Second Grading

21st Century Literature from the Philippines and the World

CHAPTER 6
 Literature in the 21st Century (non-fiction)
By Mithun Selvaratnam (Sri Lanka)
 Puruing a bachelors degree in English Language and Literature with honors at the George washintton
University in washinton D.C.
 He enjoys engaging in volunteer work around the D.C.- Metro area to immerse himself in the cultural and
economic diversity that forms his community.
 Themes in Literature in the 21st Century (Non-fiction)
BY Ashley Walton

Postmodern Literary Techniques

 Fabulation- a rejection of realism which embraces the notion that literature is created work and not bound by
notions of mimesis and verisimilitude.
 Magic realism- may be literary work marked by the use of still, sharply defined, smoothly painted images of
figures and objects depicted in a surrealistic manner. The themes and subjects are often imaginary, somewhat
outlandish and fantastic and with a certain dream like quality.
 Metafiction- is essentially writing about writing or “Forerounding the apparatus”, as it’s typical of
deconstructioniat approaches, making the artificiality of art or the fictionality of fiction apparent to the reader
and generally disregards the necessity for “willing suspension of disbelief.”
 Pastiche- means to combine, or “paste” together, multiple elements. In postmodernist literature this can be an
homage to or a parody of past styles.
 Black humor- is a comic style that makes light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo.
 Intertextuality- the relationship between one test.
CHAPTER 7
 Scheherazade by Haruki Murakami (Japan)
o Haruki Murakami (1949) contemporary japanese writer
o Awards: World fantasy Award(2006), the Frank O’ Connor International Short Story Award (2006), Franz
Kafka Prize(2006), Jerusalem Prize(2009)
o Steven Poole of “The Guardian” praised Murakami as “among the world’s greatest living novelists” for
his works and achievements.
 Their Last Visitor by Kim Young-ha, translated by Dafna Zur (South Korea)
o His father is a military
o He suffered from gas poisoning from coal gas and lost memory before ten.
o Professional writer since 1995
o Won 1st New Writer’s Award given by Munhak Dongne with the novel, I have a Right to Destroy Myself
 The bus Driver Who Wanted to be God by Etgar Keret (Israel)
o Lecturer at ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beer Sheva, and at Tel Aviv University
 Elegy by Mong-Lan (Vietnam)
o Mong-lan is a remarkably accomplished poet.
 The Burning Kite by Ouyang Jianghe, translated by Austin Woerner (China)
o Belong to the “third generation” of twentieth-century Chinese literature and the so-called “five masters
from Sichuan”
 The Wheel by Vinda Karandikar (India)
o She translated his own poems in English, which were published as “Vinda Poems” (1975)
 Song by Ali Ahmad Said Esber (Syria), translated by Khaled Mattawa (Saudi Arabia)
o He led a modernist revolution in the second half of the 20th century, exerting a seismic influence on
Arabic poetry comparable to T.S. Eliot’s in the Anglophone world.
CHAPTER 8
 A History of Everything, Including You by Jenny Hollowell (U.S.)
o Her debut novel “everything Lovely, Effortless, Safe” was published in 2010.
 o “best new writers” by The daily Beast
o Received a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University
 Chicken by Elaine Magarrell (U.S)
o Her 1st book of poetry, won the Washington Writers’ Publishing House prize
o Blameless Lives (1991) won the Word Works Prize
 A Gentleman’s C by Padgett Powell (U.S)
o Novelist in the Southern literary tradition.
o Novel entitled “Edisto” (1984) was nominated for the American Book Award and was excerpted in The
New Yorker
o He write 5 novels: A woman Named Drown 1987, Edisto Revisited 1996, Mrs. Hollingsworth’s Men 2000,
The interrogative Mood: A Novel? 2009, You and Me 2012
 One Today by Richard Blanco 1968 (U.S)
o Fifth poet to read at a United States presidential inauguration, having read for Barack Obama’s second
inauguration.
o 1st immigrant
o 1st latino
o 1st openly gay person and the youngest person to be the U.S. inaugural poet.
o Born in Madrid on February 15, 1968
o He explored his Cuban heritage in his early works and his role as a gay man in Cuban- American culture
in Looking for the Gulf Motel (2012)
 We Ate the Children last by Yann Martel 1963 (Canada)
o Known as Man Booker Prize—winning novel Life of Pi, a #1 international best seller published in more
than 50 territories.
o Best director in Oscars
o Won the Golden Globe Award for the best Original Score
o He is also the author of the novels “the High Mountains of Portugal, Beatriceand Virgil and Self, the
collection of stories The facts behind the Helsinki Roccamatios, and a collection of letters to the prime
minister of Canada, 101 Letters to a Prime Minister
o He has won a number of literary prizes, including the 2001 Hugh Maclennan Prize for Fiction and the
2002 Asian/Pacific American Awards for Literature.
 The Right Sort by David Stephen Mitchelle 1969 (United Kingdom)
o He has written 7 novels: number9dream 2001, Cloud Atlas 2004
o Born in southport in Lancashire (now Merseyside)
o He was educated at Hanley Castle High School and at the University of kent, where he obtained a degree
in English and American Literature followed by an M.A. in Comparative Literature.
o 1st novel, Ghostwritten 1999, moves around the globe, from Okinawa to Mongolia to pre-Millennial New
York City, as nine narrators tell stories that interlock and intersect.
o The novel won the John llewellyn Rhys prize (for best work of British literature written by an author
under 35) and was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award
 One Night by ann Gray (United Kingdom)
o “I felt I was able to say more. There was a space inside the poem which I rarely found in prose”
o The author of a number of collections including Painting Skin (Fatchance Press, 1995) and The man I was
Promised (Headland, 2004)
o She was commended for the national Poetry Competition 2010 and won the ballymaloe poetry prize in
2014.
o Her studies for an MA in Creative writing from the University of Plymouth led to her collection of poems
about the sudden loss of her partner, AT the Gate (Headland, 2008). “My Blue Hen” is one of many
written since that publication, which, she says, “prove” she was not finished with those poems.
Characters
 Are extremely important because they are the medium through which a reader interacts with a piece of
literature.
 Every character has his or her own personality, which a creative author uses to assist in forming the plot of a
story or creating a mood.
  The different attitudes, mannerisms, and even appearances of characters can greatly influence the other major elements in
a literary work, such as theme, setting, and tone.
Kinds of Character
 Protagonist- considered being the main character or leading figure in a novel, play, story, or poem. It may also be referred
to as the “hero” of a work.
 Antagonist- character in a story or poem who deceives, frustrates, or works again the main character, or protagonist, in
some way. The antagonist doesn’t necessarily have to be a person. It could be death, the devil, an illness, or any challenge
that prevents the main character from living “happily ever after”
 Antihero- is a protagonist who has the opposite of most of the traditional attributes of a hero. He or she may be
bewildered, ineffectual, deluded, or merely pathetic.
 Flat character- is a character who is the same sort of person at the end of a story as she was at the beginning.
 Type character is a stereotyped character: one who nature is familiar from prototypes in previous fiction. He/ she has only
one outstanding trait of feature, or at the most a few distinguishing marks.
 Dynamic character is a character who, during the course of a story, undergoes a permanent change in some aspect of his/
her personality or outlook.
 Round character- character who is complex, multi- dimensional, and convincing.

