EL 117- TEACHING AND ASSESSSMENT OF LITERATURE STUDIES

GRADING SYSTEM
 Term Exan-40%
 Quizzes, Activities, Oral Recitation-30 %
 Attendance -10%
 Reporting -20%
 Total: 100%
PRELIM LESSONS
 Definition of literature
 Scope literature
 Main genres of literature
 Elements of short story

DEFINITION OF LITERATURE

LITERATURE
o it is a body of written works. The name has traditionally been applied to those imaginative works of prose and poetry by
intentions of the authors and the perceive aesthetic excellence of their execution.
o -Literature may be classified according to a variety of systems, including language, national origin, historical period, genre,
and subject matter
o -literature can be defined as the collected oral and written works of society that depict the people’s belief, values, mores and
aspirations as well as their struggle in life.
o -literature started in oral traditions, with the passing of time tales, poems and other literary forms handed down from one
generation to another by word of the mouth.

TYPES OF LITERATURE
• Prose – a literary medium distinguished from poetry especially by its greater irregularity and variety of rhythm and its closed
resemblance to the patterns of everyday speech.
• Poetry – writing that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience in language chosen and arranged to
create a specific response through its meaning, sound, and rhythm.
SHORT STORY
A brief fictional prose narrative usually concerned with a single effect conveyed in a single significant episode or scene and
involving a limited number of characters.

Famous Short Story Writers • Guy de Maupassant

• Edgar Allan Poe – The Necklace
– The Cask of Amontillado – The Jewels
– Tell-Tale Heart • Anton Chekhov
– The Fall of the House of Usher – A Father
– The Lottery Ticket

DRAMA
• A composition intended to portray life or character or to tell a story usually involving conflicts and emotions through action
and dialogue and typically designed for theatrical performance.

ESSAY
• An analytic, interpretative, or critical literary composition usually much shorter and less systematic and formal than a
dissertation or thesis and usually dealing with its subject from a limited and often personal point of view.
Kinds of Essay
• Familiar Essay – an informal, light-hearted form of the essay.
• Formal Essay – a serious form of the essay
– Michel de Montaigne – first applied to his prose pieces the term essais in 1571
• The Profit of One Man is Damage to Another
– Francis Bacon – Famous essayist from England
• Of Studies
NOVEL
• A fictional prose narrative of considerable length and a certain complexity that deals imaginatively with human experience
through a connected sequence of events involving a group of people in a specific setting.
Kinds of Novels
• Picaresque Novel – an early form of the novel, usually first person narrative, relating the adventures of a lowborn adventurer
who drifts from place to place and from one social milieu to another in an effort to survive.
– Don Quixote dela Mancha – Miguel de Cervantes
– The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
• Gothic Novel – European romantic, pseudomedieval fiction having a prevailing atmosphere of mystery and terror.
– Frankenstein – Mary Shelley
– Dracula – Bram Stoker
– Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
• Historical Novel – has its setting a period in history that attempts to convey the spirit, manners, and social conditions of a
past age with realistic detail and fidelity to historical facts.
– War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
– Without Seeing the Dawn – Stevan Javellana

