WOR L D L IT E R A T U R E

INTRODUCTION

ANNA MARIE M. ALONZO, MAIED

Instructor
OBJECTIVES
LITERATURE
 is a product of life and about life. It includes
compositions that tell stories, dramatize
situations, express emotions, analyze and
advocate ideas. Every literary piece has a
permanent worth through its intrinsic
excellence.
WHY IS THERE A NEED TO STUDY LITERATURE?
 Literature helps readers grow.
 It provides an objective based on knowledge and
understanding.
 It links readers with the broader cultural, philosophical and
religious world of which they are apart.
 It enables people to recognize human dreams and struggles in
different places and time that they would never otherwise
know.
WHY IS THERE A NEED TO STUDY LITERATURE?

 It helps them develop mature sensibility and compassion for

the condition of all creations – humans, animals, and plants.
 It allows them to appreciate the beauty of order and
arrangment, just as a well structured song or a beautifully
painted canvas does.
 It provides the comparative basis from which they can see
worthiness in the aim of all readers and it therefore helps
them see beauty in the world around them.
WHY IS THERE A NEED TO STUDY LITERATURE?

 It exercises their emotions through interest, concern,

tension, excitement, hope, fear, regret, laughter, and
sympathy.
WHY IS THERE A NEED TO STUDY LITERATURE?

The experience of reading literary pieces enables them to shape

their goals and values and clarify their own identities– both
positively, through acceptance of the admirable in human beings
and negatively, through rejection of the sinister.
It enables readers to develop a perspective about events that
occur locally and globally, thereby allowing them to understand
and control certain events in their lives.
Literature makes people humans.
I. CLASSICAL LITERATURE
A. Greek Literature
B. Roman Literature
II. EUROPIAN LITERATURE
A. French Literature
B. Spanish and Portuguese Literature
C. Italian Literature
D. German Literature
E. Russian Literature
F. Scandinavian Litarature
III. ORIENTAL LITERATURE
A. Egyptian Literature
B. Babylonian-Assyrian Literature
C. Hebrew Literature
D. Persian Literature
E. Arabic Literature
F. Indian Literature
G. Chinese Literature
H. Japanese Literature
IV. ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE

A. English Literature
B. American Literature
FORMS OF LITERATURE
1. Poetry – literary work in which special intensity is given to the
expression of feelings and ideas by the use of distinctive style and
rhythm, poems collectively or as a genre of literature.
2. Prose – written or spoken language in its ordinary form, without
metrical structure as distinguished from poetry or verse.
KINDS OF POETRY
1. Narrative Poetry – narrative poem tells a story in verse
Epic – retells in a contiuous narrative, the life and works of a heroic or
mythological person or group of persons.
Ballad – is a songlike poem that tells a story, which often deals with
adventures or romance.
The Metrical Tale – is a narrative poem that relates a real or imaginary event
in simple straightforward language from a wide range of subjects,
characters, life experiences, and emotional situations.
Metrical Romance – is a long narrative poem that presents remote or
imaginative incidents rather than ordinary, realistic experience.
2. Lyrical Poetry – is a poem that expresses the emotions, feelings and observations of
the writer
Song – is a lyric poem that has been set to music to be sung.
Sonnet – is a fourteen-line lyric poem focused on a single theme.
Elegy – is a solemn and formal lyric poem about death that reflects a serious or tragic
theme.
Ode – is a long, formal lyric poem with a serious theme.
Events – respond to natural scences or consider serious human problems.
Simple Lyric – includes all lyric poems that do not fall under the five other types
KINDS OF PROSE
1. Fiction – (from the latin finger. “to form, create”) is a prose writing that tells about imaginary characters and events.
a)Short Story – is a brief prose narrative that is usually read in one sitting.
b)Novel – consists simply of a long narrative story, written in prose.
c)Drama – or a play is a narrative prose, written in scripted form and played on stage by the actors or ferformers.
d)Fable – is a brief story usually with animal characters that teaches moral lesson.
e)Parable – is a short narrative that that is at least in part allegorical and that illustrates a moral or spiritual lesson.
f) Legend – is a story that refelcts the people’s identity or cultural values, generally with more historical and less
emphasis on the supernatural.
g)Myth – is a fictional tale originally with religious significance that explains the actions of Gods or Heroes, the causes of
natural phenomena or both.
h)Folk tale – is a story featuring folkloric characters such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, giants, talking animals and
others
2. Non Fiction – is a prose writing that presents and explains ideas or tells about real people,
places, objects or events.
a) Autobiography – from Greek auton, “self:, bios, “life” and graphien, “write”.
b) Biography – Biography is a genre of literature based on the written accounts of individual
lives.
c) Essay – is the most common and easiest form of literature.
d) Diary or Journal – is a book for writing discrete entries arranged by date, reporting on what has
happened over the course of a day or other period.
THE ELEMENTS OF POETRY

