Understanding Literature

When words mean

something else
Literature

• Story of man
• Deals with ideas, thoughts, and
emotions of man
• Derived from the Latin word “litera”
which means letter
• Any printed materials written within a
book, a magazine or a pamphlet
Brother Azurin said…

“literature expresses the

feelings of people to society, to
the government, to his
surroundings, to his fellowmen
and to his Divine Creator.”
The expression of one’s
feelings, according to him, may
be through love, sorrow,
happiness, hatred, anger, pity,
contempt, or revenge.
 
Why We Need to Study
Philippine Literature
 to know the history of a
nation’s spirit
 To gain valuable experience from
other people/cultures.
 To better appreciate our
literary heritage. ( We cannot
appreciate something that we
do not understand.)
 To realize our literary
limitations conditioned by
certain historical factors and
we can take steps to
overcome them.
 to manifest our deep concern
for our own literature
Types of Literature

 Poetry
- a rhythmic, imaginative language
expressing the invention, thought,
imagination, taste, passion and
insight of the human soul
• Prose
- includes all forms of literary
expression not metrically versified;
direct or straightforward
Elements of poetry

1. Verse-poetic line
• before- verses are particular with
meter and rhyme
• Now- free verse which means non
conformity to the elements
2. rhyme- refers to similar sounds
within a line or among lines
Classification of rhymes

a. assonance- similar vowel sounds

b. Alliteration- similar consonant
sounds
a. assonance

 Identity or similarity in sound

between internal vowels in
neighboring words.

 Etymology:
 From the Latin, "to sound"
examples

Oh cleft effect! Cold modesty, hot wrath,

Both fire from hence and chill extincture
hath."
(William Shakespeare [authorship
uncertain], A Lover's Complaint)

"Those images that yet

Fresh images beget,
That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented
sea.
(W.B. Yeats, "Byzantium")
 b. Alliteration
consonant sounds at
the beginning of
words are repeated.

Etymology:
From the Latin,
"putting letters
together"
Examples:

 "The mass of men lead lives of

quiet desperation."
(Henry David Thoreau, Walden)

"A moist young moon hung above

the mist of a neighboring meadow."
(Vladimir Nabokov, Conclusive
Evidence)
3. Meter- measures the quantity of
syllables in a verse
4. Rhythm-regular recurrence of
stressed and unstressed syllables
5. Imagery- figurative description
- a tool to convey ideas through the
use of figurative or methaphorical
language to create figure, object or
ideas in expressive tonal language
Types of poetry

a. narrative- poems that relate series

of events. These include
1. ballad- shortest and simplest
narrative
- has simple structure and tells
single incident
-song accompanying a dance
2. Metrical romance- a long rambling
story revolving around the adventures
of knights and lord and their highborn
ladies during the age of chivalry
3. Metrical tale- written in verse and
can be classified either as a ballad or
metrical romance
4. Epic- about heroic exploits open
under supernatural control
b. Lyric poetry

- Kind of poetry meant to be sung to

the accompaniment of lyre;
expresses the emotions and
feelings of the poet.
Types of lyric poetry

1. Folksong (awiting bayan)

- short poems intended to be sung
2. sonnets- lyric poems of 14 lines dealing
with an emotion, feeling or an idea
3. elegy- expressing grief and
melancholy, theme is death
4. ode- poem of noble feeling with non
definite number of syllables or lines in
a stanza
5.Psalms (dalit)- a song praising
God or the Virgin Mary
6. Awit (song)- has measures of 12
syllables and slowly sung to the
acompaniment of guitar or banduria
7. corridos- has measures of 8
syllables and recited to a martial
beat
c. Dramatic poetry

1. comedy- “komos” meaning

festivity or revelry; usually has a
happy ending
2. Melodrama- used in musical plays
with opera
3. Tragedy- involves a hero
struggling mightily against
different forces
4. farce- exaggerated comedy;
situations are ridiculous to be true
5. Social poems- purely comic or
tragic and it pictures the life of
today
Prose consists of those written
within the common flow of
conversation in sentences and
paragraphs, while poetry refers to
those expressions in verse, with
measure and rhyme, line and stanza
and has a more melodious tone.
There are many types of prose.
These include the following:

a. Novels. A long narrative

divided into chapters and
events are taken from true-to-
life stories.
Example: WITHOUT SEEING THE DAWN by
Stevan Javellana

b. Short story. This is a narrative involving

one or more characters, one plot and one
single impression.

