Goodevening!

Lesson 1 Introduction to
Literature
 Objectives
At the end of the lesson,
you should be able to:
1. acquire a deeper
perspective about
literature;

2. understand the
importance of literature;
 Objectives
At the end of the lesson,
you should be able to:

3. appreciate the study of

literature;

4. identify the various

kinds of prose and poetry.
 MEANING OF LITERATURE
The word “literature” has different meanings
depending on who is using it. There are
different definitions given by different
writers, but let us summarize some of them.
 The term LITERATURE
“writings which interpret the
meanings of nature and life, in

01. Littera 03. words of charm and power,

touched with the personality of
author in artistic forms of
From Oxford English permanent interest.”
Dictionary
From Henry Van Dyke

“Literature is a Literature is life which

02. performance in 04. presents human
experience.
words”
From Robert Frost Arsenia Tan of University
of Santo Tomas
01
Importance of
Literature
02
How to Study
Literature
Forms of Literature
Two main
divisions of
Literature
Forms of Literature

Two main
divisions of
Literature

Prose Poetry
Does not adhere with
Written in verse
any formal structure
 Kinds of Poetry
Ballad Metrical Tale

Epic
 Kinds of Poetry
A. NARRATIVE POETRY-
tells a story in verse

3. Metrical
1. Epic 2. Ballad
Tale
Songlike poem that tells a Characters are ordinary
Narrative heroic life and
story often dealing with people concerned with
work.
adventure and romance. ordinary events.
Kinds of Poetry

4. Metrical
Romance
Medieval tales of the deeds
and loves of noble knights
and ladies.
 Kinds of Poetry
B. LYRIC POETRY-poem that expresses
the emotions, feelings, and observations
of the writer.

1. Song 2. Sonnet 3. Elegy

solemn and formal lyric
is intended to be sung. a fourteen-line lyric poem
poem about death.
 Kinds of Poetry
B. LYRIC POETRY-poem that expresses
the emotions, feelings, and observations
of the writer.

1. Song 2. Sonnet 3. Elegy

solemn and formal lyric
is intended to be sung. a fourteen-line lyric poem
poem about death.
 Kinds of Poetry
B. LYRIC POETRY-poem that expresses
the emotions, feelings, and observations
of the writer.

1. Song 2. Sonnet 3. Elegy

solemn and formal lyric
is intended to be sung. a fourteen-line lyric poem
poem about death.
 Kinds of Poetry
B. LYRIC POETRY-poem that expresses
the emotions, feelings, and observations
of the writer.

1. Song 2. Sonnet 3. Elegy

solemn and formal lyric
is intended to be sung. a fourteen-line lyric poem
poem about death.
 Kinds of Poetry
B. LYRIC POETRY-poem that expresses
the emotions, feelings, and observations
of the writer.

5. Simple
4. Ode
Lyric
long, formal lyric poem with poems that do not fall
a serious theme. under the four other types.
 Kinds of Poetry
B. LYRIC POETRY-poem that expresses
the emotions, feelings, and observations
of the writer.

5. Simple
4. Ode
Lyric
long, formal lyric poem with poems that do not fall
a serious theme. under the four other types.
 Kinds of Poetry

C. HAIKU-
Haiku is another kind of poetry, which originated in
Japan. It is a 700-year-old
Japanese verse form. A three line poem consisting of
seventeen syllables (5,7,5, i.e. five
syllables of the first line, seven for the second, and
five for the final line).
 Kinds of Poetry

C. HAIKU-
Haiku is another kind of poetry, which originated in
Japan. It is a 700-year-old
Japanese verse form. A three line poem consisting of
seventeen syllables (5,7,5, i.e. five
syllables of the first line, seven for the second, and
five for the final line).
Kinds of Prose

A. Fiction - fingere
B. Non-Fiction
A. Fiction

Short Story

Novel

Drama
A. Fiction

Fable

Parable
A. Fiction

Legend

Myth
B. Non-Fiction

Autobiography

Biography
 B. Non-Fiction

Essays

Diary or
Journal

https://www.panmacmilla
n.com/blogs/history/histo
rical-diaries-war-history-
journal
 Poetry

