Exploring Literature: From Belles Lettres to Literary Appreciation

Posted on Aug 17, 2024 in Language

Discuss the Notion of Literature as Belles Lettres

To start with, we may consider formal properties. A literary text is an artistic text, i.e., belles lettres, i.e., a text which is aesthetic, i.e., which creates beauty and provokes emotions using words in a like manner as other arts do with other materials to achieve the same:

  • Painting, using forms and colours on a plane
  • Sculpture, using three-dimensional materials such as marble or bronze
  • Music, through pitch and rhythm
  • Architecture, with bricks, stones, mortar, slates, columns, etc.

Resorting again to the OED, we could define literature in a second approach of our discussion as: …writing which has claim to consideration on the ground of beauty of form or emotional effect, one in which the aesthetic function is dominant (third approach).

In Which Sense Do Texts Such as the Excerpt From John Donne’s The Canonization Distinguish Themselves From Other Literary Texts Such as Pride and Prejudice?

Here we can observe a great density of literary resources: similes, parallelisms, anaphoric references, ellipsis, rhymed verse with end-stopped and run-on lines, etc. at the level of microstyle, i.e., in the domain of the sentence, the paragraph, or the short poem.

However, other texts, especially narrative texts such as realistic novels, show little density of literary resources at this level. Their artistry resides, notwithstanding, in features of macrostyle (the domain of text and discourse), i.e., in the way they handle macrostructural elements such as authorial tone, plot construction, character study, society study, orchestration of plot(s), characters, social description, etc.

Discuss the Openness to Interpretation of Literary Texts

The fictive nature of literary texts has an appended consequence: they are open to interpretation. This is something that characterizes literary texts. They may have different intentions and general meaning for different readers, provided that their interpretations are coherently grounded in the text. Thus, for instance, there is not general accord in the specialized criticism as what the general meaning of great pieces of literature. How to interpret literary pieces such as Don Quixote or Hamlet? Are Cervantes and Shakespeare proposing an appreciative view of man or are they being pessimistic about human nature? Are they conservative or progressive? Does Don Quixote really stand for the idealist side of mankind and Sancho Panza for the utilitarian, egotistical and realistic drive?

Which Nineteenth-Century Novel, Which Appeared First in a Serialized Version, Exemplifies the Case of No Direct (Simultaneous) Contact Between the ADDRESSER and the ADDRESSEE?

In literary communication there is usually no direct (simultaneous) contact between the ADDRESSER and the ADDRESSEE. The author, for instance, Thomas Hardy, wrote his novel Tess of the d’Urbervilles in a serialized version in a newspaper in 1891; it reached his first readers, chapter by chapter, between July and December of that year. Thomas Hardy did not know most of his readers at the time (though it is true that relatives and friends may well have discussed the novel with him and ordinary readers may have corresponded with him). Then it appeared in book form in 1892, and we can presume that most readers of this new edition did not know Hardy, personally at least, nor did Hardy know most of them either. Hardy died in 1928 and, after that year, his novel would follow its own path, meeting a great number of different readers without the presence of the author.

Which Are the Six Stages of Literary Appreciation According to Correa Calderón and Lázaro Carreter (1969)?

  1. Close and attentive reading of the text.
  2. Try to locate the text within the period, author, and works.
  3. Determine the theme and motifs.
  4. Determine the structure (macrostyle).
  5. Analyze the form, trying to elucidate in which way it contributes to enhance the theme (macro and microstyle).
  6. Give a final conclusion.

As Part of One’s Communicative Experience, Which Are the Skills Necessary for the Successful Reception of Written Texts of the Kind That Have Traditionally Been Called “Literary”?

  • The area of linguistic and textual competence, which includes the knowledge about the features and rules of the language concerning pronunciation, sentence formation and vocabulary and the way they can be used to convey a specific meaning.
  • The area of discursive competence, which concerns the ability to relate aspects of textual meaning to specific communicative situations.
  • The area of sociocultural competence, which is defined by the ability to recognize the context of interpersonal relations where communication takes place and the context of referential relations between the text and other discourses.

Explain the Reasons Why Not All Interpretations of Literary Texts Are Equally Acceptable

Neither any reading response nor any response is then admissible. An acceptable response must go beyond the surface or literal meaning of a text and capture the indirect ways through which the literary text expresses itself in such things as themes, motifs, atmosphere, the harmony of the whole, and the relationship of literary devices to themes or the social.