GEED 05: PURPOSIVE COMMUNICATION ONLINE CLASS

Week 8

Online Class Rules

1. Please read the hand-out and complete all the activities and quizzes given.
2. Should there be any questions, please do not hesitate to ask.
3. You can do additional researches on the topics below.
4. Use SHORT BOND PAPERS for all your activities/quizzes and follow the format
below.

Name (LN,GN,MI):______________________________ Score: _______

Year and Section: _____________________ Date of Completion______

6. Outputs can be printed or hand-written. Use whatever is convenient.

7. PLAGIARIZED ANSWERS WILL NOT BE GRADED.

LITERARY ANALYSIS AND POLITICAL ANALYSIS PAPERS

Objectives:
At the end of this lesson, students will be able to:
a. Discuss the different literary analyses that can be applied to critique a
certain piece of literature;
b. Write a literary analysis of “One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop using the
Historical-Biographical Approach.
c. Differentiate literary analysis from political analysis.

LITERARY ANALYSIS
A literary analysis makes a point about a literary piece through reading, interpreting and
commenting a specific text which has been designated as literature. A text is considered a literature
when it withstood the test of time and retained its value and significance to the present. To add,
literary criticism also involves the understanding and appreciation of literary texts. The analysis
may focus on the plot, settings, characters, tone, theme, author, etc.

Elements of Literature
These are some elements that can be the focus of literary analysis.

ELEMENT DEFINITION
Plot The series of events in the story- beginning,
middle, end
Character/s The people or animals in the story who carry
out the action
Setting The where and when in which the story takes
place
Theme The central belief of the story, usually
something abstract that unifies the whole plot
like love, friendship, etc.
Tone The attitude that a writer has towards the
subject

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Literary Criticism Approaches

Literary criticism is the comparison, analysis and interpretation and/or evaluation of works
of literature. It evaluates the value and merit of a literary work using certain parameters,
approaches or concepts in literature. Approaches to literary criticism are used as bases of literary
analysis. Literature can be best understood through applying a particular approach. These can be
one among the following.
1. Historical-Biographical Approach
The historical-biographical approach sees a literary work chiefly, if not exclusively, as
a reflection of its author’s life and times or the life and times of the characters in the
work. A historical novel is likely to be more meaningful when either its milieu or that of
its author is understood. James Fenimore Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans, Sir Walter
Scott’s Ivanhoe, Charles Dicken’s Tale of Two Cities, and John Steinbeck’s Grapes of
Wrath are certainly better understood by readers familiar with, respectively, the French
and Indian War (and the American frontier experience), Anglo-Norman Britain, the
French Revolution and the American Depression.

In applying this approach, readers must analyze the author’s biography to help us
understand his or her literary piece. A reader may explore on the thoughts and feelings
of the author as well as his or her experiences, beliefs in life, persons he or she used to
be with, his or her ideals, movements and social involvement.

However, one must not assume that the author’s life is related to all of his or her
masterpieces. Avoiding inaccurate information about the author is also equally
important. Lastly, one should use the author’s life, not the masterpiece associated to the
author.

2. Feminist Approach
This is a specific kind of political discourse: a critical and theoretical practice committed
to the struggle against patriarchy and sexism. Broadly, there are two kinds of feminist
criticism: one is concerned with unearthing, rediscovering or re-evaluating women’s
writing, and the other with re-reading literature from the point of view of women.
Feminism asks why women have played a subordinate role to men in the society. It is
concerned with how women’s lives have changed throughout history and what about
women’s experience is different from men.
Feminist literary criticism studies literature by women for how it addresses or expresses
the particularity of women’s live and experience. It also studies the male-dominated
canon in order to understand how men and women have used culture to further their
domination of women. Below is an example of a masterpiece that can be analyzed using
feminism approach.

