Introduction to Literature

identification of real phenomenon or construction of fictions 
phenomena within artistic /possible words
attribution of qualities to concrete phenomena

vivid representation
--> aesthetic illusion

providing more or less objective facts rather than interpretations
aura of objectivity

more intended ambiguity than in classical realist texts
restricted knowledge of the world

Portrait of the Lady: subtle forms of behavior interpreted as signs of character

variety of relationships between literary texts

broader understanding: Julia Kristeva: every text is a mosaic of quotations from other texts
more narrow understanding: Gérard Génette: only considers concrete and identifiable forms of intertextuality

relations between media, to medial interactions and interferences

e.g. text- film, text-music

several media brought together
e.g. graphic novels (text and image)

various forms of evoking the presence of another medium
e.g. ekphrasis (verbal representation of visual representation ) 
e.g. painting being described by museum tour guide

one medium transposed into another
film and stage adaptions
e.g. filmic adaptions of novels

characters on stage assume position of a painting

re-enactment of paintings, frozen moment

mute--> importance of body language

representation of one medium within another (relationship old-new media)
defining feature of new digital media

e.g. radio in digital medium

interactive features, less stable, traditional notions text , author and reader change

political, moral, religious reasons

ezra pound: decanonisation of a poet

actual meaning of book is created by reader

author's intention doesn't matter

real, historical author doesn't matter as a human being for understanding the text but that we use authorship as means of classifying literary texts

journals

review sections in newspapers, magazines

radio /tv shows

online reviews

lay reviews

channeling reader's attention given the abundance of new publications

importance of book as material object and commodity

school /branch of structuralism with particular interest in literary forms (e.g. fairy tale)
 

meaning is arbitrarily distributed to form

Viktor Shklovsky
material obviously created to remove the automatism of perception
--> author's purpose is it to create the vision which results from that deautomatized perception

Early 20th century
Gertrude Stein " Preciosilla"
radical form of defamiliarization (incoherent, fragmentary,...)

pieces of prose writing shorter than 300 words

- language
- nation
- aesthetic evaluation (high vs. low brow literature)
- sociological categories
- historical categories (classical, medieval)
- media-related categories (oral, written, audio-visual..)
- relation to reality (realistiv vs. fantasy)
- conventionality of mode of representation ( traditional, innovative, experimental)

- general rule, fundamental principle, systematic or shcientific treatment of a subject (e.g. canons of criticism, taste, art..)
- collection of books of the Bible accepted by the Christinan Church as genuine and inspired
- e.g.: BBC's top 10 greatest British novels, Major Anthologies

1) Pre-English Days
2) Anglo- Saxon Invasions
3) Scandinavian insvasions
4) Norman Conquest

-OE
-ME
- Renaissance (Early R., Elizabethan Age - shakespeare)
- 18th century (Daniel Defoe)
- Romanticism (Wiliam Blake)
-Victorianism (Dickens)
- Modernism (Virginia Woolf)
- Post- 1945 (Samuel Beckett)

Pre-Colonial /Early American P.
Colonial P
Early National P (James F. Cooper)
American Romanticism (Edgar Allan Poe)
Realism (Mark Twain)
Modernism (Ezra Pound)
Contemporary ( Barth, Morrison)

mytic texts: ode, sonnet
narrative texts: novel, fairytale, novella, fable, short story
dramatic texts: comedy, tragedy

geographical: LiteratureS in English
normative/ evaluative: canon
historical: periodization
formal: Genres

historical reality as context
reader-oriented approaches
text-oriented approaches
author-oriented approaches

Susanna Rowson (Charlotte Temple)
sexuality, matrimony  as crucial issues
fictive narrator adresses fictive readers: mothers of nubile daughters, young women

historical person who wrote the text

author as she may be inferred from the text
-- idea of the author that forms in our minds as we read the text

adressee of the story told by the narrator
 

reader the author had in mind when writing the text

any reader who reads the text

narrated events, reconstructed in chronological order

level of content

specifies how events are narrated and ordered

may also include flashbacks, prolepsis and ellipses

level of narrative transmission