Branches of literature

BY: CHELDY S. ELUMBA-PABLEO,MPA,JD,LPT
LITERARY CRITICISM

LITERATURE
• Literature has only three specific
and main branches and that is
poetry, prose and drama. Even
though this are just three but it is
subdivided in to many categories
and more sub categories that we
cannot count immediately.

GENRES OF LITERATURE POETRY
• POETRY: Verbal utterances that are composed according
to metrical schemes.
• NON-FICTION: Writing that is about real life, rather than
imaginary people and events.
• DRAMA: Work that is meant to be performed on stage
(theater) by actors in the form of a play.
• FICTION: Writing that comes from the author’s
imagination and is usually written in narrative form.

POETRY
• It is an imaginative awareness of
experience expressed through
meaning, sound, and rhythmic
language so as to evoke an emotional
response.
• Predominantly, sentences are
metaphorical.

POETRY
• Has been known to employ meter
and rhyme, but this is by no means
necessary.
• An ancient form that has gone
through numerous and drastic
reinvention over time.

3 TYPES OF POETRY
1. NARRATIVE
2. DRAMATIC
3. LYRICAL
• It is not always possible to make distinction
between them.
• For example, an epic poem can contain lyrical
passages, or lyrical poem can contain
narrative parts.

NARRATIVE POETRY
• Narrative poems include epics, ballads, idylls, and
lays.
• Some narrative poetry takes the form of a novel in
verse.
• Example of this is the ring and the book by Robert
browning.
• In the terms of narrative poetry, a romance is a
narrative poem that tells a story of chivalry (courage).

DRAMATIC POETRY
• Is any play or scene in which the characters use poetry,
whether blank or metrical, in their dialogues or
monologues.
• The works of Shakespeare are probably some of the
most easily recognizable examples of dramatic poetry,
which is any dramatic work written in lines of verse.

DRAMATIC POETRY EXAMPLES
• Include Robert Browning's “MY LAST DUCHESS,”
Summary :is narrated by the duke of Ferrari to an
envoy (representative) of another nobleman, whose
daughter the duke is soon to marry. These details
are revealed throughout the poem, but
understanding them from the opening helps to
illustrate the irony that browning employs.

LYRICAL POETRY
• Lyric poems are called so because they
were originally meant to be to set to
music, accompanied by a musical
instrument called the lyre.
• originated in the Ancient Greece.

LYRICAL POETRY
• It revived itself during the Renaissance
period with the help of brilliant writers like
Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, and John
Milton; and in the Romantic era with the
help of Robert Burns, William Blake,
William Wordsworth, John Keats, Shelley,
Victor Hugo, etc.

LYRICAL POETRY
• Written from the first person's point of
view.
• This form of poetry does not tell a story
portraying characters or actions.
• This form usually revolves around the
emotions, perceptions, and state of mind
of the poet.

LYRICAL POETRY EXAMPLE
Dying by Emily Dickinson
I heard a fly buzz when I died;
The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
Between the heaves of storm.
The eyes beside had wrung
them dry,
And breaths were gathering
sure
For that last onset, when the
king
Be witnessed in his power.
I willed my keepsakes, signed
away
What portion of me I
Could make assignable,-and
then
There interposed a fly,
With blue, uncertain,
stumbling buzz,
Between the light and me;
And then the windows failed,
and then
I could not see to see.

• EXPLANATION: observe the rhyme
scheme of the poem, it is ABCB and uses
and iambic meter.
• It's broken up into quatrains.
• The poem does not speak of a particular
character, or tell a story.

• It speaks of an observation she makes just when
she is about to die.
• Her detachment from all the worldly belongings
including the people that were present around
her deathbed is evident in the poem.
• The poem is hypothetical and expresses her
intense emotions about death as she lays dying.

TYPES OF LYRIC POETRY
• Lyric poetry includes
subcategories like ode, sonnet,
occasional poetry, dramatic
monologue, and elegy.

ODE
• An ode is a long serious poem, mostly about
nature, object of attraction, or aimed at adoring
someone or something.
• Ode to a nightingale or ode on a Grecian Urn by
John Keats, ode on intimations of immortality by
William Wordsworth are a few examples of
famous odes.

