Textual Properties and Literary Analysis: Key Concepts
Textual Properties
Adequacy
Adequacy ensures that the text corresponds to the communicative situation in which it appears.
Coherence
Coherence refers to how the different parts of a text are organized to create meaning. A text is consistent if it has a central idea, is properly structured, and responds to the text as a whole. Elements that show the coherent organization of texts include the title and subtitle. The topic should be closed with findings.
Cohesion
Cohesion is achieved by establishing relationships between words and sentences that form a text. This relation is established through linguistic resources such as punctuation, connectors, pronouns, etc.
Phenomena of Cohesion
- Reference: A procedure that replaces a word with a pronoun in another position, with reference to avoid repetition that might confuse the listener.
- Ellipsis: Using this procedure, we can omit a word that was said in a previous position and replace it mentally when we read.
- Lexical Cohesion: Another way to achieve semantic relations between words in a text is through the relation between actions and objects.
- Antonym: Sometimes, words are related to each other by naming objects or actions with opposite states within that text.
- Generalizing Words: Words that synthesize a wide field of objects, situations, or people usually named in the text, such as “facts”, “matter”, “thing”, “subject”, and “people”.
- Substitution: This avoids repetition of words by substituting one word for another different word that refers to the same object, action, or state (synonymy).
- Connectors: These links serve to connect ideas.
Types of Connectors
- Conjunctive Connectors: Used to connect ideas, such as “and”, “nor”, and “so”.
- Disjunctive Connectors: These raise an option between one and another, and only one idea can be realized, such as “or”.
- Causal and Consecutive Connectors: Two circumstances are linked to each other when the first is a cause or a motivation for the second, or the second is a consequence of the first, such as “because”, “thus”, and “as far as”.
- Temporospatial Connectors: These connectors locate actions in time and space, such as “previously”.
- Conditional Connectors: These express the necessity of enforcing a condition to develop another action.
Global Coherence
- Sequence-Suppression Macrostructure: Excludes information that is not relevant to the sequence.
- Generalization: Replaces a number of concepts defined by another concept.
- Construction: Involves replacing a number of actions based on knowledge of the world.
Literary Analysis
Gypsy Ballads
Lorca’s Symbols:
- Moon: Death
- Water: Death
- Spilled Blood: Death
- Metals: Death
- Horse and Rider: Death and sometimes male circumstances
- Air: Male eroticism
- Green: Death
Drama
- Act: Notes end with the fall of the curtain or stage darkening.
- Table: Changes in scenery within a single event occur when changing the table.
- Scene: Internal division marked by acts, entry, and exit of characters.
- Scene-Unit Time: The action was to take place in the course of a day, between sunrise and sunset.
- Unity of Action: Actions should stick to a single conflict centered on a character.
- Unity of Place: The actions should happen in a single space.
The Song of Gilgamesh
Classic Hero
Divine ancestry, warrior characteristics in his moral perfection and in their physical appearance, patriotism (e.g., Hercules, Achilles).
Christian Hero
Embodies Christian values, is the son of God, moral and physical grandeur, extreme generosity linked to a lord by loyalty, and has a profound sense of honor (e.g., Lancelot and Guinevere).