighs.
(Trans. Edmund Spenser) (Trans. D.G. Rossetti)

Reference: http://www.webexhibits.org/poetry/explore_famous_sonnet_examples.html

Shakespearean sonnet
It is a fourteen line poem with a specific rhyme scheme. The poem is written in three
quatrains and ends with a couplet. The rhyme scheme is abab cdcd efef gg. Shakespearean
is a 14-line sonnet consisting of three quatrains of abab cdcd efef followed by a couplet, gg.
Shakespearean sonnets generally use iambic pentameter and Sonnet is a lyric poem that
consists of 14 lines which usually have one or more conventional rhyme schemes.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? (Sonnet 18)

William Shakespeare, 1564 - 1616

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometimes declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Reference: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/shall-i-compare-thee-summers-day-sonnet-
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Senryu
It is a short Japanese style poem, similar to haiku in structure that treats human beings
rather than nature: Often in a humorous or satiric way.
Senryu is a short poetic form which focuses on people: men, women, husbands, wives,
children, relatives and other relations. It portrays the characteristics of human beings and
psychology of the human mind. A common misconception about senryu is that it is exclusively a
satirical and or humorous poetic genre.
That is a laugh right there, because senryu is much more than a fat lady's big behind.
There's another side of senryu, a more serious side that express the misfortunes, the hardships
and woe of humanity. Senryu that are serious in tone about romance, sex, family, friendship,
marriage, and divorce — Senryu that express other moods and human emotions such as love,
hate, anger, jealousy, sorrow, sadness, and fear — Senryu that portray the stark reality of the
human condition — the facts, fashions, sports, social issues and life-styles of popular culture —
Senryu that express passion and fullness of heart.

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 Humans' True Nature
Poem by Mihaela Pirjol
we are becoming
slaves to self-created selves —
delve into your depths

Reference: http://simplyhaiku.com/SHv4n3/senryu/senryu.html

Reference: http://images.slideplayer.com/28/9400862/slides/slide_7.jpg

Tanka
It is a Japanese poem of five lines, the first and third composed of five syllables and the other
seven. Tanka is a classic form of Japanese poetry related to the haiku with five unrhymed lines
of five, seven, five, seven, and seven syllables. (5, 7, 5, 7, 7). The 5/7/5/7/7 rule is rumored to
have been made up for school children to understand and learn this type of poetry. For an in
depth description of Tanka, please visit the Shadow Poetry Japanese Poetry Tanka section.
Reference: http://www.shadowpoetry.com/resources/wip/tanka.html

Beautiful mountains Pretty colored trees The leaves change colour

Rivers with cold, cold water. That are orange, red and yellow When the fall winds start to blow,
White cold snow on rocks In the Autumn air Yellow, orange and brown
Trees over the place with frost An old barn by the water Are the colours of fall leaves,
White sparkly snow everywhere. With a white fence around it. Slowly falling from the trees.

Reference: http://www.edu.pe.ca/stjean/playing%20with%20poetry/Hennessey/tanka.htm

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Reference: http://www.atmo.arizona.edu/... /tanka_poem.jpg

Forms of Poem on Mood and Tone: Relationship between Tone and Mood
The writer of a poem creates tone using particular syntax, setting and structure, and the
mood is the feeling that the tone evokes in the reader. Though tone and mood are closely
related, the tone tends to be associated with the poem’s voice. The narrator of the poem
creates the voice of the poem, and voice is associated with the writer’s attitude toward the
poem. In other words, the tone relays something about the writer’s attitude toward the subject
of the poem. This attitude, in turn, creates some sort of atmosphere or mood, which then
evokes a certain emotion or frame of mind in the reader.

Describing Tone and Mood

The tone of a poem may be described using a variety of words such as serious, playful,
humorous, formal, informal, angry, satirical, ironical or sad, or any other kind of appropriate
adjective. The mood of the poem may be described as idealistic, romantic, realistic, optimistic,
gloomy, imaginary or mournful.

Some poem examples based on the mood and tone as the followings.
Ballad
It is a poem that tells a story similar to a folk tale or legend which often has a repeated
refrain. When people hear of ballads, they often immediately think of songs like he lovestruck
melodies of famous performing artists such as the Righteous Brothers, Elvis Presley, Lonestar,
Frank Sinatra, and Peter Gabriel. While they are partially correct, ballads can also be narrative
pieces written in a poetic form.

Ballata 5" by Guido Cavalcanti

"That which befalls me in my Lady's presence

Bars explanation intellectual.
I seem to see a lady wonderful
Spring forth between her lips, one whom no sense
Can fully tell the mind of, and one whence
Another, in beauty, springeth marvelous,
From whom a star goes forth and speaketh thus:
'Now my salvation is gone forth from thee.'"

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 In the middle of the 15th century, Francois Villon wrote a ballad entitled "Ballad of the
Gibbet" by Francois Villon where he stated:

"Brothers and men that shall after us be,

Let not your hearts be hard to us:
For pitying this our misery
Ye shall find God the more piteous."
Villon was advising his enemies, but also making a narrative statement, about the
condition of being hunted by another person.

Ballad of the Cool Fountain by Anonymous Spanish Poet

Fountain, coolest fountain,

Cool fountain of love,
Where all the sweet birds come
For comforting-but one,
A widow turtledove,
Sadly sorrowing,
At once the nightingale,
That wicked bird, came by,
And spoke these honied words:
"My lady, if you will,
I shall be your slave."
"You are my enemy:
Begone, you are not true!"
Green boughs no longer rest me,
Nor any budding grove.
Clear springs, where there are such,
Turn muddy at my touch.
I want no spouse to love
Nor any children either.
I forego that pleasure and their comfort too.
No, leave me; you are false
And wicked-vile, untrue!
I'll never be your mistress!
I'll never marry you!

Reference:http://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-a-ballad.html

Ballade
A ballade is a type of poetry, this type of poetry first became popular in the 14th
century. A Ballade poem should have three stanzas and an envoy/ envoi. The rhyming pattern
for the stanzas is ababbcbC. The rhyming pattern for the envoy is bcbC. The capital letter in the
rhyming patterns shows where the refrain should be.

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It is a poetry which has three stanzas of seven, eight or ten lines and a shorter final stanza of
four or five. All stanzas end with the same one line refrain.
Reference: https://www.youngwriters.co.uk/types-ballade

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Bio
It is a poem written about one self's life, personality traits, and ambitions.

Reference: http://images.slideplayer.com/18/5666541/slides/slide_4.jpg

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Burlesque
It is a poetry that treats a serious subject as humor.

Reference: http://www.wordsandphrasesfromthepast.com/

Elegy
It is a sad and thoughtful poem about the death of an individual.

Women labor in pain

By Solomon Ochwo-Oburu

women labor in pain

devil picks choicest
microbes celebrate
enemies make them heroes

Reference: https://www.poetrysoup.com/poem/women_labor_in_pain_876200

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Reference: http://image.slidesharecdn.com/typesofpoetry

Epic
It is an extensive, serious poem that tells the story about a heroic figure.

Reference: http://other.phoot.biz/images/

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Epithalamium
It is a poem written in honor of the bride and groom.

Reference: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com.jpg

Lyric
It is a short poem and usually written in first person point of view, expresses an emotion or an
idea or describes a scene, does not tell a story and are often musical, and many of the poems
we read will be lyrics.

O Captain! My Captain
By Walt Whitman

“‘O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,

The ship has weather’d every rack,
the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! Heart! Heart!”

To My Enemy
By Lucy Maud Montgomery

Let those who will of friendship sing,

And to its guerdon grateful be,
But I a lyric garland bring
To crown thee, O, mine enemy!

Thanks, endless thanks, to thee I owe

For that my lifelong journey through
Thine honest hate has done for me
What love perchance had failed to do.

I had not scaled such weary heights

But that I held thy scorn in fear,
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 And never keenest lure might match
The subtle goading of thy sneer.

Thine anger struck from me a fire

That purged all dull content away,
Our mortal strife to me has been
Unflagging spur from day to day.

And thus, while all the world may laud

The gifts of love and loyalty,
I lay my meed of gratitude
Before thy feet, mine enemy!

Reference: https://www.poetrysoup.com/famous/poem/to_my_enemy_14093

Narrative
It is a poem that tells a story, generally longer than the lyric styles of poetry b/c the poet needs
to establish characters and a plot.

Examples of Narrative Poems

“The Raven”
“The Highwayman”
“Casey at the Bat”
“The Walrus and the Carpenter”

Ode
An ode is a lyrical stanza written in praise for a person, event, or thing. The form developed in
Ancient Greece and had a very specific and elaborate structure involving three parts known as
the strophe, antistrophe, and epode. Originally, Greek odes were set to music.
The form was later popularized and adapted in Renaissance England and led to a new set of
conventions, which we will explore below. The word ode comes originally from the Greek word
ᾠδή (ōidē), meaning “song.” The definition of ode has thus clearly changed over time, as now it
is often used colloquially to refer to any praise or glorification of an individual or thing.

Victory Ode
by Pindar

Creatures for a day! What is a man?

What is he not? A dream of a shadow
Is our mortal being. But when there comes to men
A gleam of splendour given of heaven,
Then rests on them a light of glory
And blessed are their days.

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Pastoral
It is a poem that depicts rural life in a peaceful, romanticized way.

Reference: http://ggcaenglish.weebly.com/

Romanticism
It is a poem about nature and love while having emphasis on the personal experience.

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Reference: http://www.poetseers.org/wordsworth-my-heart-leaps-up2.jpg

The Intrinsic and Extrinsic Elements of poetry

Intrinsic element of poetry is an element contained in a poem, which is used by analysts in
studying and understanding the meaning of a poem. There are several intrinsic elements in
poetry:

Imagery
1) Visual Imagery
Visual imagery is the imagery that can be gained from the experience of the senses
of sight (eyes).
2) Kinesthetic Imagery
Kinesthetic imagery is the imagery produced from an experience that form of
movement.
3) Auditory Imagery
Auditory imagery is the element of imagery associated with the sense of hearing.
4) Organic Imagery
Organic imagery is the imagery that emerged from our minds. Organic imagery can
be seen in the disclosure of feelings such as hunger, thirst, fatigue, drunkenness, etc.
5) Tactile Imagery
Imagery is directly related to our sense of touch. Tactile imagery can be seen from
the description of feelings such as feeling hot, cold, smooth, rough, and anything
that can be felt to be touched.
6) Gustatory Imagery
Gustatory imagery is imagery that portrayed the experience of our sense of taste, a
taste of thing. Things like sweet, bitter, sour, tasteless are some examples of words
that indicate gustatory imagery.

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 7) Olfactory Imagery
Olfactory imagery is the imagery associated with our sense of smell, a smell of thing.
Things that can be described based on the experience of smell from your nose is an
example of olfactory imagery, such as for example: the smell fragrant, smells fishy,
etc.

Style of language (figure of speech)

There are several kinds of figure of speech that are commonly seen in a poem, namely:

1) Simile
Simile is a figure of speech which is formed from which we make comparisons
between a thing with another thing which is basically similar. The author uses words
such comparison: like, as, etc, to compare these two things.
2) Metaphor
Such as simile, metaphor is formed from a comparison of two things have in
common, so one thing can take the place of something else. What distinguishes
metaphor with a simile is not the use of comparison words such as: like, as, etc.
3) Paradox
Paradox is a figure of speech that shows the contradiction between two things.
Paradox is a picture of contradiction will be a thing (as distinct from reality, with real
meaning.) As Perrine said in his literature, structure, sounds and sense that the
paradox is an apparent contradiction that is nevertheless somehow true (1987-604).
4) Irony
Irony is a figure of speech which features an Opposition of the meaning of the word.
There are three forms of irony "there remains, namely: verbal irony" there remains,
dramatic irony "there remains and the Irony of situation.

5) Hyperbole
Hyperbole is a figure of speech that works by giving meaning or describe a thing as
excessive.
6) Antithesis
Antithesis is a figure of speech that is visible from two words placed in the opposite
sense in one place.
7) Symbol
Symbol intended for a matter that is used to replace other things a broader
meaning.
8) Rhyme
Rhyme is defined as a form of repetition of sounds in these lines of poetry. Rhyme is
divided into three types, namely: End Rhyme, median and front rhyme.
9) Rhythm
Rhythm is an intrinsic element of poetry that only comes when a poem was read.
Rhythm is a tone that appears when poetry was sung.
10) Meter
Size of tone in the rhythm called the meter. Meters can be shaped monometer,
dimeter, trimeter, tetrameter, and pentameter.