CHAPTER 9
 Hazaran by Jean- Marie Gustave Le Clezio (France), translated by Patricia E. Frederick
o Usually identified as J.M.G. Le Clezio is a French- Mauritian writer and professor.
o Over forty works, he was awarded the 1963 Prix Renaudot for his novel Le Proces- Verbal, as well as the 2008
Nobel Prize in Literature for his life’s work, as an “author of new departures, poetic adventure, and sensual
ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization.
 Kiss by Carlos Ruiz zafon 1964 (Spain)
 The Red Fox Fur Coat by Teolinda Gersao 1940, translated by Margaret Jull Costa (Portugal)
 Blood of a Mole Zdravka Evtimova 1959 (Bulgaria)
 Atlantis—A lost Sonnet by Eavan Boland 1944 Ireland
o She spoke of this time in her poem “An Irish Childhood in England”
 From “Late” by Gottfried Benn 1886-1956 (Germany)
CHAPTER 10
 Like Hercules (microstory) by Ana Maria Shua (Argentina) translated by Steven J. Stewart
 Honey (Flash fiction) by Antonio Utgar (Colombia) translated by Katherine Silver
 Essential Things (sudden fiction) by Jorge Luis Arzola (Cuba)
 You didn’t know (poem) by Idea Vilarino (Uruguay) translated by Jesse Lee kercheval
 The Desert of Atacama V (poem) by Raul Zurita (Chile) translated by Anna Deeny
 To those who have lost everything (Poem) by Francisco X. Alarcon (Mexico)
CHAPTER 11
 As a Woman Grows Older (short story) by J.M. Coetzee (South Africa)
 Poison (science fiction) by Henrietta Rose- Innes (South Africa)
 Hyde Park (creative non-fiction) by Petina Gappah (Zimbabwe)
 The first circle (poem) by Kofi Awoonor (Ghana)
 Tonight (poem) by Ladan Osman (Somalia)
CHAPTER 12
“Criticism asks what literature is, what it does, and what it is worth”

