1) What is Literature?

The term literature, one can distinguish between two general directions: a
broad and a narrow definition. The broad definition incorporates everything that
has been written down in some form or another, i.e., all the written manifestation
of a culture. Needless to say that such a broad definition is problematic as it does
not really facilitate communication about the topic. Furthermore, this concept
neglects the fact that in many cultures in the past and for a number of indigenous
peoples today, literature has not been captured in written media but has been
passed down in a long oral tradition of storytelling, myths, ritual speeches, etc.
Attempts to come up with a narrow definition have, however, led to such a
diversity of approaches that one can hardly talk about the narrow definition.
Nevertheless, it is possible to sift out some of the criteria scholars have applied in
order to demarcate literary texts from non-literary texts. These criteria include:

Fictionality
Specialized language
Lack of pragmatic function
Ambiguity

There are also other quotations which define literature:

R. Hake said that literature as an interpretive presentation of human

experience in an artistic form

According to Murdoch (1950), literature could be said to be a sort of

disciplined technique for arousing certain emotions.

Pound (1971) said that great literature is simply language charged

with meaning to the utmost possible degree.

According to Boas (1931), literature is the record of experience
interpreted by personality that behind every book which the race has
preserved is a human beings eager effort to give life meaning, to
create beauty, to express vivid emotions and ideas, to make men aware

of themselves and the life they lead.

Here are some different definition given by teachers from all over the
world in Literature and Language Teaching book by G. Lazar (1993)
said that:
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1. Literature is the feelings and thoughts in black and white.

2. Literature is a world of fantasy, horror, feelings, visions put
into words.
a) Fictionality
Fictionality attempt to represent reality in some form or another, are
ultimately products of a writers imagination and that at least the characters and
their conversations are fictitious. Thus, some of the characters in Sir Walter
Scotts historical novels, for example, are pure inventions although they are
situated in authentic historical contexts, and they have fictitious conversations
with historical figures who actually existed. This is one of the example:
Sesca Rompas climbed on to a plastic stool and peered through a dirty
window at her brother, Aldo Kansil, lying motionless in a bed below. He was
a pitiful sight: two drips attached, arms swathed in bandages, his face an
angry mosaic of burns.
The text uses embellishments to present a specific story-world and to
attract the readers attention. In this text, we can identify rhetorical devices such
as alliteration (bed below), metaphor (angry mosaic of burns), etc.
One important thing, whether a text is fictional or not, is perhaps less the
consequence of some inherent quality of the text but of a readers attitude towards
it.
b) Specialised language
The literary language is special and that it differs from normal everyday
language. Two key terms in this focus: poetic function and defamiliarisation.
What is poetic function? The linguist Roman Jakobson spoke of the poetic
function of literary texts in his essay Linguistics and Poetics: Closing Statement
(1960), i.e., the fact that literary texts draw attention to the language they employ.
Literary texts make us of language becomes strange and unfamiliar in a given
context. This is based on Russian Formalist maintained in the early twentieth
century.

The second term is defamiliarisation. The defamiliarisation is the process

that literary texts make use of language become strange and unfamiliar. This is
one of example from Charles Dickenss novel Bleak House illustrates this process:
Foot passengers, jostling one anothers umbrellas, in a general infection
of ill-temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of
thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since
the day broke (if this day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust
upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement,
and accumulating at compound interest. (Charles Dickens, Bleak House,
ch. 1)
In this example, the writer is described the bad November weather in
London has hardly anything to do with the people would normally. One thing is
particularly conspicuous: the blending of a description of natural phenomena
(mud, bad weather) with the jargon of the world of finance (deposits,
accumulating, compound interest). By combining these two different areas,
the words are taken out of their usual context and put into another one, which
becomes new and unfamiliar to the reader. In the above example, we are also
attracted the reader by this strange linguistic description and we start to wonder
why such language is used here. One explanation might be London as one of the
financial centers in the mid-nineteenth centuries.
Other area literariness of language is poetry. Poetry is often marked by a
conspicuous shape (lines, stanzas: is the lines are arranged into the symmetrical
groups, etc.). a dense structure (thematically and linguistically), specific prosodic
features, and rhetorical devices.
What is prosodic features? Prosody is the study of speech rhythms and
versification. Most poetry is a rhythmical utterance, that is to say, it makes use of
rhythmic elements that are natural to language: alternation of stress and nonstress, vowel length, consonant clusters, pauses and so on. Various rhythmical
patterns have different effects on those who read or hear poetry. The central
question for the analysis of metre and rhythm is to determine the function which
these rhythmical elements perform in each poem. Unfortunately, there are no

