Introduction to Popular Literature

Objectives:
At the end of the lesson, the students should be able to:
a. Acquaint themselves with the nature, appeal, and social
functions of popular literature.

UNDERSTANDING THE NATURE, FUNCTION, AND VALUE OF

LITERATURE

HOW DR. ELLIS DESCRIBES ‘LITERATURE’

 Dr. Rod Ellis- known as the “Father of Second
Language Acquisition” (ASL)
(1989:30) defines literature as:
1. The verbal expression of human imagination and
2. One of the primary means by which a culture
transmits itself.

I. NATURE
WHAT IS THE NATURE OF LITERATURE?
 Literature can be defined as an expression of human feelings,
thoughts, and ideas whose medium is language, oral and written.
 It is not only about human ideas, thoughts, and feelings but also
about experiences of the authors.
 It can be medium for human to communicate what they feel, think,
experience to the readers.
‘LITERATURE’ BASED ON DIFFERENT POINT OF VIEWS
 Literature is art,
 Literature is language,
 Literature is aesthetic,
 Literature is fictional,
 Literature is expressive, and
 Literature is affective.
 Literature is everything in print.
 It means any writing can be categorized as literature.
LITERATURE AS ART FORM
1. IMAGINATIVE LITERATURE
 Is highly ‘connotative’ which means words that used in literary works
have feeling and shades of meaning that words tend to evoke.
 Imaginative literature or “literature of power” includes poems, short
stories, novels, and plays. It interprets human experience by presenting
actual truths about particular events.
2. NON-IMAGINATIVE LITERATURE
 Means that the words refer to meaning in dictionary.
 Non-Fictional Literature or “literature of knowledge” includes
biographies, and essays which presents actual facts, events, experiences
and ideas.
TWO CATEGORIES OF LITERATURE ACCORDING TO KLEDEN
 Kleden (2004:7-8) states that literature can be differentiate based on
the kind of meanings that exist in a text.
A. LITERARY TEXT consists of textual meaning and referential meaning
and;
B. NON-LITERARY TEXT only consists of referral meaning.
The TEXTUAL MEANING is the meaning that is produced by the relationship
of text itself.
REFERENTIAL MEANING it is produced by the relationship between internal
text and external text (world beyond the text).

LITERATURE DIFFER FROM ORDIANRY SPOKEN OR WRITTEN

LANGUAGE

 Literature uses special words, structures, and characteristics.

Primarily the language of literature differs from ordinary language in
three ways:
1.) Language is concentrated and meaningful.
2.) Its purpose is not simply to explain, argue, or make a point but rather
to give a sense of pleasure in the discovery of new experience, and
3.) It demands intense concentration from the readers. It indicates that
the language of literature has originality, quality, creativity, and pleasure.
LITERARY FROM THE USE OF LANGUAGE AND THE EXISTENCE
 From the use of language and the existence of meaning in literary
works, it can be concluded that poetry, prose and drama are put in literary
works article, journalism, news, bibliography, memoir, and so on can be
categorized as non-literary works.

II. APPEAL
➢ Something that makes the viewers or readers attracted and interested
in the literary piece.

III. SOCIAL FUNCTION

FUNCTION OF LITERATURE
ENTERTAINMENT FUNCTION
Known as, “pleasure reading”. In this function, literature is
used to entertain its readers. It is consumed for the sake of one’s
enjoyment.

SOCIAL AND POLITICAL FUNCTION

Literature shows how society works around them. It helps the
reader “see” the social and political constructs around him and shows the
state of the people and the world around him.
IDEOLOGICAL FUNCTION
Ideological function shapes our way of thinking based on the
ideas of other people. Literature also displays a person’s ideology placed in
the text consciously and unconsciously.