EXAMPLE OF AN ODE
ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE by John Keats
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness
pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had
drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the
drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had
sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the
trees
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows
O, for a draught of vintage! that hath
been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved
earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and
sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful
Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the
brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world

EXPLANATION ODE
• This ode has a ABABCDECDE rhyme scheme and follows
an iambic pentameter.
• Though it may seem that the poem speaks of a
nightingale, it is in fact symbolic of the desire of
anonymity.
• It also celebrates her (nightingale's) freedom from the
world, and her enchanting voice, and celebrates every
aspect of being a bird in every way.

SONNET
• Sonnets are lyric poems comprising 14 lines
falling into 3 quatrains followed by a
couplet.
• Sonnet 18 by Shakespeare, death be not
proud by John Donne, sonnet 43 by
Elizabeth browning are a few of the famous
sonnets.

EXAMPLE OF A SONNET
Sonnet 43 by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
"How do I love thee? Let me count the
ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and
height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of
sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's
faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints―I love thee with the

EXPLANATION SONNET 43
• 'Sonnet 43', by Elizabeth Barrett browning is a simple
sonnet proclaiming her undying love for her husband-
to-be.
• The poem expresses her emotions and feelings towards
him.
• Thus it has immense imagery without a story or
characters and is written in first person.
• She uses the ABBAABBACDCDCD rhyme scheme with
an iambic pentameter.

DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE
• Dramatic monologues are also known as a persona poem.
This type of poetry is highly narrative and imagined by the
person, which reveals the aspects of his character and
nature while describing a situation or event. They are often
lengthy, famous, and fall under lyric poetry.
• The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot, my last
duchess by Browning are some notable dramatic
monologues.

EXAMPLE OF A DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE
MY LAST DUCHESS BY ROBERT BROWNING

SUMMARY OF THE POEM
• This poem is modeled after Alfonso II, a Spanish nobleman, and
his wife who mysteriously died.
• In this poem, the Duke holds a picture of his deceased wife
behind a thick curtain
• He looks upon her beautiful picture and recounts the life they
shared
• He describes his wife as gentle, humble, and innocent
• But instead of seeing her beauty, he sees her imperfections
• After the wife's death the Duke search for a new life

EXPLANATION OF A DRAMATIC
MONOLOGUE
• The psyche of the duke of Ferrara is revealed in this poem as he
speaks of his deceased wife and of the prospective new ones to come.
The duke narrates how his former wife was easily pleased and would
react the same way with one and all, whether they were cherries
brought to her by the peasant or getting married to the duke himself.
And it is hinted that in a jealous rage he gave commands which
could mean he commanded for her untimely demise. At the end of
the poem he points out to a bronze statue of Neptune taming a
seahorse - which depicts his need to keep things in control.
• This too has an iambic pentameter and uses Enjambed rhyming
couplets.

OCCASIONAL POETRY
• An occasional poetry is written on a specific
occasion. This form of poetry falls under lyric
poetry as it is meant for a performance,
accompanied by instruments.
• Epithalamion by Edmund Spenser, Lycidas by
Milton are two of the most renowned
occasional lyric poetry.

EXAMPLE OF AN OCCASIONAL POETRY
BY: ALFRED TENNYSON

EXPLANATION OF AN OCCASIONAL
POETRY
• This poem commemorates a battle in the Crimean war.
The poet directly speaks of this battle and makes the
listener or reader feel like they are a part of it. He
describes the scene of war between the British and the
Russian empire in the Crimean war. The British soldiers
are referred to as light brigade who are going head on
into their impending doom. The composition makes this
poem an epitome of tragic heroism.

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON’S
“THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIDGE”
USES OF LANGUAGE

ELEGY
• During the classic literature era, an elegy used to be a simple
poem written in an elegiac meter meaning alternating lines
consisted of dactylic hexameter and pentameter. However
post the 16th century, this form of lyric poem laments the
death of someone. A famous form of elegy is the pastoral elegy
which speaks of the simple life of the shepherd and his
observations.
• Milton's Lycidas, Matthew Arnold's thyrsi's, Shelley's Adonai's,
and in memory of W. B. Yeats by W. H. Auden are just a few
examples of famous elegies.

EXAMPLE OF AN ELEGY
O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN
By: Walt Whitman

EXPLANATION OF AN ELEGY
• At first the poet speaks of a victorious return of a ship. He
narrates that the joy of the people on land and slowly
reveals the death of the captain. This is a direct hint to the
sad demise of Abraham Lincoln after the civil war.
However, in reality he mourns the death of Abraham
Lincoln. He speaks of the civil war in this poem.
• As for the technical part of the poetry Whitman has used
AABBCDED rhyme scheme and an iambic pentameter.