A. Sound
Elements of B. Figures of
Poetry Speech
 1. Rhyme
A
B
B
A
A
B
B
A
C
D
E
C
D
E
 2. Rhythm
https://literarydevices.net
/rhythm/
 3. Meter
https://literarydevices.net
/meter/
4. Repetition
 a. Alliteration
There Will Come Soft Rains
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pool singing at night,

And wild plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire,

Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one

Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,

If mankind perished utterly;
 b. consonance

“Love is feeling cold in the back of vans

Love is a fanclub with only two fans
Love is walking holding paintstained hands…"
 c. assonance

"Once upon a midnight

dreary, while I pondered
weak and weary..." 
 d. parallelism
Parallelism: Their son loved playing chess, video games, and soccer.

No parallelism: Their son loved chess, video games, and to play soccer.

Parallelism (adjectives): The Bach Sonata was beautiful, moving,

and inspiring.

No parallelism: The Bach Sonata was beautiful, moving, and

it inspired.
5. Onomatopoeia
 Poetry

A. Sound
Elements of B. Figures of
Poetry Speech
 B. Figures of Speech
Simile
-(from the Latin word simile, which means similar)

Example 1: Horseradish (Lemony Snicket)

A library is like an island in the middle of a vast sea of ignorance, particularly if the library is
very tall and the surrounding area has been flooded.

Example 2: A Red, Red Rose (Robert Burns)

O my Luve’s like a red, red rose,

That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Luve’s like the melodie
That’s sweetly play’d in tune.
 B. Figures of Speech
Metaphor-
(from the Greek verb methaphere, which means to carry
over)
Dreams (Langston Hughes)
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
 
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
 B. Figures of Speech
Metaphor-
(from the Greek verb methaphere, which means to carry
over)

a. Character is a diamond that scratches every other stone.

b. You are my Angel.
c. He is a walking encyclopedia.
d. “She is the apple of his eyes.”
 B. Figures of Speech
Personification vs. anthropomorphism 

a. Only the moon was the witness

in the incident.
b. The volcano is very angry.
c. “As I entered my room,
mosquitoes were rehearsing their
war song.”
d. Time had fallen asleep in the
afternoon sunshine.
 B. Figures of Speech
Metonymy-
(from the Greek prefix meta, which means change + the
root onoma,
name + the noun suffix -y)
=“change of name.”
• I need to decide if I will go Greek in college next year.

Joe’s new ride was expensive.

When I came to visit, my friend offered me a cup.

The pen is mightier than the sword (reading materials, armed forces)

Malacañang announced a non-working holiday.

 B. Figures of Speech
Hyperbole
(from the Greek prefix hyper, Which means beyond + the
root ballein, to
throw)

• We are going to steal the moon! (Despicable Me)

As God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again (Gone with the Wind)
 B. Figures of Speech
Irony
Verbal Irony
Telling a rude customer to “have a nice day”
Walking into an empty theater and asking, “it’s too crowded”

Situational Irony
A dentist needing a root canal.
Winner of a Spelling Bee failing a spelling test.

Dramatic Irony
 B. Figures of Speech
Oxymoron
My sister and I had a friendly fight over the lipstick.

I think the professor stated his unbiased opinion regarding the student response.

You look awfully pretty in that coat.

Sarah ate the whole piece of pie.

The carpenters left the bench completely unfinished.

The new kittens enjoyed being Alone together.

 B. Figures of Speech
Paradox

“I can’t live with or without you” (With or Without You, lyrics by U2)
“Whatever you do in life will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it”
(Ghandi)

“Men work together…Whether they work together or apart” (Robert Frost)

“It’s weird not to be weird” (John Lennon)

