21ST CENTURY LITERATURE FROM THE PHILIPPINES

AND THE WORLD

Conventional and
21 Century Genres
st

(Module 2)
by Ma’am Rowena D. Cortez
21ST CENTURY LITERATURE

• new literary work created within the last decade

• written by contemporary authors which may deal
with current themes/ issues and reflects a
technological culture
• often breaks traditional writing rules
21ST CENTURY READER
• grew up using technology as a primary learning tool
• capable of navigating and interpreting digital formats and media messages
• possesses literacy skills, which include technological abilities such as:
⮚ keyboarding
⮚internet navigation
⮚interpretation of technological speak
⮚ability to communicate and interpret coded language
⮚decipher graphics
 LITERATURE IN THE 21ST CENTURY

✔ Internet Age
⮚ written word is more accessible and democratic

✔ “Electronic literature”
⮚ hypertext (interactive fiction)
⮚ animated poetry
⮚ Short Message Service SMS (text-message) fiction
⮚ science fiction

✔ Insatiable appetite for information has grown larger and more impetuous
 “Literature has to change with society.”
(Mithun Selvaratnam, Sri Lanka)
✔Major journalistic sources
⮚
Twitter
⮚
Blogs
⮚
Hyper-textual nature of internet
⮚
Online forums
✔
“Death of print”
⮚ risen accessibility of devices (tablets, smartphones)
⮚ made electronic medium cheaper and more universal
⮚ diminished book sales
⮚ lessened magazines and newspaper subscriptions
✔
Less success in “traditional” forms of literature
CONVENTIONAL MAJOR LITERARY GENRES

1. Poetry
2. Drama
3. Fiction
4. Nonfiction
21ST CENTURY LITERATURE GENRES
1. ILLUSTRATED NOVEL

• Story through text and illustrated images

• 50% of the narrative is presented without words

• The reader must interpret the images to comprehend
the story completely.
• Textual portions are presented in traditional form.
• Some illustrated novels may contain no text at all.
• Span all genres.
• Examples include The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick and The Arrival by Shaun Tan.
2. DIGI-FICTION

• Triple Media Literature

• Combines three media:
book, movie/video and internet website
• to get the full story, students must engage in
navigation, reading, and viewing in all three forms.
• Patrick Carman’s Skeleton Creek and Anthony Zuiker’s Level 26 are
examples
 3. GRAPHIC NOVEL

• Narrative in comic book formats

• Narrative work in which the story is
conveyed to the reader using a comic form.
• The term is employed in broadly manner, encompassing non-fiction works
and thematically linked short stories as well as fictional stories across a
number of genres.
• Archie Comics by John Goldwater and illustrator, Bob Montana, is a good
example.
 4. MANGA

• Japanese word for comics

• It is used in the English-speaking world as a generic
term for all comic books and graphic novels originally published in Japan.
• Considered as an artistic and storytelling style.
• Ameri-manga- sometimes used to refer to comics created by American artists in manga style.
• Shonen- Boy’s Manga (Naruto, Bleach, One Piece)
• Shojo- Girl’s Manga (Sailormoon)
• Kodomo- Children’s Manga (Doraemon, Hello Kitty)
 5. DOODLE FICTION

• Literary presentation where the author incorporates

doodle writing, drawings and handwritten graphics
in place of the traditional font.
• Drawing enhances the story, often adding
humorous elements
• Examples include The Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff
Kinney and Timmy Failure by Stephan Pastis.
 6. TEXT-TALK NOVELS

• Blogs, email and IM format narratives

• Stories told almost entirely in dialogue
simulating social network exchanges.
7. CHICK LIT OR CHICK LITERATURE