OTHER KINDS OF LITERATURE

EPIC
• A long narrative poem recounting the deeds of a hero with supernatural powers.
Famous Epics
 The Iliad – consists of 24 books covering the last 49 days of the tenth year of the Trojan War in the 10th century B.C. Most
of the books give detailed accounts of the fierce battles waged on the plains of Troy.
 The Odyssey – also by Homer, consists also of 24 books, is closely connected with The Iliad inasmuch as it represents the
ten-year struggle of the Greek Ulysses (Odysseus) to reach and save his own kingdom, Ithaca, after the fall of Troy
 The Aeneid – the great epic of Rome, was written by Virgil in the first century A.D. The story tells of how Aeneas is able to
establish the city of Rome.
 Beowulf – is England’s oldest epic. It is about the heroic deeds of Beowulf who helps save the kingdom of Heorot.
 The Shah Namah – is the great epic of Persia. It was written by Firdausi, meaning “Singer of Paradise.” The story tells of
the struggle of Persia to overthrow her enemies.
 The Nibelungenlied – a folk epic consisting of 39 parts called adventures. It tells the story of Siegfried and how he helped
King Gunther win his bride. It is also about the lack of union between rival, kindred tribes.
 The Song of Roland – the great epic of France was probably written near the end of the 11th century. The story depicted the
great struggle of Christian knights of France under Charlemagne against the Moors or the Mohammedans.
 El Cid – is the great folk-epic of Spain, written about 1200 A.D. The story tells of the deeds of the great Cid or lord Rodrigo
in his wars with the Moors.
 The Divine Comedy – written by Dante, is the great epic of Italy and of Medieval Christianity. The epic has three parts:
Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. The great purpose to be accomplished in the epic is the salvation of the soul.

METRICAL ROMANCE
• A long rambling love story in verse. It is the popular type of literature during the Middle Ages. Chivalry, romantic love,
religion predominate. Wonderful and impossible adventures are set forth.
– Le Morte de Arthur
– Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
BALLAD
• A short narrative poem which could be sung. It’s very short and told in great rapidity. It tells a simple, serious story which
usually has a tragic ending. Love, tragedy, and the supernatural predominate.
– Lord Randal
– Richard Cory
METRICAL TALE
• A short story in verse. It deals with any emotion or phase of life. Its story is told in as simple, straightforward, and realistic a
manner as possible.
– The Canterbury Tales – written by Geoffrey Chaucer; a collection of isolated stories about different people of
Medieval England.
– The Decameron – written by Giovanni Boccaccio; a collection of tales told by a group of young people escaping
the Black Death from the city.
DRAMATIC POETRY
• Dramas written in verse form. The poetic form is used to set forth life and character by means of speech and action.
– Oedipus Rex (Sophocles), Medea (Euripedes)
– The dramas of Shakespeare
DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE
• Has but one one speaker and is not adapted for regular stage presentation. It is, however, sometimes used for declamatory
purposes.
– My Last Duchess (Robert Browning)
COMEDY
• Dramatic literature that deals with the light or amusing or with the serious and profound in a light, familiar, or satirical
manner.
SATIRE
• Topical literary composition holding up human or individual vices, folly, abuses, or shortcomings to censure by means of
ridicule, irony, or other methods, sometimes with an intent to bring about improvement.
– Plays of Aristophanes
– Wanted: A Chaperon (Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero)
LYRIC POETRY
• Derives its name from the musical instrument, the lyre, and was primarily intended to be sung. It expresses the author’s own
moods, emotions, and reflections in musical language.
– Ode
– Elegy
– Sonnet
– Simple Lyric
ODE
• The most majestic type of lyric poetry. It expresses enthusiasm, lofty praise of some person or thing, deep reflection or
restrained feeling.
– Ode to the West Wind (Percy Bysshe Shelley)
– Ode to Duty (William Wordsworth)
– Ode to a Nightingale (John Keats)

ELEGY
• A lyric poem that voices the author’s personal grief for a loved one or a meditation on death. It is a poem of lamentation.
– Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (Thomas Gray)
– She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways (William Wordsworth)
– Break, Break, Break (Alfred Lord Tennyson)
SONNET
• Composed of 14 iambic pentameter lines. The Italian writer Petrarch was the first to write the sonnets. In England,
Shakespeare, Spencer, Sidney, and others wrote them.
– Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets (Sonnets 14, 18, and 29 are the most popular)
– How Do I Love Thee (Elizabeth Barrett Browning)
SIMPLE LYRIC
• Touches every mood and emotion of the human heart. All the other poems that do not properly belong under any of the types
of lyrics are called simple lyric poems.
– The Tiger (William Blake)
– The Road Not Taken, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (Robert Frost)
– Gitanjali (Rabindranath Tagore)

------------ RODA T. PAJE, LPT------------

EL 117 INSTRUCTOR