Approaches to Literature(week10)

Approaches to Literature(week10)

Genre

Genre, "kind" or "sort", from Latin genus (stem gener-), Greek γένος, génos) is any form or type of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially-agreed upon conventions developed over time. Genre is most popularly known as a category of literature, music, or other forms of art or entertainment, whether written or spoken, audio or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria, yet genres can be aesthetic, rhetorical, communicative, or functional. Genres form by conventions that change over time as new genres are invented and the use of old ones is discontinued. Often, works fit into multiple genres by way of borrowing and recombining these conventions. Stand alone texts, works, or pieces of communication may have individual styles, but genres are amalgams of these texts based on agreed upon or socially inferred conventions. Some genres may be rigid with strictly adhered to guidelines while others may be very flexible.

Genre began as an absolute classification system for ancient Greek literature. Poetry, prose, and performance each had a specific and calculated style that related to the theme of the story. Speech patterns for comedy would not be appropriate for tragedy, and even actors were restricted to their genre under the assumption that a type of person could tell one type of story best. In later periods genres proliferated and developed in response to changes in audiences and creators. Genre became a dynamic tool to help the public make sense out of unpredictable art. Because art is often a response to a social state, in that people write/paint/sing/dance about what they know about, the use of genre as a tool must be able to adapt to changing meanings.

Genre suffers from the same ills of any classification system. Genre is to be reassessed and scrutinized and to weigh works on their unique merit. It has been suggested that genres resonate with people because of the familiarity, the shorthand communication, as well as the tendency of genres to shift with public mores and to reflect the zeitgeist. While the genre of storytelling has been relegated as lesser form of art because of the heavily borrowed nature of the conventions, admiration has grown. Proponents argue that the genius of an effective genre piece is in the variation, recombination, and evolution of the codes.

Fiction

Fiction is a story or similar work derived from imagination—in other words, not based strictly on history or fact.Fiction can be expressed in a variety of formats, including writings, live performances, films, television programs, animations, video games, and role-playing games, though the term originally and most commonly refers to the narrative forms of literature (see literary fiction), including the novel, novella, short story, and play. Fiction does not refer to a specific mode or genre, unless used in its narrowest sense to mean a "literary narrative". Fiction is traditionally regarded as the opposite of non-fiction, whose creators assume responsibility for presenting only the historical and factual truth; however, the distinction between fiction and non-fiction can be blurred, for example, in postmodern literature.

A work of fiction is an act of creative invention; its total faithfulness to reality is not typically assumed by its audience, and so it is not expected to present only characters who are actual people or descriptions that are factually accurate. Instead, the context of fiction is generally open to interpretation, due to fiction's freedom from adhering exactly to the real world.Characters and events within a fictional work may even be openly set in their own context entirely separate from the known universe: a fictional universe.

>>Format

Traditionally, fiction includes novels, short stories, fables, legends, myths, fairy tales, epic and narrative poetry, plays, (including opera,) and various kinds of theatrical dancing). However, fiction may also encompass comic books, and many animated cartoons, stop motions, animes, mangas, films, video games, radio programs, television programs (comedies and dramas), etc.

The Internet has had a major impact on the creation and distribution of fiction, calling into question the feasibility of copyright as a means to ensure royaltiesare paid to copyright holders. Also, digital libraries such as Project Gutenberg make public domain texts more readily available. The combination of inexpensive home computers, the Internet and the creativity of its users has also led to new forms of fiction, such as interactive computer games or computer-generated comics. Countless forums for fan fiction can be found online, where loyal followers of specific fictional realms create and distribute derivative stories. The Internet is also used for the development of blog fiction, where a story is delivered through a blog either as flash fiction or serial blog, and collaborative fiction, where a story is written sequentially by different authors, or the entire text can be revised by anyone using a wiki.

Types of literary fiction in prose:

• Short story: A work of at least 2,000 words but under 7,500 words (5–25 pages). The boundary between a long short story and a novella is vague.
• Novella: A work of at least 17,500 words but under 50,000 words.(60–170 pages). Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1899) is an example of a novella.
• Novel: A work of 50,000 words or more (about 170+ pages).

Persona

The term persona has been derived from a Latin word “persona” that means the mask of an actor, and is therefore etymologically linked to the dramatis personae which refers to the list of characters and cast in a play or a drama. It is also known as a theatrical mask. It can be defined in a literary work as a voiceor an assumed role of a character that represents the thoughts of a writer or a specific person the writer wants to present as his mouthpiece. Most of the time, the dramatis personae are identified with the writers though sometimes a persona can be a character or an unknown narrator. Examples of persona are found not only in dramas but in poems and novels, too.

>>Example 1

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question….
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot)

These are the initial fifteen lines of the poem Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. The speaker is a persona of T. S. Eliot that he wants to present before the world though the poet himself is not suffering from the same mental conflict.

>>Example 2

That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,

Looking as if she were alive. I call

That piece a wonder, now: Fra Pandolf’s hands….

Will’t please you sit and look at her? I said

''Fra Pandolf” by design, for never read……

At starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go

Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,

Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,

Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!

(My Last Duchess by Robert Browning)

This poem is a dramatic monologue (uses persona). The poet mainly communicates about the shocking appearance of the “duke” character. In this stanza the persona is discussing the painting as the monologue opens. Through simple technique the poet describes the superficiality of the duke’s character though it seems to be the voice of the poet put into the mouth of the duke.

>>Example 3

An excerpt from “The Old Man and Sea”

“He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone

eighty-four days now without taking a fish. In the first forty days a boy had been with him. But after forty days without a fish the boy’s parents had told him that the old man was now definitely and finally salao, which is the worst form of unlucky…….