“Life is a preparation for the future; and the best preparation for the future is to live as if
there were none” (Albert Einstein)
 B. Figures of Speech
Paradox
“I can’t live with or without you” (With or Without You, lyrics by U2)
“Whatever you do in life will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it”
(Ghandi)
“Men work together…Whether they work together or apart” (Robert Frost)
“It’s weird not to be weird” (John Lennon)
“Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once”
(Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare)
“Life is a preparation for the future; and the best preparation for the future is to live as if
there were none” (Albert Einstein)
 B. Figures of Speech
Apostrophe
Jane Taylor uses apostrophe in the well-known poem, The Star:
“Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are.
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.”
Death Be Not Proud (By John Donne)
“Death be not proud, though some have called
thee
Mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think’st, thou dost
overthrow,
Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill
me.”
 Fiction

A. Plot
B. Character
Elements of C. Setting
Fiction D. POV
E. Theme
F. Diction, Image
and Symbol
 Setting
the time, place and period in which the action takes
place. It includes

The geographical
location The socio-economic
The time period characteristics of the
location

The specific location

-building, room, etc.
Setting
can help in the portrayal of characters.
“I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. That is, my feet are in it; the rest of me
is on the draining-board."
I capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

“Sir Walter Scott the Younger of Buccleugh was in church marrying his aunt
the day the English killed his granny."

Dorothy Dunnett
Disorderly Knights
Setting
can establish the atmosphere of a work.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night…

Snoopy

"It was the best of times, it was the

worst of times..."
A Tale of Two Cities
Types of Characters

• Round Character: Elizabeth Bennet in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Jay
Gatsby in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby
• Dynamic Character: Neville Longbottom in Harry Potter, Anakin Skywalker
• Flat Character: Crabbe and Goyle in Harry Potter and Elizabeth Proctor in Arthur
Miller’s The Crucible
• Static Character: Captain Hook of Peter Pan, Sherlock Holmes,
Types of Characters
The people (or animals, things, etc. presented as people) appearing in a
literary work.

• Round Character: convincing, true to life and have many character traits.
• Dynamic Character: undergoes some type of change in story because of
something that happens to them.
• Flat Character: stereotyped, shallow, often symbolic. They have one or two
personality traits.
• Static Character: does not change in the course of the story
Characters
● Protagonist
Group Hero protagonist
Alone protagonist

● Antagonist
Villain
Group Villain
Inanimate forcess
Characters
● Protagonist
Harry, Katniss Everdeen, Frodo
Baggins (Lord of the Rings), Matilda
(Matilda), Cooper (Interstellar)

● Antagonist
Voldemort, Darth Vader (Star Wars),
Hans Gruber (Die Hard), Sauron
(Lord of the Rings), Cruella de Vil
(101 Dalmatians)
Characters

● Protagonist
The main character in a literary
work.

● Antagonist
The character who opposes the
protagonist.
Methods of Characterization
• direct- “he was an old man…
• characters’ thoughts, words, and actions
• reactions/comments of other characters
• character’s physical appearance
• characters’ thoughts
"He no longer dreamed of storms,
nor of women , nor of great
occurrences, nor of great fish, nor
fights, nor contests of strength, nor
of his wife. He only dreamed of
places now and of the lions on the
beach. They played like young cats
in the dusk and he loved them as he
loved the boy."
Plot The series of events and actions that takes place in a story.

Climax

Beginning End

Expositions Resolution
Plot The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Climax
-Katniss is tied in the competition
with one of the other representatives
from another district.

Beginning End

Resolution
Expositions
-the officials don’t want
-Katniss is tasked with that to happen and
representing her instead declare them
district in the hunger both victorious.
games
Plot Line
Climax: The turning point. The most intense
moment (either mentally or in action.

Rising Action: the

series of conflicts and Falling Action: all of the action
crisis in the story that which follows the Climax.
lead to the climax.

Resolution: The conclusion, the

Exposition: The start of the story. The
tying together of all of the threads.
way things are before the action starts.
Elements of Plot

• Conflict
• Man VS Man
• Man VS Nature
• Man VS Society
• Man VS Himself
Elements of Plot

• Conflict
• Man VS Technology
• Man VS Supernatural
• Man VS Destiny
Conflict
• Man VS Man (Katniss vs. the other
contestants, Dorothy vs. the Wicked
Witch)
• Man VS Nature (In the Life of Pi
the protagonist vs. the tiger)
• Man VS Society (Atticus Finch
opposed his racist community in
Harper Lee’s To Kill a
Mockingbird)
• Man VS Himself (Hamlet, the
protagonist in Daniel Scott Keye’s
short story, Flowers for Algernon)
Point of View:
The perspective from which the story is told.
(Who is telling the story?)
Omniscient Point of View/third person POV: The author is
telling the story. (he/she)

Limited Omniscient/second person: Third person, told from the

viewpoint of a character in the story. (you)

First Person: Story is told from point of view of one of the

characters who uses the first person pronoun “I.”