MORAL FUNCTION
Literature may impart moral values to its readers. The morals
contained in a literary text, whether good or bad are absorbed by whoever
reads it, thus helps in shaping their personality.
LINGUISTIC FUNCTION
Literature preserves the language of every civilization from
where it originated. They are also evidences that a certain civilization has
existed by recording the language and preserving it through wide spans of
time.
CULTURAL FUNCTION
Literature orients us to the traditions, folklore and the arts of
our ethnic group’s heritage. It preserves entire cultures and creates an
imprint of the people’s way of living for others to read, hear and learn.
EDUCATIONAL FUNCTION
Literature teaches us of many things about the human
experience. It is used to portray the facets of life that we see, and those
that we would never dream of seeing. Literature therefore, is a conduct
for the chance to experience and feel things where we can learn things
about life.
HISTORICAL FUNCTION
Ancient texts, illuminated scripts, stone tablets etc. keeps a
record of events that happened in the place where they originated. Thus,
they serve as time capsules of letters that are studies by scholars and
researchers of today.

IMPORTANCE OF LITERATURE
 It entertains you and provides useful occupation in your free time.
 It makes you a wiser and more experienced person by forcing you to
judge, sympathize with, or criticize the characters you read about.
 Literature improves your command of language.
 It teaches you about the life, cultures and experiences of people in
other parts of the world.
 It gives you information about other parts of the world which you may
never be able to visit in your lifetime.
 It helps you compare your own experiences with the experiences of
other people.
 It gives information which may be useful in other subjects, for
example, in Geography, Science, History, Social Studies and so on.

IMPORTANCE OF LITERARY CRITICISM

 As a tool in literary studies, critic plays an important role in doing
studies or analysis about literary work.
 Applying criticism make our focus on certain aspect or element of
literary work sharper than reading as usual.
 The reader can focus on an aspect as his interest toward the literary
work.

UNIVERSAL CHARACTERISTIC OF LITERATURE

1. Timelessness
2. Eternity
3. Universality
4. Permanence
LITERATURE is a permanent expression in words of some thought or
feelings or idea about life and the world.

LITERARY CRITICISM AND ITS PURPOSE

 Literary criticism refers to analysis and judgment of works of
literature.
 It tries to interpret specific works of literature, and also helps to
identify and understand different ways of examining and interpreting them.
 Study of literary criticism contributes to maintenance of high
standards of literature.
 It is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature.
 Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is
the philosophical discussion of literature’s goals and methods.
FUNCTIONS OF LITERARY CRITICISM
 The modern understanding of criticism is regarded as having two
different functions which helps to achieve the main purposes of criticism.
 Criticism is the process of analysis and description and interpretation
of literary works for the purpose of increasing understanding and raising
appreciation.

HOW DO YOU DO LITERARY CRITICISM?

 Method to Applying Advanced Critical Techniques
 Read the work of literature critically.
 Evaluate as you read.
 Brainstorm which aspect to write about.
 Formulate a thesis statement.
 Create an outline.
 Select quotes and patterns that support your thesis.
 Find other criticism to support your thesis.

TYPES OF LITERARY CRITICISM

 Such analysis may be based from a variety of critical approaches or
movements, such as:
1. Archetypal Criticism
2. Cultural Criticism
3. Feminist Criticism
4. Psychoanalytic Criticism
5. Marxist Criticism
6. New Criticism (Formalist/Structuralism)
7. New Historicism
8. Post-Structuralism, and
9. Reader-response Criticism
ARCHETYPAL CRITICISM is a critical theory that interprets a text by
focusing on symbols, images, and character types in literary works that is
used to discuss in plot, character or situation. It recognizes conscious and
unconscious symbols that relates to emotions, values, feelings to specific
images. It encourages the readers to examine basic beliefs, fear, and
anxieties.

