Understanding Literary Texts: Lyric, Narrative, and Drama
Literary Texts
The Lyric
The lyrical text has the following characteristics:
- Provides a very subjective and emotional speech where the poetic function predominates.
- Does not develop a story; its content is the expression of feelings, emotions, and ideas. The poetic voice belongs to fiction.
- Focuses on one aspect, is short, and allows for the accumulation of expressive resources.
- Usually occurs in verse, but can also be lyrical or poetic prose.
Communicative Process in Lyrical Text
The lyrical text issuer can take three approaches:
- Apparent objectivity (reality apparently external, third person).
- Appeal (lyrical recipient, second person, explicitly present).
- Pure expression (poetic, first person).
Themes, Motifs, and Topics
The issue is the axis that articulates the text, providing unity and coherence.
The motifs are minor elements of content and can be addressed more than once in the same text.
A topic is a cause or a stable configuration of several motifs that have been used with some frequency.
The Narrative
The narrative has the following characteristics:
- Develops a story, so the referential function dominates, as well as poetry.
- The story is told by a narrator, who belongs to the world of fiction.
- Prose predominates, but verse has also been used.
Levels of Narrative Analysis
In the analysis of a text, two levels should be considered:
- History: Actions that are causal and in chronological order, made by characters in a certain space and time.
- Address: How the story goes, which may or may not respect the time in history.
Analysis of the Story
The analysis of the story involves the characterization and its four elements: action, characters, time, and space.
The characters may be main or secondary. The main characters seek to achieve certain objectives. The other characters act as allies or adversaries.
Space always influences characters’ actions. The time can range from a few hours to many years.
Discourse Analysis
In the speech, the temporal or chronological order of the story can be influenced by three types of distortions: beginning in medias res, analepsis, or prolepsis.
This circumstance changes the pace of the narrative.
There are four narrative movements: scenes, abstracts, pauses, and ellipses.
The narrator can recount the events in first person or third person; a second-person narrator has also been used.
The Drama
Dramatic texts have the following characteristics:
- Develop a story presented through words or actions of the characters. The appellative and expressive functions predominate.
- Verbal communication is important, especially dialogue, and the mode of discourse can be both prose and verse.
- The transmission and reception are collective.
Text and Secondary Text
In the theatrical text, we distinguish the main text, formed by the words of the characters, and the secondary text, which consists of the stage directions.
The main text can take many forms:
- Dialogue: Exchange of words between the characters.
- Monologue: Speech of the character addressed to oneself.
- Aside: Brief intervention of a character so that only the public hears.
Theatrical Text and Performance
The representation of a play involves the existence of a double kind of communication: that which is established between the characters and that which exists between stakeholders and the public.
Theatrical performance includes the characters’ words and nonverbal elements.
Analysis of the Dramatic Text
The drama unfolds a story whose base is the conflict that occurs between the characters.
The characters may be main or secondary; space and time should be considered.
The so-called rule of three unities is to develop a single action in a maximum of one day and in one dramatic space.
In discourse analysis, the primary and secondary text should be considered:
- In the main text, the speech of the characters is always direct, advancing the dramatic action.
- In the secondary text, one must account for the nonverbal elements that refer to the stage directions. The referential function predominates.