THE STUDY OF LITERATUREDR. HUSNIAH SAHAMID

FACULTY OF EDUCATIONAL STUDIESUNIVERSITY PUTRA MALAYSIA

Why Study iterature

• "You look for your own story in literature; it's one of the best mechanisms you have to convince yourself you're not alone."

• [Glenn Schaeffer, founder of the International Institute of Modern Letters, UNLV Magazine]

• "[L]iterature is an art, and . . . as an art it is able to enlarge and refine our understanding of life."

[Robertson Davies, Reading and Writing 2-3 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, special ed., 1993) (1992)]

• "Students are formed by the reading they do, by the views of self and world such reading presents."

[Parker J. Palmer, To Know as We Are Known 19 (New York: Harper & Row, 1983)]

• Learn language aspects: vocabulary items, grammatical structures

• aesthetic purposes• take us beyond our limited experience of life• show us lives of other people/culture at other

times.

• stir us intellectually and emotionally, • deepen understanding of our history, our

society, our own individual lives• learn truths about human life• Insight into characters

Classification: Literary Genres

• Works classified according to what they have in common,

• either in formal structures, • treatment of subject matter

• A literary genre is a category of literary composition.

GENRES

• Genre - French term • derived from Latin genus, generis• meaning "type," "sort," or "kind."

Literary Genre

- can be determined by • literary technique, • tone, • content, • or even (as in the case of fiction) length

Genre vs category• should not be confused with age category,• adult, young adult, childrenGeneral genres in literature:• epic, • tragedy, • comedy, • novel, • short story, • creative nonfiction

Grouping works

• orderly way to talk about a LARGE number of literary texts:

• have a better idea of its intended overall structure and/or subject.

• deepen sense of the value of any single text • view it comparatively, - alongside texts of its type

• In US /different countries • literary genre might be differently

grouped/classified• loosely classified eg Library: Dewey System• Fiction & Non Fiction

Non- Fiction

• “informational” material. • These types of books provide information that

is factual. • Nothing is make-believe in these types of

materials. • More specific examples of this type of genre

would be . . .

Biographies: A true account of a person's life written, composed, or produced by another.

Autobiographies: The biography of a person written by that person.

Fiction

• author can make up whole story. can also choose to include :• factual information in a made-up story.

Sub - genres

• often divided into sub-genres :

Eg. 3 basic kinds of literature• the classic genres of Ancient Greece –• poetry, drama, and prose.

Tragedy: A Genre

Historically:Greek Tragedy: Aristotle's Poetics Medieval Tragedy and the Wheel of

Fortune Elizabethan or Shakespearean TragedyThe Problem Play or Drama of Ideas

Poetry : sub-genre

Example: subdivided into • epic, • lyric, • dramatic

Historical

• 450-1066 Old English. (Anglo-Saxon) Period • 1066-1500 Middle English Period • 1500-1660 The Renaissance • 1558-1603 Elizabethan Age • 1603-1625 Jacobean Age • 1625-1649 Caroline Age • 1649-1669 Commonwealth Period • 1660-1785 The Neoclassical Period • 1660-1700 The Restoration • 1700-1745 The Augustan Age. (Age of Pope) • 1745-1785 The Age of Sensibility. (Age of Johnson) • 1785-1830 The Romantic Period• 1832-1901 The Victorian Period • 1848-1860 The Pre-Raphaelites • 1880-1901 Aestheticism and Decadence • 1901-1914 The Edwardian Period • 1910-1936 The Georgian Period • 1914- The Modern Period

• End of Notes