Review Literature
Poetry
A. Review/Assess of Poetry
Assess of Poetry
1. Definition
Based on Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary definition of assess is to judge or decide to amount, value, quality or importance of something.
Base on Oxford, definition of asses is a judge the importance, worth, etc or calculate the value.
Base on Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary definition of poetryis a poem in general as a form of literature.
Base on Oxford, definition of poetry is collection of poem; poem in general or graceful quality.
2. Reading poems
In some ways reading poetry is much like reading fiction: we observe details of action and language, make connection and inferences, and draw conclusions. We also bring to poetry the same intellectual and emotional dispositions, the same general experience with life and literature that we draw on reading fiction. And yet there is something different about reading poems. The difference, admittedly more one of degree than of kind, involves our being more attentive to connotations of words, more receptive to the expressive qualities of sound and rhythm in line and stanza, more discerning abut details of syntax and punctuation. This increase attention to linguistic detail is necessary because of the density and compression characteristic of poetry. More than fiction, poetry is an art of condensation and implication; poems concentrate meaning and distill feeling.
Learning to read poetry well and to savor its pleasures involves learning to ask question about how we experience poems, how we interpret them, and how we evaluate them. Such questions include the following:
1. What feelings does the poem evoke? What sensation, association, and memories does it give rise to?
2. What ideas that the poems express, either directly on indirectly?
3. What view of the world does the poet present? What do you think of the poet’s view?
Our discussion is divided into three parts: the experience of poetry, the interpretation of poetry, and the evaluation of poetry. In the experience section we will be concerned primarily with subjective response or personal reaction. In the interpretation section our concern will be intellectual process that we engage in as we develop and understanding of poetry. Here the focus will be analytical rather than impressionistic, rational rather than emotional. And in the evaluation of poetry, we will be concerned with the ways we bring our sense of who we are and what we believe into our consideration of any poem’s significance, and with how to evaluate poems aesthetically.
The experience of poetry
We begin by considering the following poem, from the stand point of our experience.
ROBERT HAYDEN
[1913-1980]
Those Winter Sundays
Sundays my father got up early
And put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
Then with cracked hands that ached
From labor in weekday weather made
Blanked fires blaze. No ne ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call
And slowly I would rise and dress,
Fearing the chronic angers of that house
Speaking indifferently to him
Who had driven out the cold
And polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I knowof love’s austere and lonely offices?
[1962]
Even from a single reading we see that the speaker of “Those Winter Sundays” now an adult, is remembering how is father use to get up on cold Sunday mornings and light the fires that warm the house for his sleeping family. We sense that he regrets how an appreciative of his father he was as a child. We may wonder what prompts these memories and feelings. Our initial reading may also call up memories of our own. This kind of reading in context of our experience is important for our full response to our full response to the pleasures poetry offers.
The Interpretation of Poetry
When we interpret a poem, we concern ourselves less with how it affect us that with what it mean or suggest. Interpretation relies on our intellectual comprehension and rational understanding rather than on our emotional apprehension and response.
The act of interpretation involves essentially four things: observing, connecting, inferring, and concluding. We observe details of description and action, of language and form. We look for connections among these details and begin to establish a sense of the poem’s coherence (the way its details fit together in meaningful relationships).On the basis of these connections we make inferences or interpretive guesses about their significance. And finally, we come to provisional conclusion about the poem’s meaning base on our observation, connections, and inferences.
The Evaluation of Poetry
When we evaluate a poem, we do two different kinds of things. First, we make a judgments about how good it is and how successfully it realizes its poetic intentions. We examine its language and structure, for example, and consider how well they work together to embody meaning and convey feeling. Second, we consider how much significance the poem has for us personally, and what significance it may have for other readers- both those who are like us and those who differ in age, race, gender, culture, and ideology.
