Popular Literature

Objective:
Acquaint with the nature, appeal, and social functions of
popular literature.
Definition of Literature

• The verbal expression of human imagination; and

• One of the primary means by which a culture transmits itself.
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Dr. Rod Ellis
“Father of Second Language Acquisition” (SLA)
NATURE OF POPULAR LITERATURE

• Expression of human feelings, thoughts, and ideas whose medium is

language, oral and written
• Not only about human ideas, thoughts, and feelings, but also about
experiences of the authors
• Can be medium for human to communicate what they feel, think, and
experience to the readers
Literature is…

• art
• language
• aesthetic
• fictional
• expressive
• affective
• everything in print (any writing is a literature)
 UNIVERSAL CHARACTERISTICS OF
LITERATURE

1. Timelessness
2. Eternity
3. Universality
4. Permanence
LITERATURE AS ART

1. IMAGINATIVE LITERATURE (PROSE FICTION AND POETRY)

– highly connotative (poems, stories, novels, plays)
2. NON-IMAGINATIVE LITERATURE (PROSE NON-FICTION)
- denotative (biographies, essays, etc.)
APPEAL OF POPULAR LITERATURE

Something that makes the viewers or readers

attracted and interested in the literary piece.
SOCIAL FUNCTION OF POP LIT

1. Entertainment - ”pleasure reading”; used

to entertain readers; consumed for the sake of
enjoyment
SOCIAL FUNCTION OF POP LIT

2. Social and Political- shows how society

works around them; helps reader see social
and political constructs and state of the
people and the world
SOCIAL FUNCTION OF POP LIT

3. Ideological- shapes our ways of thinking

based on the ideas o other people; displays
person’s ideology placed in the text
consciously or unconsciously
SOCIAL FUNCTION OF POP LIT

4. Moral- may impart, oral values to readers,

whether good or bad, and absorbed by
whoever reads it, thus helps in shaping their
personality
SOCIAL FUNCTION OF POP LIT

5. Linguistic- preserves language of every

civilization where it originated; also
evidences that a certain civilization existed
SOCIAL FUNCTION OF POP LIT

6. Cultural- orients traditions, folklore, and

arts of ethnic groups’ heritage; preserves
cultures, and creates an imprint of peoples’
way of living for others to read, hear, and
learn
SOCIAL FUNCTION OF POP LIT

7. Educational- teaches us of many things

about the human experience; portrays facets
of life that we see and dream of seeing; the
chance to experience and feel things where
we can learn things about life
SOCIAL FUNCTION OF POP LIT

8. Historical- keeps a record of events that

happened in the past; serve as capsules of
letters that are studied by scholars and
researchers today
TYPES OF LITERARY CRITICISM

1. Archetypal Criticism- interprets a text by

focusing on symbols, images, and character
types in literary works in relation to
emotions, values, and feelings to specific
images
TYPES OF LITERARY CRITICISM

2. Cultural Criticism- focuses on elements

of culture and how they affect one’s
perceptions and understanding of texts
(ethnicities, religious beliefs, social class,
etc.)
TYPES OF LITERARY CRITICISM

3. Feminist Criticism- representation of

women in literature as an expression of the
social norms about women and their social
roles and as a means of socialization (by male
writers)
TYPES OF LITERARY CRITICISM

4. Psychoanalytic Criticism- based on

Sigmund Freud Id, ego, and superego; uses
theories of psychology to analyze author or
fictional character’s state of mind
(psychoanalysis)
TYPES OF LITERARY CRITICISM

5. Marxist Criticism- applies political

science and economics (Karl Marx);
concerned with issues of class conflict and
materialism, wealth, work, and various
surrounding ideologies
TYPES OF LITERARY CRITICISM

6. New Criticism/ Formalist/

Structuralism- discovers how work of
literature functioned as a self-contained, self-
referential aesthetic object
TYPES OF LITERARY CRITICISM

7. Formalism- analysis, interpretation, or

evaluation of inherent feature of text including
grammar and syntax, and literary elements or
devices; reduces importance of text’s historical,
biographical, and cultural context
TYPES OF LITERARY CRITICISM