To the Virgins to Make Much of Time

Robert Herrick
I
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old time is still a-flying;
and this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying

II
The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun
The higher he’s a-getting,
The sooner will his race will run,
And nearer he’s to setting

III
That age is best which is the first,

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When youth and blood are warmer,

But being spent, the worst and the worst
Times still succeed the former

IV
Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry;
For, having lost but once your prime,
You may forever tarry

3. Mythological/Archetypal Approach
This approach to literary study is based on Carl Jung’s theory of collective unconscious.
Repeated or dominant images or patterns of human experience are identified in the text:
the changing of seasons, the cycle of birth, death and rebirth, the heroic quest, or
immortality. Myths are universal although every nation has its own distinctive
mythology. Similar motifs or themes may be found among many different mythologies
and certain images that recur in the myths of people separated in time and place tend to
have a common meaning, elicit comparable to psychological responses, and serve similar
cultural functions. Such motifs and images are called archetypes.
This approach also uses the Northrop Frye’s assertion that literature consists of
variations on a great mythic theme that contains the following:
 Creation and life in paradise: garden
 The displacement or banishment from paradise: alienation
 A time of trial and tribulation, usually a wandering: journey
 A self-discovery as a result of struggle: epiphany
 A return to paradise: rebirth/resurrection

e.g.
Lam-ang – archetype of immorality
Superman in the movie Superman Returns – death and rebirth archetype
Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings –wise old man archetype
Odysseus – hero of initiation
Aeneas – hero of the quest
Jesus Christ – sacrificial scapegoat

4. Reader-response Approach
Reader-response approach is a critical approach emphasizing the idea that a text, without
a reader, means nothing. It heavily claims that it is the reader that derives meaning from
a text, hence, focusing its analysis on the individual reader’s evolving response to the
text. The readers, through their own values and experiences “create” the meaning of the
text and therefore, there is no one correcting the meaning.

5. Psycho-analytical Approach
This theory applies the idea of Freudian psychology to literature. Freud sees the
component parts of the psyche as the three groups of functions: the id, directly related to
instinctual drives; the ego, an agency which regulates and opposes the drives; and the
superego, another part of the ego with a critical judging function. This theory encourages
the reader to be creative in speculating about the character or author’s motivations,
drives, fears or desires. The belief here is that creative writing is like dreaming – it
disguises what cannot be confronted directly – the critic must decode what is disguised.
A direct relation between the text and the author is presupposed and made the center of
inquiry.

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6. Moral-Philosophical Approach
This emphasizes that the larger function of literature is to teach morality and to probe
philosophical issues. Literature is interpreted within a context of the philosophical
thought of a period or group. Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus can be read profitably
only if one understands existentialism. Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter is seen as a study of
the effects of sin on a human soul. Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy
Evening” suggests that duty takes precedence over beauty and pleasure.

7. Marxist Approach
This theory aims to explain literature in relation to society – that literature can only be
properly understood within a larger framework of social reality. Marxists believe that
any theory that treats literature that treats literature in isolation (for instance as pure
structure or as a history and society, will be deficient in its ability to explain what
literature is.
Marxist literary critics start by looking at the structure or history and society and then
see whether the literary work reflects or distorts this structure. Literature must have a
social dimension – it exists in time and space; in history and society. A literary work
must speak to concerns that readers recognize as relevant to their lives.
Marxist literary criticism maintains that a writer’s social class and its prevailing
‘ideology’ (outlook, values, tacit assumptions,etc.) have a major bearing on what is
written by a member of that class. The writers are constantly formed by their social
contexts.
The Farmer’s Son
There is a great power in reason
It comes like so much rain
Or like strong wind in a dry month

My father was bent

By work
His shoulders were bent
In a contract
He never understood

While I was still

A young man he sent me
To school
And bid me walk
With straight shoulders

Learn, he said,
Learn words
That you may pry off
These letters
That have made me
Old and bent

I came back
Many years later
With my words
I knew he wanted
But by then
It was too late

I listened to him
Die with words:
You are lucky
To have learned words
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They will keep you

From having bent shoulders

By his deathbed
I cried
And spat off
Letters while
My shoulders bent
With grief

8. Formalist/New Criticism Approach

This theory believes that literature is an organic unity. It is a movement in literary
criticism that proposes to close reading and textual analysis of the text itself. It is “New”
because it deviates to the previous practices on looking into just the author’s biography
and historical contexts similar to the message itself. Instead, this approach focuses on
the literary text alone by looking into the following: the persona, addressee, the situation,
what the persona says, the central metaphor, the central irony, multiple meanings of the
words, characters, plot, setting, language, images and symbols present it the text. It does
not primarily seeks a text’s meaning, but how it speaks for itself. Furthermore, it looks
into how the parts relate to each other, achieve its order and harmony, contain and resolve
the irony, paradox, tension, ambivalence and ambiguity.