3.Elements of Poetry
We can learn to interpret and appreciate poem by understanding their basic elements. The elements of a poem include a speaker whose voice we hear in it; its diction or selection of word; its syntax or the order of those word ; its imagery or details of sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch; its figurative language or nonliteralyways of expressing one thing in terms of another, such as symbol and metaphor ; its sound effects, especially rhyme, assonance, and alliteration; its rhythm and meter or the pattern of accents we hear in the poem’s word., phrases, lines, and sentence; and its structure or formal patterns of organization.
VOICE: SPEAKER AND TONE
When we read or hear a poem, we hear a speaker’s voice. It is this voice that conveys the poem’s tone, its implied attitude toward its subject. Tone is an abstraction we make frm the details of a poem’s language: the use of meter and rhyme; the inclusion of certain kinds of details and exclusion of other kinds; particular choises of word and sentence pattern, of imagery and figurative language. When we listen to a poem’s language and hear the voice of its speaker, we can catch its tone and feeling and ultimately its meaning.
DICTION
Poems include “the best words in the best order”, as Samuel Taylor Colerige has said. in reading any poem it is necessary to know what the words mean, but it is equally important to understand what the words imply or suggest.
IMAGERY
Poems include such details which trigger our memories, stimulate our feelings, and command our response. When such specific details appear in poems they are called images. An image is a concrete representation of sense impression, feeling, or idea. Images appeal to one or more of our sense. Images may be visual(something seen),aural(something heard), tactile(something felt), olfactory(something smelled), or gustatory(something tasted).
Symbolism and Allegory
A symbol is any object or action that represents something beyond itself.
Syntax
Syntax as arrangement of words in sentences, phrase, or clause.
Sound: Rhyme, Alliteration, Assonance
The most familiar element of poetry is rhyme, which can be defined as the matching of final vowel or consonant sounds in two or more words. For the reader rhyme is a pleasure, for the poet a challenge. Part of pleasure for reader is in anticipating and hearing a poem’s echoing song. Part of its challenge is in rhyming naturally, without forcing the rhythm, the syntax, or the sense. Alliteration is repetition of consonant sound, especially at the beginning of word, and assonace is repetition of vowel sounds.
Rhythm
Rhythm refers to the regular recurrence of the accent or stress in poem.
Theme
Theme as an idea or intellectually apprehensible meaning inherent and implicit in work.
Novel
B.Assess of novel
A. Defination
Among the forms of imaginative literature in our language, the novel has long been favorite of both writer and reader. For more than two hundred years, only the lyric poem has rivelaled the novel in attracting outstanding practitioners. As far as we can tell from sales figures, the novel has far outstanding the popularity of other literary forms. Broadly defined, a novel is a book-leigth story in prose, who author tries to create the sense that, while we read, we experience actual life. Some defination of the novel would more stricly limit its province. The novel is a picture of real life and manners and of the time in which it was written. A novel is a long prose narrative that describes fictional characters and events in the form of a sequential story
Generally, the novel is a long, fictitious prose narrative whose imaginary characters and events are presented in a realistic, true-to-life manner. You should note that there is no hard and fast rule on the length of the novel. This is why novels are not uniform in their length. Some have adduced that English novels are usually long because of thepeople's reading culture.
B. Varieties of novel
1. Historical Novel
Historical Novel is detailed reconstruction of life in another time or in the past, perhaps in another place. In some historical the author attemps a faitful picture of daily life in another era, as does Robert Graves in I, Cladudius (1934), a novel of patrician Rome. More often history is a backdropfor an exciting story loveand heroic advanture. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (set in Puritan Boston), Herman Melville’s Moby Dick(set in the heyday of Yangke whalers), and Stephen Charne’s The Red Badge of Courage (set in the battlefields of Civil War) are historical novel in that their author lived considerably later than the scenes and event that they decipted and stoved for truthfulness, by imaginative means.
2. Appreticenship novel
Appreticenship novel is that novel tells about some consistent world view or philoshopy of life. Some times Appreticenship novel is evidently the authors recallection of his own early life: James Joyce’s Portpait of the Artis as Young Man(1914) and Thomas Whole’s Look Homeward, Angel (1929).