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 11) Allusion
Allusion is a style that uses words or names in the bible that is inserted in the poem
with a specific purpose and reason.

Extrinsic Elements of poetry

Extrinsic Elements of poetry is a supporting element of poetry that comes from outside the
work of poetry created. Extrinsic Elements of poetry was instrumental in the analysis of a
poem. Without using the approach on the extrinsic elements of the poem, analysts will have
difficulty in determining the reason and purpose of a poem is created. Even understanding the
meaning of a poem can be shifted from what was intended by the author, if the poem is
analyzed in the extrinsic elements only. Some elements of extrinsic poem are like: author
biography, social background, religion, and education of the author, and social circumstances at
the time the poem was made.

In essence, extrinsic element in poetry is no different with extrinsic elements contained in the
other literary works such as prose and drama.

Reference
Sources: Sound and Sense: An Introduction to Poetry by Laurence Perrine (1956)
An Introduction to Literature: fiction, poetry, drama; third edition written by Barnet, Berman
and Burto (1961)

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 Unit 8
Concept of Prose

Definition of Prose
Prose is a form of language that has no formal metrical structure. It applies a natural
flow of speech, and ordinary grammatical structure rather than rhythmic structure, such as in
the case of traditional poetry.
Normal every day speech is spoken in prose and most people think and write in prose form.
Prose comprises of full grammatical sentences which consist of paragraphs and forgoes
aesthetic appeal in favor of clear, straightforward language. It can be said to be the most
reflective of conversational speech. Some works of prose do have versification and a blend of
the two formats that is called prose poetry.
Prose is a communicative style that sounds natural and uses grammatical structure.
Prose is the opposite of verse, or poetry, which employs a rhythmic structure that does not
mimic ordinary speech. There is, however, some poetry called “prose poetry” that uses
elements of prose while adding in poetic techniques such as heightened emotional content,
high frequency of metaphors, and juxtaposition of contrasting images. Most forms of writing
and speaking are done in prose, including short stories and novels, journalism, academic
writing, and regular conversations.
(https://literarydevices.net/prose/)
Prose is a form of language that exhibits a natural flow of speech and grammatica
structure, rather than a rhythmic structure as in traditional poetry. Where the common unit of
verse is based on meter or rhyme, the common unit of prose is purely grammatical, such as a
sentence or paragraph.[1]
The word "prose" first appears in English in the 14th century. It is derived from the Old French
prose, which in turn originates in the Latin expression prosa oratio (literally, straightforward or
direct speech).[3]
The word “prose” comes from the Latin expression prosa oratio, which means
straightforward or direct speech. Due to the definition of prose referring to straightforward
communication, “prosaic” has come to mean dull and commonplace discourse. When used as a
literary term, however, prose does not carry this connotation.

Prose Form
“The woods look lovely against the setting darkness and as I gaze into the mysterious depths of
the forest, I feel like lingering here longer. However, I have pending appointments to keep and
much distance to cover before I settle in for the night or else I will be late for all of them.”
The above paragraph is conveying a similar message but it is conveyed in ordinary language,
without a formal metrical structure to bind it.

Some Common Types of Prose

1. Nonfictional Prose: A literary work that is mainly based on fact although it may contain
fictional elements in certain cases. Examples are biographies and essays.
2. Fictional Prose: A literary work that is wholly or partly imagined or theoretical. Examples
are novels.
3. Heroic Prose: A literary work that may be written down or recited and employs many of
the formulaic expressions found in oral tradition. Examples are legends and tales.

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 4. Prose Poetry: A literary work which exhibits poetic quality using emotional effects and
heightened imagery but are written in prose instead of verse.

Common Examples of Prose

Everything that is not poetry is prose. Therefore, every utterance or written word that is not in
the form of verse is an example of prose. Here are some different formats that prose comes in:
• Casual dialogue: “Hi, how are you?” “I’m fine, how are you?” “Fine, thanks.”
• Oration: I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where
they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. –
Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Dictionary definition: Prose (n)—
the ordinary form of spoken or written language, without metrical
structure, as distinguished from poetry or verse.
• Philosophical texts: Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he
does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will
gaze back into you. –Friedrich Nietzsche
• Journalism: State and local officials were heavily criticized for their response to the
January 2014 storm that created a traffic nightmare and left some motorists stranded
for 18 hours or more.

Example 1
I shall never be fool enough to turn knight-errant. For I see quite well that it’s not the fashion now to do as they
did in the olden days when they say those famous knights roamed the world.

(Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes)

Don Quixote is often considered the forerunner of the modern novel, and here we can see
Cervantes’s prose style as being very direct with some sarcasm.

Example 2
The ledge, where I placed my candle, had a few mildewed books piled up in one corner; and it was covered with
writing scratched on the paint. This writing, however, was nothing but a name repeated in all kinds of characters,
large and small—Catherine Earnshaw, here and there varied to Catherine Heathcliff, and then again to Catherine
Linton. In vapid listlessness I leant my head against the window, and continued spelling over Catherine Earnshaw—
Heathcliff—Linton, till my eyes closed; but they had not rested five minutes when a glare of white letters started
from the dark, as vivid as spectres—the air swarmed with Catherines; and rousing myself to dispel the obtrusive
name, I discovered my candle wick reclining on one of the antique volumes, and perfuming the place with an
odour of roasted calf-skin.

(Wuthering Heights by Charlotte Brontë)

In this prose example from Charlotte Brontë we hear from the narrator, who is focused on the
character of Catherine and her fate. The prose style mimics his obsession in its long, winding
sentences.

Example 3
“I never know you was so brave, Jim,” she went on comfortingly. “You is just like big mans; you wait for him lift his
head and then you go for him. Ain’t you feel scared a bit? Now we take that snake home and show everybody.
Nobody ain’t seen in this kawn-tree so big snake like you kill.”

53
(My Antonia by Willa Cather)

In this excerpt from My Antonia, Willa Cather uses her prose to suggest the sound of Antonia’s
English. She is a recent immigrant and as the book progresses her English improves, yet never
loses the flavor of being a non-native speaker.

Example 4
Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton. Do not think I am very much impressed by
that as a boxing title, but it meant a lot to Cohn. He cared nothing for boxing, in fact he disliked it, but he learned it
painfully and thoroughly to counteract the feeling of inferiority and shyness he had felt on being treated as a Jew
at Princeton.

(The Sun also Rises by Ernest Hemingway)

Ernest Hemingway wrote his prose in a very direct and straightforward manner. This excerpt
from The Sun Also Rises demonstrates the directness in which he wrote–there is no subtlety to
the narrator’s remark “Do not think I am very much impressed by that as a boxing title.”

Example 5
The Lighthouse was then a silvery, misty-looking tower with a yellow eye that opened suddenly and softly in the
evening.
Now—James looked at the Lighthouse. He could see the white-washed rocks; the tower, stark and straight; he
could see that it was barred with black and white; he could see windows in it; he could even see washing spread
on the rocks to dry. So that was the Lighthouse, was it? No, the other was also the Lighthouse. For nothing was
simply one thing. The other Lighthouse was true too.

(To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf)

Virginia Woolf was noted for her stream-of-consciousness prose style. This excerpt from To the
Lighthouse demonstrates her style of writing in the same way that thoughts occur to a normal
person.

Example 6
And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you
wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock,
everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything
that is speaking. . .ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: “It is time to be drunk! So as
not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you
wish.”

(“Be Drunk” by Charles Baudelaire)

(Taken from: http://www.literarydevices.com/prose/)

Reference
1. "Verse", "Types-Of-Poetry", Screen 1
2. Eliot T S 'Poetry & Prose: The Chapbook' Poetry Bookshop London 1921
3. "Prose (n.)". Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved 19 January 2015.

