Major 14: Reviewer

WEEK 1

LITERATURE 1.1Can be defined as an expression of feelings, thoughts, and ideas whose medium is
language; oral or written.

1.2. It is not only about human ideas, thoughts, and feelings but also about experience of the authors.

1.3. It can be medium for human to communicate what they feel, think, experience to the readers.

Literature based on different views:

 Literature is an art
 Literature is language
 Literature is fictional
 Literature is expressive
 Literature is everything in print
 It means any writing can be categorized as literature.

Literature as an art form

Imaginative literature 1. Is highly connotative which means words that used in literary works have feeling
and shades of meaning that words tend to evoke.

Literature of power 2. Imaginative literature as also known as? Including poems, short stories, novels, and
plays. It interprets human experience by presenting actual truths about particular events.

Non-imaginative literature 3. Means that the words refer to meaning in dictionary?

Literature of knowledge 4. Non-fictional literature includes biographies, and essays which presents facts,
events, experiences and ideas?

Functions of literature

Entertainment function 1. Known as pleasure reading? In this function, literature is used to entertain is
readers. It is consumed for the sake of one’s enjoyment.

Social and Political function 2. Literature shows how the society works around them. It helps the reader see
the social and political constructs around him and shows the state of the people and the world around
him.

Moral function 3. Literature may impact moral values to its readers the morals contained in a literary text,
whether good or bad are absorbed by whoever reads it, thus shaping their personality.

Linguistic function 4. Literature preserves the language of every civilization from where it originated. They
are also evidences that a certain civilization has existed by recording the language and preserving it
through a wide spans of time.

Educational function 5. Literature teaches us many things about human experience. It is used to portray the
facets of life that we see, and those that we would never dream of seeing. Literature therefore, is a
conduct for the chance to experience and feel things where we can learn things about life.

Key features of literature

Literature as a form of communication 1. It is the transmission of a written or spoken text between a sudden
(author) and a receiver (reader)? It is the transmission of message? It connects individual thoughts and
opinions?

Literature is an art 2. Literature deliberate manifestations of the mind’s ability to create and imagine.
Literary works have feeling and shades of meaning that words tend to evoke.

Timelessness 3. A work must have an enduring quality in which its beauty as well as its applicability cans
with stands the change of time.
Unversality 4. Describes a piece of writing that appeals to the hearts and minds of almost any reader. The
appeal is considered universal due to its ability to cross gender, racial and cultural barriers, regardless of
the time it’s written.

Contemporary literature1. It is a vast group of written works produced from a specific time in history
through the current age.

Contemporary literature2. Started at the end or after the world war II and extend to the current day.

Experiences of war 3. What influenced the literature in the post-war period?

Paul Celan 4. Who attempted to come to terms with the horrors of the death camps?

Gunter Grass 5. He was one of the German authors who tackled the shameful legacy of Nazism?

Nazism 6. It is a political principle of national socialist German’s workers party?

Contemporary Literature 8. The Horrors of Wars, including Bombs, ground wars, genocide and
corruption are the pathways to this type of literature

Contemporary Literature 9. Reflects a society’s social, and or political viewpoints, shown through
realistic characters and connections to current events?

. In order to be considered literature, a written work must upload the highest writing standard and contain a
particular beauty and style. Many literary works become socially relevant and have the power to influence
the public.

People 10. Popular comes from the Greek word populus which means?

Literature 11. Is considered to be a reflection of the culture of its time. Mirrors society?

Popular Culture 12. Is surely culture, which widely favoured or well-liked by many people?

 One has to examine the market sales of books; sales of albums and videos.
 Is a literature that is capable of affecting 90% of the people and 90% of the time.

Popular literature 13. Contains writings that are intended for the masses and those that find Favour with large
audiences? Highly admired, marketable and saleable? Design primarily to entertain?

Emergent Literature 14. The “death of print” has been much heralded over the past decade, precipitated by the
rising accessibility of devices like tablets and smartphones that have made the electronic medium cheaper and
more universal. Book sales, as well as magazine and newspaper subscriptions, have diminished, but our
appetite for information has grown larger and more impetuous.