METERS
• All types of lyric poetry fall under a
meter.
• It is an underlying structure beneath
the words which helps you emphasize
or stress on certain words of the poem.

IAMBIC METERS
• Iambic pentameter is a standard line
with five iambic feet in a row. DUM
da or da DUM is one iambic foot.
• EXPLANATION: dum da dum da dum
da dum da dum da
• EXAMPLE: if music be the food of
love, play on

TROCHAIC TETRAMETER
• Trochaic tetrameter is opposite of
iambic pentameter and has four
trochees.
• EXPLANATION: DUM da DUM de
DUM da DUM de

PYRRHIC METERS
• Pyrrhic is also known as a dibrach,
which consists of two unaccented, and
has short syllables.
• EXAMPLE: when the blood creeps and
the nerves prick.
• EXPLANATION: da dum

ANAPESTIC METERS
• Anapestic is a quantitative meters which is made up
of two short syllables followed by a long one. The
accentual stress meters consists of two unstressed
syllables followed by one stressed syllable.
• EXAMPLE: I must finish my journey alone
• EXPLANATION: da da DUM

DACTYLIC METERS
• Dactylic is reverse of anapestic metrical foot
of three syllables, one being stressed
followed by two unstressed.
• EXAMPLE: half a league, half a league, half
a league, onward
• EXPLANATION: DUM da da DUM da da

SPONDEE METERS
• Spondee is a metrical foot which
consists of two accented syllables.
• Words like: shortcake, drop-dead, dead
man, childhood, black hole,
breakdown, love-song.
• EXPLANATION: da DUM

CLASSIFICATION OF RHYTHMIC METRE

POEM’S METRICAL DESCRIPTION

RHYME AND METER

POETRY DEFINED BY FAMOUS POETS
• WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
“The spontaneous overflow
of powerful feelings.”

• DYLAN THOMAS
“Poetry is what makes me laugh or
cry or yawn, what makes my
toenails twinkle, what makes me
want to do this or that or nothing.”

• EMILY DICKINSON
“if I read a book and it makes
my body so cold no fire ever
can warm me, I know that is
poetry.”

• OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE (600 -
1100 A.D.) Also known as Anglo-Saxon –
the earliest form of English.
• OLD ENGLISH POEMS are usually long
narrative epics giving accounts of great
deeds of warriors and heroes.
POETRY
OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE (600 -1100 A.D)

• BEOWULF: Greatest and first old
English poem (epic) written in the
7th century by an unknown author.
• LAWS AND ANGLO-SAXON
CHRONICLE: Oldest Anglo-Saxon
prose.
POETRY
OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE (600 -1100 A.D)

• MIDDLE ENGLISH: Language used
from 1100 1500 A.D.
• THE CANTERBURY TALES (17,000
lines): poem written by geoffrey chaucer
(father of english poetry) which can be
classified as religious.
POETRY
MIDDLE ENGLISH LITERATURE (1100 - 1500)

POETRY
MIDDLE ENGLISH LITERATURE (1100 - 1500)
• TROILUS AND CRYSEYDE:
Chaucer’s other important poem.
• Unknown author: SIR GWAIN
AND THE GREEN KNIGHT (1360)

PROSE
• Is a literature that is written in the ordinary
language without metrical structure, as
distinguished from poetry or verse.
• This definition of prose is an example of
prose writing, as is most human
conversation, textbooks, lectures, novels,
short stories, fairy tales, newspaper articles,
and essays.

TYPES OF PROSE
1. NONFICTIONAL PROSE - It includes
biographies, essays, journals, letters,
memoirs, autobiographies, biographies,
essays, diaries and journals, magazines,
newspapers, subject text books such as in
geography, history and civic education

TYPES OF PROSE
2. FICTIONAL PROSE - it includes novels,
novellas, short stories, plays, poems, oral
literature, and songs.
3. HEROIC PROSE – It includes legends, tales.
4. POETRY PROSE – Includes Poetry written in
prose instead of using verse but maintaining poetic
qualities.

PROSE FICTION
Extended prose fiction is the latest of the
literary forms to develop.
We have romances from classical Greek times
that are as long as short novels; but they are
really tales of adventure—vastly extended
anecdotes.

FICTIONAL PLAY EXAMPLE
• THE COMEDY OF ERRORS Summary.
After both being separated from their
twins in a shipwreck, Antipholus and his
slave Dromio go to Ephesus to find them.
The other set of twins lives in Ephesus,
and the new arrivals cause a series of
incidents of mistaken identity.