54
 Unit 9
Complexity of Drama

Drama
Drama belongs simultaneously to the categories of theater and literature: it is the
primary element in a theatrical performance, but it may also be appreciated by reading alone.
Drama developed as a result of the evolution of theater as an art. The emergence of actors at
the forefront, who combine pantomime with the spoken word, heralded the rise of drama as a
type of literature. A number of elements contribute to the specific nature of drama. It has a
plot—that is, it reproduces a course of events—its action has dramatic tension and is broken
down into scenes and episodes, the utterances of its characters have continuity, and the
narrative principle is lacking or subordinate. Intended for group perception, drama has always
dealt with the most topical issues, and its most brilliant models have become popular. In A. S.
Pushkin’s opinion, the purpose of drama is to “have an effect on the crowd, the many, and to
attract their curiosity” (Poln. sobr. soch., vol. 7, 1958, p. 214).
Drama is characterized by deep conflict. The fundamental principle is the tense and
active experience by people of sociohistorical or “eternal” contradictions common to mankind.
A dramatic quality, which is found in all forms of art, prevails inherently in drama. According to
V. G. Belinskii, the dramatic is an important quality of the human spirit, evoked by situations in
which something that is dearly cherished or greatly desired and demands fulfillment is
threatened.
Conflicts permeated with a dramatic quality are embodied in the action, in the behavior
of the protagonists, and in their deeds and accomplishments. The structure of most drama is
based on a single external action. (This corresponds to Aristotle’s principle of “unity of action.”)
The external action is based, as a rule, on a direct struggle between the main characters. The
action proceeds from the beginning, or exposition, to the denouement. It may cover a long
period of time (in medieval and Oriental drama, such as Kalidasa’s Sakuntala), or it may begin
only at its culminating moment, near the denouement (ancient tragedy, such as Sophocles’
Oedipus Rex, and many modern drarnas, including A. N. Ostrovskii’s The Dowerless Girl).
Classical 19th-century aesthetics tended to make these principles of dramatic structure
into absolute rules. Following Hegel, Belinskii viewed drama as the re-creation of willful acts in
collision with one another (“actions” and “reactions”). Belinskii wrote: “The action of a drama
should be concentrated upon a single interest, and all side interests should be excluded. .. . In
drama there should not be a single character that is not necessary to the mechanism of its
development and flow” (Poln. sobr. soch., vol. 5, 1954, p. 53). Moreover “the decision of which
path to choose depends on the hero of the drama and not on the events” (ibid., p. 20).
However, in Shakespeare’s historical plays and Pushkin’s Boris Godunov the unity of
external action is attenuated, and in A. P. Chekhov’s works it is entirely absent, and several
different plot lines are developed simultaneously. A decisive role is often played by inner
action, in which the protagonists do not accomplish much but experience situations of
persistent conflict, clarify their own point of view, and think with intense concentration. Inner
action, which is present even in ancient tragedies and is typified by Shakespeare’s Hamlet,
prevailed in late 19th- and mid-20th-century drama, including works by H. Ibsen, M.
Maeterlinck, Chekhov, Gorky, Shaw, and Brecht, as well as contemporary “intellectual” drama.
The principle of inner action is presented polemically in Shaw’s The Quintessence oflbsenism.
The most important formal features of drama are a continuing series of utterances, which
function as the behavioral acts fractions of the characters, and as a consequence of this, the
55
depiction of the subject matter within a limited space and time. The universal basis of a
dramatic composition is the episode; the time taken to depict the episode—so-called real
time—must appear to correspond to the time perceived by the audience—so-called artistic
time. In folk drama, medieval drama, and Oriental drama, as well as in Shakespeare, Pushkin’s
Boris Godunov, and Brecht, the time and place of the action change quite frequently. European
drama of the 17th through the 19th century was, as a rule, based on a few rather extended
scenic episodes, corresponding to the acts in a theatrical performance. The extreme expression
of compactness in the use of space and time are the famous “unities” based on Boileau’ Art of
Poetry. These continued to be observed until the 19th century (for example, A. S. Griboedov’s
Woe From Wit).
Intended to be “played” on the stage and focusing its action within narrow limits of
space and time, drama generally tends toward conventional treatment of characters, as
Pushkin observed when he said that “of all the kinds of literary work the most untrue to life …
are works of drama” (Poln. sobr. soch., vol. 7, 1958, p. 37). E. Zola and L. N. Tolstoy also spoke
of this quality of works of drama. A readiness to rush headlong into passions and a tendency to
make sudden decisions and sharp intellectual reactions and to express thoughts and feelings
vividly and exquisitely are more typical of the protagonists in drama than of people in real life
or figures in a narrative work. In the opinion of the French actor Talma, the playwright and the
actors bring together “in a narrow space, for the course of some two hours, all the actions, all
the emotions that even a passionate person might experience only in the course of a rather
lengthy period of his life” (Tal’ma o stsenicheskom iskusstve, Moscow, 1888, p. 33).
The playwright strives primarily to capture significant and vivid spiritual currents that
completely fill the consciousness and consist chiefly of reactions by the characters to the
situation at a given moment—to spoken words, to someone’s action, and so forth. Indistinct or
vague thoughts, feelings, and intentions not connected with the situation of a given moment
are represented less concretely and less successfully in drama than in the narrative form.
From antiquity to the 19th century these qualities of drama fully corresponded to
overall tendencies in art and literature. In art transformational, idealizing, or grotesque
elements prevailed over representational ones, and the forms of artistic execution diverged
from the forms of real life. Thus, drama successfully rivaled epic literature and was even
regarded as the “crown of poetry” (Belinskii). In the 19th and 20th centuries drama yielded its
primacy to other art forms, above all the novel, in which individual psychology and the
opposition between the individual and his environment could be represented more subtly,
broadly, and freely. The striving for verisimilitude and naturalism in art, which resulted in a
degeneration of the elevated style of drama (especially in the West in the first half of the 19th
century), also led to radical changes in the structure of dramatic works. Under the influence of
the novel, the traditional conventionality and hyperbole in dramatic execution were reduced to
a minimum (for example, the works of Ostrovskii, Chekhov, and Gorky, with their attempt to
achieve complete authenticity in depicting psychology and everyday existence). However, even
modern drama preserves some elements of “nonverisimilitude”: divergence between the forms
of real life and of life created in drama is inevitable. Even in Chekhov’s plays, which seem to be
the most true-to-life dramas, the characters often express themselves in a conventionally
poetic and declamatory way. V. Nemirovich-Danchenko called Chekhov’s plays “poems in
prose.”
The use of narrative fragments and the increased role played by the montage of scenic
episodes often gives the work of 20th-century playwrights a documentary tone. At the same
time, however, it is precisely in these dramas that the illusion of reality is openly violated and
56
the open demonstration of convention is practiced (for example, when the characters address
the audience directly, when a character’s dreams or recollections are performed on the stage,
or when fragments of songs or lyrics are interjected into the action).
Among the various artistic means of expression used in drama the specific features of
the speech of its characters are invariably the most important. However, the text must be
oriented both toward visually perceived forms of expression on the stage (mime, gesture, and
movement) and orally delivered monologues and dialogues. It must also correspond to the
possibilities of time and space on the stage and to stagecraft (staging mises en scene). Thus, in
the eyes of the actor and director, the value of a drama lies invariably in its suitability for the
stage, which is determined ultimately by the degree to which it presents conflict or dramatic
action.
As a type of literature, drama includes many genres. Two of them—tragedy and
comedy—have existed throughout the history of drama. Characteristic of the Middle Ages were
the mystery, miracle, and morality plays, and school drama. In the 18th century the drama
proper developed, which subsequently became the prevailing genre. Other widespread forms
are melodrama, farce, and vaudeville. Tragicomedy has assumed an important role in modern
drama outside the Soviet Union.
In the 19th and 20th centuries drama has sometimes included a lyric element (the so-
called lyric dramas of Byron, Maeterlinck, and Blok) or a narrative element (the so-called epic
dramas of Brecht). In the mid-20th century “documentary” drama became widespread,
recapitulating real events, historical documents, and memoirs accurately and in detail (for
example, J. Kilty#x2019;s Dear Liar, M. Shatrov’s The Sixth of July, and a stage version of The
Diary of Anne Frank). However varied its forms, drama retain its specific features as a type of
literature.
European drama has its sources in the work of the ancient Greek tragedians Aeschylus,
Sophocles, and Euripides and the writer of comedies Aristophanes. Ancient Roman drama is
represented by Terence and Plautus. Entrusted with the role of public educator, ancient drama
had a high philosophical potential, flowing, sublime tragic images and comedy bright with
carnival atmosphere and satirical play. The golden age of drama in the Orient dates from a later
time. In India dramatic genres flourished and prevailed in the middle of the first millennium
A.D. in the work of the world-famous Kalidasa (fourth and fifth centuries) and Sudraka (fifth
century). The major dramatists in Japan were Zeami Motokiyo (early 15th century), in whose
work the drama first received a polished literary form (the yokyoku genre), and Chikamatsu
Monzaemon (late 17th and early 18th centuries). In the 13th and 14th century’s secular drama
developed in China as a literary genre.
The golden age of European drama coincided with the English and Spanish Renaissance
and the baroque period. The loftiness and tragedy of the Renaissance personality, its titanic and
ambivalent qualities, and its freedom from the gods and dependence on passion and the power
of money, as well as the wholeness and contradictoriness in the course of history, were
embodied in Shakespeare’s works in a genuine folk dramatic form, synthesizing the tragic and
the comic and the real and the fantastic, showing great freedom in composition, and offering
multilevel plots that combined the subtlest intellectual and poetic qualities with the most
vulgar farce. The tragic plays of Calderón de la Barca embodied the ideas of the baroque—the
dualism of the world (the antinomy between the worldly and the spiritual), the permanence of
suffering on earth, and the stoic self-liberation of man through the spiritual mastering of need,
compulsion, and personal de-sires. The drama of French classicism, including tragedies by
Corneille and Racine, developed the conflict between personal feelings and duty to the nation
57
and state with a profound sense of psychology. The “high comedy” of Moliere, bordering on
tragedy in the heat of its passions, combined the traditions of folk performances with the
classical principles of representing character types and blended satire on social evils with the
common people’s joie de vivre.
The ideas and conflicts of the Renaissance were reflected in the dramas of Lessing,
Diderot, Beaumarchais, and Goldoni. At the same time the genre of “middle-class drama”
appeared, falling halfway between tragedy and comedy. The universality of the classical norms
was challenged, and a democratization of drama and its language occurred. The early works of
Schiller and Goethe were precursors of romantic drama. The later dramatic works of the two
writers, created during the period of Weimar classicism, were models of the drama of great
ideas that consciously expressed the meaning of history. In the first half of the 19th century the
most effective dramatic writing was done by the romantics H. von Kleist, Byron, Shelley, and
Hugo. The enthusiasm and passion of the free individual and protests against “bourgeois
values” were expressed in brilliant and dynamic events, usually legendary or historical, and in
the inspired lyricism of the monologues and dialogues.
Realistic drama prevailed in Russian literature from the 1820’s and 1830’s (Griboedov,
Pushkin, and Gogol). Ostrovskii’s dramatic writing in many genres, with its persistent conflict
between spiritual worth and the power of money, its emphasis on the destructive force of the
social, “conditions” of life and the despotism of everyday affairs, its bias toward showing the
inner purity of character of the “little man,” and the prevalence in it of “lifelike” forms, played a
decisive role in creating the Russian national repertoire of the 19th century. L. Tolstoy also
wrote “lifelike” dramas, more or less free of the conventions of dramaturgy and permeated
with unpitying realism and a psychological approach, which was “combined” with epic qualities.
At the turn of the century drama underwent a radical shift with the work of Chekhov. The unity
of outer conflict, willful action by the main characters, and peripeteia in the action ceased to be
obligatory. Chekhov reproduced the spiritual drama of creative and honest intellectuals,
tormentedly seeking but not finding general or supraindividual ideas, filled with exalted,
romantic aspirations and with impotence and sometimes despair in the face of the prosaic
destructiveness of everyday life. He clothed his profoundly dramatic themes in sadly ironic
lyricism. The dynamic of his plays lies not in their eventfulness or in skirmishes of dialogue but
in the lingering conversations and the flow of “impressionistic” states of mind. Cues and
episodes are linked by association—by a contrapuntal principle. The complexity of emotions is
revealed in the flow of ordinary events, creating meanings suggested but not overtly expressed
in the text (a technique simultaneously developed by Maeterlinck).
Western European drama began to prosper at the turn of the century: Ibsen and Shaw
focused attention on urgent social, philosophical, and moral conflicts. Maeterlinck’s symbolic
drama (written in 1896-1918) retained the themes of the “tragic quality of everyday life,” “the
mystery of the soul,” and the principle of the suggested meanings (dialogue behind the words),
but at the same time began to acquire realistic colors and optimistic social ideas. In the 20th
century realistic traditions were further developed by R. Rol-land, J. B. Priestley, S. O’Casey, E.
O’Neill, K. Capek, A. Miller, E. DeFilippo, F. Durrenmatt, E. F. Albee, and T. Williams. The so-
called intellectual drama, which is associated with existentialism (J.-P. Sartre and J. Anouilh),
has had an important place in art outside the Soviet Union. The severe sociopolitical collisions
of the 1920’s through the 1940’s were reflected in the work of Brecht, one of the most
important socialist realists of the West. Brecht’s theater is emphatically rationalistic,
intellectually tense, and frankly conventional, and it has the features of a mass meeting with
actors doing oratorical work.
58
 Soviet drama has taken its inspiration from Gorky, whose play The Enemies marks the
beginning of the history of socialist realist drama. The heroic spirit of revolutionary struggle is
conveyed in the plays of such writers as Vs. Vishnevskii (An Optimistic Tragedy), N. Pogodin (the
trilogy on Lenin), K. Trenev (Liubov larovaia), and B. Lavrenev. Brilliant models of satirical drama
were written by Mayakovsky (The Bedbug and The Bathhouse) as well as by such writers as M.
Bulgakov (The Purple Island) and lu. Smuul (The Colonels Widow). The genre of the fairy tale
play, in which bright lyricism, heroics, and satire are combined, was developed by E. Shvarts.
Socio-psychological drama is represented by the creative work of A. Afinogenov, L. Leonov, A.
Korneichuk, I. Mikitenko, A. Arbuzov, V. Rozov, A. Volodin, I. Drutse, and E. Rannet. Soviet
drama, which is united in its social emphasis, is quite varied in its aesthetic and ethical ideas
and its styles and genres.
One of the basic forms or genres of dramatic writing, in addition to tragedy and comedy.
Like comedy, drama above all re-creates the private life of its characters, but its chief aim is not
to ridicule mores and personalities but to por-tray the individual in dramatic relation with
society. Like tragedy, drama portrays its protagonists in their spiritual development or in the
process of moral change. However, unlike tragic characters, the characters in dramas are not
exceptional. Drama tends to represent sharp contradictions and collisions. At the same time, its
conflicts are not as unrelenting as that in tragedy, and in principle the possibility of their being
resolved is not precluded.
Precursors of drama are found even in classical antiquity (for example, Euripides) and
more often among Renaissance plays. However, drama first appeared as an independent genre
and was given theoretical justification among Enlightenment writers only in the second half of
the 18th century (for example, the middle-class drama of Diderot and Mercier in France and
Lessing in Germany). The interest shown by drama in social reality, everyday life, the moral
ideals of the democratic milieu, and the psychology of the “average” person helped to promote
realistic trends in European art.
In the early stages of the development of drama, works usually offered a favorable
solution to the conflicts depicted. Later, the inner dramatic tension increased, the happy ending
occurred less frequently, and the hero usually remained at odds with society and with himself.
Increasingly, his fate was one of spiritual suffering or loneliness, as in Ostrovskii’s The Storm
and The Dowerless Girl, Ibsen’s The Master Builder and Hedda Gabler, and plays by Chekhov
and Shaw. The hero’s tense ideological struggle against his environment (the general conditions
of life) is the outstanding characteristic of Gorky’s dramas.
In the mid-20th century, psychological drama remains a dominant form. Certain
varieties of drama tend to merge with other genres, actively using the forms of expression
common to them (for example, the techniques of tragicomedy and the theater of masks). The
realistic psychological drama is a widespread form of contemporary Soviet dramatic writing.
T. M. RODINA [8-1425-1) The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The
Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

Drama is
1. A work to be performed by actors on stage, radio, or television; play
2. The genre of literature represented by works intended for the stage
3. The art of the writing and production of plays

Taken from: http://vl-theatre.com

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005
59
 Drama is a mode of fictional representation through dialogue and 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 in verse or prose presenting a story in pantomime or
dialogue, containing conflict of 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.

Types of Drama
Let us consider a few popular types of drama:
• Comedy – Comedies are lighter in tone than ordinary writers, and provide a happy
conclusion. The intention of dramatists in comedies is to make their audience laugh.
Hence, they use quaint circumstances, unusual characters and witty remarks.
• Tragedy – Tragic dramas use darker themes such as disaster, pain and death.
Protagonists often have a tragic flaw—a characteristic that leads them to their downfall.
• Farce – Generally, a farce is a nonsensical genre of drama, which often overacts or
engages slapstick humor.
• Melodrama – Melodrama is an exaggerated drama, which is sensational and appeals
directly to the senses of audience. Just like the farce, the characters are of single
dimension and simple, or may be stereotyped.
• Musical Drama – In musical drama, the dramatists not only tell their story through
acting and dialogue, nevertheless through dance as well as music. Often the story may
be comedic, though it may also involve serious subjects.

