LITERATURE

Angeli Erica Lorenzo

Ronalyn Valencia
Literature
 Literature is a collection of writing in prose or
verse, especially writings having excellence of
form or expression and expressing ideas of
permanent or universal interest. (Webster)
 The term “literature” came from the Latin
word “literatura” meaning writing or learning
or from the Latin word “literatus” meaning
literate or learned.
 Literature is divided into two broad genres---
poetry and prose.
 Poetry is that broad genre of literature that is
written in stanza form. It is characterized by a
regular rhythmic pattern, rhyme, horizontal
and/or vertical measure, imagery, symbolism
and figurative language.
 Poetry (the term derives from a variant of
the Greek term, poiesis, "making") is a form
of literature that uses aesthetic and
rhythmic[1][2][3] qualities of language—such
as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism,
and metre—to evoke meanings in addition to,
or in place of, the prosaic ostensible meaning.
 Poetry is a 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.
Elements of Poetry

 Measure
 Rhythm
 Rhyme
 Imagery
 Symbolism
 Figure of Speech
Measure

 Measure involves the counting of the number

of lines and stanzas (vertical measure) and the
number of syllables and feet (horizontal
measure)
Vertical Measure

 Poems and stanzas are classified according to

the number of lines.
 Couplet- two lines
 Triplet- three lines; (the three lines rhyme) or
tercet (the first and last lines rhyme)
 Quatrain or Quartet- four lines
 Cinquain or Quintain- five lines
 Sestet- six lines
 Septet- seven lines
 Octave- eight lines
 Nonet- nine lines
Horizontal Measure
 Lines are described according to the number of syllables.
 Monosyllabic- one (1) syllable
 Disyllabic- two (2) syllables
 Trisyllabic- three (3) syllables
 Tetrasyllabic- four (4) syllables
 Pentasyllabic- five (5) syllables
 Hexasyllabic- six (6) syllables
 Heptasyllabic- seven (7) syllables
 Octosyllabic- eight (8) syllables
 Nonasyllabic- nine (9) syllables
 Decasyllabic- ten (10) syllables
 Undecasyllabic- eleven (11) syllables
 Dodecasyllabic- twelve (12) syllables
Rhythm
 It is the regular succession of accented and unaccented syllables in
line.
 It is associated with the metrical feet, which are classified as follows:
 iamb – one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable (e.g.
des-cribe, in-clude, re-tract)
 trochee – one stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable
(e.g. pic-ture, flow-er)
 dactyl – one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables
(e.g. an-no-tate, sim-i-lar)
 anapest – two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable
(e.g. com-pre-hend)
 spondee – two stressed syllables together (e.g. heart-beat, four-
teen)
 pyrrhic – two unstressed syllables together (rare, usually used to end
dactylic hexameter) --- Wikipedia
Rhyme

 It is the presence of words that have similar or

identical final sounds
 Internal Rhyme. When the rhyming words are
found with one line.
 Terminal Rhyme. When the rhyming words
are found at the end of lines, a terminal
rhyme. (e.g. Jose Garcia Villa’s poem “Lyric
17”)
 "Lyric 17"
First, a poem must be magical,
Then musical as a sea-gull.
It must be a brightness moving
And hold secret a bird's flowering.
It must be slender as a bell,
And it must hold fire as well.
It must have the wisdom of bows
And it must kneel like a rose.
It must be able to hear
The luminance of dove and deer.
It must be able to hide
What it seeks, like a bride.
And over all I would like to hover
God, smiling from the poem's cover.
 Perfect Rhyme. It occurs when the final
sounds of rhyming words are identical. (e.g.
choose and lose ; death and breath; and
rhyme and dime.
 Approximate Rhyme. It occurs when the
final sounds of rhyming words are similar.
(e.g. thing & sin; meet and fit; ice and eyes; )
 Eye Rhyme. It occurs when the words have
identical final letters which do not sound
the same; thus, the words appear to rhyme.
(e.g. lone & done; heroine & entwine; groan
& Roan)
 Masculine Rhyme. (Single Rhyme) It occurs
when the rhyming words have one (single)
syllable each. (e.g. stake & make; main & sane;
and main & same)
 Feminine Rhyme (Double Rhyme). It occurs
when the rhyming words have two (double)
syllables each and the stress on the first
syllable. (e.g. father & mother; loving & hating;
action &station)
 Compound Rhyme. It occurs when the
rhyming words are compound words forming
two pairs of rhyming words. (e.g. fish broth &
dishcloth; love boat & sob note; hair band &
Fairland).
 Monorime. A monorime esuxts when all lines
in the stanza have the same final sound. A
tanaga, a korido, and an awit have monoring
quartrains with lines of seven, eight, and
twelve syllables, respectively.
 Dirime. A dirime exist when stanza has two
pairs or sets of rhyming words.(ABAB; ABBA ;
AABB)
 Trimine . A trimine exists when a stanza has
three pairs or sets of rhyming words.
(AABBCC; ABCCBA).
 Rime Riche or Identical Rhyme. It occurs
when the rhyming wore are homonyms. (e.g.
steak & stake; main & mane; pail & pale)
Imagery

 It is the creation of a picture or pictures by

using words that appeal to the senses. It is
either visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory,
tactile or tactual, kinesthetic or thermal.
 Imagery is language used by poets, novelists
and other writers to create images in the
mind of the reader. Imagery
includes figurative and metaphorical
language to improve the reader’s experience
through their senses.
 Daddy by Sylvia Plath
 Not a God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.
You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who
Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do…
Examples of Imagery

 Example 1 Imagery using visuals:

