Literary Text Analysis: Approaches & Linguistics

Approaches to English Literary Texts

Approaches to English literary texts involve the critical examination of significant and representative passages from literary works written in Britain, the United States, or any other English-speaking country. There are three major approaches:

  • a) Linguistic analysis of the text: The text is considered self-contained, and its structure and meaning are analyzed.
  • b) Reading and feeling the text: This traditional approach, used in many British and American universities,
Read More

Understanding Poetry and Narrative Texts: Key Features

Understanding Poetry and Narrative Texts

Lyric Poetry: Expressing Subjective Feelings

As a literary genre, poetry, specifically lyric poetry, is any poetic composition in which the author expresses their feelings subjectively. Written in verse and prose, poetic language aims to create a world that is connotative, evocative, and polysemous, full of artifice and expressive density.

Lyric Language: Three Attitudes

Three lyrical attitudes exist between reality and the poet:

  1. Lyrical Emotion: The poet’s external
Read More

Narrative Voice: Understanding Point of View in Storytelling

Point of View as Narrative Voice

In both descriptive and narrative discourse, a voice explains the sequence of events. The narrator is the voice we hear describing settings, characters, and events. The narrator is perhaps the most important technique created by the author to dispense information about events, characters, and settings to readers or viewers.

The role of the narrator in descriptive and narrative discourse is paramount because they decide what to tell or conceal about the story, manipulating

Read More

Hermann Hesse: Life and Works of the Nobel Laureate

**Hermann Karl Hesse**

(German: [ˈhɛɐ̯man ˈhɛsə]; 2 July 1877 – 9 August 1962) was a German-born poet, novelist, and painter. His best-known works include *Demian*, *Steppenwolf*, *Siddhartha*, and *The Glass Bead Game*, each of which explores an individual’s search for authenticity, self-knowledge, and spirituality. In 1946, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Early Life and Career

Hermann Hesse was a Nobel Prize-winning author known for novels like *Peter Camenzind*, *Siddhartha*,

Read More

Structuralism, Generativism, and Pragmatics in Literary Analysis

Literature in Structuralism: Stylistics of Connotation and Choice

The analysis forwarded by Jakobson and Lévi-Strauss in “‘Les Chats’ de Charles Baudelaire” is considered to be an exemplary investigation into linguistic poetics, that is, into the verbal structure of a literary composition. The research is a typical sample of the taxonomical methodology of structuralism, which tackles all sorts of units and components on a wide range of linguistic levels:

  • The rhyme pattern (masculine or feminine)
Read More

Monologue, Soliloquy, Sonnets, and Theming in Linguistics

Monologue and Soliloquy

Monologue and soliloquy have similar meanings and, in most cases, can be used interchangeably. The word ‘monologue’ has more senses. It may have the same meaning as a soliloquy. It can be applied to an extended speech uttered by a single speaker who attempts to have the monopoly or exclusive rights or control of a conversation. In a third sense, a monologue is a form of dramatic entertainment, that is, a composition or a poem, in which there is only a single speaker: a comedian’

Read More