Beso, Luiz Miguel B.
BSE EN 2-1
Literature
Students are asked to write literary analysis essays because this type of assignment encourages you to think about how and why a poem, short story, novel, or play was written. To successfully analyze literature, you’ll need to remember that authors make specific choices for particular reasons. Your essay should point out the author’s choices and attempt to explain their significance.
Another way to look at a literary analysis is to consider a piece of literature from your own perspective. Rather than thinking about the author’s intentions, you can develop an argument based on any single term (or combination of terms) listed below. You’ll just need to use the original text to defend and explain your argument to the reader.
Allegory - narrative form in which the characters are representative of some larger humanistic trait (i.e. greed, vanity, or bravery) and attempt to convey some larger lesson or meaning to life. Although allegory was originally and traditionally character based, modern allegories tend to parallel story and theme.
William Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily- the decline of the Old South
Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde- man’s struggle to contain his inner primal instincts
District 9- South African Apartheid
X Men- the evils of prejudice
Harry Potter- the dangers of seeking “racial purity”
Character - representation of a person, place, or thing performing traditionally human activities or functions in a work of fiction
Protagonist - The character the story revolves around.
Antagonist - A character or force that opposes the protagonist.
Minor character - Often provides support and illuminates the protagonist.
Static character - A character that remains the same.
Dynamic character - A character that changes in some important way.
Characterization - The choices an author makes to reveal a character’s personality, such as appearance, actions, dialogue, and motivations.
Look for: Connections, links, and clues between and about characters. Ask yourself what the function and significance of each character is. Make this determination based upon the character's history, what the reader is told (and not told), and what other characters say about themselves and others.
Connotation - implied meaning of word. BEWARE! Connotations can change over time. confidence/ arrogance mouse/ rat cautious/ scared curious/ nosey frugal/ cheap
Denotation - dictionary definition of a word Diction - word choice that both conveys and emphasizes the meaning or theme of a poem through distinctions in sound, look, rhythm, syllable, letters, and definition
Figurative language - the use of words to express meaning beyond the literal meaning of the words themselves Metaphor - contrasting to seemingly unalike things to enhance the meaning of a situation or theme without using like or as
You are the sunshine of my life.
Simile - contrasting to seemingly unalike things to enhance the meaning of a situation or theme using like or as
What happens to a dream deferred, does it dry up like a raisin in the sun
Hyperbole - exaggeration
I have a million things to do today.
Personification - giving non-human objects human characteristics
America has thrown her hat into the ring, and will be joining forces with the British.
Foot - grouping of stressed and unstressed syllables used in line or poem
Iamb - unstressed syllable followed by stressed
Made famous by the Shakespearian sonnet, closest to the natural rhythm of human speech
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways
Spondee - stressed stressed
Used to add emphasis and break up monotonous rhythm
Blood boil, mind-meld, well- loved
Trochee - stressed unstressed
Often used in children’s rhymes and to help with memorization, gives poem a hurried feeling
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
Anapest - unstressed unstressed stressed
Often used in longer poems or “rhymed stories”
Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house
Dactyls - stressed unstressed unstressed
Often used in classical Greek or Latin text, later revived by the Romantics, then again by the Beatles, often thought to create a heartbeat or pulse in a poem
Picture yourself in a boat on a river,
With tangerine trees and marmalade skies.
The iamb stumbles through my books; trochees rush and tumble; while anapest runs like a hurrying brook; dactyls are stately and classical.
Imagery - the author’s attempt to create a mental picture (or reference point) in the mind of the reader. Remember, though the most immediate forms of imagery are visual, strong and effective imagery can be used to invoke an emotional, sensational (taste, touch, smell etc) or even physical response.
Meter - measure or structuring of rhythm in a poem
Plot - the arrangement of ideas and/or incidents that make up a story
Foreshadowing - When the writer clues the reader in to something that will eventually occur in the story; it may be explicit (obvious) or implied (disguised).
Suspense - The tension that the author uses to create a feeling of discomfort about the unknown
Conflict - Struggle between opposing forces.
Exposition - Background information regarding the setting, characters, plot.
Rising Action - The process the story follows as it builds to its main conflict
Crisis - A significant turning point in the story that determines how it must end
Resolution/Denouement - The way the story turns out.
Point of View - pertains to who tells the story and how it is told. The point of view of a story can sometimes indirectly establish the author's intentions.
Narrator - The person telling the story who may or may not be a character in the story.
First-person - Narrator participates in action but sometimes has limited knowledge/vision.
Second person - Narrator addresses the reader directly as though she is part of the story. (i.e. “You walk into your bedroom. You see clutter everywhere and…”)
Third Person (Objective) - Narrator is unnamed/unidentified (a detached observer). Does not assume character's perspective and is not a character in the story. The narrator reports on events and lets the reader supply the meaning.
Omniscient - All-knowing narrator (multiple perspectives). The narrator knows what each character is thinking and feeling, not just what they are doing throughout the story. This type of narrator usually jumps around within the text, following one character for a few pages or chapters, and then switching to another character for a few pages, chapters, etc. Omniscient narrators also sometimes step out of a particular character’s mind to evaluate him or her in some meaningful way.
Rhythm - often thought of as a poem’s timing. Rhythm is the juxtaposition of stressed and unstressed beats in a poem, and is often used to give the reader a lens through which to move through the work. (See meter and foot)
Setting - the place or location of the action. The setting provides the historical and cultural context for characters. It often can symbolize the emotional state of characters. Example – In Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, the crumbling old mansion reflects the decaying state of both the family and the narrator’s mind. We also see this type of emphasis on setting in Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice.
Speaker - the person delivering the poem. Remember, a poem does not have to have a speaker, and the speaker and the poet are not necessarily one in the same.
Structure (fiction) - The way that the writer arranges the plot of a story.
Look for: Repeated elements in action, gesture, dialogue, description, as well as shifts in direction, focus, time, place, etc.
Structure (poetry) - The pattern of organization of a poem. For example, a Shakespearean sonnet is a 14-line poem written in iambic pentameter. Because the sonnet is strictly constrained, it is considered a closed or fixed form. An open or free form poem has looser form, or perhaps one of the author’s invention, but it is important to remember that these poems are not necessarily formless.
Symbolism - when an object is meant to be representative of something or an idea greater than the object itself.
Cross - representative of Christ or Christianity
Bald Eagle - America or Patriotism
Owl - wisdom or knowledge
Yellow - implies cowardice or rot
Tone - the implied attitude towards the subject of the poem. Is it hopeful, pessimistic, dreary, worried? A poet conveys tone by combining all of the elements listed above to create a precise impression on the reader.

