THE STUDY

OF FICTION
WHAT IS FICTION?

 literature in the form of prose that

FI describes imaginary events and
CT people.

IO
N  something that is invented or
untrue

 embodiment of artistic or the

structural unity of plot, character,
setting, point of view, irony,
symbols, theme, and style.
WHAT IS PLOT?
 PLOT
 the main events of a  is the selection of events
play, novel, movie, or (story) based on relevance
similar work, devised (cause-effect) and
and presented by the suggestiveness
writer as an (provocative scenes),
interrelated sequence. ordering of action to reveal
exposition, complication
leading to crisis-turn-
reversal, and the
resolution, which leads to
the denouement and
ending.
 WHAT IS
CHARACTER?
 character

a person in a The sense of Characters

novel, play, or physical presence reveal
movie of people "in the motivation,
round," fully flower in
fleshed and with action; act or
inner life. are acted upon
and exhibit
growth, change,
or deterioration.
 WHAT IS
SETTING?
 SETTING

 also scene or atmosphere, could be a fixed locale or a "feeling"

which invites meanings.

 It has four functions:

setting as an idea
as a symbol
as an atmosphere
and as a motive force.
WHAT IS POV?
 POINT OF VIEW/POV
• through this, the author allows us to see what he wants us to
see and is, therefore, a device of selectiveness, limitation,
verisimilitude, and distancing.

• There are different kinds: telling it in the 1st person, either as

observer or participant; telling it in the 3rd person,
omniscient or panoramic; and as "limited omniscient."
WHAT IS
IRONY?
 IRONY
• shows contrast between what seems, and what
is, and could be:

 Dramatic  Situational discrepancy  Verbal

discrepancy between between expectation and discrepancy
meaning intended by result, intention and between what
fictional character outcome, illusion and is said and
and another meaning reality; and what is meant,
that the audience or often a vehicle
reader finds in the for sarcasm,
same words; sadness,
affection.
 WHAT IS
SYMBOLISM?
 SYMBOLISM

• doubles as the designation of something concrete in the story and

something intangible and valuable, for example, T. S. Eliot's "object
correlative" or a verbal short- hand to convey meaning or mood.
SYTLE AND
THEME
 STYLE and THEME

Style
implies control of material through different
devices.

Theme
is meaning that surfaces and is communicated
with clarity and intensity; should not be obvious
or simply a moral.
TECHNIQUES FOR
READING POETRY
 WHAT IS POETRY?
POETRY
• is a branch of the humanities that renders
artistically, imaginatively the best of man's
thoughts and feelings. It is metaphorical
communication, "the highest form of talk"
(Engle). It is, according to Ciardi, a formal
structure in which elements operate
simultaneously. We know poetry as a statement
of human experience and its two outstanding
qualities are the formal structure and intensity
of language.
EF
FE
• Its interpretive power awakening, enhancing
CT
S our awareness of things. Here, words mean
OF more, suggest more: a story, a world of
PO ideas, emotions, moods. What is a poet? One
ET
RY who "hangs around words," a juggler of
words, a man who imposes verbal
restrictions (rules of form) or who evolves
his own form as a poet writing free verse,
one of encyclopedic mind with a flair for
sounds, shapes, colors, etc.
 GENERAL THEMES OF
POETRY
Personal themes love, death,
LUIANE loneliness, frustration, nature as
destroyer or as an aspect of the
Divine, art and life, faith in man,
faith in God; and Social themes
injustice, human suffering, man's
DIANE BLANCO
inhumanity to man, failure of
LUIGI BATARILAN
tradition, of the family,
materialism, etc.
 CHARACTERISTICS OF
POETRY

● Metaphorical, rhythmical or cadenced,

connotative, figurative, condensed,
imaginative, emotional, dramatic, indirect,
mysterious, vivid, descriptive, concrete, and
paradoxical.
ELEMENTS
OF
POETRY
 Thought or
I Language V Meaning