FICTIONAL PLAY
THE COMEDY OF ERRORS
BY: WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
INTRODUCTION:
The Comedy of Errors is one of Shakespeare's
earliest plays.
It is his shortest and one of his most farcical
comedies, with a major part of the humor coming
from slapstick and mistaken identity in addition to
puns and word plat.
The play was not published until it appeared in the
First Folio in 1623.

FICTIONAL PLAY
CONFLICT:
• Antipholus is in Ephesus seeking his lost family. He is
conflicted about his lost family. Not only he left his father, but
he also seems unable to locate his brother and mother. He is
convinced that in this process of searching for them, he lost
himself too. S. Antipholus is further confused by all people who
seem to know him, though he doesn’t know them. This
increases his feeling that he doesn’t know himself, and
obscures the obvious facts that his long-lost twin is running
around the same city.

FICTIONAL PLAY
PLOT STRUCTURE:
Egeon is sentenced to death in Ephesus.
He is seeking his two lost sons.
He is being a sad sack, and seems to have a life story so
miserable that he’d rather die from it than deal with it.
The story of his separated family sets the stage for the
comic resolution.
Egeon’s plight seems to invite the conclusion of all six
people being happily reunited.

FICTIONAL PLAY
GEOGRAPHY AND TRAVEL:
Though “The Comedy of Errors” takes place in a single
location, the characters come from all corners of the
Earth.
Though they all happen to currently be in one spot,
they do a fantastic job of relating their worldliness by
using geography as a motif in the play.
Geography symbolizes not only where you are, but
where you’ve been and where you intend to go.

FICTIONAL PLAY
SUSPENSE:
Antipholus of Syracus and Dromio of Syracuse escape into
priory after almost getting into a duel with the Merchant;
the Abbess refuses to release S. Antipolus to Adriana’s
care.
CONCLUSION:
Antipholus of Ephesus is comminted to his wife; S.
Antipholus again declareshis love for Luciana; the whole
family is reunited; Egion doest get beheaded.

DIFFERENT ELEMENTS OF PROSE
• The basic elements of prose are: character,
setting, plot, point of view, and mood.
1. CHARACTER refers to: biographical
information; personality traits; social roles, and
psychological factors such as aspirations,
fears, and personal values.

2. SETTING INCLUDES:
Physical environment,
social situation, time
period, and location.

3. PLOT is what happens: characters'
actions and important events.
• Plot progresses through the three
stages of rising action, climax, and
resolution.
• Point of view is a technical term that
identifies the narrator's position
relative to the story being told.

4. MOOD --Means the
dominant feelings and
emotions evoked.

PROSE
MIDDLE ENGLISH LITERATURE(100-1500)
• It is mainly religious
• EXAMPLE: The Ancren
Riwle (13th century) about
the proper conduct of
Women

PROSE
THE ANCREN RIWLE (13th century)

PROSE
• FIRST ENGLISH PLAYS (DRAMA):
1. MIRACLE/MYSTERY PLAYS: Stories from the
bible
2. MORALITY PLAYS: Characters are not people, but
personified as virtues (truth, honor, greed,
revenge).
3. INTERLUDE: A funny play by two or three actors.

PROSE
FIRST ENGLISH DRAMA EXAMPLE
• THE TRAGEDY OF MARIAM, the fair
queen of Jewry, a closet drama written by
Elizabeth Tanfield Cary (1585–1639) and
first published in 1613, was the first
original play in English known to have
been written by a woman.

PROSE
FIRST ENGLISH PLAYS IN THE WORLD
• AESCHYLUS' historical tragedy the
Persians is the oldest surviving drama,
although when it won first prize at the
city Dionysia competition in 472 BC, he
had been writing plays for more than
25 years.

PROSE
FIRST ENGLISH TRAGEDY PLAY
• The first English tragedy, GORBODUC (1561), by Thomas
Sackville and Thomas Norton, is a chain of slaughter and
revenge written in direct imitation of Seneca. (As it happens,
Gorboduc does follow the form as well as the subject matter of
Seneca tragedy: but only a very few other English plays--e.g.
THE MISFORTUNES OF ARTHUR—followed its lead in this.)
Senecan influence is also evident in Thomas Kyd's THE
SPANISH TRAGEDY, and in Shakespeare's TITUS
ANDRONICUS and HAMLET.