• Is genre fiction which addresses issues of modern

womanhood, often humorously and lightheartedly.
• Chick Lit typically features a female protagonist
whose femininity is heavily thermalizing in the plot.
• Scarlet Bailey’s The night before Christmas and
Miranda Dickinson’s It started with a Kiss are
examples of this.
8. FLASH FICTION
• Is a style of fictional
literature of extreme brevity
• There is no widely accepted
definition of the length and
category. It could range
from word to a thousand.
 9. SIX-WORD FLASH FICTION
• Brevity. Flash fiction compresses an entire story into the space
of a few words
• A complete plot. A flash fiction story is indeed a story, with a
beginning, middle, and end
• Surprise.
 10. CREATIVE NONFICTION
• Also known as literary nonfiction or narrative nonfiction
• A genre of writing that uses literary styles and techniques to
create factually accurate narratives.
• Contrasts with other non-fiction, such as technical writing or
journalism, which is also rooted in accurate fact, but is not
primarily written in service to its craft.
• As a genre, creative non-fiction is still relatively young and is
only beginning to be scrutinized with the same critical analysis
given to fiction and poetry.
• 1000 Gifts by Ann Voskamp and Wind, Sand, and Stars by
Antoine de Saint-Exupery are examples.
 11. SCIENCE FICTION

• Is a genre of speculative fiction dealing with imaginative

concepts such as futuristic science and technology, space
travel, time travel, faster than light travel, a parallel
universe and extra-terrestrial life.
• Often explores the potential consequences of scientific
and other innovations and has been called a “literature of
ideas”.
• Examples include Suzanne Collins’ Mockingjay and
Sarah Maas’ Kingdom of Ash.
12. BLOG
• A weblog, a website containing short
articles called posts that are changed
regularly.
• Some blogs are written by one
person containing his or her own
opinions, interests and experiences,
while others are written by different
people.
 13. HYPER POETRY

• Digital poetry that uses links and hypertext mark-

up
• It can either involve set words, phrases, lines, etc.
that are presented in variable order but sit on the
page much as traditional poetry does, or it can
contain parts of the poem that move and transform.
• It is usually found online, through CD-ROM and
diskette versions exist. The earliest examples date
to no later than the mid-1980’s
Quarter 1 – Module 3
Context and
Text’s Meaning
WHAT IS CONTEXT?

• Context originates from the notion of weaving together.

• It is defined as the circumstances that form the setting of events,
statements, or ideas and in the way of which it can be fully
understood and assessed.
• Reading a literary piece may contribute to the production of the
author and the reception of the reader as they appreciate and
explore
 TYPES OF READING CONTEXT

1. Writer's context is knowing about the writer's life,

values, assumptions, gender, race, race, sexual
orientation, and the political and economic issues
related to the author.
2. Reader's context is about the reader's previous
reading experience, values, assumptions, political
and economic issues.
3. Text's context is about its publishing history. It
is part of the larger text such as newspaper,
history, events, translated in it.
4. Social context and socio-cultural of a text
feature the society in which the characters live
and in which the author's text was produced.
 LITERARY DEVICES—TECHNIQUES AND ELEMENTS

A literary device is any specific aspect of literature, or a

particular work, which we can recognize, identify, interpret
and/or analyze. Both literary elements and literary techniques
can rightly be called literary devices.
Literary techniques are specific, deliberate constructions of
language which an author uses to convey meaning. An
author’s use of a literary technique usually occurs with a
single word or phrase, or a particular group of words or
phrases, at one single point in a text. Unlike literary
elements, literary techniques are not necessarily present in
every text.
 The 8 Literary Elements of a story are: character,
setting, plot, conflict, theme, point-of-view, tone
and style. These story elements form the backbone
of any good novel or short story. If you know the 8
elements, you can write and analyze stories more
effectively.
 SOME LITERARY TECHNIQUES

1.Dialogue – written conversation where characters speak to one another.

2.Flashback– an interruption, taking readers back to the beginning of the story
3.Flash-forward or Prolepsis - a literary device in which the plot goes ahead
of time
4.Foreshadowing – hinting at events to come later in the story to build readers’
expectations
5.Imagery – descriptive words and phrases used to create a picture in the
readers’ minds
6.Suspense – an excited uncertainty about the outcome of the conflict in
the story
7.Tone – an overall feeling or mood, ranging from humorous to serious to
sad…
8. Ellipsis - authors use examples of ellipsis to build tension when it
seems as though a character or the narrator is leaving something
unfinished, unsaid, or un-started (…)
9. Anecdote - a usually short narrative of an interesting, amusing, or
biographical incident.
10. Symbolism – a person, place or thing used to represent something else
• Visual imagery produced by the use of words that appeal to the sense of sight.
• Auditory Imagery produced by the use of words that appeal to the sense of
hearing.
• Kinesthetic imagery produced by the use of words that appeal to the actions
and movement.