II Tone

III Imagery

Sound and
IV Rhythms
 LANGUAGE

The poet uses every resource of language, from simplicity to

eloquence, heightening through compression, expansion,
omission, and repetition, but the effect is always one of
spontaneity. Poetic language considers diction, vocabulary,
and level (whether lofty or simple and conversational).
Language is connotative, that is, it employs words for their
flavor or "feel." The choice of words is marked by the use of
active and exact words, with more nouns and verbs than
adjective and adverbs.
 TONE

or atmosphere, feeling, attitude, stance, or the poet's way of

looking at his subject or at the world. It may be serious, ironic,
bitter, resigned, joyful, sad, etc.
 IMAGERY
the total sensory suggestion of poetry visual, auditory, tactile,
gustatory, and bodily. Imagery which is wider than metaphor
suggests symbols, myth, and archetype. The image is a kind of
verbal shorthand wherein the poet, through his images, perceive
intuitive similarities of unlike objects. The poet is an image
maker, one who reinforces his thoughts with concrete words.
Images in poetry should not be merely profuse, but if they are,
they should be part of a planned symbolic significance or part of
an organized system, hence, imagery.
 SOUND AND RHYTHMS
take into account the kind and number of foot patterns in each
line (iamb, trochaic, anapest, dactylic, spondee and monometer,
dimeter, trimeter, tetrameter, etc.). Rhythm is determined by
metrical stress and rhetorical stress, the latter being dependent
on meaning. Rime or echoing of sound is characterized by the
presence of masculine rime, feminine rime, assonance,
consonance, alliteration, and interior rime. Musicality means the
expressive use of these kinds of rime. Onomatopoeia is also an
important quality of sound in poetry.
 THOUGHT OR MEANING

More significant than the answer to the question "What does a

poem mean?" is the question "How does a poem mean?" Reading
poetry is reenactment of an experience ("What it feels like to...?")
rather than arrival at a thought or logical conclusion.
 HOW TO
SUCCED AS A
POETRY
READER
 HOW TO SUCCED
1. Follow the author's idea or argument through to the end.
Poetry is generally to be imagined as the voice of someone
addressing the audience. It has dramatic possibilities of being
or sounding meditative, pleading, angry, prayerful,
declamatory, narrative, ironic, satiric, etc.

2. Take in the mood evoked by richly connotative words.

Emphasize with the "persona."
3. Recreate the world suggested by the sensuous imagery or
lilting sound effects to be charmed, delighted by the world
conjured by the poet.

4. Look up references, allusions, and suggestions.

5. Analyze it as a formal piece with each strand of

elements but which works expressively as a whole.
 FIGURES OF SPEECH

• Simile, metaphor, personification, metonymy,

synecdoche, litotes, hyperbole, oxymoron,
antithesis, irony and paradox.
 METRICS AND
VERSIFICATION
Metrics and versification are, like imagery, aspects in the study
of poetry concerned with patterns of rhythm, a quality of
speech present in both poetry and prose. Metric is a way of
learning to hear patterns of sounds in English which is based on
occurrence of stressed and unstressed syllables. Meter or
measure takes into account foot pattern and the number of feet
in each line of poetry. The foot patterns are iamb- (/), trochee-
(/), anapest- (~/), dctyl- (~), and spondee- (//). The number of
feet is reckoned as monometer or one foot, dimeter, trimeter,
tetrameter, pentameter, hexameter, and heptameter. Hence,
each line of verse is assigned a metric pattern as iambic
pentameter, trochaic trimeter.
Yet, metrical order or mechanical regularity is almost
always absent in good poetry. Instead, we find
variations of this kind of normal rhythm based on
substitution or a foot pattern for the generally
prevailing one or the absence of perfect foot, as in:

• registers, stresses, pauses,

inflection, pitch, volume, body
movements, position, gestures, and
movement.
 THE TRAGEDY AND COMEDY
M
OO • The mood of tragedy is serious,
thoughtful, philosophical, and more

D emotional. Comedy is mirthful,

satiric, and more intellectual.
KINDS OF ACTION
In the tragedy, the hero is
overcome by forces he is opposed
to or tries to oppose. In the
comedy, incongruity springs from
the gap between intentions and
actuality.
RESOLUTION OF ACTION
The tragic hero loses in the end and the
play ends in catastrophe, death, a sense
of sadness, and futility. The main
character in the comedy triumphs over
obstacles.

EFFECT
The tragedy produces catharsis (makes us pity the hero
and fear with him in a sense of identification) while in
the comedy, the amusement makes us feel superior to
the hero because of his imperfections and ignorance.