1. Sounds – poems use ryhme, rhythm, and repetition to create special sound
effects.
a) rhyme – is the regular recurrence of similar sounds usually at the end of
each line.
EXAMPLE
TREES
I think that I shall never see,
A poem as lovely as a tree;

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest,

Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,

And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear,

A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain

Who intimately lives with rain;

Poems are made by fools like me,

But only God can make a tree.
THE ELEMENTS OF POETRY
b) Rhythm – like the beat in music, is the recurrence of pattern of sound. It is the result of
systematically streesing or accenting words and syllabus.

Example : “Blame not my cheecks through pale with love they be.”

c) Meter – is the measure with which we count the beat of rhythm. It was taken from the Greek word
“metron” meaning “to measure.”
Example: “When cooking fish soup,
Add pepper for flavor, add onion for aroma.”
d) Repetition – is the repeated use of a sound, word, phrase, sentence, rhythmical
pattern or grammatical pattern.

Example: THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE

Half a league, half a league

Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Road the six hundred
Forward, the light Brigade!
Charge for the gun’s he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred
e) Onomatopoeia – refers to words that sound like what they mean.

Example:
“Bang!” to the sound of the gun,
“Tic, tac,” of the clock
“Splash” of the water
2. Figure of Speech – is a word or phrase used in a non-literal sense for
rhetorical or vivid effect.

The ff are the most commonly used figures of speech,

simile – (from the Latin word word simile which means similar) is a stated
comparison between two things that really are very different, but share
some common element. It is introduced by like,as, or as if.

Examples : 1. A poem as lovely as a tree

2. “..little star like a diamond in the sky”
3. His mind is like a sponge
Metaphor – (from the Greek verb methapherein which means
to carry over) is a suggested or implied comparison between
two unlike things without the use of as, as if, like.

Examples: 1. Character is a diamond that scratches every

other stone.
2. He is a walking encyclopedia.
3. “She is the apple of his eyes.”
Personification – is a figure of speech that gives human
qualities or attributes to an object, an animal or an idea.

Examples: 1. Only the moon was the witness in the incident.

2. The volcano is very angry.
3. “As I entered my room, mosquitoes were
rehearsing their war song.”
4. Time had fallen asleep in the afternoon.
Metonymy – (from the Greek prefix meta, which means change + the
root onoma, name + the noun suffix –y) consists of substitution of the
literal noun for another which it suggests because it is somehow
associated with it.

Examples: 1. Lend me your ears. (listen)

2. The pen is mighter than the sword. (reading)
3. I give my heart. (love)
Hyperbole – (from the Greek prefix hyper which means
beyond + the root ballein, to throw) is a deliberate
overstatement or exxageration – not to deceive, but to
emphasize a statement –often for humorous effect.

Examples: 1. She cried forever!

2. He almost died laughing.
3. I’ve been waiting for an eternity.
Irony – is a statement of one idea, the opposite of
which is meant.

Examples:1. For Brutus is an honorable man.

2. You’re so lovely today; you look like a Christmas tree.
3. You’re a great guy! (bitterly)
Oxymoron – is the combining of contraries
(opposites) to portray a particular image or to
produce a striking effect.

Examples: 1. Parting is such a sweet sarrow.

2. Less is more.
3. Sound of silence
Apostrophe – is a direct address to an inanimate
object, a dead person (as if present), or an idea.

Examples: 1. “O Death! Where is thy sting?”

2. “Love, thy will be done.”
3. “O captain, my captain! Our fearful trip is done.”
GUIDELINES IN INTERPRETING LITERARY TEXTS:

A. PRELIMINARIES ON INTERPRETING LITERARY TEXTX

REFERENCE

WORLD LITERATURE,