Criticism
 Is the practice of judging the merits and faults of something
 The judger is called a critic.
 To engage in criticism is to criticize.
 One specific item of criticism is called a criticism or critique. Criticism is an evaluative or corrective exercise that
can occur in any area of human life
Literary Criticism
 It is the study, discussion, evaluation and interpretation of literature.
 Modern literary criticism is often informed by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of its
methods and goal.
 It is not always, and has not always been, theorist.
School of Criticism

 Formalist Criticism- “a unique form of human knowledge that needs to be examined on its own terms”
 New Criticism- approach to literature made popular between the 1940’s and the 1960s that evolved out of formalist
criticism.
 Biographical Criticism- “begins with the simple but central insight that literature is written by actual people and that
understanding an author’s life can help readers more thoroughly comprehend the work
 Historical Criticism- seeks to understand a literary work by investigating the social, cultural, and intellectual context that
produced it—a context that necessarily includes the artist’s biography and milieu”
 Gender Criticism- examines how sexual identity influences the creation and reception of literary works.
 Psychological criticism- reflects the effect that modern psychology has had upon both literature and literary criticism.
 Sociological criticism- examines literature in the cultural, economic and political context in which it is written or received.
 Mythological Criticism- the recurrent universal patterns underlying most literary works.
 Reader- response Criticism takes as a fundamental tenet that “literature” exists not as an artifact upon a printed page but
as a transaction between the physical text and the interpreting a text.
 Structuralism- examines how literary texts arrived at their meanings, rather than the meanings themselves.
 Deconstructionist- rejects the traditional assumption that language can accurately represent reality.
 Cultural – approach to literature that focuses on the historical AS WELL AS SOCIAL, POLITICAL, and economic context of
work.

 New Historicism- approach to literature that emphasizes the interaction between the historic context of the work and a
modern reader’s understanding and interpretation of the work.
 Postcolonial – approach to literature that focuses on the study of cultural behavior and expression in relationship to the
colonized world.

Four levels of meaning of a literary work

 Literal meaning – based on taking the work at its “Face value” --without examining any figurative levels.
 Allegorical – particularly in narrative works, each object, person place, and event represents something else, with the characters of the
narrative personifying abstract qualities.
 Symbolic-have dual meaning
 Figurative- the writers strives for a special meaning other than the standard or literal meaning of the words..
Plot
 Built around a series of events that take place within a definite period. It is what happens to the characters. No rules exist for the order in
which the events are presented.
 A Unified plot has a beginning, middle, and an end.
Parts of a Plot
 Exposition- is the introductory material that creates the tone, gives the setting, introduces the characters, and supplies other facts
necessary to understanding a work of literature.
 Rising action- is the second section of the typical Plot, in which the Main character begins to grappe with the story’s main conflict; the
rising action contains several events which usually are arranged in an order of increasing importance
 Climax- is a rhetorical term for a rising orderof importance in the ideas expressed…
 Falling Action- is the part of the Plot after the Climax, containing events caused by the climax and contributing to the Resolution
 Denouement or Resolution- is the final unraveling of a plot; the living solution of a mystery; an explanation or outcome. Denouement
implies an ingenious untying of the knot of an intrigue, involving not only a satisfactory outcome of the main situation but an explanation
of all the secrets and misunderstanding connected with the plot complication.
 Prepared by: Van Quinlog

THE END !
GOOD LUCK SA 2ND QUARTER TEST
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