Example 1
Comedy:
Much Ado about Nothing is the most frequently performed Shakespearian comedy. The play is
romantically funny in that love between Hero and Claudio is laughable, as they never even get a
single chance to communicate on-stage until they get married. Their relationship lacks
development and depth. They end up merely as caricatures, exemplifying what people face in
life when their relationships are internally weak. Love ove between Benedick and Beatrice is
amusing, as initially their communications are very sparky, and they hate each other. However,
they all of sudden make up, and start loving each other.

Example 2
Tragedy:
Sophocles’’ mythical and immortal drama, Oedipus Rex, is thought to be his best classical
tragedy. Aristotle has adjudged this play as one of the greatest examples of tragic drama in his
book, Poetics by giving following reasons:
• The play arouses emotions of pity and fear, and achieves the tragic katharsis.
• It shows the downfall of an extraordinary man of high rank, Oedipus.
• The central character suffers due to his tragic error called hamartia; as he murders his
real father, Laius, and then marries his real mother, Jocasta.
• Hubris is the cause of Oedipus’ downfall.

60
Example 3
Farce:
Oscar Wilde’s play, The Importance of Being Earnest, is a very popular example of Victorian
farce. In this play, a man uses two identities; one as a serious person Jack (his actual name) that
he uses for Cesily, his ward, and as a rogue named Ernest for his beloved woman, Gwendolyn.
Unluckily, Gwendolyn loves him partially because she loves the name Ernest. It is when Jack and
Earnest must come on-stage together for Cesily, then Algernon comes in to play Earnest’ role,
and ward immediately falls in love with another Ernest. Thus, two young women think that they
love the same man – an occurrence that amuses the audience.

Example 4
Melodrama:
The Heiress is based on Henry James’ novel the Washington Square. Directed for stage
performance by William Wyler, this play shows an ungraceful and homely daughter of a
domineering and rich doctor falling in love with a young man, Morris Townsend wishes to elope
with him, but he leaves her in lurch. Author creates melodrama towards the end, when
Catherine teaches a lesson to Morris and leaves him instead.

Function of Drama
Drama is one of the best literary forms through which dramatists can directly speak to their
readers or audience as well as they can receive instant feedback of audience. A few dramatists
use their characters as a vehicle to convey their thoughts, values such as poets do with
personas, and novelists do with narrators. Since drama uses spoken words and dialogues, thus
language of characters plays a vital role, as it may give clues to their feelings, personalities,
backgrounds, and change in feelings, etc. In drama the characters live out a story without any
comments of the author, providing the audience a direct presentation of characters’ life
experiences.
(Taken from: https://literarydevices.net/drama/)

References
Aristotle. Ob iskusstve poezii. Moscow, 1957.
Hegel, G. W. F. “Dramaticheskaia poeziia.” In his Soch., vol. 14. Moscow, 1958.
Belinskii, V. G. O drame iteatre. Moscow-Leningrad, 1948.
Brecht, B. O teatre. Moscow, 1960. (Translated from German.)
Vol’kenshtein, V. Dramaturgiia. Moscow, 1969.
Anikst, A. Teoriia dramy ot Aristotelia do Lessinga. Moscow, 1967.
Sakhnovskii-Pankeev, V. A. Drama. Leningrad, 1969.
Kariagin, A. A. Drama kak esteticheskaia problema. Moscow, 1971.
Thompson, A. R. The Anatomy of Drama, 2nded. Los Angeles, 1946.
Dürrenmatt, F. Theaterprobleme, 3rd ed. Zurich, 1955.
Styan, J. L. The Elements of Drama. Cambridge (England), 1963.
Clark, B. H. European Theories of the Drama. Revised by H. Popkin. New York, 1965.
Bentley, E. The Life of Drama. London, 1966.
Episches Theater. Cologne-Berlin, 1966.
Kerr, W. Tragedy and Comedy. New York, 1967.
Calderwood, J. L., and H. E. Toliver, eds. Perspectives on Drama. New York, 1968.
61
 Unit 10
Literary Movements

Literary movements are marked by shared traits of style, subject, and literary genre.
While literature predates this list of movements, literary movements began in the early modern
period, well after the Renaissance.

Date Event
Neoclassicism (1660 to 1798)
The neoclassical movement in literature was based on classical ideal, skepticism and
1660
satire. Noted authors during this movement include Alexander Pope and Jonathan
Swift.
Revolutionary (1765 to 1830)
1765 The revolutionary literary movement incorporates both political and literary writings in
colonial and early revolutionary America.
Romanticism (1798 to 1832)
1798 Romanticism emphasized emotion and imagination. Eventually, romanticism led to the
development of the Gothic novel.
American Romanticism (1830 to 1865)
American romanticism was predominantly fiction, rather than poetry. Unlike English
1830
romanticism, American romanticism had a strong and sometimes morbid interest in
history.
Victorian (1832 to 1901)
Victorian literature dates to the period of Queen Victoria's reign. The novel came to
1832
prominence in this period, and a number of authors showed a growing interest in the
grittier aspects of life.
American Transcendentalism (1836 to 1860)
1836 American transcendentalism is a literary movement marked by a strong interest in
nature. Emerson is the best-known of the American transcendentalists.
Realism (1865 to 1914)
1865 Realists had an interest in everyday life and poverty, as well as simplicity. Noted authors
include Flaubert and Tolstoy.
Stream of Consciousness (Early 20th Century)
Stream of consciousness writing eliminated authorial presence, sharing a loosely
2000
organized pattern of thoughts. James Joyce and Virginia Woolf are well-known authors
in this movement.
Modernism (Early 20th Century)
2000 Modernism is a more varied movement, incorporating different styles, as well as
reactions to growing science and technology.
Naturalism (1900 to 1930)
Naturalism is a philosophical movement in literature. Naturalists identified humans as
1900
animals, studying their character in relation to their surroundings. Emile Zola is a well-
known naturalist author.

62
 Edwardian (1901 to 1910)
1901 Edwardian literature marked a growing division between high and low literature, as well
as the growth of children's literature.
The Lost Generation (1918 to 1929)
1918 Several of the best known authors of the 20th century fall into this literary movement.
These authors all lived and worked in Paris between the two world wars.
Harlem Renaissance (1920s)
1920 During the 1920s, in Harlem, New York, a strong literary movement developed among
African-American writers, including Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston.
Beat (1950s and 1960s)
The beat authors were primarily poets. This was a counterculture and youth culture
1950
movement beginning in the 1950s. Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg were well known
beat poets.
Postmodernism (1965 to Present)
Postmodernism is a literary movement embracing diversity, word play and other
1965
attributes of modern literature. Jorge Luis Borges is an excellent example of modern
literary postmodernism.

Reference:
http://www.softschools.com/timelines/literary_movements_timeline/421/

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 Unit 11
Critical Approaches to Literature

Literature Criticism
What is literature criticism? It is a description and evaluation of its object: literature
(literary writings, writers, literary classes, etc. Literary criticism is not an abstract, intellectual
exercise; it is a natural human response to literature. If a friend informs you she is reading a
book you have just finished, it would be odd indeed if you did not begin swapping opinions.
Literary criticism is nothing more than discourse—spoken or written—about literature. A
student who sits quietly in a morning English class, intimidated by the notion of literary
criticism, will spend an hour that evening talking animatedly about the meaning of R.E.M. lyrics
or comparing the relative merits of the three Star Trek T.V. series. It is inevitable that people
will ponder, discuss, and analyze the works of art that interest them.
The informal criticism of friends talking about literature tends to be casual, unorganized,
and subjective. Since Aristotle, however, philosophers, scholars, and writers have tried to
create more precise and disciplined ways of discussing literature. Literary critics have borrowed
concepts from other disciplines, like linguistics, psychology, and anthropology, to analyze imagi-
native literature more perceptively. Some critics have found it useful to work in the abstract
area of literary theory, criticism that tries to formulate general principles rather than discuss
specific texts. Mass media critics, such as newspaper reviewers, usually spend their time
evaluating works—telling us which books are worth reading, which plays not to bother seeing.
But most serious literary criticism is not primarily evaluative; it assumes we know that Othello
or “The Death of Ivan Ilych” are worth reading. Instead, it is analytical; it tries to help us better
understand a literary work.

Critical Approaches to Literature

In the following pages you will find overviews of nine critical approaches to literature. While
these nine methods do not exhaust the total possibilities of literary criticism, they represent the
most widely used contemporary approaches. Although presented separately, the approaches
are not necessarily mutually exclusive; many critics mix methods to suit their needs and
interests. A historical critic may use formalist techniques to analyze a poem; a biographical
critic will frequently use psychological theories to analyze an author. The summaries do not try
to provide a history of each approach; nor do they try to present the latest trends in each
school. Their purpose is to give you a practical introduction to each critical method and then
provide one or more representative examples of criticism. If one of these critical methods
interests you, why not try to write a class paper using the approach?

1. Formalist Criticism
Formalist criticism regards literature as a unique form of human knowledge that needs
to be examined on its own terms. “The natural and sensible starting point for work in literary
scholarship,” René Wellek and Austin Warren wrote in their influential Theory of Literature, “is
the interpretation and analysis of the works of literature themselves.” To a formalist, a poem or
story is not primarily a social, historical, or biographical document; it is a literary work that can
be understood only by reference to its intrinsic literary features—those elements, that is, found
in the text itself. To analyze a poem or story, the formalist critic, therefore, focuses on the
words of the text rather than facts about the author’s life or the historical milieu in which it was
written. The critic would pay special attention to the formal features of the text—the style
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irony in Vanity Fair; Humor in Dickens’ writing, simplicity in Sherwood Anderson or in
Hemingway, etc.） structure (sentence structure: short, long, simple, complicated, loose
sentence; repetition, parallelism, climax, anti-climax; oxymoron; normal or deviation, imagery,
symbols, figure of speech, tone, and genre (poem: fiction: play or film implied meaning.). These
features, however, are usually not examined in isolation, because formalist critics believe that
what gives a literary text its special status as art is how all of its elements work together to
create the reader’s total experience. As Robert Penn Warren commented, “Poetry does not
inhere in any particular element but depends upon the set of relationships, the structure, which
we call the poem.
A key method that formalists use to explore the intense relationships within a poem is close
reading, a careful step-by-step analysis and explication of a text. The purpose of close reading
is to understand how various elements in a literary text work together to shape its effects on
the reader. Since formalists believe that the various stylistic and thematic elements of literary
work influence each other, these critics insist that form and content cannot be meaningfully
separated. The complete interdependence of form and content is what makes a text literary.
When we extract a work’s theme or paraphrase its meaning, we destroy the aesthetic
experience of the work.
When Robert Langbaum examines Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess”, he uses several
techniques of formalist criticism. First, he places the poem in relation to its literary form, the
dramatic monologue. Second, he discusses the dramatic structure of the poem—why the duke
tells his story, which he addresses, and the physical circumstances in which he speaks. Third,
Langbaum analyzes how the duke tells his story—his tone, manner, even the order in which he
makes his disclosures. Langbaum does not introduce facts about Browning’s life into his
analysis; nor does he try to relate the poem to the historical period or social conditions that
produced it. He focuses on the text itself to explain how it produces a complex effect on the
reader.

But the formalist critic is concerned primarily with the work itself. From and content can’t
be separated.

Example:
Color Imagery in Tess; The Use of Figure of Contrast in "The Solitary Reaper";
The Major Writing Skills Washington Irving Used in His The Legend of Sleepy Hollow;
Verbal Irony and an Irony of Fate in The Cop and the Anthem;

The formalist critic knows as well as anyone that poems and plays and novels are written by
men—that they do not somehow happen—and that they are written as expressions of
particular personalities and are written from all sorts of motives—for money, from a desire to
express oneself, for the sake of a cause, etc. Moreover, the formalist critic knows as well as
anyone that literary works are merely potential until they are read—that is, that they are
recreated in the minds of actual readers, who vary enormously in their capabilities, their
interests, their prejudices, their ideas. Speculation on the mental processes of the author takes
the critic away from the work into biography and psychology. There is no reason, of course,
why he should not turn away into biography and psychology. Such explorations are very much
worth making. But they should not be confused with an account of the work. Such studies
describe the process of composition, not the structure of the thing composed, and they may be

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performed quite as validly for the poor work as for the good one. They may be validly
performed for any kind of expression—non-literary as well as literary.