╸ An integration of a traditional and technological-driven form of literature, such as online collaborative

╸ Contemporary literature refers to the literary works published post WWII to the current day. It can
also be defined as the literature that came postmodern literature. Contemporary word signifies the
prevalent culture encompassing the popular art, music and literature
╸ Popular Literature begins in the 19th century to the 20th Century. Popular literature refers to the literary
work written for a very huge audience. It doesn’t have to do anything with a strict time period but the
work should cater to a large audience to classify it into popular literature.
╸ Emergent Literature starts from 21st century to the present. Emergent literature is more of an adjective
used for the literature work that’s emerging and trending. There could be an emerging theme/genre of
literature that is being written about during the current period.
A contemporary work of literature could be both popular and emerging. Mostly, we don’t emphasize on the
specificity of each word and often string them together to label a piece of literature

Characteristics of emergent literature – It deals with current topics and issues and frequently reflects today’s
technological culture.
 It consists of multi-modal texts. In teaching literature, this multimodal term turn has shifted attention to the
interplay of words and pictures in text-type such as picture books, comics & graphic novels.

Essay type of questions

WEEK 2

The word contemporary means living, belonging to or occurring in the present. So when we talk about
contemporary literature, we are talking about literature that is being written in the now about the now.

A. Types of Fiction

Fiction 1. is general term used to describe an imaginative work of prose, either a novel, short story, or novella.

 Commercial Fiction

 Intended solely to entertain

 Literary Fiction

 Written with serious artistic intentions by someone who hopes to enable readers to broaden
understanding of life and to empathise with others
 Literary writers are more like explorers who take us into the midst of life, show us the props and mirrors
and seek to dispel the illusions.
 Provides keener awareness of our humanity in a friendly and hostile world.
 Usually need to read twice
 Plot: the sequence of events through which an author constructs a story.
 Structure: usually chronological or cause/effect, however a complex structure is often required to convey
complex meanings, so it may be more experimental and unpredictable

 Mystery

Mystery is a popular genre, boasting a huge established audience. All mysteries focus on crime, usually
murder. The action tends to center on the attempts of a wily detective-type to solve the crime. And the climax
usually occurs near the end in a leisurely setting where all the elements of the mystery are neatly assembled for
the reader’s convenience. The solution, is then delivered to the characters and the reader alike.

 Romance

Romance is a huge category aimed at diverting and entertaining women. In romance novels, you have
the elements of fantasy, love, naiveté, extravagance, adventure, and always the heroic lover overcoming
impossible odds to be with his true love.

 Women’s Fiction

It’s common knowledge in the publishing industry that women constitute the biggest book-buying
segment. So, it’s certainly no accident that most mainstream as well as genre fiction is popular among women.
For that reason, publishers and book sellers have identified a category within the mainstream that they classify
as Women’s Fiction.

 Science Fiction/Fantasy

Science Fiction/Fantasy novels depict distant worlds and futuristic technologies that whirl readers far
from the hare and now yet provoke contemplation of contemporary issues.
  Western

Known simply as westerns, these novels about life on America’s post-Civil War western frontier usually
involve conflicts between cowboys and outlaws, cowboys and Native Americans, or Easterners and Westerners.

 Horror

Filled with gut-wrenching fear, this popular genre keeps readers turning the blood-filled pages. From a
writer’s perspective, the defining characteristic is the intention to frighten readers by exploiting their fears, both
conscious and subconconscious.

 Young Adult

This genre includes any type of novel with a protagonist in the 12 to 16 age range that speaks to the
concerns of teenagers.

B. Elements of Fiction

 Suspense

 Mystery: an unusual set of circumstances for which the reader craves an explanation
 Dilemma: a position in which he or she must choose between two courses of action, both undesirable

 Ending

Is it logical within the story’s own terms and does it afford a full, believable revelation?

 Surprise Ending: a sudden, unexpected turn or twist, and furnishes meaningful illumination, not
just a reversal of expectation
 Happy Ending: more common in commercial fiction
 Unhappy Ending: more common in literary fiction because it more closely mirrors real life and
forces readers to contemplate the complexities of life
 Indeterminate Ending: no definitive conclusion is reached, but need not be in terms of a resolved
conflict.

 Artistic Unity

 There must be nothing in the story that is irrelevant

 Plot Manipulation: Unjustified turn in the plot by the situation or the characters

 Coincidence: the occurrence of event that may have a peculiar correspondence. Consider the function
of plot in trying to understand the relationship of each incident to the larger meaning of the story.

 Chance: the occurrence of an event that has no apparent cause in previous events or in predisposition
of character.