3. Novelette
Novelette is is like a novel. The major difference is that the novelette is short and
thus it can be called a "short novel". It is sometimes said to be a "long short story". Mainly short a description of size, the term short novel refers to a narrative midway in leght between a short story and a novel. Generally a short novel, like short story, centers on just one or two characters, but unlike short story, has room to releval them in greater fullness and depth, sometime taking in longer span of time. The defination of short story is like the novelette, the short story is another miniature novel. The short story may be independent or annexed to a novel. Charles Dickens' ThePick Wick Papers is an example of a famous short story.
Drama
a. What is Drama?
Drama comes from Greek words meaning "to do" or "to act." A play is a story acted out. It shows people going through some eventful period in their lives, seriously or humorously. The speech and action of a play recreate the flow of human life. A play comes fully to life only on the stage. On the stage it combines many arts those of the author, director, actor, designer, and others. Dramatic performance involves an intricate process of rehearsal based upon imagery inherent in the dramatic text. A playwright first invents a drama out of mental imagery. The dramatic text presents the drama as a range of verbal imagery. The language of drama can range between great extremes: on the one hand, an intensely theatrical and ritualistic manner; and on the other, an almost exact reproduction of real life. A dramatic monologue is a type of lyrical poem or narrative piece that has a person speaking to a select listener and revealing his character in a dramatic situation.
b. Classification of Dramatic Plays
In a strict sense, plays are classified as being either tragedies or comedies. The broad difference between the two is in the ending. Comedies end happily. Tragedies end on an unhappy note. The tragedy acts as a purge. It arouses our pity for the stricken one and our terror that we ourselves may be struck down. As the play closes we are washed clean of these emotions and we feel better for the experience. A classical tragedy tells of a high and noble person who falls because of a "tragic flaw," a weakness in his own character. A domestic tragedy concerns the lives of ordinary people brought low by circumstances beyond their control. Domestic tragedy may be realistic seemingly true to life or naturalistic realistic and on the seamy side of life. A romantic comedy is a love story. The main characters are lovers; the secondary characters are comic. In the end the lovers are always united. Farce is comedy at its broadest. Much fun and horseplay enliven the action. The comedy of manners, or artificial comedy, is subtle, witty, and often mocking. Sentimental comedy mixes sentimental emotion with its humor. Melodrama has a plot filled with pathos and menacing threats by a villain, but it does include comic relief and has a happy ending. It depends upon physical action rather than upon character probing. Tragic or comic, the action of the play comes from conflict of characters how the stage people react to each other. These reactions make the play.
c. Elements of Drama
1) Character
Most simply a character is one of the persons who appears in the play, one of the dramatis personae (literally, the persons of the play). In another sense of the term, the treatment of the character is the basic part of the playwright's work. Conventions of the period and the author's personal vision will affect the treatment of character.
Most plays contain major characters and minor characters. The delineation and development of major characters is essential to the play. A minor character serves a specific function.
The distinction between heroes (or heroines) and villains, between good guys and bad guys, between virtue and vice is useful in dealing with certain types of plays.
Another common term in drama is protagonist. Etymologically, it means the first contestant. In the Greek drama, where the term arose, all the parts were played by one, two, or three actors (the more actors, the later the play), and the best actor, who got the principal part(s), was the protagonist. The second best actor was called the euteragonist. Ideally, the term "protagonist" should be used only for the principal character. Several other characters can be defined by their relation to the protagonist. The antagonist is his principal rival in the conflict set forth in the play. A foil is a character who defines certain characteristics in the protagonist by exhibiting opposite traits or the same traits in a greater or lesser degree. (Carl E. Bain, Jerome Beaty& J. Paul Hunter. 1973. The Norton Introduction to Literature (Combined Shorter Edition) Canada: Goerge J. McLeod Limited.)
2) Plot
The interest generated by the plot varies for different kinds of plays. (See fiction elements on plot for more information regarding plot.) The plot is usually structured with acts and scenes.