general rules about these functions. Rhetorical devices and literary techniques are
closely related to tone and style. In fact, an authors style partly consists of
selecting and using certain devices; an authors tone is partially determined by the
type of techniques an author uses. The function of using rhetorical devices is to
arouse the readers interest. Consider the following sentence from the same
article:
Just around the corner, an anxious-looking couple were standing close
together, clutching plastic bags.
At first sight, this looks like a normal sentence. There is nothing
conspicuous about the words or the sentence structure. What happens if one pays
attention to the rhythm of this sentence and displays it accordingly?
Just around the corner,
An anxious-looking couple
Were standing close together,
Clutching plastic bags.
This pattern namely trimeter. The sentence in this pattern follows a
regular metrical pattern. The pattern with alternating stressed and unstressed
syllables. This make sentence poetic. One can see that the line between literary
and non-literary language is a very fine one.
c) Lack of Pragmatic Function
Texts derive their meaning partly from their context. Novel is presented in
a certain way (bound, with a title on the front page, sometimes the word novel in
the subtitle, and a plot summary as well as commentary on the back cover).
Moreover, I use the novel as a novel and not as a cookery book, a newspaper or an
encyclopedia of garden plants, for example. Why is that? One might argue that
these texts, in contrast to literary texts, have a definite pragmatic function, i.e.,
they are written and used for a specific purpose, e.g., to assist with the cooking or
gardening or, generally, to inform the reader. A piece of literary writing, on the
other hand, need not have been intended by the author for any specific purpose. It

sometimes seems as though literature was just written into time and space, to
nobody in particular and without any function.
Literary texts do have a purpose, e.g., to criticize, to educate or to
entertain. Non-literary texts may have more clearly defined and generally
function. if we claim that a literary text has no immediate pragmatic function, we
usually start to ascribe one to it in our usage or treatment of that text. While nonliterary texts seem to have an inherent pragmatic function, i.e., they were born to
be a telephone book, a time-table, a womens magazine, etc., literary texts gain
their more specific and possibly individual pragmatic function in the reading
process.
d) Ambiguity
What is ambiguity? Ambiguity is different interpretation from one person
to another. People generally accept the view that literary texts are far more
ambiguous than non-literary texts. If one reads a recipe, for example, or a timetable or an instruction manual, the meaning expressed in these texts is presumed
to be more or less fixed and not open to interpretation. In fact, these texts must not
be open to interpretation because then they just would not work. If ten people
read a same recipe for carrot cake, they reach approximately the same result by
following the same instructions.
But, this is certainly not the case if these ten people read a novel. For
example, in classroom we give a same novel to ten students. The different
students will come up with different interpretations. What is make literary texts so
ambiguous? Obviously one thing, the human factor: when we read a text we
usually bring to bear on it certain expectations and interests, and inevitably we
start looking for exactly those things that see relevant to us. No matter which
interpretation one favour, one can find evidence for all of them in the text if one
only searches through it thoroughly. This example illustrates that literary texts
must indeed have some quality which makes them more open than non-literary
texts. One can say that literary texts always express meaning on different levels or
in different layers. In other words: They express something beyond their literal

meaning, and these other layers of meaning can be explored by attentive reading
and analysis. It is a bit like archaeology: the deeper one digs the more interesting
ones findings are likely to be. At the same time, one needs suitable equipment for
digging out hidden meanings. That is where literary studies become important
and where the fun begins once one has mastered the tools at hand.
2) Language in Literature
The effect a text has on its reader is to a very large extent determined by
style. In its broadest definition, style is the way in which language is used
(Leech/Short 1981: 10 for a discussion of various definitions of style). Style is
thus not a phenomenon that is restricted to literature; it is necessarily part of any
utterance, because for each context one chooses the way one speaks: One uses
different vocabulary and probably different syntax when talking to ones granny
than one uses when talking to ones examiner in the final oral exam; a report in
the newspaper is expected to display and in most cases does a different style
than a love letter. Obviously, most people are limited in the range of styles they
have at their command, and sometimes style expectations are deliberately
flaunted: A newspaper report written in the style of a love letter will no doubt
cause a certain amount of surprise and thus possibly increase its effect. A love
letter written in the style of a report will most likely cause trouble or appear
simply ridiculous.
When examining the style of a text, one scrutinises mainly two aspects:
diction (the choice and use of words) and syntax (the sentence structure). In other
words, one examines which words are used and how these words are put together.
Closely related to such questions is the use of rhetorical devices. Particularly in
poetry and verse drama one also focuses on the rhythmical patterns and sound
effects, though these can also be used effectively in prose.