9. Structuralist Approach
This theory draws from the linguistic theory of Ferdinand de Saussure. Language is a
system or structure. Our perception of reality, and hence the way we respond to it are
dictated or constructed by the structure of the language we speak. This theory assumes
that literature is an artefact of culture, is modelled on the structure of language. The
emphasis is on ‘how’ a text means, instead of ‘what’ of the New Criticism. The
structuralists argue that the structure of language produces reality, and meaning is no
longer determined by the individual but the system which governs the individual.
Structuralism aims to identify the general principles of literary structure and not to
provide interpretations of individual texts (Vladimir Propp & Tzvetan Torodov).
The structuralist approach to literature assumes three dimensions in the individual
literary texts
 The text as a particular system or structure in itself (naturalization of a
text)
 Texts are unavoidable influenced by other texts, in terms of both their
formal and conceptual structures; part of the meaning of any text depends
on its intertextual relation to other texts
 The text is related to the culture as a whole

Jabberwocky
Lewis Carroll

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand:

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Long time in the manxome foe he sought –

So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,

The 6abberwocky, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through

The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

“ And has thou slain the Jabberwock?

Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabious day! Callooh! Callay!’
He chortled in his joy.

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Writing a Literary Analysis

Basically, literary analysis contains an introduction, body, conclusion and references.
a. Introduction should capture the reader’s interest. You may use quotation, question,
vivid description, startling fact etc. as a starter followed by an introduction about
and a summary of the literary piece. Lastly, your introduction must clearly state a
thesis statement. The thesis statement must be specific, arguable, focused on any of
the elements of the literary piece. An approach suitable for a literary piece is also
expected to be the basis of your thesis statement.
b. Body is the development of the thesis statement. Each paragraph in the body has a
topic sentence that supports the thesis statement, and each topic sentence is
elaborated with evidence.
c. Conclusion should echo the thesis statement. It should not be presenting new ideas
which were not developed in the body.
d. References list entries cited in the literary analysis text. It is important to give credit
to the sources of information which helped developed your analysis.

ACTIVITY 1
Analyze the poem titled “One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop using the Historical-Biographical
Approach.
One Art
Elizabeth Bishop
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
So many things seem filled with the intent
To be lost that their lost is no disaster

Love something every day. Accept the fluster

Of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing of losing isn’t hard to master.

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Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

Places, and names, and where it was you meant
To travel. None of this will bring disaster

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or

Next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

Some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
The art of losing’s not too hard to master
Though it may look like (Write it!) like a disaster

WRITING A POLITICAL ANALYSIS PAPER

The field of political science requires a good grasp of writing skills for different purposes.
Every now and then, people react to various political issues that emerge. Rallies, position papers,
essays, editorial and others are possible ways to voice out one’s understanding or stand regarding
an issue of event in politics.
The field of political science covers vast topics from its traditional structures to most
theories and practices. Extensive knowledge in the history of world and international affairs, and
good analytical skills are vital requirements in political science.

What is a political analysis paper?

 It answers the questions pertaining to actions, problems, procedure and implementation of
politics;
 It analyses political events in the past and the present; and
 It investigates political phenomenon from diverse standpoints.

What are the requirements for a decent political analysis paper?

 Vast understanding of local politics and international affairs
 Extensive reading and research
 Knowledge of the parts of a political analysis paper
a. Introduction – defines political terms, state the motives and thesis
b. Body – analyses data, presents arguments in paragraphs, gives supporting evidence
and proof
c. Conclusion – extrapolates the ideas stated in the body and makes counter-
arguments
 Objectivity of the writer or author
 Citation and referencing
 Formality of tone
 Clear, concise, and well-structured sentences
 Clearly defined terms

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ACTIVITY 2

Using a Venn diagram, compare and contrast political analysis paper with a literary
analysis paper.

REFERENCES

Barrot, J. (2016). Communicative today: English for academic and professional purposes for
senior high school. Quezon City: C & E Publishing, Inc.

Northcutt, E. (2000). Steck-Vaughn PRE-GED writing. Austin, Texas: Steck-Vaughn Company.

Tiongson, M. A., & Rodriguez, M.C. (2016). Reading and writing skills. Manila: Rex Book
Store, Inc.

Wakat, G.S., et al. (2018). Purposive communication. Manila: Lorimar Publishing Inc.