The sail was patched with flour sacks and, furled, it looked like the flag of permanent defeat…..”

The first paragraph of this book sounds as if Hemingway himself is Santiago. Through the characterization of Santiago, Hemingway is expressing his belief in the struggle against unconquerable natural forces of the world. However, it is up to the persona (Santiago) to determine whether he wants to change his luck or not.

>>Example 4

An excerpt from “Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad

“Now when I was a little chap I had a passion for maps. I would look for hours at South America, or Africa, or Australia, and lose myself in all the glories of exploration…., and when I saw one that looked particularly inviting on a map (but they all look that) I would put my finger on it and say, ‘When I grow up I will go there…… Well, I haven’t been there yet, and shall not try now. The glamour’s off…. well, we won’t talk about that.…..”

Marlow is probably one of the most famous persona examples in novels. In this novel, Marlow is used as Conrad’s mouthpiece. In this extract, Conrad is telling us through Marlow about his own visit to the Congo and his experiences of sailing to distant places and his boyhood ambition of sailing. Hence, Marlow is used as a persona in this novel.

Stop All the Clock, Cut off the Telephone

(by W. H. Auden)

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. 

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,

Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,

Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves. 

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.

For nothing now can ever come to any good.

The poet calls for the clocks to be stopped, the telephone to be cut off, and the dog and pianos silenced. The coffin will be brought out to the mourners with a muffled drum and under the moan of airplanes that spell out the message, “He Is Dead.” Doves are to be decked with bows around their necks, and the traffic policemen are to wear black cotton gloves.

The poet thinks of the deceased as “my North, my South, my East and West,” his work and his rest, his noon and his midnight, his talk and his song. He incorrectly thought their love would last forever.

The stars, moon, sun, ocean, and forests, the poet writes, should be sent away; they are no longer needed, and “nothing now can ever come to any good.”

>>Summary

An unnamed speaker laments the death of someone close to him. (The speaker's gender is never given, but we'll refer to "him" from now on for convenience.) The speaker asks for quiet. He wants to stop all clocks and telephones and to silence barking dogs and pianos. He says to bring out the coffin of the dead beloved, and for the mourners to come. 

He continues on in a similar vein; and asks the airplanes to write "He Is Dead" across the sky. He says that doves should wear white ribbons and that policemen should wear black gloves to commemorate the death. 

Then things take a turn for the personal. He says that the dead man was everything to him—all points of a compass, every day of the week, every time of the day. And the worst part is that this experience has taught him that love won't last forever, as he once thought. 

That's when he starts to really despair. He doesn't want to see the stars, the moon, or the sun. He doesn't want to see the ocean or the forest. Now that the dead man is gone, there is no good left in the world. None at all.

W. H.  Auden

Wystan Hugh Auden (/ˈwɪstən ˈhjuː ˈɔːdən/; 21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973) was an English poet, who later became an American citizen. He is best known for love poems such as "Funeral Blues," poems on political and social themes such as "September 1, 1939" and "The Shield of Achilles," poems on cultural and psychological themes such as The Age of Anxiety, and poems on religious themes such as "For the Time Being" and "Horae Canonicae." He was born in York, grew up in and near Birmingham in a professional middle-class family. He attended English independent (or public) schools and studied English at Christ Church, Oxford. After a few months in Berlin in 1928–29 he spent five years (1930–35) teaching in English public schools, then travelled to Iceland and China in order to write books about his journeys. In 1939 he moved to the United States and became an American citizen in 1946. He taught from 1941 to 1945 in American universities, followed by occasional visiting professorships in the 1950s. From 1947 to 1957 he wintered in New York and summered in Ischia; from 1958 until the end of his life he wintered in New York (in Oxford in 1972–73) and summered in Kirchstetten, Austria.

Auden's poetry was noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in tone, form and content.

He came to wide public attention at the age of twenty-three, in 1930, with his first book, Poems, followed in 1932 by The Orators. Three plays written in collaboration with Christopher Isherwood in 1935–38 built his reputation as a left-wing political writer. Auden moved to the United States partly to escape this reputation, and his work in the 1940s, including the long poems "For the Time Being" and "The Sea and the Mirror," focused on religious themes. He won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for his 1947 long poem The Age of Anxiety, the title of which became a popular phrase describing the modern era. In 1956–61 he was Professor of Poetry at Oxford; his lectures were popular with students and faculty and served as the basis of his 1962 prose collection The Dyer's Hand.

From around 1927 to 1939 Auden and Isherwood maintained a lasting but intermittent sexual friendship while both had briefer but more intense relations with other men. In 1939 Auden fell in love with Chester Kallmanand regarded their relation as a marriage; this ended in 1941 when Kallman refused to accept the faithful relation that Auden demanded, but the two maintained their friendship, and from 1947 until Auden's death they lived in the same house or apartment in a non-sexual relation, often collaborating on opera libretti such as The Rake's Progress, for music by Igor Stravinsky.

Auden was a prolific writer of prose essays and reviews on literary, political, psychological and religious subjects, and he worked at various times on documentary films, poetic plays, and other forms of performance. Throughout his career he was both controversial and influential, and critical views on his work ranged from sharply dismissive, treating him as a lesser follower of W. B. Yeats and T. S. Eliot, to strongly affirmative, as in Joseph Brodsky's claim that he had "the greatest mind of the twentieth century". After his death, his poems became known to a much wider public than during his lifetime through films, broadcasts, and popular media.