 The night was black as ever, but bright stars lit up the
sky in beautiful and varied constellations which were
sprinkled across the astronomical landscape.
 In this example, the experience of the night sky is
described in depth with color (black as ever, bright),
shape (varied constellations), and pattern (sprinkled).
 Example 2 Imagery using sounds:
 Silence was broken by the peal of piano keys as Shannon
began practicing her concerto.
 Here, auditory imagery breaks silence with the
beautiful sound of piano keys.
Imagery in Literature

 Imagery is found throughout literature in

poems, plays, stories, novels, and other
creative compositions. Here are a few
examples of imagery in literature:
 Example 1
 Excerpt describing a fish:
 his brown skin hung in strips
 like ancient wallpaper,
 and its pattern of darker brown
 was like wallpaper:
 shapes like full-blown roses
 stained and lost through age.
 This excerpt from Elizabeth Bishop’s poem “The Fish”
is brimming with visual imagery. It beautifies and
complicates the image of a fish that has just been
caught. You can imagine the fish with tattered, dark
brown skin “like ancient wallpaper” covered in
barnacles, lime deposits, and sea lice. In just a few
lines, Bishop mentions many colors including brown,
rose, white, and green.
 Example 2
 Another example:
 A taste for the miniature was one aspect of an orderly
spirit. Another was a passion for secrets: in a
prized varnished cabinet, a secret drawer was opened
by pushing against the grain of a cleverly turned
dovetail joint, and here she kept a diary locked by a
clasp, and a notebook written in a code of her own
invention. … An old tin petty cash box was hidden
under a removable floorboard beneath her bed.
 In this excerpt from Ian McEwan’s novel Atonement,
we can almost feel the cabinet and its varnished
texture or the joint that is specifically in a dovetail
shape. We can also imagine the clasp detailing on
the diary and the tin cash box that’s hidden under a
floorboard. Various items are described in-depth, so
much so that the reader can easily visualize them.
 Example 3 Imagery using scent:
 She smelled the scent of sweet hibiscus wafting through the air, its
tropical smell a reminder that she was on vacation in a beautiful place.
 The scent of hibiscus helps describe a scene which is relaxing, warm,
and welcoming.
 Example 4 Imagery using taste:
 The candy melted in her mouth and swirls of bittersweet chocolate and
slightly sweet but salty caramel blended together on her tongue.
 Thanks to an in-depth description of the candy’s various flavors, the
reader can almost experience the deliciousness directly.
 Example 5 Imagery using touch:
 After the long run, he collapsed in the grass with tired and burning
muscles. The grass tickled his skin and sweat cooled on his brow.
 In this example, imagery is used to describe the feeling of strained
muscles, grass’s tickle, and sweat cooling on skin.
Symbolism

 It is manifested when one thing is let to

represent another. A symbol is something
which represents something else by
association, resemblance or convention.
 Mountain- symbolize great obstacle
 Strong wall- a powerful or intellectual person
 Flowers- ladies or women
 Butterflies and bees- men courting women
Figures of Speech

 Figure of speech are those words and phrases

connotatively used by the writer to
communicate an abstract idea or to produce an
effect that words used in their ordinary or
denotative sense can’t produce.
 A figure of speech is a phrase or word having
different meanings than its literal meanings. It
conveys meaning by identifying or comparing
one thing to another, which has connotation or
meaning familiar to the audience. That is why it
is helpful in creating vivid rhetorical effect.
Main Figures Of
Speech In Poetry
 The metaphor is one of the main figures of
speech, that expresses a word with a different
meaning to its usual significance but where
there is a similarity between them. A real
term is identified with something imaginary.
 Examples:
 Your eyes are suns.
 Time is a thief.
 He broke my heart.
 The synecdoche is a figure of speech used to
express a part of something as a whole;
conversely, it may also be that it expresses
the whole as a part.
 Examples:
 I will write him a few words (a letter).
 The sails (ships) could be seen from the
horizon
 You need to earn your bread (food-money)
 Another of the main figures of speech
is synonymia which consists in the
accumulated use of synonyms, which also
draws on functions similar to those of rhetoric
repetition. The aim is to specify and greatly
emphasise descriptions.
 Example:
 Obstinate, fierce and villainous.
 You always look beautiful, perfect,
untouchable and ideal.
 There is a figure of speech that we also use
frequently in day to day life: irony. This is
used to express the contrary of what we realy
want to say, emphasizing a false or funny
tone.
 Examples:
 I love spending an hour waiting for someone!
 The smell of trash is really delicious
 The hyperbole is a figure of speech consisting
of exaggerating one aspect of reality in order
to achieve greater expressiveness, to exalt
expressions. Thus, it can be used to express
despair or intrigue or for comic effect.
 Example:
 The bag weighed a ton
 My heart shrinks every time she talks
 The chiasmus is used in a group of verses and
can be used to reverse the order of a word to
find another meaning to the next sentence or
emphasis the first one.
 Examples:
 Many that are first shall be last, many that are
last shall be first.
 Beauty is truth, truth is beauty.
 The epithet is a figure of speech that
unnecessarily adds adjectives intended to
describe, but in reality they do not add
anything.
 Example:
 The green grass and the blue sky.
 Upon the sweetest flower of all the field.
 With allegory, what is done is to represent
figuratively an idea through beings which can
be animate, human, fictitious, etc..
 Examples:
 The waves of the sea alone.
 The flowers danced to the sound of the wind.
 The paradox is also very popular, it's a
contradictory expression that is presented
when we put two opposed concepts together
but can, however, create a sentence that
invites analysis and reflection.
 Examples:
 The more I see the less I know.
 Be realistic, do the impossible.