Elements of Literature or Some Terms Used in Literary Analysis

Elements of Literature or Some Terms Used in Literary Analysis DICTION: A writer s choice of a particular word over a possible synonym. Diction can be useful when you re trying to figure out a writer s tone/style/voice. Is the writer s diction consistently colloquial? Consistently erudite? A cool mix of both? For example: When I left my boxed township of Illinois farmland to attend my dad s alma mater in the lurid jutting Berkshires of western Massachusetts, I all of a sudden developed a jones for mathematics. David Foster Wallace, Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley SYNTAX: The arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences in a language. (In this case that language is English; well-formed is a matter of taste, often). Compare: When I came back to the front we still lived in that town. There were many more guns in the country around and the spring had come. The fields were green and there were small green shoots on the vines, the trees along the road had small leaves and a breeze came from the sea. E. Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms With: From a little after two o'clock until almost sundown of the long still hot weary dead September afternoon they sat in what Miss Coldfield still called the office because her father had called it that--a dim hot airless room with the blinds all closed and fastened for forty-three summers because when she was a girl someone had believed that light and moving air carried heat and that dark was always cooler, and which (as the sun shone fuller and fuller on that side of the house) became latticed with yellow slashes full of dust motes which Quentin thought of as being flecks of the dead old dried paint itself blown inward from the scaling blinds as wind might have blown them. W. Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom! TONE: The way in which an author s choices in diction and syntax (among other elements) create a specific attitude or mood in a piece. An author s tone might be consistently solemn or consistently playful, or it might vary throughout the piece: breezy and ironic at some points, full of pathos and sincerity at others. (In the

wrong hands, drastic tone shifts may result in bathos, which my e-dictionary defines as: the effect of anticlimax created by an unintentional lapse in mood from the sublime to the trivial or ridiculous. ) VOICE: Hard to define, but I sometimes think of it as the soul of a writer--her essence, as presented on the page. I d like to be able to reduce it to some sort of equation (like diction + syntax = tone) but really you have to consider all the elements described in this handout to begin to define an author s voice. Here then are some quotes that may or may not be helpful: Voice: The sense not only that you are hearing a story but that somebody is telling you that story. Philip Gerard From a creative writing perspective: Voice is one of the most elusive qualities in any story. We recognize it when we hear it, but it s hard consciously to create an authentic voice. Somehow voice seems to be the natural manifestation of all the narrative decisions we ve made so far. We discover it more than we fabricate it. -Philip Gerard My commodity as a writer, whatever I'm writing about, is me. And your commodity is you. Don't alter your voice to fit the subject. Develop one voice that readers will recognize when they hear it on the page, a voice that's enjoyable not only in its musical line but in its avoidance of sounds that would cheapen its tone: breeziness and condescension and clichés. -William Zinsser STYLE: Voice and style are often synonymous. But style can refer to a House Style a prescriptive set of guidelines that influence a text. I like to think of voice as more all-encompassing: it includes the writer s worldview, his/her capacity for empathy, etc. In Adaptation., Tilda Swinton s character compliments both Kaufman and Orlean by saying: We think you re great. Such a fresh, funny voice. Anyway, more quotes: Style is the essential characteristic of every piece of writing, the outcome of the writer's personality and his emotions at the moment, and no single paragraph can be put together without revealing to some degree the personality of its author. - Song Xiaoshu, Cheng Dongming

With some writers, style not only reveals the spirit of the man [sic] but reveals his identity, as surely as would his fingerprints. -Strunk & White See what I mean? FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE: The use of words in a non-literal way. Two examples of figurative language are: METAPHOR: A comparison between two things that lends the qualities of one thing to illuminate the other: The burning flame of my love. (Note: A metaphor can also be implied we ll see in Adaptation., where an orchid is not just an orchid.) SIMILE: The same as a metaphor except it makes the comparison explicit by using like, as or as if. My love is like a burning flame. SYMBOLISM: Any object, person, place or action that represents something beyond the literal. Like, say, the USA s flag. Raising one up on July 4 is obviously symbolic. Burning one is a symbolic act. Raising one up upside down is a distress signal. In the film, In the Valley of Elah, it s also a symbolic act. MOTIF: Words, phrases, descriptions, or images that reoccur throughout a text. The accumulation of these words/phrases/images should alert readers to some sort of authorial intention (clue us in to his/her implicit meaning). If not, the author is either a show-off or a novice. Or both. NARRATIVE STRUCTURE: In drama and sometimes fiction: the writer s use of exposition, inciting incident (aka intro to conflict ), rising action, climax, falling action, resolution, coda to use Aristotle s/freitag s model. But then there are various structures for, say, nonfiction narrative It s a pretty generic term, which makes it useful and infuriating. CONFLICT: Generally considered the driving force of dramatic narratives. As the screenwriting guru in Adaptation. says, No conflict, no drama! Conflict can mean a struggle between opposing characters ( external conflict ) or opposing forces within a single character ( internal conflict ). Literary fiction is often characterized by its inclusion of both an external conflict There s a bomb on this bus but we can t stop the bus or the bomb will explode! plus an internal conflict ( Maybe I want the bomb to explode because life is meaningless ).