2．Biographical Criticism
Biographical criticism begins with the simple but central insight that literature is written by
actual people and that understanding an author’s life can help readers more thoroughly
comprehend the work. Anyone who reads the biography of a writer quickly sees how much an
author’s experience shapes—both directly and indirectly—what he or she creates. Reading the
biography will also change (and usually deepen) our response to the work. Sometimes even
knowing a single important fact illuminates our reading of a poem or story. Learning, for
example, that Josephine Miles was confined to a wheelchair or that Weldon Kees committed
suicide at forty-one will certainly make us pay attention to certain aspects of their poems we
might otherwise have missed or considered unimportant. A formalist critic might complain that
we would also have noticed those things through careful textual analysis, but biographical
information provided the practical assistance of underscoring subtle but important meanings in
the poems. Though many literary theorists have assailed biographical criticism on philosophical
grounds, the biographical approach to literature has never disappeared because of its obvious
practical advantage in illuminating literary texts.
It may be helpful here to make a distinction between biography and biographical criticism.
Biography is, strictly speaking, a branch of history; it provides a written account of a person’s
life. To establish and interpret the facts of a poet’s life, for instance, a biographer would use all
the available information—not just personal documents like letters and diaries, but also the
poems for the possible light they might shed on the subject’s life. A biographical critic,
however, is not concerned with recreating the record of an author’s life. Biographical criticism
focuses on explicating the literary work by using the insight provided by knowledge of the
author’s life. Quite often biographical critics, like Brett C. Millier in her discussion of Elizabeth
Bishop’s “One Art,” will examine the drafts of a poem or story to see both how the work came
into being and how it might have been changed from its autobiographical origins.
A reader, however, must use biographical interpretations cautiously. Writers are notorious
for revising the facts of their own lives; they often delete embarrassments and invent
accomplishments while changing the details of real episodes to improve their literary impact.
John Cheever, for example, frequently told reporters about his sunny, privileged youth; after
the author’s death, his biographer Scott Donaldson discovered a childhood scarred by a distant
mother, a failed, alcoholic father, and nagging economic uncertainty. Likewise, Cheever’s
outwardly successful adulthood was plagued by alcoholism, sexual promiscuity, and family
tension. The chilling facts of Cheever’s life significantly changed the way critics read his stories.
The danger in a famous writer s case—Sylvia Plath and F. Scott Fitzgerald are two modern
examples—is that the life story can overwhelm and eventually distort the work. A savvy
biographical critic always remembers to base an interpretation on what is in the text itself;
biographical data should amplify the meaning of the text, not drown it out with irrelevant
material.

Example:
Isolation of Emily Dickinson as Revealed in Her Poems; Walt Whitman: A Lover of Death;
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; A Biographical Study of David Copperfield

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3． Historical Criticism
Historical criticism seeks to understand a literary work by investigating the social, cultural,
and intellectual context that produced it—a context that necessarily includes the artist’s
biography and milieu. Historical critics are less concerned with explaining a work’s literary
significance for today’s readers than with helping us understand the work by recreating, as
nearly as possible, the exact meaning and impact it had on its original audience. A historical
reading of a literary work begins by exploring the possible ways in which the meaning of the
text has changed over time. The analysis of William Blake’s poem “London”, for instance,
carefully examines how certain words had different connotations for the poem’s original
readers than they do today. It also explores the probable associations an eighteenth— century
English reader would have made with certain images and characters, like the poem’s persona,
the chimney-sweeper—a type of exploited child laborer who, fortunately, no longer exists in
our society.
Reading ancient literature, no one doubts the value of historical criticism. There have been
so many social, cultural, and linguistic changes that some older texts are incomprehensible
without scholarly assistance. But historical criticism can even help us better understand modern
texts. To return to Weldon Kees’s “For My Daughter,” for example, we learn a great deal by
considering two rudimentary historical facts—the year in which the poem was first published
(1940) and the nationality of its author (American)—and then asking ourselves how this
information has shaped the meaning of the poem. In 1940, war had already broken out in
Europe and most Americans realized that their country, still recovering from the Depression,
would soon be drawn into it; for a young man, like Kees, the future seemed bleak, uncertain,
and personally dangerous. Even this simple historical analysis helps explain at least part of the
bitter pessimism of Kees’s poem, though a psychological critic would rightly insist that Kees’s
dark personality also played a crucial role. In writing a paper on a poem, you might explore how
the time and place of its creation affected its meaning. For a splendid example of how to
recreate the historical context of a poem’s genesis, read the following account by Hugh Kenner
of Ezra Pound’s imagistic “In a Station of the Metro.”

4．Gender Criticism
Gender criticism examines how sexual identity influences the creation and reception of
literary works. Gender studies began with the feminist movement and were influenced by such
works as Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949) and Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics (1970)
as well as sociology, psychology, and anthropology. Feminist critics believe that culture has
been so completely dominated by men that literature is full of unexamined “male-produced”
assumptions. They see their criticism correcting this imbalance by analyzing and combating
patriarchal attitudes.
Feminist criticism can be divided into two distinct varieties. Feminist criticism has explored
how an author’s gender influences—consciously or unconsciously—his or her writing. It is
concerned with woman as writer—with woman as the producer of textual meaning, with the
history, themes, genres, and structures of literature by women. Its subjects include the
psychodynamics of female creativity; linguistics and the problem of a female language; the
trajectory of the individual or collective female literary career; literary history; and, of course,
studies of particular writers and works.
Example: While a formalist critic emphasized the universality of Emily Dickinson’s poetry by
demonstrating how powerfully the language, imagery, and myth-making of her poems combine

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to affect a generalized reader, Sandra M. Gilbert, a leading feminist critic, has identified
attitudes and assumptions in Dickinson’s poetry that she believes are essentially female.
Another important theme in feminist criticism is analyzing how sexual identity influences
the reader of a text. It is concerned with woman as reader—with woman as the consumer of
male-produced literature, and with the way in which the hypothesis of a female reader changes
our apprehension of a given text, awakening us to the significance of its sexual codes. It is a
historically grounded inquiry which probes the ideological assumptions of literary phenomena.
Its subjects include the images and stereotypes of women in literature, the omissions of and
misconceptions about women in criticism. It is also concerned with the exploitation and
manipulation of the female audience, especially in popular culture and film; and with the
analysis of woman-as-sign in semiotic systems. The reader sees a text through the eyes of his or
her sex.
Finally, feminist critics carefully examine how the images of men and women in imaginative
literature reflect or reject the social forces that have historically kept the sexes from achieving
total equality.
Recently, gender criticism has expanded beyond its original feminist perspective. Critics
have explored the impact of different sexual orientations on literary creation and reception. A
men’s movement has also emerged in response to feminism. The men’s movement does not
seek to reject feminism but to rediscover masculine identity in an authentic, contemporary
way. Led by poet Robert Bly, the men s movement has paid special attention to interpreting
poetry and fables as myths of psychic growth and sexual identity.

Example:
Female Characters in Lawrence’s Literary Works; Character Analysis of Scarlett in Gone with the
Wind; Gender Influence in the Growth of Stephen

5．Psychological Criticism
Modern psychology has had an immense effect on both literature and literary criticism.
Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theories changed our notions of human behavior by exploring
new or controversial areas like wish-fulfillment, sexuality, the unconscious, and repression.
Freud also expanded our sense of how language and symbols operate by demonstrating their
ability to reflect unconscious fears or desires. Freud admitted that he himself had learned a
great deal about psychology from studying literature: Sophocles, Shakespeare, Goethe, and
Dostoevsky were as important to the development of his ideas as were his clinical studies.
Some of Freud’s most influential writing was, in a broad sense, literary criticism, such as his
psychoanalytic examination of Sophocles’ Oedipus.
This famous section of The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) often raises an important
question for students: was Freud implying that Sophocles knew or shared Freud’s theories?
(Variations of this question can be asked for most critical approaches: does using a critical
approach require that the author under scrutiny believed in it?) The answer is, of course, no; in
analyzing Sophocles’ Oedipus, Freud paid the classical Greek dramatist the considerable
compliment that the playwright had such profound insight into human nature that his
characters display the depth and complexity of real people. In focusing on literature, Freud and
his disciples like Carl Jung, Ernest Jones, Marie Bonaparte, and Bruno Bettelheim endorse the
belief that great literature truthfully reflects life.
Psychological criticism is a diverse category, but it often employs three approaches. First, it
investigates the creative process of the artist: what is the nature of literary genius and how
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does it relate to normal mental functions? (Philosophers and poets have also wrestled with this
question, as you can see in selections from Plato and Wordsworth in the “Criticism: On Poetry”)
The second major area for psychological criticism is the psychological study of a particular
artist. Most modern literary biographies employ psychology to understand their subject’s
motivations and behavior. One recent book, Diane Middle brook’s controversial Anne Sexton: A
Biography, actually used tapes of the poet’s sessions with her psychiatrist as material for the
study. The third common area of psychological criticism is the analysis of fictional characters.
Freud’s study of Oedipus is the prototype for this approach that tries to bring modern insights
about human behavior into the study of how fictional people act.

Example:
Sigmund Freud (1856—1939)
THE DESTINY OF OEDIPUS

Being translated by James Strachey. The lines from Oedipus the King are given in the version of
David Qrene.

If Oedipus the King moves a modern audience no less than it did the contemporary Greek
one, the explanation can only be that its effect does not lie in the contrast between destiny and
human will, but is to be looked for in the particular nature of the material on which that
contrast is exemplified. There must be something which makes a voice within us ready to
recognize the compelling force of destiny in the Oedipus, while we can dismiss as merely
arbitrary such dispositions as are laid down in Die Ahnfrau or other modern tragedies of
destiny. And a factor of this kind is in fact involved in the story of King Oedipus. His destiny
moves us only because it might have been ours—because the oracle laid the same curse upon
us before our birth as upon him. It is the fate of all of us, perhaps, to direct our first sexual
impulse towards our mother and our first hatred and our first murderous wish against our
father. Our dreams convince us that that is so. King Oedipus, who slew his father Laius and
married his mother Jocasta, merely shows us the fulfillment of our own childhood wishes. But,
more fortunate than he, we have meanwhile succeeded, insofar as we have not become
psychoneurotics, in detaching our sexual impulses from our mothers and in forgetting our
jealousy of our fathers. Here is one in whom these primeval wishes of our childhood have been
fulfilled, and we shrink back from him with the whole..........

Example:
Hamlet’s Philosophical and Psychological Dilemma in His “To Be or Not to Be” Soliloquy;

6．Socilological Criticism
Sociological criticism examines literature in the cultural, economic, and political context in
which it is written or received. “Art is not created in a vacuum,” critic Wilbur Scott observed, “it
is the work not simply of a person, but of an author fixed in time and space, answering a
community of which he is an important, because articulate part.” Sociological criticism explores
the relationships between the artist and society. Sometimes it looks at the sociological status of
the author to evaluate how the profession of the writer in a particular milieu affected what was
written. Sociological criticism also analyzes the social content of literary works—what cultural,
economic or political values a particular text implicitly or explicitly promotes. Finally,
sociological criticism examines the role the audience has in shaping literature. A sociological
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view of Shakespeare, for example, might look at the economic position of Elizabethan
playwrights and actors; it might also study the political ideas expressed in the plays or discuss
how the nature of an Elizabethan theatrical audience (which was usually all male unless the
play was produced at court) helped determine the subject, tone, and language of the plays.
An influential type of sociological criticism has been Marxist criticism, which focuses on the
economic and political elements of art. Marxist criticism, like the work of the Hungarian
philosopher Georg Lukacs, often explores the ideological content of literature. Whereas a
formalist critic would maintain that form and content are inextricably blended, Lukacs believed
that content determines form and that therefore, all art is political. Even if a work of art ignores
political issues, it makes a political statement, Marxist critics believe, because it endorses the
economic and political status quo. Consequently, Marxist criticism is frequently evaluative and
judges some literary work better than others on an ideological basis; this tendency can lead to
reductive judgment, as when Soviet critics rated Jack London a novelist superior to William
Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Edith Wharton, and Henry James, because he illustrated the
principles of class struggle more clearly. But, as an analytical tool, Marxist criticism, like other
sociological methods, can illuminate political and economic dimensions of literature other
approaches overlook.

