Topic 2

• An element of the story that refers to the people or person who faces the conflict of the story?

  character
• An element of the story that refers to the place and time the story happens?

  setting
• plot - An element of the story that narrates the sequence of the story
• Theme - An element of the story that refers to the central idea
• Conflict - An element of the story that refers to the struggle of the protagonist that he needs to face
• Point of View - An element of the story that determines whether we're seeing something from the narrator's perspective or a character's perspective
• Tone - An element of the story that refers to the overall feeling of your story
• Genre - A style, especially in the arts, that involves a particular set of characteristics
• Sonnet - A fourteen-line poem
• Elegy - A poem of serious reflection, especially one mourning the loss of someone who died
• Dramatic - An emotional piece of literature which includes a story which is recited or sung
• Fiction - A type of book or story that is written about imaginary characters and events and not based on real people and facts
• Critique - A detailed analysis and assessment of something, especially a literary, philosophical, or political theory
• Essay - A short piece of writing on a particular subject
• Parable - A usually short fictitious story that illustrates a moral attitude or a religious principle
• Dramatist - A person who writes plays
• Literary Selection - About the one that is selected, such as a literary or musical text chosen for reading or performance
• Anecdote - A short narrative of an interesting, amusing, or biographical incident
• Tragedy - A branch of drama that treats in a serious and dignified style the sorrowful or terrible events encountered or caused by a heroic individual
• Prose - Written or spoken language in its ordinary form, without metrical structure
• Structuralist/Formalists - This approach holds that the true meaning of a text can be determined only by analyzing the literary elements of the text and by understanding how these elements work together to form up a cohesive whole
• What are being analyzed in the Structuralist/Formalists approach?

  • Literary elements
  • Literary devices
  • Structure
  • Language
• Historical - It involves the understanding of the cultural and historical conditions that influence the production of the literary works
• What are being analyzed in the Historical approach?

  • Cultural context
  • Historical context
  • Cultural events
  • Historical events
• Moralist - This approach believes that the larger purpose of literature is to teach morality and to probe philosophical issues
• Feminist - This approach focuses on female representation in literature, paying attention to female point of views, concerns and values
• Underlying assumptions in the Feminist approach


  • Western society is pervasively patriarchal, male-centered, and controlled
  • The concept of gender is socially constructed, not biologically determined
  • Patriarchal ideology pervades those writing which have been considered "great works of literature"
• Reader-response - This approach argues that the meaning of a text is dependent upon the readers response to it. It attempts "to describe what happens in the reader's mind while interpreting a text" and reflects that reading, like writing, is a creative process
• Marxist - In literary theory, a Marxist interpretation reads the text as an expression of contemporary class struggle. Literature is not simply a matter of personal expression or taste. It somehow relates to the social and political conditions of the time
• What are being analyzed in the Marxist approach?

  • Class stratification
  • Class relation
  • Dominant ideology
  • How money, power, and politics play a role in literary text
• Sometimes called "lenses"?


  critical approaches