GORBODUC (1561) -SUMMARY
By: Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton

THE SPANISH TRAGEDY –SUMMARY
By: Thomas Kyd
• The Spanish tragedy begins with the ghost of
Andrea, a Spanish nobleman, and the personified
abstraction of revenge. Andrea explains that he
was killed in battle against the Portuguese. This
deprived him of his secret love, bel-imperia, and
his ghost has now emerged from the underworld
to seek revenge.

TITUS ANDRONICUS-SUMMARY
By: William Shakespeare
• It is a violent story about a tragic hero, Titus,
whose life is destroyed because of his own
actions. When Titus Andronicus, the most
honored Roman General, returns from a ten-
year war, he has captured Tamora, queen of the
goths, and her three son sand her lover, Aaron
the Moor, as captives. Her eldest son is
sacrificed by Titus; she vows revenge.

HAMLET-SUMMARY
• The ghost of the king of Denmark tells his son hamlet to
avenge his murder by killing the new king, Hamlet's
uncle. Hamlet feigns madness, contemplates life and
death, and seeks revenge. His uncle, fearing for his life,
also devises plots to kill hamlet.
• At end of Hamlet, he finally gets his revenge on Claudius
and Fortinbras is crowned the new King. After the
intense events that happen after Gertrude dies, one after
another each character meets their death.

• Any play or scene in which the characters use
poetry, whether blank or metrical, in their
dialogues or monologues.
• The works of Shakespeare are probably some of
the most easily recognizable examples of
dramatic poetry, which is any dramatic work
written in lines of verse.
DRAMATIC POETRY

• Dramatic poetry is narrative -- it tells a story -spoken
from the point of view of a persona, a speaker who is a
character rather than the author.
• Often, dramatic poetry has multiple characters.
• They often speak mostly in rhymed lines, in blank verse
or in a combination of the two.
• BLANK VERSE refers to unrhymed lines of 10
syllables long with every other syllable stressed.
• Shakespeare wrote his plays in blank verse.
KINDS OF DRAMATIC POETRY
HALLMARKS

DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE
• The monologue may have multiple characters but
only one speaker.
• That speaker may or may not be reliable.
• The reader has to keep in mind that the speaker is
telling a story from his point of view only.
• Were another character to tell the story, the reader
would get another point of view.

DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE
• For EXAMPLE, one character, the duke, tells the
story in Robert Browning's “My Last Duchess.“
• He believes that the duchess gave herself freely
to other men, but without the point of view of
another more objective speaker, you can't really
know whether that is true.

COMEDY
• Some dramatic verse is comedy.
• It may be comedy in the humorous sense that
readers think of today, or it may be comedy in
the classical sense, in that it ends happily in
spite of the sometimes very serious trouble
that unfolds throughout the story.

COMEDY
• Shakespeare's "the tempest" is a
comedy, even though it's not funny,
because it ends happily.
• "As you like it," another of
Shakespeare's comedies, has a
happy ending, and it is also funny.

TRAGEDY
• A tragedy is any story that ends
unhappily.
• The verse dramas “HAMLET," "Romeo and
Juliet" and “THE CRUCIBLE" are
examples of tragedies.
• Verse dramas always take place in the
present.

ENGLISH TRAGEDY PLAY
THE CRUCIBLE -SUMMARY
• Takes place in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692 during the
Salem witch trials. The play is a fictionalized version of the
trials and tells the story of a group of young Salem women
who falsely accuse other villagers of witchcraft.
• Crucible ends with John Proctor marching off to a martyr's
death. By refusing to lie and confess to witchcraft, he
sacrifices his life in the name of truth. At the end of the
play, Proctor has in some way regained his goodness.

TRAGEDY
• For EXAMPLE, you read “MY LAST
DUCHESS" as if you were standing
there listening to the duke speak.
• Likewise, you watch the events of a
Shakespearian tragedy unfold as if
they were happening right now.

THANK YOU FOR READING!
CHELDHAYE

Branches of literature

Empfohlen

Empfohlen

Weitere ähnliche Inhalte

Was ist angesagt?

Was ist angesagt? (20)

Ähnlich wie Branches of literature

Ähnlich wie Branches of literature (20)

Mehr von Cheldy S, Elumba-Pableo

Mehr von Cheldy S, Elumba-Pableo (20)

Kürzlich hochgeladen

Kürzlich hochgeladen (20)

Branches of literature