Open conflict plays: rely on the suspense of a struggle in which the hero, through perhaps fight against all odds, is not doomed. Dramatic thesis: foreshadowing, in the form of ominous hints or symbolic incidents, conditions the audience to expect certain logical developments. Coincidence: sudden reversal of fortune plays depict climatic ironies or misunderstandings. Dramatic irony: the fulfillment of a plan, action, or expectation in a surprising way, often opposite of what was intended.
3) Theme
The plot has been called the body of a play and the theme has been called its soul. Most plays have a conflict of some kind between individuals, between man and society, man and some superior force or man and himself. The events that this conflict provokes make up the plot. One of the first items of interest is the playwright treatment of the plot and what them he would draw from it. The same plots have been and will be used many times; it is the treatment that supplies each effort with originality or artistic worth. Shakespeare is said to have borrowed all but one of his stories, but he presented them so much better than any of the previous authors that he is not seriously criticized for the borrowing. The treatment of theme is equally varied.
The same theme or story may be given a very serious or a very light touch. It may be a severe indictment or a tongue-in- cheek attack. It could point up a great lesson or show the same situation as a handicap to progress. The personality, background an d social or artistic temperament of the playwright are responsible for the treatment that he gives to his story or theme. We must, therefore, both understand and evaluate these factors.
To endure, a play should have a theme. If a play has a theme, we should be able to state it in general terms and in a single sentence, even at the risk of oversimplification. Of course the theme, no matter how fully stated, is not the equivalent of the play. The play is a complex experience, and one must remain open to its manifold suggestions.
As indicated above, the statement of the play in specific terms is the plot presented. Plot and theme should go hand in hand. If the theme is one of nobility, or dignity, the plot must concern events and characters that measure up to that theme. (Wright, E.A. 1969. A Primer for Playgoers. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc. p.156-158)
4) Dialogue
Dialogue provides the substance of a play. Each word uttered by the character furthers the business of the play, contributes to its effect as a whole. Any artificial picture of life must start from the detail of actuality. An audience must be able to recognize it; however changed; we want to check it against experience.
Conversely, the detail of actuality in realistic drama can be chosen and presented in such a way as to suggest that it stands for more on the stage than it would in life. So it is dramatic speech. A snatch of phase caught in everyday conversation may mean little, Used by an actor on a stage, it can assume general and typical qualities. The context into which it is put can make it pull more than its conversation al weight, no matter how simple words. Consider Othello\quotes bare repetition: 'Put out the light, end then put out the light.'
Why do words begin to assume general qualities, and why do they become dramatic? Here are two problems on either side of the same coin. The words in both cases depend upon the kind of attention we give them. The artist using them, whether author or actors, force them upon us, and in a variety of ways try to fix the quality of our attention.
If dialogue carefully follows the way we speak in life, as it is likely to go i n a naturalistic play, the first step towards understanding how it departs from actuality can be awkward. It is helpful to cease to submit the pretence for the moment. An apparent reproduction of ordinary conversation will be, in good drama, a construction of word setup to do many jobs that are not immediately obvious.
When the actor examines the text to prepare his part, he looks for what makes the words different from conversation that is he looks for the structural elements of the building, for links of characteristic thought in the character, and so on. He persists till he has shaped in his mind a firm and workable pattern of his part.
Dramatic dialogue has other work to do before it provides a table of words to be spoken. In the absence of the author it must provide a set of unwritten working directives to the actor on how to speak its speeches. And before that, it has to teach him how to think and feel them: the particularly of a play requires this if is not to be animated by a series of cardboard stereotypes.
Dramatic dialogue works by a number of instinctively agreed codes. Some tell the producer how to arrange the figures on the stage. Others tell him what he should hear as the pattern of sound echoing and contradicting, changing tone, rising and falling. Dialogue should be read and heard as a dramatic score. (J.L. Styan. 1960. The Elements of Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)
Literary Criticism
Literary criticism or literary analysis can be defined as An informed analysis and evaluation of a piece of literature or a written study, evaluation and interpretation of a work of literature.The literary criticism is a concept, formed on the basis of critical analysis and primarily estimates the value and merit of literary works for the presence or quality of certain parameters of literary characteristics.