CULTURAL CRITICISM focuses on the elements of culture and how they

affect one’s perceptions and understanding of texts.
FOUR ASSUMPTIONS:
Ethnicity, religious beliefs, social class, etc. are crucial components in
formulating plausible interpretation of text.
While the emphasis is on diversity of approach and subject matter,
Cultural Criticism is not the only means of understanding ourselves and our
art.
An examination or exploration of the relationship between dominant
cultures and the dominated is essential.
When looking at a text through the perspective of marginalized
peoples, new understandings emerge.
FEMINIST CRITICISM is a product of the feminist movement of the 1960’s
and 1970’s. It is the representation of women in literature as an expression
of the social norms about women and their social roles and as a means of
socialization. It focused on the images of the women in books by male
writers to expose the patriarchal ideology and how women characters are
portrayed.
PSYCHOANALYTIC CRITICISM based on Sigmund Freud ID, ego and
superego, the author’s own childhood effects the book and character. It is a
type of criticism that uses theories of psychology to analyze literature. It
focuses on the author’s state of mind or the state of the mind of fictional
character. Psychoanalytic criticism uses two different approaches;
psychoanalysis of the author and psychoanalysis of the character.
MARXIST CRITICISM applies political science and economics to the
study of literature. Grew out of writings of Karl Marx, who was highly
critical of the capitalist system of economics and politics. It concerned
with the issues of class conflict and materialism, wealth, work, and the
various ideologies that surrounds these things. It connotes higher class
do control arts, literatures, and ideologies.
Marxism As Compared To Feminist and New Historicism
Like feminist critics, it investigates how literature can work as a
force for social change or as a reaffirmation of existing conditions.
Like New Historicism, it examines how history influences literature;
the difference is that Marxism focuses on the lower class.

How to do Marxist Reading

1. Look for examples of oppression, bad working conditions,
class struggles and other related issues.
2. Search for the “covert” meaning underneath the “overt”
which is about class struggles, historical stages, and economic
conditions.
3. Relate the context of a work to the social-class status of the author.
4. Relate the literary work to the social conditions of its time period.
5. Explain an entire genre in terms of its social period.
6. Show how literature is shaped by political, economic, labor, and
class conditions.

NEW CRITICISM (FORMALISM/STRUCTURALISM) New criticism was a

formalist movement in literary theory that dominated in American
literary criticism in the middle decades of the 20th century which
emphasized close reading particularly of poetry, to discover how a work
of literature functioned as a self-contained, self-referential aesthetic
object.
FORMALISM refers to critical approaches that analyze, interpret, or
evaluate the inherent features of a text. These features include not only
the grammar and syntax but also literary devices such as a meter and
figures of speech. It reduces the importance of a text’s historical
biographical and cultural context.
NEW HISTORICISM was first developed in 1980 by the American critic
Stephen Greenbelts. It is based on the idea that literature should be
studied and interpreted within a wide context examining both how
the author’s time, in turn recognizing that current cultural contexts color
that critic’s conclusion.
POST-STRUCTURALISM offers a way of studying how knowledge is
produced and critiques structuralism premise. It rejects the idea of a
literary text having a single purpose, a single meaning, or one singular
existence. It argues to understand an object (e.g. a text), it is
necessary to study both the object itself and the systems of
knowledge that produced the object.
POST-STRUCTURALISTIC CRITIC must be able to utilize a variety of
perspectives to create a multifaceted interpretation of a text, even if these
interpretations conflict with one another.
It is particularly important to analyze how the meanings of a text
shift in relation to certain variables, usually the identity of the reader.

READER-RESPONSE CRITICISM (RR) critic believes that a reader’s

interaction with the text give its meaning. The text cannot exist without
the reader. It focuses on the reader or audience and the experience of a
literary work rather than the author or the context and form of work. If a
tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear, does it make a
noise? If a text sits on the shelf in a bookstore and no one is around
to read it, does the text have meaning?
ROLE OF THE READER RESPONSE CRITICISM
The role of the reader is pivotal in the understanding of
literature – they can use a psychoanalytical, structural, feminist, etc.
approach to formulate their criticism (anything goes).
Readers are active in the reading process. They cannot read
literature passively but must react and therefore bring meaning to the
text.