Example:
Heathcliff: A Product of Social Environment; The American Dream in The Great Gatsby;
Collapse of the American Dream in Death of a Salesman; The Twisted Human Nature in
Wuthering Heights

7．Mythological Criticism
Mythological critics look for the recurrent universal patterns underlying most literary
works. (“Myth and Narrative,” for a definition of myth and a discussion of its importance to the
literary imagination.) Mythological criticism is an interdisciplinary approach that combines the
insights of anthropology, psychology, history, and comparative religion. If psychological
criticism examines the artist as an individual, mythological criticism explores the artist’s
common humanity by tracing how the individual imagination uses myths and symbols common
to different cultures and epochs.
A central concept in mythological criticism is the archetype, a symbol, character, situation,
or image that evokes a deep universal response. The idea of the archetype came into literary
criticism from the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, a lifetime student of myth and religion. Jung
believed that all individuals share a “collective unconscious,” a set of primal memories common
to the human race, existing below each person’s conscious mind.
Archetypal images (which often relate to experiencing primordial phenomena like the sun,
moon, fire, night, and blood), Jung believed, trigger the collective unconscious. We do not need
to accept the literal truth of the collective unconscious, however, to endorse the archetype as a
helpful critical concept. The late Northrop Frye defined the archetype in considerably less
occult terms as “a symbol, usually an image, which recurs often enough in literature to be
recognizable as an element of one’s literary experience as a whole.”
Identifying archetypal symbols and situations in literary works, mythological critics almost
inevitably link the individual text under discussion to a broader context of works that share an
underlying pattern. In discussing Shakespeare’s Hamlet, for instance, a mythological critic might
relate Shakespeare’s Danish prince to other mythic sons avenging their fathers’ deaths, like
Orestes from Greek myth or Sigmund of Norse legend; or, in discussing Othello, relate the
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sinister figure of Iago to the devil in traditional Christian belief. Critic Joseph Campbell took such
comparisons even further; his compendious study The Hero with a Thousand Faces
demonstrates how similar mythic characters appear in virtually every culture on every
continent.

Example:
Northrop Frye (1912—1991)
MYTHIC ARCHETYPES
We begin our study of archetypes, then, with a world of myth, an abstract or purely literary
world of fictional and thematic design, unaffected by canons of plausible adaptation to familiar
experience. In terms of narrative, myth is the imitation of actions near or at the conceivable
limits of desire. The gods enjoy beautiful women, fight one another with prodigious strength,
comfort and assist man, or else watch his miseries from the height of their immortal freedom.
The fact that myth operates at the top level of human desire does not mean that it necessarily
presents its world as attained or attainable by human beings. . .

Example:
“Lucifer in Shakespeare’s Othello”；

8．Deconstructionist Criticism
Deconstructionist criticism rejects the traditional assumption that language can accurately
represent reality. Language, according to deconstructionists, is a fundamentally unstable
medium; consequently, literary texts, which are made up of words, have no fixed, single
meaning. Deconstructionists insist, according to critic Paul de Man, on “the impossibility of
making the actual expression coincide with what has to be expressed, of making the actual
signs coincide with what is signified.” Since they believe that literature cannot definitively
express its subject matter, deconstructionists tend to shift their attention away from what is
being said to how language is being used in a text.
Paradoxically, deconstructionist criticism often resembles formalist criticism; both methods
usually involve close reading. But while a formalist usually tries to demonstrate how the diverse
elements of a text cohere into meaning, the deconstructionist approach attempts to show how
the text “deconstructs,” that is, how it can be broken down—by a skeptical critic— into
mutually irreconcilable positions. A biographical or historical critic might seek to establish the
author’s intention as a means to interpreting a literary work, but deconstructionists reject the
notion that the critic should endorse the myth of authorial control over language.
Deconstructionist critics like Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault have therefore called for “the
death of the author,” that is, the rejection of the assumption that the author, no matter how
ingenious, can fully control the meaning of a text. They have also announced the death of
literature as a special category of writing. In their view, poems and novels are merely words on
a page that deserve no privileged status as art; all texts are created equal—equally
untrustworthy, that is.
Deconstructionists focus on how language is used to achieve power. Since they believe, in
the words of critic David Lehman, that “there are no truths, only rival interpretations,”
deconstructionists try to understand how some “interpretations come to be regarded as truth.
A major goal of deconstruction is to demonstrate how those supposed truths are at best
provisional and at worst contradictory.

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 Deconstruction, as you may have inferred, calls for intellectual subtlety and skill, and isn’t
for a novice to leap into. If you pursue your literary studies beyond the introductory stage, you
will want to become more familiar with its assumptions. Deconstruction may strike you as a
negative, even destructive, critical approach, and yet its best practitioners are adept at
exposing the inadequacy of much conventional criticism. By patient analysis, they can
sometimes open up the most familiar text and find in it fresh and unexpected significance.

9．Reader-Response Criticism
Reader-response criticism attempts to describe what happens in the reader’s mind while
interpreting a text. If traditional criticism assumes that imaginative writing is a creative act,
reader-response theory recognizes that reading is also a creative process. Reader-response
critics believe that no text provides self-contained meaning; literary texts do not exist
independently of readers’ interpretations. A text, according to this critical school, is not finished
until it is read and interpreted. The practical problem then arises that no two individuals
necessarily read a text in exactly the same way. Rather than declare one interpretation correct
and the other mistaken, reader-response criticism recognizes the inevitable plurality of
readings. Instead of trying to ignore or reconcile the contradictions inherent in this situation, it
explores them.
The easiest way to explain reader-response criticism is to relate it to the common
experience of rereading a favorite book after many years. Rereading a novel as an adult, for
example, that “changed your life” as an adolescent, is often a shocking experience. The book
may seem substantially different. The character you remembered liking most now seems less
admirable, and another character you disliked now seems more sympathetic. Has the book
changed? Very unlikely, but you certainly have in the intervening years. Reader-response
criticism explores how the different individuals (or classes of individuals) see the same text
differently. It emphasizes how religious, cultural, and social values affect readings; it also
overlaps with gender criticism in exploring how men and women read the same text with
different assumptions.
While reader-response criticism rejects the notion that there can be a single correct reading
for a literary text, it doesn’t consider all readings permissible. Each text creates limits to its
possible interpretations. As Stanley Fish admits in the following critical selection, we cannot
arbitrarily place an Eskimo in William Faulkner’s story “A Rose for Emily” (though Professor Fish
does ingeniously imagine a hypothetical situation where this bizarre interpretation might
actually be possible) poem would be forthcoming. This poem is not only a “refusal to mourn,”
like that of Dylan Thomas, it is a refusal to elegize. The whole elegiac tradition, like its cousin
the funeral oration, turns finally away from mourning toward acceptance, revival, renewal, a
return to the concerns of life, symbolized by the very writing of the poem. Life goes on; there is
an audience; and the mourned person will live through accomplishments, influence,
descendants, and also (not least) in the elegiac poem itself. Merwin rejects all that. If I wrote an
elegy for X, the person for whom I have always written, X would not be alive to read it;
therefore, there is no reason to write an elegy for the one person in my life who most deserves
one; therefore, there is no reason to write any elegy, anymore, ever.

Reference
X. J. Kennedy, An Introduction to Poetry, New York: HarperCollins College Publishers, 1994
Gloria Henderson, William Day & Sandra Waller, Literature and Ourselves, New York:
HarperCollins College Publishers, 1994
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 Unit 12
Trinities in Discoering Meaning on Literature

TRINITIES IN DISCOVERING MEANINGS ON LITERATURE

Instructional Scheme on Literary Studies

Sarif Syamsu Rizal

([email protected])
English Study Program Faculty of Humanities
Universitas Dian Nuswanroto, Indonesia

Abstract: This paper’s title is Trinities in Discovering Meaning on Literature aiming to discuss
Instructional Scheme on Literary Studies. Methods of the study consist of qualitative design in
explaining discourse, library research in collecting data, and problem-based approach in
answering the problem statements, the three-substances of which are significant to English
teaching on literary studies. Literary studies are the humanistic studies of literature and literary
research is the final project for the students who are going to complete their study at notably
English Literature Study Programs. Their final project must compose scientific written report. It
is in the form of writing literary analysis. The most significant point to emphasize is that literary
analysis is an argument about a literary work and that whatever recommendations are made
throughout the interpretation from the need to write persuasively about a clear, scientific, and
debatable thesis. The writing on literary analysis is getting branched out being up to date in any
academic atmosphere, of course, in line with the development of theory, history, and criticism
on literature. This article is an alternative way for instructional manuscript blending theoretical
or conceptual ideas with practical ideas about an alternative pedagogy in the area of English
literary studies teaching and research. It is designed to help teachers specialized in literature
introducing the writing literary analysis to their students. I deliver this article because I am sure
that the trinities in the science of literature must be comprehended by the teachers before they
transmit it in the classroom activities in teaching English Literary Studies. The term “Trinities”
above is going to be explained in a discussion.

Keywords: trinities, literature, instructional scheme, literary studies

The variety or pluralism of knowledge makes us, the teachers and the students, hard to
comprehend its definition. The knowledge has its observation medium and theory. It has its
type of hypothesis. The pluralism of knowledge is located not only in its material object but also
in its formal object. The material objects are such three major literary works as text of fiction,
drama, and poetry (Klarer, 1999:3). It can be said that these objects are genres of literary works
to analyse. The formal objects are aspects being used as paradigms and theoretical base,
including paradigm of inquiry, approaches, methods, techniques, and way and instruments.
These aspects can be applied in chapter methodology of literary research such as statement of
the problems, sources of data, units of analysis, techniques of data collection, techniques of
data analysis and research steps.
Frequently people are not interested in studying literature because there is an
assumption that studying as researching abstract findings and less giving certainty. But in real
matter of doing literary research, deep-studying the literature is able to represent one of
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possibilities that open to infiltrate the human being’s problems. During the time, the literature
represents knowledge applying in one same horizon in education institution that is in faculty of
languages and letters, faculty of humanity and culture, or faculty of cultural studies.
Literary research is a final project for the students who are going to finish their study at
notably Literary Studies section. The final project must compose scientific written report. It is in
the form of writing on literary analysis. The most significant point to emphasize is that literary
analysis is an argument about a literary work and that whatever recommendations are made
throughout the argument from the need to write persuasively about a clear, scientific, and
debatable thesis. The writing on literary analysis is getting branched out being up to date in any
academic atmosphere, in line with the development of theory, history, and critic on literature.
This article is an instructional manuscript blending theoretical or conceptual ideas with
practical ideas about an alternative pedagogy in the area of English literary studies teaching and
research. This article is designed to help teachers specialized in literature introduce the writing
on literary analysis to their students. I deliver this article because I am sure that the trinities in
the science of literature must be comprehended by the teachers before they transmit it in the
classroom activities in teaching English Literary Studies. The term “Trinities” above is going to
be explained on the following discussion.

DISCUSSION
Literature can be work of art and work of science. As the work of art, it can entertain the
readers, but as the work of science, it can educate the readers. In this case, the good teachers
and the good students should be the good readers. As what Budianta said that Horatio, a
roman philosopher, in Art Poetica, stated that literature has two significant aspects, i.e. dulce et
utile (2002: 19). This discussion is delivered to share any of the scientific principles of literary
studies, the scientific areas of literary studies, and the analytic levels on literary studies.

The First Trinity on Literature: The Scientific Principalities of Literary Studies

In comprehending a science philosophically, there are three principalities which anyone
must comprehend; i.e. ontology, axiology, and epistemology. Ontological principality
represents essence of study object. (Setiardja, 2005: 5-7). Axiological principality represents
target of science beneficial for the shake of human beings, meaning that the science has to be
exploited as medium to increase the human life level (Setiardja, 2005: 41-55). Epistemological
principality represents scientific methodology. The methodology is a set of administration to
science which is systemic and systematic. Systemic and systematic represent method criteria of
the science. Systemic means in unity there is relevancy of inter-elements and systematic means
in unity there is logical sequence of inter-steps (Setiardja, 2005: 55-64).
The discussion delivers the principalities of the science saying that there are three
aspects with reciprocal relevancy in process of scientific development. In understanding literary
studies, these three principalities must be comprehended; i.e. ontology, axiology, and
epistemology of literary studies. Or, it gains understanding of circumstantial interpretative
about essence of study object, target of significant benefit, and methodologies of literary
studies systemically-systematically-comprehensively so that it can be useful as enrichment
insights of literary studies development.