a) Diction

The analysis of diction involves answering a series of questions, all

relating to the use of vocabulary: its origin, its effect, its grammatical categories.
What effect does the use of diction have in this particular text? In classical
rhetoric styles were classified into three main levels: the grand style, the middle
style and the low (or plain) style. Certain types of diction were thought
appropriate for certain stylistic levels. This was called the principle of decorum,
which was an influential concept well into the eighteenth century. Poetry, perhaps
more than other types of literary texts, tends to use words or phrases that are not
current in ordinary conversation, so-called poetic diction.
b) Syntax
The analysis of syntax involves answering a series of questions relating to
the use of sentence structure. These are questions such as: What kind of sentences
are used? (simple or complex, long or short, statements, exclamations, questions,
or commands, etc). Is there a type of clause that is preferred? (relative clause,
adverbial clause, interrogative clauses, that-clause,finite or non-finite clause, etc).
How are sentences linked (sentence cohesion)? (are there cross references and
what type, are sentences connected with logical links or are they purely
associative, are any particular sentence structures repeated, are any particular
words repeated which create cross references, what rhetorical devices are used on
the sentence level).
What effect does the use of syntax achieve? There are no fixed answers to
this question. The effect of stylistic devices will differ from text to text and within
texts, depending on the immediate context.
c) Rhetorical Devices
For the analysis of literature, a knowledge of rhetorical devices is
indispensable since there is often a considerable density of rhetorical figures and
tropes which are important generators and qualifiers of meaning and effect. This is
particularly the case in poetry.

Figures of speech in classical rhetoric were defined as a form of speech

artfully varied from common usage (Quintilian, Inst. Orat. IX.i.2). The forms of
figurative languages are divided into two main groups: schemes (or figures) and
tropes.
Rhetorical schemes describe the arrangement of individual sounds
(phonological schemes), the arrangement of words (morphological schemes), and
sentence structure (syntactical schemes). Rhetorical tropes are devices of
figurative language. They represent a deviation from the common or main
significance of a word or phrase (semantic figures) or include specific appeals to
the audience (pragmatic figures).
1. Schemes: Phoneme-level (level of individual sounds)
alliteration : the same sound is repeated at the beginning of several

words or stressed syllables in words that are in close proximity

assonance : the same or similar vowel sounds are repeated in the
stressed syllables of words that are in close proximity while the

consonants differ
consonance : two or more consonants are repeated, but the adjacent

vowels differ
onomatopoeia : the sound of the word imitates the sound of the thing
which that word denotes

2. Schemes: Word-level
anadiplosis/reduplicatio : (Greek for doubling back) the word or
phrase that concludes one line or clause is repeated at the beginning of

the next
anaphora : a word or phrase is repeated at the beginning of successive

phrases, clauses or lines

climax/gradatio : (Greek for ladder) arrangement of words, phrases,

or clauses in an order of ascending power

epistrophe : a word or expression is repeated at the end of successive
phrases, clauses or lines

epizeuxis/geminatio : the repetition of the same words immediately

next to each other

homonym : words with the same pronunciation and / or spelling but

with different meanings

polyptoton/metabole : one word is repeated in different grammatical or
syntactical (inflected) forms. A special case of polyptoton is the figura

etymologica which repeats two or more words of the same stem

portmanteau words (blend, contaminatio) : words formed by

blending two words into one

symploce : A combination of anaphora and epistrophe, so that one word
or phrase is repeated at the beginning and another word or phrase is

repeated at the end of successive phrases, clauses or sentences

synonym : use of words with the same or similar meanings
tautology : one idea is repeatedly expressed through additional words,
phrases, or sentences

3. Prose
Most literature that is read today is written in prose, that is in non-metrical,
ordinarylanguage. In this section the focus will be on narrative prose, that is,
prose literature which tells a story.
o Story and Discourse
These are two narrative texts: story and discourse. Story is a WHAT (What
is told?) and discourse is a HOW (how is it told?) (Chatman 1978: 19)
who follows structuralist like Roland Barthes, Gerrard Gennette and
Tzvetum Todorow.
Story
The story consists of events (things that happen) and existents (the
characters the make things happen and the setting-the place where

things happen).
Discourse
Discourse consists of elements of discourse. Elements of discourse
determine our perception of the story (what actually happened).
Elements of discourse consists of plot, narrative voices (who

speaks?), focalization (who sees?), narrative modes, representation

of consciousness, time, and language in literature.
Plot is the causal and logical structure which connects events
(Forster: 1927: 93F). The concept of plot is particularly useful to
distinguish between tightly and loosely plotted narratives.
Narrative voices means part of the analysis that examines HOW
a narrative is told. It is characteristic of narrative prose (and
narrative poetry) that is always told by someone, not the case in
drama or film where the characters generally speak directly.
Focalisation is use to express the distinction between narrative
voice (who speaks?) and perspective (who sees or perceives?).
This term has introduced by Genette (Genette 1980: 189-194).
Narrative modes are the kinds of utterance through which a
narrative is conveyed (Bonheim 1982).
Representation of Consciousness is to tell the reader about a
characters mental processes and emotions without having that
character burst into speech (in drama).
Time, there are two aspects of time that deserve particular
attention in the analysis of narrative prose: the use of tense and
presentation of time sequences. The analysis of the use of time
in a narrative centres around three aspects: order, duration and
frequency (Genette 1980: good summary in Jahn 2002). An
intentive use of time in a narrative can create startling effects.

o Some Types of Prose Fiction

The Novel can be defined as a types of prose. It derives from the
Italian novella (little new thing), which was a short piece of

prose.
Science fiction is a type of prose narrative of varying length, from
short story to novel. All type of science fiction is the interest of
science change and development and concern for social, climate,
geological or ecological change.
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Metafiction is concentrates on the phenomological characteristics

of fiction and investigates into the quintessential nature of literary

art by reflecting the process of narrating.