Example: THE LAUGHTER OF MY FATHER by

Carlos Bulosan

The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
 c. Plays. This is presented
on a stage, is divided into
acts and each act has many
scenes.

 During Medieval times most plays were religious and were used to
teach people about the Bible, the lives of saints, or how to live your
life the right way. There were three different types of plays
preformed during medieval times; The Mystery Play, the Miracle
Play and the Morality Play.
Example: THIRTEEN PLAYS by Wilfredo M.
Guerrero

d. Legends. These are fictitious narratives,

usually about origins.

Example: THE BIKOL LEGEND by Pio Duran

 
e. Fables. These are also fictitious and they deal
with animals and inanimate things who speak and
act like people and their purpose is to enlighten
the minds of children to events that can mold
their ways and attitudes.

Example: THE MONKEY AND THE TURTLE

f. Anecdotes. These are merely products of
the writer’s imagination and the main aim
is to bring out lessons to the reader.

Example: THE MOTH AND THE LAMP

g. Essay. This expresses the viewpoint or

opinion of the writer about a particular
problem or event. The best example of
this is the Editorial page of a newspaper.

h. Biography. This deals with the life of a

person which may be about himself, his
autobiography or that of others.
Example: CAYETANO ARELLANO by
Socorro O. Albert
 
i. News. This is a report of everyday
events in society, government,
science and industry, and accidents,
happening nationally or not.
 
j. Oration. This is 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.
FIGURES OF SPEECH
Figure of Speech

 A figure of speech is a rhetorical

device that achieves a special
effect by using words in distinctive
ways.
Simile

A stated comparison (usually formed

with "like" or "as") between two
fundamentally dissimilar things that
have certain qualities in common.

Etymology:
 From Latin, "likeness" or
"comparison"
Examples:

 "He was like a cock who thought the sun

had risen to hear him crow."
(George Eliot, Adam Bede)
 "Human speech is like a cracked
cauldron on which we bang out
tunes that make bears dance,
when we want to move the stars to
pity."
(Gustave Flaubert, Madame
Bovary)
Metaphor
 An implied comparison between two unlike
things that actually have something important in
common.
Definition: An implied comparison between two
unlike things that actually have something
important in common. A metaphor expresses
the unfamiliar (the tenor) in terms of the familiar
(the vehicle). When Neil Young sings, "Love is a
rose," "rose" is the vehicle for "love," the tenor.
Related terms include mixed metaphor and
catachresis.

 Etymology:
 From the Greek, "carrying over"
Examples :

 "My heart is a lonely hunter that hunts

on a lonely hill."
(William Sharp, "The Lonely Hunter")
 "Memory is a crazy woman that
hoards colored rags and throws
away food."
(Austin O'Malley)
 “Words are bullets, and should be
used sparingly, aimed toward a
target."
(Army Colonel Dick Hallock)
 "Language is a road map of a culture. It tells
you where its people come from and where
they are going."
(Rita Mae Brown)
Hyperbole

 An extravagant statement; the use

of exaggerated terms for the
purpose of emphasis or heightened
effect.
 Etymology:
 From the Greek, "excess"

Examples and Observations:

 "The temperature is several degrees below
zero. My sentences are frozen as they come
out of my mouth, and are thawed in the course
of the summer, making strange noises and
unexpected assertions in various parts of the
church."
(Sidney Smith)
 You crashed my innocent heart.
 "My love is deeper than the holler,
Stronger than the rivers,
Higher than the pine trees growin' tall upon the
hill;
My love is purer than the snowflakes that fall in
late December,
And honest as a robin on a springtime
windowsill
And longer than the song of the whippoorwill."
(Randy Travis, "Deeper Than the Holler")
Onomatopoeia

 Definition: The formation or use of

words (such as hiss or murmur)
that imitate the sounds associated
with the objects or actions they
refer to. Adjective: onomatopoeic.

Etymology:
 From the Latin, "to make names"
 "I'm getting married in the morning!
Ding dong! the bells are gonna chime."
(Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe,
"Get Me to the Church on Time," from
My Fair Lady)
Personification

 A figure of speech in which an

inanimate object or abstraction is
endowed with human qualities or
abilities.
Examples :

 The leaves are dancing while the wind is

whistling.

 "And indeed there will be time

For the yellow smoke that slides along the
street,
Rubbing its back upon the window panes."
(T. S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock")
 "Fear knocked on the door. Faith
answered. There was no one there."
(English proverb quoted by Christopher
Moltisanti in The Sopranos)
Anaphora

 Repetition of the same word or

phrase at the beginning of
successive clauses or verses.