The Ontological Principality of Literary Studies

The ontological principality of literary studies means the essence or object of literary
studies. Based on this principality of science, the writer explains the object of literary study.
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Setiardja (2005:4) states that each science must have certain object. The essence of the study
object consists of material object and formal object. The material object indicates study
material of its pertinent sciences such as linguistics, semiotics, stylistics, ideology, sociology,
psychology, and many more contemporary disciplines. Because of the pertinent sciences, the
literary study is interdisciplinary one. Besides material object, the science has formal object.
The formal object is facets of evaluating a pertinent science; meaning that the science has to
look for causes of its material object. The science, social, and humanities always look for how
structure or formation building of its object form science. The material object of literary studies
is literary works-fiction, drama, poetry-and any interrelation of the works to universe, artist,
and audience. It means that things exist and possible things exist in the literature.
Ontologically, literature can be as the art and as the science. Literature as the art can be
seen from the aspect of its aesthetics, meaning that representing a product of creativity such as
fiction, drama, and poetry. Literature as the science can be seen from the characteristic of
scientific aspects; objective, theoretical, and methodological. The scientific aspects can be
studied from three branches of literary studies; i.e. theory of literature, history of literature,
and literary criticism.

Art Aesthetic Subjective Literary Work:

Fiction
Drama
Literature Poetry

Science Scientific Objective Literary Studies:

Theoretic Literary theory
Methodic History of literature
Literary criticism

Scheme 1 Onthology of Literature

The Writer

Literature represents one of artistic form using language up on its activity. This activity
here is literary symptoms. Use of language in the literary activity differs from use of language of
other activity. This difference gives special impression to the activity. In literary activity,
language is used in a particular way, language might possibly digress from rule of grammar and
has ambiguous meaning even though a man of letters (author, poet, and playwright) passes his
work in order to submit message to audiences.
Literary activity according to its delivery of meaning can be spoken (oral), written and or
audio-visual. From that symptom, wecan see forms such as literary works and any relation to its
production process, its reproduction process, its writer (poet, author, and playwright), its
reader (audience), and its context (the influencing pertinent environmental fact/ universe)
The spoken (oral) literature can be in the form of folklore, charm or chant, folksong, and
traditional theatre. The written major genres of literary work are poem (poetry), prose, and
drama (play). The audio-visual literature is in the form of film representing transformation of
the oral literature and or the written one into the audio-visual literature.

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 Spoken Literary Works:
Folklore
Folksong
Charm Audio-Visual
Traditional theatre Literary Work:
Literary Work
Film
Written Literary Works:
Poetry
Prose
Play

Scheme 2 Forms of Literature

The Writer

From its production process of building literary work, a literary work is formed upon two
elements; i.e. intrinsic element and extrinsic element. The intrinsic element is element
developing literary work structurally and this element can be detectable inside of the literary
work building structurally. Each genre contains intrinsic element in which some are the same
and some others are different. The intrinsic elements of poem (poetry) are line, metre, stanza,
rhyme, rhythm, persona (voice), theme, and imagery. The intrinsic elements of prose are plot,
character, characterization, setting, conflict, theme, message, and narrative perspective
(Staton, 2007: 22-52). The intrinsic elements in drama (play) are character, dialogue, and plot.
Evaluating this intrinsic element in theory of literature is conceived as understanding of
autonomous structuralism. The extrinsic element is the element from outside of the literary
work influencing and colouring its contents. This element covers some aspects like religion,
economics, culture, politics, biography, law, sociology, and psychology (Noor, 2006: 37-65).
Thus, evaluating the extrinsic element in theory of literature is conceived as
understanding of genetic structuralism and as understanding of dynamic structuralism.
Besides the two elements, literary work in its production process cannot get out of the
universe (environmental fact/ context), artist/ writer (author, poet, playwright), and audience
(reader). Therefore, the production process of literary work can be mapped in specified
orientation of literary studies like the following scheme.

Universe

Work

Artist Audience

Scheme 3 Critical Orientation on Literary Studies

The Mirror and the Lamp (Abrams, 1971: 6-7)

Simply in literary studies, visible symptom can be found from the object of the study
which is related to. On the other word, it can be studied based on the object orientation.
Literary studies can be conducted by seeing from the form focusing upon four orientations, i.e.
the study focusing on the reader (reader-oriented approaches) or pragmatics study, focusing on
the writer (author-oriented approaches) or expressive study, focusing on its context (context-
oriented approaches) or mimetic study, and focusing on the literary work (text-oriented
approaches) or objective study (Klarer, 1999: 75-100).
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 reader-oreinted approaches pragmatics study
Orientation
Orientation author-oriented approches expressive study
Approaches of Orientation
Literary Studies context-oriented approaches mimetic study
Orientation
text-oriented approaches objective study
Orientation
Scheme 4 Orientations of Literary Studies
The Writer

From the four orientations, the study area can develop into broader coverage, such as
on sociology of literature and on psychology of literature. The former can be studied from four
studies; the first is expressive socio-literary study. This study centres the analysis on social
phenomenon of the writer. The concentration of course does not discharge its relevancy with
the written work because social phenomenon of writer is reflected in his work. The second is
pragmatic socio-literary study. This study centres the analysis on social phenomenon of the
reader related to literary reception. The concentration does not discharge its relevancy with the
reading work. The third is socio-context of production-consumption literary study. This study
centres the analysis on its relevancy among literary work with social system. Production of
literature is not such an individual production, but social production. The production has long
networking system. The networking covers writer, mediator, publisher, distributor, sponsor,
censor, and others that existence of literature is very influenced by social system around, so is
the consumption which is not an individual consumption but social consumption. The
consumption covers social institute such as education, study group, group of critic and others.
The forth is objective socio-literary study. This study centres the analysis on intrinsically social
problems narrated in literary work. The problems come into structure and detail element of the
work. The structure and element of the work can be analyzed by sociological objective based on
intrinsic social items structural objectivity (Harsono, 2000: 6-11)
The latter is on psychology of literature. This study is based on an assumption that
literary work always discusses event of human life with its various behaviour, and to recognize
human being exhaustively needing psychology. The domain of psychology of literature covers;
the first is expressive psycho-literary study. This study centres the analysis on psychological
condition of writer and his creative process. In course of creative process, there are direct or
indirect relevancy between the psychological condition of writer and the process of literary
creation.
Creative process relates to actions and inner experiences of the writer. The second is
pragmatic psycho-literary study that centres the analysis on psychological condition of reader.
Each literary work has relation psychologically to its reader. The relation can be pragmatic,
receptive, and therapeutic. Being pragmatic means how far the literary work can influence
psychological condition of its reader. Being receptive means how psychological condition of
reader happens in process of interpretation. Being therapeutic means function of the literary
work as catharsis medium of its reader. The function can clean psychological emotion of its
reader. The third is objective psycho-literary study. This study centres the analysis on
psychological problems in the work intrinsically.
In this case, psychology of literature has autonomous characteristic, i.e. studying
literature is rid of the writer, the reader and the universe. This study covers structure and
psychological items in the work as well the psychological meanings inside (Harsono, 2000:16-
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23) The other literary symptom can be seen from sign and its significance in the work can be
studied from the study semiotics on literatures (Wardoyo, 2004: 1-26).
From the literary symptoms above, the ontology of literary studies can be schemed as
the following.

Pragmatics study Reader-oriented approaches of literature

Expressive study Author-oriented approaches of literature
Mimetic study Context-oriented approaches of literature
Objective study Text-oriented approaches of literature
Pragmatic socio-literary study On sociology of literature
Expressive socio-literary study On sociology of literature
Socio-context of production-consumption literary On sociology of literature
study On sociology of literature
Objective socio-literary study On psychology of literature
Pragmatic psycho-literary study On psychology of literature
Expressive psycho-literary study On psychology of literature
Objective psycho-literary study Sign and significance on literature
Semiotics study
Literary Studies Approaches of Literary Studies

Scheme 5 Approaches to Literary Studies

The Writer

The literary symptom basically is universal, because all of society has literary work. In
addition, there are a number of differences, among the literary works; there are same
characteristics in general. Therefore, the literary studies can take the objects from any language
literary work. But, of course, literary researcher at foreign study program must present and
justify report process and his result of study in the foreign language according to his study
program. Even though appreciation will be given more, the foreign literary researcher studies
the literary work written in foreign language, by foreign nation, and in background of foreign
socio-culture.

The Axiological Principality of Literary Studies

In this discussion, the writer refers to Axiological principality to represent target of
science significant benefit for the shake of human beings, meaning that the science has to be
exploited as medium to increase the human life level (Setiardja, 2005: 41-55) and Farkhan
(2007: 1-139) explains an understanding of circumstantial interpretative about the benefit and
way of good presentation of the literary studies as the following. Hence, the axiological
principality of literary studies means the target of literary studies benefits. Target of literary
studies benefit is for the shake of human being. It means that literary studies must be exploited
as medium to increase the human life level. To axiological principality, activity in the study can
aim to produce a verified knowledge, to obtain/ generate deep-understanding, and to offer a
counter interpretation
Target of literary studies benefit is for the shake of human being. It means that literary
studies must be exploited as medium to increase the human life level. To axiological
principality, activity in the study can aim to produce a verified knowledge, to obtain generate
deep-understanding, and to offer a counter interpretation.
Based on the target of its benefit, the literary studies can be schemed as the following.

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 To produce a verified knowledge
To generate deep-understanding
To offer a counter interpretation

Literary Studies Benefit

Scheme 6 Target of Literary Studies Benefit

The Writer

First, literary studies aim to produce four types of knowledge; i.e. exploratory
knowledge, descriptive knowledge, explanatory knowledge, and predictive knowledge. Literary
studies yields knowledge which can be formulated with sentence and selected pursuant to its
types of knowledge. Thus, the study aiming to produce the knowledge such as to produce an
exploratory knowledge on..., to produce a descriptive knowledge on..., to produce an
explanatory knowledge on...), and to produce a predictive knowledge on... about the object of
study.

Exploratory knowledge
Descriptive knowledge
Explanatory knowledge
Predictive knowledge

Knowledge of Literary Studies

Scheme 7 Kinds of Knowledge of Literary Studies

The Writer

Second, literary studies aim to produce circumstantial knowledge which can be selected
from five types of understanding: i.e. understanding on spoken or written text (textual
understanding), understanding on speaker or writer (intentional understanding), understanding
audience or reader (receptive or experiential understanding), understanding on researcher
(interpretative understanding), and understanding among speaker or writer, audience or
reader, and researcher (shared-understanding).
The understanding on spoken or written text is an understanding which is solely based
on what is said or what is written. This understanding is discharged at all from its speaker or
writer. The understanding on speaker or writer is an understanding as meant by the speaker or
the writer. The spoken or written is assumed inseparable its speaker or its writer. The
understanding on audience or reader is an understanding experienced by audience or reader.
Real meaning of meaning (significance) is contained in message received or got by that
audience or that reader. The understanding on researcher is an understanding concluded by
interpreter conducted systematically-comprehensively. The shared-understanding is crisscross
of the understanding based on the spoken or written text, according to the speaker or writer,
according to the audience or reader, and the interpretation given by the researcher.
Based on the consideration above, literary studies produce(s) knowledge which can be
formulated with sentence and selected on its types of understanding. Thus, the study aims to
produce; the textual understanding( to generate a textual understanding on...), the intentional
understanding (to generate an intentional understanding on...), receptive or experimental
understanding (to generate an experiential understanding on...), the interpretative
understanding (to generate an interpretative understanding on...), and share understanding (to
generate a shared-understanding on...) about the object of study.
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 Textual understanding
Intentional understanding
Receptive or experiential understanding
Interpretative understanding
Shared-understanding

Understanding of Literary Studies

Scheme 8 Understandings of Literary Studies

The Writer

The Epistemological Principality of Literary Studies

The epistemological principality of literary studies means the methodology of literary
studies. Based on this principality of science, the writer explains that epistemological
principality represents scientific methodology. The methodology is a set of administration to
science which is systemic and systematic. Systemic and systematic methodology represents
method criteria of the science. Systemic methodology means in unity there is relevancy of
inter-elements and systematic methodology means in unity there is logical sequence of inter-
steps (Setiardja, 2005:4)
Starting from how scientific study is conducted, the writer based on the epistemological
principality, shares science methodology of literary studies. The scientific methodology is a set
of administration to produce scientific knowledge systemically and systematically. Systemically
means there is relevancy of inter-elements, while systematically means there is logical
sequence of inter-steps.
There are steps which must be done in conducting a study. Before taking choice of
approach, method, techniques and or ways and instruments as well, literary researcher before
hand specifies points of view used for objects and benefits as target of study. This point of view
refers to paradigm of inquiry. On the other words, the paradigm is fundamental viewpoint
regarding to subject matter of, target of, and nature of analyzed object. A paradigm is consisted
of a number of approaches. In an approach is consisted of a number of methods. A method is
consisted of a number of techniques. Hereinafter in a technique, there are some ways and
instruments.