Limited by the perspective abilities of the character.

confined
Theme

Good vs. evil

Love
Redemption
Courage and perseverance
coming of age
revenge
.
 The Theme
of a piece of fiction is its central idea.
It usually contains some insight into the human condition.

The Literary Element of Theme

• a general statement of the central, underlying, and controlling idea or insight of a work
of literature.
• the idea the writer wishes to convey about the subject—the writer’s view of the world or
a revelation about human nature.
• can be expressed in a single sentence.

Theme is NOT-
• usually expressed in a single word
• the purpose of a work
• the moral
• the conflict
The Literary Element of Theme
Identifying the Theme in Five Steps
To identify the theme, be sure that you’ve first identified the story’s plot, the way the story uses
characterization, and the primary conflict in the story.
1. Summarize the plot by writing a one-sentence description for the exposition, the conflict, the rising action, the climax, the falling
action, and the resolution.
2. Identify the subject of the work.
3. Identify the insight or truth that was learned about the subject.

• How did the protagonist change?

• What lesson did the protagonist learn from the resolution of the conflict?

4. State how the plot presents the primary insight or truth about the subject.
5. Write one or more generalized, declarative sentences that state what was learned and how it was learned.

Theme Litmus Test

• Is the theme supported by evidence from the work itself?
• Are all the author’s choices of plot, character, conflict, and tone controlled by this theme?
Symbolism

● Harry’s scar
● Albus Dumbledore
● The golden snitch
● the letter “A” in Nathaniel
Hawthorne’s The scarlet letter
● Bread and bread crumbs in
Hansel and Gretel
 Symbolism

A symbol represents an idea, quality, or concept larger than itself.

Water may
represent a new
A Journey can beginning.
symbolize life.

A lion could be a
Black can represent symbol of courage.
evil or death.
Other Fiction Elements

• Allusion: a reference to a person, place or literary, historical, artistic,

mythological source or event.
“It was in St. Louis, Missouri, where they have that giant McDonald’s
thing towering over the city…”(Bean Trees 15)

• Atmosphere: the prevailing emotional and mental climate of a piece of

fiction.
• Dialogue: the reproduction of a conversation between two of the
characters.
Other Elements Continued
• Foreshadowing: early clues about what will happen later in a piece of fiction.
• Irony: a difference between what is expected and reality.
• Style: a writer’s individual and distinct way of writing. The total of the qualities
that distinguish one author’s writing from another’s.
• Structure: the way time moves through a novel.
• Chronological: starts at the beginning and moves through time.
• Flashback: starts in the present and then goes back to the past.
• Circular or Anticipatory: starts in the present, flashes back to the past, and
returns to the present at the conclusion.
 THE DICTION, IMAGE,
AND SYMBOL
• Diction is choice of a word.

• Image is an image, a verbal expression of sensed experience

makes possible the
communication of what one sees, hears, feels, smells, and tastes.
For example, “a’
red rag,” “a deadened burst of thighty splashes and snorts,”
"pressure in his side,”
etc. Descriptions of settings, characters, and of events are all
made up of images.
 THE DICTION,
IMAGE, AND
SYMBOL
• Symbol is a representation of something, example: the
visual image of red rose may
serve at the same time as a part of a description of a garden
and as a sign of beauty
and passion. Darkness may occur in a story of the unknown
and death.
Your Work

Literary E- Folio
 Beginning Developing Established Excelling

Originality

Technique

Creativity

Attractiveness

Neatness

Grammar and Spelling

“Literature always
anticipates life.”
-Oscar Wilde
 Thanks
Do you have any questions?

riverajoscellejoycelaude27@g
mail.com

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