Critical Literary Theory
The critical literary theory is a boarder concept incorporating various strict senses and merits for the systematic study of the nature of literature and provides a complete set of methods for analyzing literature. M.H. Abrams wrote a book called "Critical Theory Since Plato" in which he grouped literary theory into four distinct types:
1) Mimetic Theories - Concerned with the relation of poetry to the universe (nature), mimetic theories view the best poetry as that which imitates nature as closely as possible.
2) Pragmatic Theories - Concerned with the social function of poetry, the didactic function of poetry. Pragmatic theories explore the impact that poetry has upon its audience.
3) Expressive Theories - Concerned with the relationship between the poet and her poem. Expressive theories tend to view poetry as a prophetic force as opposed to the didactic force expounded in pragmatic theories.
4) Objective Theories - Concerned with the poems relation to itself, the objective theories focus on the internal consistency of poetry.
Plato
Our first great literary critic, Plato, views poetry as a dangerous force which leads us further away from the truth. Basically, Plato viewed this world as a sort of illusion. Therefore, as poetry is a mimesis of this imperfect world it is an imperfect copy of a copy, degradation from his ideal world of forms.
Aristotle
Plato's pupil, Aristotle, turns Plato's view of poetry on its head. Aristotle maintained that mimesis was a search for harmony, a force for order and balance.Aristotle's Poetics has had more impact in literary theory than any other work. In it he introduces us to many of the terms used in literary theory to this day. Key among these are mimesis (imitation), praxis (story), and muthos (plot).
Neoclassical Criticism 1
Horace
During the so-called "Golden Age of Roman Poetry" (roughly 27BCE-14BCE) Horace composed his ArsPoetica (Art of Poetry). The ArsPoetica was a verse epistle, and a masterpiece of irony. Horace wrote this to the young poets in the Piso family, and it is a subtle plea for them to give up their art.
According to Horace, the literary critic was a whetstone for poets to sharpen their craft against. Like all of the neo-classical critics, Horace was highly concerned with the rules of poetry known as decorum. Decorum means that a poem should not mix dissimilar elements, nor should he mix genres. Horace humorously presents the image of the mermaid as an example of the breaking of decorum.To Horace, the poet was the creator of society, bringing us together in a civilizing force.
Longinus
As a neo-classicist, "Longinus" holds a somewhat aristocratic, elitist view of poetry highly concerned with decorum. The author says that the best art will seem more natural than nature itself. The sublime is always above the corrupting influences of the world. Chief among the corrupting influences listed in On the Sublime are materialism and hedonism. These influences produce a "slavery of the soul" far worse than any material prison. Finally, the author maintains that poetry is a force for morality in the world.
Types of Literary Criticism
Literacy criticism includes various techniques of literature analysis which are widely used for critical essay writing and drafting analysis for texts and materials against specific merits of evaluation.
Objective Analysis
An objective analysis makes uses the technique of independently investigating a particular subject matter with reference to the existing facts, figures, events and background information.
An objective analysis can also be referred to as statistical interpolation, objective mapping, or systematic probing into a subject and is completely devoid of personal feelings and viewpoint.
Traditional Criticism
The traditional criticism approach examines you examine how the author’s life, his/her biographical information, contemporary times and effect of his life circumstances on his inspiration and their reflection in his works.This technique is commonly used in in general surveys of English literature. It includes a general analysis of the writers as opposed to a detailed analysis of their individual works.
New Criticism
The new criticism approach is mostly used in poetry analysis and evaluates elements like diction, imagery, stanza structure, verse form, meanings, particularly and complexities of meaning.This form of critical analysis refrains from analyzing the biographical and historical context of a poem.
Sociological Criticism
The sociological criticism approach deals with the direct analysis of society with reference to societal problems, conflicts and contemporary issues. Areas of analysis typically include events, happenings, cultural trends and effects of modernism.