The General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH) was proposed by Victor Raskin and Salvatore Attardo in the article “Script theory revis(it)ed: joke similarity and joke representation model”. It integrated Raskin’s ideas of Script Opposition (SO), developed in his Script-based Semantic Theory of Humor [SSTH], into the GTVH as one of six levels of independent Knowledge Resources (KRs). These KRs could be used to model individual verbal jokes as well as analyze the degree of similarity or difference between them. The Knowledge Resources proposed in this theory are:
Script Opposition (SO) references the script opposition included in Raskin’s SSTH. This includes, among others, themes such as real (unreal), actual (non-actual), normal (abnormal), possible (impossible).
Logical Mechanism (LM) refers to the mechanism which connects the different scripts in the joke. These can range from a simple verbal technique like a pun to more complex LMs such as faulty logic or false analogies.
Situation (SI) can include objects, activities, instruments, props needed to tell the story.
Target (TA) identifies the actor(s) who become the “butt” of the joke. This labeling serves to develop and solidify stereotypes of ethnic groups, professions, etc.
Narrative strategy (NS) addresses the narrative format of the joke, as either a simple narrative, a dialogue, or a riddle. It attempts to classify the different genres and subgenres of verbal humor. In a subsequent study Attardo expands the NS to include oral and printed humorous narratives of any length, not just jokes.
Language (LA) “…contains all the information necessary for the verbalization of a text. It is responsible for the exact wording …and for the placement of the functional elements.”

dramatic irony,
Britannica Classic: O. Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi” [Credit: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.]a literary device by which the audience’s or reader’s understanding of events or individuals in a work surpasses that of its characters. Dramatic irony is a form of irony that is expressed through a work’s structure: an audience’s awareness of the situation in which a work’s characters exist differs substantially from that of the characters’, and the words and actions of the characters therefore take on a different—often contradictory—meaning for the audience than they have for the work’s characters. Dramatic irony is most often associated with the theatre, but examples of it can be found across the literary and performing arts.
Othello: with Branagh [Credit: Castle Rock Entertainment (Courtesy Kobal)]Dramatic irony abounds in works of tragedy. In Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, for example, the audience knows that Oedipus’s acts are tragic mistakes long before he recognizes his own errors. Western writers whose works are traditionally cited for their adept use of dramatic irony include William Shakespeare (as in Othello’s trust of the treacherous Iago in the play Othello), Voltaire, Jonathan Swift, Henry Fielding, Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, and Henry James, among many others. Dramatic irony can also be found in such works as O. Henry’s short story “The Gift of the Magi” and Anton Chekhov’s story “Lady with the Dog.”
Dramatic irony is frequently contrasted with verbal irony. The former is embedded in a work’s structure, whereas the latter typically operates at the level of words and sentences that are understood by audiences or readers to carry meanings different from the words themselves when interpreted literally. (Sarcasm can be considered a form of verbal irony.) Dramatic irony is also sometimes equated with tragic irony, situational irony, or structural irony; all those terms are also sometimes understood to exist within a hierarchy that establishes narrow differences of meaning among themselves.

Satire Definition
Satire is a technique employed by writers to expose and criticize foolishness and corruption of an individual or a society by using humor, irony, exaggeration or ridicule. It intends to improve humanity by criticizing its follies and foibles. A writer in a satire uses fictional characters, which stand for real people, to expose and condemn their corruption.
A writer may point a satire toward a person, a country or even the entire world. Usually, a satire is a comical piece of writing which makes fun of an individual or a society to expose its stupidity and shortcomings. In addition, he hopes that those he criticizes will improve their characters by overcoming their weaknesses.
Satire and Irony
Satire and irony are interlinked. Irony is the difference between what is said or done and what is actually meant. Therefore, writers frequently employ satire to point at the dishonesty and silliness of individuals and society and criticize them by ridiculing them.
Examples of Satire in Everyday Life
Most political cartoons which we witness every day in newspapers and magazines are examples of satire. These cartoons criticize some recent actions of political figures in a comical way.
Some shows on television are satire examples like The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and The Larry Sanders Show. These shows claim to target what they think are stupid political and social viewpoints.
Let us see a sample of Stephen Colbert’s social satire:
“If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn’t help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we’ve got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don’t want to do it.”

References: https://www.roanestate.edu/owl/elementslit.html https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theories_of_humor http://www.britannica.com/art/dramatic-irony http://literarydevices.net/satire/