 Characterization

 Direct Presentation-readers are told straight out what the characters are alike, or they have
another character in the story describe them. Like emotional impact.
 Indirect Presentation-the author show us the characters through their actions; we determine
what they are like by what they say or do. In good fiction, characters are dramatized.

C. Genres of Contemporary Literature

Flash fiction goes by many names, including micro fiction, micro stories, short- shorts, short stories,
very short stories, sudden fiction, postcard fiction and nanofiction.

 Short Stories
 The short story is usually concerned with a single effect conveyed in only one or a few significant
episodes or scenes. The form encourages economy of setting, concise narrative, and the omission of a complex
plot; character is disclosed in action and dramatic encounter but is seldom fully developed.

 Action/adventure

 Adventure literature developed from many fictional narrative genres in which adventures and an
interesting setting were essential but not the determining factors of the plot.
 Adventure literature is marked by a rapid development of action, inventiveness of plot, and
intense emotions; secrets and enigmas and motifs of abduction and pursuit are also common. The
settings are unusual and the characters are clearly divided into villains and heroes.

 Fantasy

Fantasy, from the Greek ϕαντασία meaning ‘making visible,’ is a genre of fiction that concentrates on
imaginary elements (the fantastic). This can mean magic, the supernatural, alternate worlds,
superheroes, monsters, fairies, magical creatures, mythological heroes—essentially, anything that an
author can imagine outside of reality. With fantasy, the magical or supernatural elements serve as the
foundation of the plot, setting, characterization, or storyline in general.

D. Challenges in Contemporary Literature

 Literature is language-based and national; contemporary society is globalizing and polyglot

 Vernacular means of everyday communication “cellphones, social networks, streaming video’’’are moving
into areas where printed text cannot follow.

 Intellectual property systems failing

 Means of book promotion, distribution and retail destabilized

 Ink-on-paper manufacturing is an outmoded, toxic industry with steeply rising costs.

 Core demographic for printed media is aging faster than the general population. Failure of print and
newspaper is disenfranchising young apprentice writers.

 Media conglomerates have poor business model; economically rationalized “culture industry” is actively
hostile to vital aspects of humane culture.

 Long tail Balkanizes audiences, disrupts means of canon-building and fragments literary reputation

 Academic education system suffering severe bubble-inflation

 Polarizing civil cold war is harmful to intellectual honesty

 Digital public-domain transforms traditional literary heritage into a huge, cost-free, portable, searchable
database, radically transforming the reader’s relationship to belle-letters.

 Contemporary literature not confronting issues of general urgency; domain best-sellers are in former niche
genres such as fantasies, romances and teen books.

 Barriers to publication entry have crashed, enabling huge torrent of sub literary and/or nonliterary textual
expressions.

 Algorithms and social media replacing work of editors and publishing houses; network socially-generated
texts replacing individually-authored text.

 “Convergence culture” obliterating former distinctions between media: books becoming one minor aspect of
huge tweet/blog/comics/games/sountrack/television/cinema/ancillary-merchandise pro fan franchises.

 Unstable computer and cellphone interfaces becoming world’s primary means of cultural access. Compositor
system remake media in their own hybrid creole image.

 Scholars steeped within the disciplines becoming cross-linked jack-of-all-trades virtual intelligentsia.
 Reviewed by sir linoyan:

Literature 1. it means any writing.

Non-imaginative literature 2. Includes biographies, essays presents actual facts, events and experiences?

Literature 3.It is used to portray the facets of life that we see and those that we would never been in seeing?

An usual set of circumstances for which the reader craves for an explanation 4. Which is not true about horror?

There must be nothing in the story that is irrelevant 5. What is artistic unity?

It is written during World War II 5. The ff. defines contemporary literature except?

Happy ending 6. A type of ending that is more common in commercial fiction?

Moral Function 7. A function of literature that says, a literary piece must contain a moral value in a literary text
that absorbed by whoever reads it, thus shaping their personality.

Timelessness 8. A work must have an enduring quality in which its beauty as well as its applicability cans with
stands the change of time.

Young Adult fiction 9. A type of fiction that sticks to the concerns of teenagers?

Plot 10.It is a sequence of events through which an author constructs his part?

3 Essays in mid term.

1. Differentiate mystery and detective story.

Note: familiarize the challenges of contemporary literature. I pick one challenges and you have to explain.