 Etymology: From the Greek,

"carrying up or back"
Examples of Anaphora

"We shall go on to the end, we shall

fight in France, we shall fight on
the seas and oceans, we shall
fight with growing confidence and
growing strength in the air, we
shall defend our Island, whatever
the cost may be, we shall fight on
the beaches, we shall fight on the
landing grounds, we shall fight in
the fields and in the streets, we
shall fight in the hills; we shall
never surrender."
(Winston Churchill, speech to the
House of Commons, June 4, 1940)
Antithesis

 Definition: Juxtaposition of contrasting ideas in

balanced phrases.
 Etymology: From the Greek, "opposition"
Examples of Antithesis:

 It was the best of times, it was the worst of

times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age
of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was
the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of
Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the
spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we
had everything before us, we had nothing
before us, we were all going direct to Heaven,
we were all going direct the other way."
(Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two
Cities)
 "We must learn to
live together as
brothers or perish
together as fools."
(Martin Luther King,
Jr., speech at St.
Louis, 1964)

 "You're easy on the

eyes
Hard on the heart."
(Terri Clark)
Apostrophe

 Breaking off discourse to address

some absent person or thing, some
abstract quality, an inanimate
object, or a nonexistent character.

Etymology: From the Greek,

"turning away"
Examples:

"Bright star, would I were steadfast

as thou art"
(John Keats)

Oh, heaven give me light.

 "Blue Moon, you saw me standing alone
Without a dream in my heart
Without a love of my own.
(Lorenz Hart, "Blue Moon")
Euphemism

 The substitution of an inoffensive

term for one considered offensively
explicit.

 Etymology:
From the Greek, "use of good words"
Examples:
 "Ground beef" or "hamburger" for ground flesh
of a dead cow;
 "pre-owned" for used or second-hand;
 "undocumented worker" for illegal alien;
 "wind" for a belch or a fart

 "Euphemisms are not, as many young people

think, useless verbiage for that which can and
should be said bluntly; they are like secret
agents on a delicate mission, they must airily
pass by a stinking mess with barely so much
as a nod of the head.

 Euphemisms are unpleasant truths wearing

diplomatic cologne."
(Quentin Crisp, Manners from Heaven)
Oxymoron

 Definition: A figure of speech in which

incongruous or contradictory terms
appear side by side; a compressed
paradox.
 Combining contraries/opposites

 Etymology:
From the Greek, "sharp-dull"
Examples:
 "O brawling love! O loving hate! . . .
O heavy lightness! serious vanity!
Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms!
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire,
sick health!
Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!
This love feel I, that feel no love in this."
(William Shakespeare, Romeo and
Juliet)

 "A yawn may be defined as a silent yell."

(G.K. Chesterton)
 "O miserable abundance,
O beggarly riches!"
(John Donne, Devotions Upon
Emergent Occasions)

 "That building is a little bit big and pretty

ugly."
(James Thurber)
Paradox

 A statement that appears to

contradict itself.

Definition: A statement that

appears to contradict itself.
Adjective: paradoxical.

 From the Greek, "incredible,

contrary to opinion or expectation"
Example

 .I planted rice, I pound it, I cooked it but

someone else ate it
Pun

 A play on words, sometimes on

different senses of the same word
and sometimes on the similar
sense or sound of different words.

 "To pun is to treat homonyms as

synonyms."
(Walter Redfern, Puns, 1974)
Examples and Observations of puns

 "It is better to be looked over than to be

overlooked."
(Mae West)

 "Look deep into our ryes."

(Wigler's Bakery advertising slogan)
 "All moanday, tearsday, wailsday,
thumpsday, frightday, shatterday till
the fear of the Law."
(James Joyce, Finnegans Wake)
 A vulture boards an airplane, carrying
two dead possums. The flight attendant
looks at him and says, "I'm sorry, sir,
only one carrion allowed per
passenger."

 "Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a

banana."
(Groucho Marx)
Synechdoche
 A figure of speech is which a part is used to represent
the whole, the whole for a part, the specific for the
general, the general for the specific, or the material for
the thing made from it.
Etymology:
 From the Greek, "gathering together"
Examples and Observations:
 "All hands on deck.“
 "Take thy face hence."
(William Shakespeare, Macbeth V.iii)
 "The ship was lost with all hands [sailors]."
 "His parents bought him a new set of wheels [car]."
 Similarly, "mouths to feed" for hungry people, "white
hair" for an elderly person, "the press" for news media.