St.

Louise de Marillac College of Sorsogon

Higher Education Department
Sorsogon City
nd
2 Semester, S.Y 2020-2021
LANGUAGE OF LITERARY TEXTS
ELS110 CC10

Course: Bachelor of Arts in English - II Instructor: Mark Justine L. Llanto

CP Number: 09070116137 Email: llantomarkjustine@gmail.com
Name of Student: ___________________________________ Module No.: 1
Topic: Literary Texts: Definition and Characteristics
Objectives:
 Define what a literary text is
 Identify the characteristics of literary texts
 List down some prominent literary works

I. ELICIT
Good day class! Welcome to Language of Literary Texts (ELS110 CC10) class.

Course Description: The course introduces various approaches to the study of different literary genre. A literary genre is a category of
literary composition. Genres may be determined by literary technique, tone, content, or even (as in the case of
fiction) length. They generally move from more abstract, encompassing classes, which are then further sub-divided
into more concrete distinctions.
II.ENGAGE
Using the diagram below, list down some words that comes into your mind when you hear the word LITERATURE
 III. EXPLORE
WHAT IS LITERARY TEXT?
A literary text is a piece of writing, such as a book or poem, that has the purpose of telling a story or entertaining, as in a fictional novel. Its primary
function as a text is usually aesthetic, but it may also contain political messages or beliefs.
A literary text is a genre of literature that transmits a message artistically and creatively. Literary texts focus on both content and form. The authors of
this kind of texts use a stylistic language and idiosyncratic style to present reality or tackle phenomena. Although literary texts have one common
objective and work in the same way, there are different types of literary texts. Such these types are the narrative text, literary description, literary
recount, personal response text, and finally the review text.
Starting by the narrative text, it can be defined as a text that tells a story using a series of events. Picture books, cartoons, fiction, and fairy tales are
good examples of narrative texts. The author encodes his message in a given context. The latter usually consists of a setting, such as place and time,
events of the story, characters, a situation, and a semantic field or what is called by the co-text. These aspects make the narrative text
distinguishable from the descriptive text which describes people, characters, places, events and things in an imaginary way. Descriptive texts can
present a specific and detailed description of some features, physical appearance, or landscapes and many other examples without even telling a
story with events and situation.
Among other types of literary texts, there are literary recount and review. Literary recount works retell events from stories, plays, films, and personal
experiences to entertain others. To make it more interesting as well as appealing, authors of literary recounts sequence their recounts starting by
background information, then, describing the events in time order, and finally, they may end the retold story with a personal comment about the
events or characters. Among the well-known recount works, there is the fairy tale of Gingerbread Man. On the other hand, a review text does not
retell another text in different words, but it summarizes, analyzes, and assesses the appeal of a novel, play or film, to a broader audience. Reviews
usually tend to describe features, such as characters, plot, situation, etc, that may or may not appeal to the reader. For instance, comments on books,
films, and plays are an example of reviews. However, a review of a certain work differs from a personal response text. The latter is a literary text
too, but, there is a slight difference between the two of them.
If a review is a text that provides a comment or an evaluation of the whole work, a personal response text gives a personal opinion on a novel or play
or film focusing only on parts of a specific passage. This entails a description of how the reader feels about the elements of the context of a story
and things that may or may not appeal to them. Personal responses can include questions like ‘what did you like about the artwork and why?’
‘Describe why you do or you don’t like in the plot of the story…etc.?
To conclude, literary texts can be represented in different types with different features and characteristics. However, they all share the same aspects
of creativity, freedom of choice of the writer, features of innovation and power of imagination. It seems that literary works do not only entertain
readers but also can be used as support to teach in schools. They can noticeably improve students’ level of creativity, imagination and intelligent
quotient when it comes to language learning.
 CHARACTERISTICS OF LITERARY TEXTS

IV. EXPLAIN
1. Define what is a literary text. (5 points)
2. Discuss the relevance of literary pieces. (5 points)
3. What is the most important characteristic of literary text and why? (5 points)
V. ELABORATE
Give at least ten (10) popular literary pieces in the world.
Literary Piece (Title) Author
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
1
0

VI. EVALUATE Discuss the Characteristics of literary texts using the diagram below.
 VII. EXTEND
References:
Ait Oumghar Elghali. Literary texts and their types. December 23, 2019 (https://medium.com/@AitOumgharElghali/literary-texts-and-their-
types-5e33b3c9ec43)
https://neopode.net/literary-text/