CLIMAX: The climax marks the story s turning point. It is also the point of greatest narrative intensity. THIRD ACT DENOUEMENT: The final part of a play, movie, or narrative in which the strands of the plot are drawn together and matters are explained or resolved. I ve included it because it s part of a joke in Adaptation. DEUS EX MACHINA: In Latin, literally: "god out of the machine. Wikipedia offers a fine description: a plot device whereby a seemingly inextricable problem is suddenly and abruptly solved with the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability, or object. So in Adaptation., the guru warns Charlie: And don t cheat. The characters must change, and the change must come from within. And don t you dare bring in a deus ex machina! THEME: The insight about life and human nature that an author expresses in a literary work. All elements of said work plot, setting, characterization, symbolism, etc. (should probably) contribute to the development of its theme. Examples of themes include: ambition, guilt, identity, love, honor, compassion, sacrifice The old verities, as Faulkner is quoted as saying in Nam Le s story. CHARACTERIZATION: The way a writer reveals the personality of her character(s) through physical description, dialogue, what they do and think. Exactly how an author does this depends on her narrative perspective (i.e. her point of view ). POINT OF VIEW: The method of narration, or the perspective from which the story is told. The point of view governs the reader s particular angle of access to the story/characters and determines just how much we can know at any given moment. Commonly used points of view: Omniscient point of view: The all knowing or godlike narrator. The omniscient narrator is not a character in the story. He/she/it writes about characters in the third-person, from a vantage point outside the story: Larry almost missed his plane! Victoria, his roommate, couldn t wait for him to leave the house. The omniscient narrator is free to tell us much or little; to dramatize or summarize; to interpret, speculate, philosophize, moralize, or judge. He or she can tell us directly what the characters are like and why they behave as they do, record their words and conversations and dramatize their actions, or enter their minds to explore directly their innermost thoughts and feelings.

Limited omniscient point of view (AKA close third narrator): This narrator limits his or her ability to penetrate the minds of characters by selecting a single character to act as the center of revelation: Larry could sense that his roommate, Victoria, was a little irritated. But he didn t know why. What the reader knows and sees of events is always restricted to what this focal character knows and sees. Note: I prefer to use the term close third to describe a narrator who inhabits the mind of a single character, because limited omniscient can also mean that an omniscient narrator is limiting his/her storytelling by never giving us the thoughts of any characters, but relying instead on description and action to tell the story. First-person point of view. Any narrator who uses I (and is therefore most likely directly involved in the story). First person narrators are subjective. This means that the reader can never expect to see characters and events as they actually are, but only as they appear to be to the I narrator. So a first-person narrator requires us to pay particular attention to his/her biases, values, beliefs, and degree of awareness and perceptivity. This helps us measure his/her reliability as a narrator. Unreliable Narrator: A first-person narrator who, we suspect, isn t giving us the full story. But it s a slippery term there are narrators who are knowingly manipulating us and there are narrators who maybe aren t capable of so-called reliability (see, for instance, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which you may or may not be reading in this class). This can create dramatic irony (see below). Free Indirect Style (AKA going into character ): This is when an omniscient narrator starts to take on the diction and syntax of a character. That is, the way in which the narrator reports events expresses something of the way in which a particular character is experiencing said events. IRONY: In general, a contrast between what appears to be and what really is. Verbal Irony occurs when the surface meaning of what one says or writes is the opposite of the intended meaning. Situational Irony exists when what is expected or intended contrasts with what occurs. Dramatic Irony occurs in fiction or drama when the reader or spectator knows more about the true state of affairs than the characters do.

IMAGERY/DESCRIPTION: The representation, through language (obviously), of sense experience: what can be seen, heard, touched, tasted, smelled, and what can be felt. Detailed description helps re-create an experience, can put the reader in the moment, as I ve asked you to try to do with your personal essays. MOOD: The climate of feeling in a literary work. The author s choice of setting, details, images and diction all contribute to creating a specific mood. FORESHADOWING: Authorial device used to hint at something to follow. It establishes narrative tension. SETTING: A term that encompasses the physical location that frames the action as well as the time of day or year, the weather, and the historical period during which the action takes place. Setting to Create Appropriate Atmosphere: Many authors use setting as a means of arousing the reader s expectations and establishing an appropriate mood/tone. An oft-cited example of this is the opening of Dickens Bleak House, in which he describes at length the crud and slop of London s streets, and the various types of fog that creep through its every crevice. Not only does his description establish a literal atmosphere of stagnation and muck, but it also suggests that rot and corruption and obstinacy will be among his major themes. Setting to Reveal Character: Very often the way in which a character perceives the setting, and the way he or she reacts to it, will tell the reader more about the character and his/her state of mind than it will about the setting itself. Setting To Reinforce Theme: Setting can also be used as a means of reinforcing and clarifying the theme of a story! That s enough for now.