Step I Paradigm of Inquiry

Step II Approach

Step III Method

Step IV Technique

Step V Way and Instrument

Scheme 9 Steps on Conducting Literary Studies

The Writer

The methodology of literary studies recognizes three major paradigms; i.e. positivistic
paradigm, interpretative paradigm, and reflexive paradigm. In this case, positivistic paradigm is
the same as quantitative research design, interpretive paradigm is the same as qualitative

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research design, and reflexive paradigm is the same as critical research design. Based on the
methodologies above, the literary research can be selected from the existing paradigms.

positivistic paradigm/ quantitative research design

interpretative paradigm/ qualitative research design
reflexive paradigm / critical research design

Paradigms in Literary Studies

Scheme 10 Paradigms in Literary Studies

The Writer

The followings are distinction and brief clarification of the three types of paradigm. The
first is target of benefit. According to the positivistic paradigm, every study has to find a law
enabling human being predict and control reality. The interpretive paradigm has to understand
and interpret meaning of reality. The reflexive paradigm has to empower and liberate human
being from a shackle of spurious awareness or understanding.
The second is basic nature of reality. According to positivistic paradigm, reality is stable
and patterned, so that the reality can be found or formulated. Interpretative paradigm assumes
that reality is melting and streaming, so that the reality represents result of agreement and
interaction of human being. Whereas, according to reflexive paradigm, reality is full of
oppositions and influenced by under covered constitute structure.
The third is nature of human being. According to positivistic paradigm, nature of human
being is rational and personal interest, and also influenced by outside strength. Interpretative
paradigm assumes that human being is capable to form and give meaning to their world. While
reflexive paradigm assumes that human being is creative and adaptive, but tends to be
oppressed by spurious awareness, they are less capable to present their potency.
The fourth is common sense role. According to positivistic paradigm, common sense
differs from knowledge of science. Interpretative paradigm assumes that common sense
represents a set of theory used to benefit certain people. Meanwhile reflexive paradigm
assumes that common sense represents spurious beliefs covering up substantive reality.
The fifth is theory. According to positivistic paradigm, theories represent deductively
logical system and depict interrelation among a number of definition, axiom, and law.
Interpretative paradigm interprets theory as a set of explanation on how meaning
interpretation is produced and maintained.
Any paradigm selected by literary researcher, literary research must be conducted
systematically, relied on data, based on theory, presented explicitly, encouraged by reflective
action, and covered by open-ended results.
In conducting literary studies which is pursuant to positivistic paradigm, steps of the
study are as follows: 1) determining problem statement, covering choosing up eligible problem
and 2) making up framework in formulating hypothesis, including observation of theory and
result report of previous study 3) formulating hypothesis, as temporary answer to problems 4)
electing or developing study design 5) developing instruments and data collecting device 6)
collecting data 7) processing data to test hypothesis 8) interpreting result of study 9) concluding
based on data processing result, 10) integrating result of study into previous knowledge
structure, and also suggesting to next study.
If the study does not produce explanatory knowledge, but knowledge exploratory,
descriptive and predictive, hence the steps related to proffering and examining hypothesis are
not needed, because the study does not test hypothesis, theory study and analysis of previous
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study result are only needed to clarify and formulate variable or concept tested, and also give
picture about how far the studies in the topic have been conducted by other researcher.
Any study of literature, study activity of positivistic paradigm has to comply with the
following criteria, i.e. 1) validity, it proves that what being collected is true (factual) according
to what really will be collected; 2) reliability, it proves that whenever and by whoever data
collected, it will give the same more or less result; 3) objectivity, it proves that there is no
personal influence of researcher to study result; and 4) generality, it proves that inference or
conclusion of the study can be generally accepted.
In conducting literary studies which is pursuant to the interpretative paradigm, the
study activities strike 1) determining study focus including choosing up to eligible and meaning
problem, 2) developing theoretical sensitivity with relevant to book materials observation and
result of previous study, 3) determining materials study, covering choosing where and who
from the data obtained, 4) developing protocol of data acquirement and processing, including
determining apparatus, steps, and technique in data acquirement and processing used, 5)
executing the acquirement, cinsisting of field data collection or studied reading text, 6)
processing the data acquirement, covering coding, categorizing, comparing , and discussing, 7)
negotiating the result of study with study subject, and 8) formulating conclusion, covering
interpreting and integrating findings into previous knowledge building, and suggestion to the
next study.
Because nature of the study materials and the target reached, the framework steps can
be altered according to field dynamics. Study focus is for the example; it is possible repeating
sharpening and formulating after conducting field investigating. It can be done as long as the
data availability to increase the meaning of study. Thus, the interpretative paradigm must
requires the following criteria 1) credibility, proving that the data acquirement and conclusion
are believable, 2) dependability, proving that findings and conclusion relies on the raw data, 3)
conformability, proving that the findings and conclusion can be traced on the data
acquirement, and transferability, proving that the findings and conclusion can be gone into the
same effect to other cases having equal conditions.
In conducting literary studies which is pursuant to the reflexive paradigm, the study
activities strike 1) determining topic of study, including choosing and formulating valuable
problem to arose human being awareness, 2) stipulating philosophy or ideological perspective,
covering observing relevant idea and formulating explicitly specific or basic idea used as basis
for proffering critics, 3) electing cases or materials, by determining where and who from the
data obtained 4) developing strategy of data acquirement and data processing, consisted of
determining data apparatus, steps, and techniques used, 5) executing the acquirement,
consisting of field data collection or studied text reading, 6) processing the data acquirement,
covering coding, categorizing, contrasting , and discussing, 7) formulating conclusion,
conducted according to reflexive thinking, and 8) proffering recommendation either to advance
study or to next empowerment agenda.
Like two types of previous study, the study of reflexive paradigm claims to the following
requirements such as credibility, dependency, conformability, and transferability. Besides,
because of the particular aspiration of the reflexive paradigm is to awaken awareness of
change, therefore the counter interpretation must present eligible criteria, covering 1)
relevance proving that the selected topic and or ideological perspective is relevant to human
challenge or problem, 2) coherence proving that the entire building of offered interpretation
does not interfere each other, 3) criticalness proving that the observation succeed to unload a

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discourse to the root, and 4) reasonableness) proving that reflexive thinking has logical thinking
base.

The Second Trinity on Literature: The Scientific Areas of Literary Studies

The scientific areas of literary studies can be derived into three branches; i.e. literary
theory or theory of literature, history of literature, and literary criticism. The followings are
brief clarification of those three branches of the literary studies.

Literary theory
As what Bressler (1998:6) wrote that “literary theory-the assumptions either conscious
or unconscious, that undergird one’s understanding and interpretation of language, the
construction of meaning, art, culture, aesthetics, and ideological positions.”
In line with Bressler, Noor explained that this branch is the scientific areas consisting of
conceptual understandings of literature and any study areas interrelated in it including such as
definitions of literature, the literary terminologies, the essence and function of literature, the
literary studies, the beauty of literary works, genres of literature, literary research, the history
of literature, and literary criticism (2006: 21)

History of literature
Noor explained that this branch is the scientific areas of literary studies on historical
periods of literature from time to time, including such as the creation history of literature, the
development of literary style and -isms, the chronological literary dialect, and the development
of literary thoughts (2006: 20).

Literary criticism
Further, Bressler (1998: 6) said that “because anyone who responds to a text is already a
practicing literary critic and because practical criticism is rooted in the reader’s preconditioned
mindset concerning his or her expectations when actually reading a text every reader exposes
some kind of literary theory.” Noor explained that this branch is the scientific areas of literary
studies on to scrutinize, research, examine, analyze thoroughly, and to appreciate literary
works by giving advantages and disadvantages of the literary works (2006: 20).

From the concepts above, the writer can conclude that those scientific areas of literary
studies are interrelated with one another in doing literary analysis. The literary theory, of
course, needs literary criticism, for example to compose theories of style, and narrative
technique. It needs as well the history of literature, for example, to compose theories about
periods, isms, and wholly development of literature. The history of literature needs literary
theory, for example to compose history of creation, progression, and development of literary
works needs differences of literary theories from time to time. The literary criticism also needs
literary theory to give any critic to literary works, for example theory of approaches and theory
of genres. The literary criticism needs the history of literature, for example, to find out the
originality, intertextuality, and comparison of the literary works from age to age.

The Third Trinity on Literature: The Analytic Levels of Literary Studies

Matthew Arnold states in Bressler (1998:4-5), that “...literary criticism as ‘A
disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best way that is known and thought in the
world.:...that literary criticism is a discipline activity that attempts to describe study, analyze,
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justify, interpret, and evaluate a work of art’.” Based on that quote, in analyzing a text, literary
critics asks basic questions concerning the philosophical, psychological, and functional aspects
of literary text. In line with the basic questions of literary work as object of literary research is
the human expression of a vision, mission, and consideration of some aspects of life. It can be
concluded that literature qualifies as an art form that may be approached on three levels. They
are psychological, philosophical, and functional levels.

Psychological Level
This level can be seen from what Klarer (1999:92) stated that “reception theory focuses
on the reader’s point of view. ...Some of these approaches do not postulate a single objective
text, but rather assume that there are many texts as readers. This attitude implies that a new
individual text evolves with every individual reading process” Based on this theory, the
researcher can do expressive study using reader-oriented approach in the form of, for example,
reader-response criticism.

Philosophical Level
This level, according to Sigmund Freud in Klarer (1999: 92) is that “... psychoanalytic
literary criticism is a movement which sometimes deals with the author,... ...literary text can be
an explanation of certain psychological phenomena,” because there is a direct link between
the literary text and the biography of an author such as dates, facts, and events in the author’s
life juxtaposed with literary elements of his or her works in order to find aspects which connect
the biography of the author with the text. The researcher can do author-oriented approach
using pragmatics study on literature, for example, in the form of biographical criticism,
psychoanalytic criticism, and phenomenology.

Functional Level
This level, by tracing Plato’s statement, is that “many contend that literature’s primary
function is moral” (Bressler, 1998: 12). For this, the value of a text is found within the text or
inseparably linked to the work itself. To do this analytic level, Klarer (1999: 79) stated that the
literary researcher can do objective study on literature using text-oriented approaches. The
text-oriented approach is primarily concerned with questions of the materiality of the texts,
including edition manuscripts, analyses of language, style, and formal of structure of literary
work. The researcher can do such as philology, rhetoric, stylistics, formalism, structuralism, new
criticism, semiotics and deconstruction.
Another study of this level is mimetic study on literature as what Bressler (1999: 94)
stated that
context-oriented approach refer to ha heterogeneous group of
schools and methodologies which do not regard literary text as self-
contained, independent works of art but try to place them within a
larger context. Depending on the movement, this context can be
history, social, political background, nationality, and gender.

The researcher can have the context-oriented approach in the form of, for example
literary history, Marxism literary, feminist literary, new historicism, and cultural studies.

84
 As the writer, I insist that, the trinities’ scheme in discovering meanings on literature as
trilogy to English teaching on literature be mastered by the teachers as well as the students
who study the literature.

CONCLUSION
There are three aspects with reciprocal relevancy in the process of scientific
development. In understanding literary studies, these three principalities should be
comprehended; i.e. ontology, axiology, and epistemology of literary studies. Or, on the other
hand, it gains understanding of circumstantial interpretative about essence of study object,
target of benefit, and methodologies of literary studies systemically-systematically-
comprehensively so that it can be useful as enrichment insights of literary studies.
The three scientific areas of literary studies can be derived into three branches. They are
literary theory or theory of literature, history of literature, and literary criticism. The first
branch is the scientific areas consisting of conceptual understandings of literature and any
interrelated study areas, The second branch is the scientific areas of literary studies on
historical periods of literature from time to time, and the third branch is the scientific areas of
literary studies on to scrutinize, research, examine, analyze thoroughly, and to appreciate
literary works by giving advantages and disadvantages of the literary works.
Literary work as object of literary research represents a human expression of a vision,
mission, and consideration of some aspects of life, and literature qualifies as an art form that
may be approached from three levels; the first is psychological level, the second is philosophical
level, and the third is functional level.

REFERENCES
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