A romance is a fictional narrative in prose or verse that represents
a chivalric theme or relates improbable adventures of idealized

characters in some remote or enchanced settings.

A Short story is a piece of prose fiction market by relative
shortness and density organized into plot.

4. Poetry
a) What is Poetry?
Poetry is perceived as fictional, it uses specialized language, it lacks of
pragmatic function, it is also ambiguous.
Based on Muller-Zettelmann 2000: 73, 156 in answering the question
What is Poetry?. Poetic texts have a tendency to:
Relative brevity (with some notable exception)
Dense expression
Express subjectivity more than other texts
Display a musical or song like quality
Be structurally and phonologically overstructured
Be syntactically and morphologically overstructured
Deviate from everyday language
Aesthetic self-referenticality
b) Types of Poetry
Two general distinctions in mind: lyric poetry and narrative poetry.

Lyric Poetry
A lyric poem is a comparatively short, non-narrative poem in which
a single speaker presents a state of mind or an emotional state.
Subcategories of the lyric are: elegy, ode, sonnet and dramatic
monologue and most occasional poetry.
An elegy is a formal lament for the death of a particular
person.
An ode is a long lyric poem with a serious subject written in
an elevated style.

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 Sonnet was originally a love poem which dealt with the

lovers suffering and hopes.
A dramatic monologue is use to make a speech to a silent
auditor in a specific situation and at a critical moment.
Occasional poetry is written for a specific occasion: a
wedding or a death.

Narrative Poetry
Narrative Poetry gives a verbal representation, in verse, of a
sequence of connected events. It propels character through a plot.
Narrative poems might tell of a love story, the story of a father and
son, or the deeds of a hero or heroine. Sub-categories of narrative
poetry are epic, mock-epic or ballad.
Epics usually operate on a large scale, such as the founding
of a nation, or the beginning of world history.
The mock-epic makes use of epic conventions, like the
elevated style.
A ballad is a song, which tells a story. It is a form of folk
poetry.

c) Prosodic Feature : Rhythm

Prosody is the study of speech rhythms and versification. Rhythm is a
series of alternations of build-up and release, movement and counter-movement,
tending toward regularity but complicated by constant variations and local
inflections (Attridge 1995 : 3).
Rhythm itself is a more general phenomenon relating to the variations of
speed. This speed is influenced by: pauses, elisions and expansions, vowel length,
consonant clusters and modulations.
d) Prosodic Features : Sound Patterns
The effect of literary texts depend on various patterns of repetition. Most
people associate poetry with repetition sound, in rhyme. Other sound patterns in
poetry: alliteration, assonance and onomatopoeia.

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 Rhyme : the two words have the same sound (phoneme) from the last
stressed vowel.
An Alliteration : is the repetition of the same sound, usually consonant, at
the beginning of words or stressed syllables.
Assonance : is the repetition of the same vowel sound in the stressed
syllables of words.
Onomatopoeia : is the accumulations of sound combinations imitate in
the sentence.

References
Bonheim, Helmut. 1982. The Narrative Modes: Techniques of the Short-Story.
Cambridge: Brewer.
Chatman, Seymour. 1978. Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction
and Film. Ithaca : Cornell University Press.
E. Pound, 1971. How to Read, Haskell House, 1971.
Forster, E.M. 1927. Aspects of the Novel. London: Edward Arnold.
Genette, Grard. 1980. Narrative Discourse. Trans. Jane E. Lewin. Oxford:
Blackwell.
G. Lazar, 1993. Literature and Language Teaching, Cambridge University Press.
I. Murdoch, Existentialist Hero, The Listener, vol. 23, pp. 52, March 1950.
Jakobson, Roman 1960. Linguistics and Poetics: Closing Statement.. Style in
Language. Ed. Thomas Sebeok. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Lethbridge, Stefanie & Mildorf, Jarmila. Basics of English Studies: An
Introductory Course for Students of Literary Studies. developed at English
departments of the Universities of Tubingen, Stuttgart and Freiburg.
Version 12/03
R. Hake. 2001. Why Study Literature. Patrick Henry College
R. P. Boas, The Study and Interpretation of Literature, Harcourt: Brace and
Company Inc., 1931

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