8. New Historicism- examining how author’s

time
TYPES OF LITERARY CRITICISM

9. Post-Structuralism- studies objects and

systems of knowledge produced by the object
TYPES OF LITERARY CRITICISM

10. Reader-Response Criticism-believes

that a reader’s interaction with the text give
its meaning; text cannot exist without the
reader; focuses on reader instead of author
Why is literature important?
Popular Literature
Genres
Objective:
Familiarize the popular literature genres.
1. ROMANCE (definition)

• a narrative genre in literature that

involves a mysterious, adventurous, or
spiritual storyline where the focus is on a
quest that involves bravery and strong
values, not always love interest.
1. ROMANCE (types)

a. Gothic – settings are usually in distant regions

and stories feature dark and compelling characters
(Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte; Wuthering Heights
by Emily Bronte; Frankenstein by Mary Shelley; The
Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne)
1. ROMANCE (types)

b. Historical – takes place in times long past

and appears romantic due to the adventure
and wilderness of time.
(The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore
Cooper; Rob Roy by Sir Walter Scott)
1. ROMANCE (types)

c. Contemporary/ Modern – focuses on

love relationship and has a happy ending; can
be series of books or single-title.
(comedy-romance; tragic-romance; satire-
romance; serious-romance)
2. SCIENCE FICTION (definition)

• “Sci-fi” is a genre whose content is imaginative,

but based in science; relies heavily on scientific
facts, theories, and principles as support to
settings, characters, themes, and plot-lines
making it different from fantasy; imaginary
but possible/ plausible.
2. SCIENCE FICTION (definition)

a. Hard Science Fiction – strictly follows

scientific facts and principles; focused on
natural sciences like physics, astronomy,
chemistry, astrophysics, etc.; often written by
real scientists; prediction of future events.
2. SCIENCE FICTION (definition)

b. Soft Science Fiction – focused on social

sciences like anthropology, sociology,
psychology, and politics– involving human
behavior; mainly addresses possible scientific
consequences of human behavior
3. DETECTIVE STORY (definition)

• a popular literature wherein a crime is

introduced, investigated, and the culprit is
revealed
• “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” by Edgar
Allan Poe (April 1841) – first detective story
3. DETECTIVE STORY (examples)
• “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” by Edgar Allan Poe (April
1841) – first detective story
• The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins (1868, English)
• The Leavenworth Case by Anna Katherine Green (1878,
American)
• The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (1886, Australian Fergus Hume)
• Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle – greatest of all
fictional detectives
4. COMIC BOOK (definition)

• Provide narrative experiences for students

beginning to read and students acquiring a
new language
• Follows plot, characters, and setting without
sophisticated decoding skills
• Aids both reading and writing
4. COMIC BOOK (definition)
• “Comics provide authentic language learning
opportunities for all students… The dramatically
reduced text of many comics make them manageable
and language profitable for even beginning level
readers.” (Stephen Cary, L2 Learner Specialist, author
of Going Graphic: Comics at Work in Multilingual
Classroom)
4. COMIC BOOK (benefits)
• Visual representation/ images of knowledge
• Present what is essential
• Engaing through thinking, creating, and writing
• Avenue for writing dialogue
• Incite students with low interest in writing
• Helps organization through storytelling and
storyboarding
4. COMIC BOOK (benefits)
• Easier to remember
• Develops creative and higher level though processes
• Develops composition techniques through visual-
verbal connections
• Enriches reading, writing, and thinking
• Serves as assessment and evaluation tool
• Sequencing promotes understanding
5. COMIC STRIPS/ STORY BOARD
(definition)
• Sequence of drawings, either in color or black
and white, relating to comic incident,
adventure, or mystery story, etc.
• Dialogues are typically printed in balloons,
usually in horizontal strip in daily newspapers
and comic books
5. COMIC STRIPS (benefits)
• Fun, interesting, and motivating
• Promote a wide variety of skills: cognitive, intellectual,
social, and cultural
• Can be used in different grades and subjects
• Can help develop HOTs (sequencing, predicting,
inferring, synthesizing, analyzing, evaluating, creating)
• Enhance students’ engagement with multimodal texts
5. COMIC STRIPS (benefits)
• Make students aware of multimodal means in
construction and communication of meanings
• Ideal teaching tools for teaching target language
• Visually illustrated content is easier to understand and
remember
• Can be used to teach language macro skills