Introduction to Literature

“An education in the arts is an education in feelings.” – Anonymous

What is literature?

Literature are compositions that:

• tell stories
• dramatize situations
• express emotions
• analyze and advocate ideas

Why do we study literature?

Roberts & Jacobs (1995) enumerates the following:

1. It helps us grow, both personally and intellectually.

2. It provides an objective base for knowledge and understanding.
3. It links us with a broader cultural, philosophic, and religious world of which we
are a part.
4. It enables us to recognize human dreams and struggles in different places and
times that we would never otherwise know.
5. It helps us develop mature sensibility and compassion for the condition of all
living things – human, animal, and vegetable.
6. It gives us the knowledge and perception to appreciate the beauty of order and
arrangement.
7. It provides comparative basis from which we can see worthiness in the aims of
all people.
8. It exercises our emotions through interest, concern, tension, excitement, hope,
fear, regret, laughter, and sympathy.

9. It shapes our goals and values by clarifying our own identities – through
acceptance of the admirable in human beings and through rejection of the
sinister.
10. It enables us to develop a perspective in events occurring locally and globally.
11. It encourages us to assist creative, talented people who need recognition and
support.
12. It shapes and influences our life.

Genres of Literature

1. Prose Fiction
• is also known as narrative fiction
• is classed as imaginative literature
• is based in the author’s imagination
• its essence is narration
• is focused on one or a few major characters who undergo a change of attitude
as they interact with other characters and deal with problems
• may introduce true historical details but is not real history
• main purpose is to interest, stimulate, instruct, and divert, not to create a
precise historical record
• its aim is truth to life and human nature
• classification:
o Prose allegory
▪ fables
▪ myths
▪ legends o Prose romances
▪ fairy tales
▪ folk tales
▪ myths and legends o Prose satires o Novels o Short stories

o Novelettes

2. Poetry
• expresses a conversation or interchange that is grounded in the most deeply
felt experiences of human beings
• is more economical in its use of words
• relies heavily on imagery, figurative language, and sound
 • classification:
o Narrative poetry
▪ epic
▪ metrical romance
▪ ballad
▪ metrical tale o Lyric poetry
▪ ode
▪ elegy
▪ songs
▪ simple lyric ▪ sonnet
➢ Italian sonnet
➢ Shakespearian (English) sonnet
o Dramatic poetry
▪ poetic plays
▪ masque
▪ dramatic monologue

3. Drama
• is designed to be performed by actors
• may focus on a single character or a small number of characters
• enacts events as if they were happening in the present, to be witnessed by
an audience

• may use prose dialogue or may be in poetic form

• its essence is make-believe
• classification: o tragedy o comedy
o morality play o tragicomedy
o farce o melodrama o social
drama / problem drama o
closet drama o comedy of
manners

4. Nonfiction Prose
 • describes or interprets facts and presents judgments and opinions
• its goals are truth in reporting and logic in reasoning
• its aim is truth to the factual world of news, science, and history
• examples:
o news reports o feature
articles o essays
o editorials o textbooks o
historical and biographical works
o letters (epistles), diaries,
journals, memoirs, meditations o
book reviews
o literary criticism o scientific
and current publications
References:

Bascara, L. R. (2003). World Literature. Quezon City: Rex Book Store, Inc.
Roberts, E. V. & Jacobs, H. E. (1995). Literature: An Introduction to Reading and
Writing (4th Edition). New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.