Rhetorical Criticism
The rhetorical criticism approach makes use of the technique of persuasion and aims to understand the conveyance of the content of poetry and other works of art. It evaluates the angle of approach, presentation of arguments, evidence and attitude.
Stylistic Criticism
The stylistic critical technique evaluates the manner of presentation for any work and focuses on the minor details like diction, vocabulary, tone and various style elements.
Metaphorical Criticism
A metaphorical critical analysis makes use of the use, nature, purpose and evaluation of metaphors used in any work. The analysis probes into the meaning and illustration along with the message conveyed of the metaphorical stance being used.
Structuralist Criticism
The structural critical analysis studies symmetry, trends and patterns for a particular society or for a societal comparative analysis of various societies, underlying patterns of symmetry which are held to be common to all societies. Corroboration is drawn from sociology and anthropology, and the study techniques categorize and evaluate the work in larger context rather than assessing its quality alone.
Biographical Criticism
A biographical critical analysis evaluates a with a poem in terms of the reflection of the writer’s psychology, or as biographical data piece. This kind of analysis focuses on the interrelationship of a particular work in context of understanding the influences, inspiration and circumstances of the writer.
Marxist Criticism
In case of the Marxist critical analysis, poetry is analyzed on the basis of its political correctness and calls for mention of support for workers against capitalist exploitation and perils of free market perils.
Historical Criticism
Historical criticism analyzes poem works in their historical context and evaluates the use of allusions, words, phrases and diction along with conventions and expectations at the time of the written works produced.
Psychological (Freudian) Criticism
Psychological critical analysis examine texts an works for the portrayal of sexual imagery and against other Freudian concepts; struggles of the superego, the Oedipus complex, repressed contents of consciousness, etc. The purpose of Freudian analysis is to highlight the existence of psychic conflicts rather than looking for aesthetical merits.
Mythological (Archetypal) Criticism
Mythological criticism evaluates content for instinctual and inmost emotions in human nature which are influenced by certain events, happenings and character situations. The analysis is based on communal beliefs since mythology is strongly derived from religious beliefs, anthropology, and cultural history.
Moralist Criticism
The moral critical approach examines poetry and art works against standard ethical and civil criteria; humanistic, societal impact, tolerance, equality, social justice and sensitivity.
This approach adheres to the humanistic and civil element in poems, dramas and other art work and evaluates the impact and influence of works of literature in a stringent moral context.
Feminist Criticism
Feminist critical analysis is concerned with the politics of women’s authorship, representation of the women’s condition within literature. Origin of feminine criticism is originally derived from the classic works of 19th Century women authors like George Eliot and Margaret Fuller.
Based on the feminist theory, the feminist critical evaluation analyzes elements like stereotypes of women, images of women in literature, literary mistreatment of women, place of women in patriarchal societies and challenges faced by women in the modern era.to sum up, poetry, prose, and drama have their own characteristics.
Conclusion
To sum up, every literary works like poetry, novel, and drama have their own characteristics, and those characteristics or elements reflect on whether it’s literary work good or not because those characteristics or elements become absolute requirement of literary works which every literary works must have and become a measurement of good literary works. If one of characteristics is omitted or neglected, it will cause the lack of assessment for those literary works. Assessment of literary works or more known as critical literary works are also determined by a different variety points of views. These variety points of views in critical literary works have been developed since Plato period until now.
REFERENCES
Bain, Carl E.,Beaty,Jerome &Hunter, J. Paul.1973. The Norton Introduction to Literature (Combined Shorter Edition)Canada:Goerge J. McLeod Limited.
Wright, E.A. 1969. A Primer for Playgoers.Englewood Cliffs:Prentice-Hall, Inc.
Styan,J.L. 1960. The Elements of Drama.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Diyanni, Robert. 2004. Literature: Approaches to fiction, poetry, and drama. USA: The McGraw Hill Company, Inc.
Kennedy, X.J. 1983. An Introduction to Fiction Third Edition. Boston: Brown and Company Limited.
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