Concepts in Literature

Dystopia - a fictional society characterized by human misery, oppression, disease, and

overcrowding.
Utopia - an imaginary place that is ideally perfect: free from poverty and suffering.
Theme - the universal idea, lesson, or message explored throughout a work of literature.
Irony - the expression of one's meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite,
typically for humorous or emphatic effect.
Magical Realism – a specific form of fiction that weaves fantasy and myth into everyday life.
Allegory - symbolic fictional narrative conveys a meaning not explicitly set forth in the narrative.
Persona – element is the voice chosen by the author for a particular artistic purpose.
Symbolism – refers to the use of words to express something other than and especially the
opposite of the literal meaning.
Dramatic Situation – refers to the underlying plot line that is created to place the characters in
conflict with themselves or others.
Plot - refers to the sequence of events inside a story.

Literature, Reality, Society

• Literature, such as comics, can be used to identify issues in the community/society.
• Pinoy Comics became “The literature of the masses” in post- war period.
• 21st Century literature are texts written from 2000s up to present.
• Characters in 21st Century Literature are situated based from the sociopolitical
context.
• Literature from different regions can have similarities even though culture varies
from one place to another.
• World Literature features: power, class and society, oppression, appearances and
perceptions; reflects a country’s history, culture, and language.
• Latin American Literature gives voice to the weak, marginalized, and oppressed in the
society.
• Philippine Literature reflects the sociopolitical issues during the administration of
Duterte.
• African Literature teaches us to reject single-sided stories.
• Fiction Literature – stories are product of imaginations yet situated in reality.
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ODD ONE OUT

• Oyayi sa Dilim > the Monkey and the Turtle > Echo Chambers > The Haiyan Dead
• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie > Amalia Gladhart > Chinua Achebe > Camara Laye
• Driving > Poverty > Language > Animals (Danger of a Single Story)
• To malign > to control > to empower > to humanize
• Sand > blood > brooch > pendant (A Perfect Wife; Battlefield)
Pinoy Comics became “The literature of the masses” in post- war period.

“KOMIKS” – Philippine term for “Comics”

THE MONKEY & THE TURTLE – First Filipino Comics by Dr. Jose Rizal in 1885.
KENKOY – created by Tony Velasquez, “father of the Tagalog Comics”, in 1929.
KULAFU – gave life by Francisco Reyes and Pedrito Reyes in 1933.
Mars Ravelo’s works of art made a mark in Philippine culture as these tickled the imaginations
of the Filipinos.

• Zuma
• Darna
• Lastikman
• Dyesebel
• Anday
• Pedro Penduko
• Captain Barbell

Ella Arcangel: Oyayi sa Dilim

• Culture is the main theme of the story.
• “Oyayi” / “Uyayi” – means Philippine Lullaby
• Ella > Jepoy > Whitey > Nanay > Betbet > Janice
• Was animated by Mervin Malonzo
• One of the supernatural beings present is Tiyanak, Tikbalang, and Duwende.
• The EJK Victim is a product of War on Drugs
• was made during the administration of Pres. Duterte
• Ella is like Alexandra Trese, female protectors of their land.
A Perfect Wife
LATIN AMERICAN LITERATURE

• = Filipino Culture and Traditions (Spanish Colonization)

• Philippine Literature = Latin American Literature
• Search for identity and belonging.
• Region’s political and historical roots

MAGICAL REALISM (an interesting feature of Latin American Literature)

• A form of fiction but differs from pure fantasy.

• Set in the modern world with authentic description of humans and society (Suma,
2018)
• A world view that is not based on natural or physical laws or objective reality
• Critique oppressive political actions
• To define the rich cultural identity
• A post-colonial discourse to provide a positive and liberating response
• Changes colonial violence into messages that give voice to the silenced,
marginalized, and othered.

SUBALTERN

• refers to the groups in the society who are subject to the hegemony of the ruling class.
• The marginalized and the oppressed

ANGELICA GORODISCHER

• most influential and multi-awarded Argentine writer.

• Famous for alternative realities
• Fine writer of science and detective fiction DOORS:
1. Parent’s Bedroom (Gobi
Desert)
AMALIA GLADHEART 2. Bathroom (bearded man)
• Translator of Trafalgar and a Perfect Wife 3. Her Bedroom (Battlefield)
4. Doctor’s Office (Bathtub)
• A Professor of Spanish at University of Oregon
5. Blue Tent (Sleeping Couple)

A theme is NOT JUST a word, moral, lesson, or memory of Maria Varela Osorio
quote. These are what encapsulates the
Nestor Eduardo – Son
event/story.
Laura Ines - Daughter
In our society, women experience inequal treatment and oppression which may harm their
well-being.
The Latin American wars of Independence that occurred in the early 19th century in Latin America
led to literary themes of identity, resistance, and human rights.
Stereotypes. Oppression. Gender Inequality. Portrayal of Woman / “A Perfect Wife”.
A Danger of a Single Story (AFRICAN LITERATURE)
PRJUDICE – “Unfair and unreasonable opinion or feeling, especially formed without enough
thought or knowledge”
This involves a misuse of intelligence which results to damaging the reputation of and
perception to another person or group of people.

Literature around the world reflects various forms of prejudice: in ethnicity, gender, social
class, religion, and sexuality, to name a few.
21st Century stories are mirrors of discrimination, prejudice, and stereotyping.

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE

• a Nigerian writer
• July 2009, Oxford England (the talk)
• Grew up in University Campus in Eastern Nigeria
• From a conventional, middle-class Nigerian family. Father was a professor. Mother was an
administrator.
• Started reading at 2; an early reader of British and American’s Children Books (white and
blue-eyed)
• Early writer at 7, wrote exactly the kinds of stories she was reading: All the characters were
white and blue-eyed.
• At 8, a new house boy. His name was Fide. “his family was very poor.” -- it had become
impossible for me to see them as anything else but poor. Their poverty was my single story
of them.
• At 19, American roommate, asked how she learned English and “tribal music” (Mariah
Carey)-- Her default position toward me, as an African, was a kind of patronizing, well-
meaning pity
• “People like me could exist in Literature”
• Writers like Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye, I went through a mental shift in my
perception of literature.
• Farafina Trust – non-profit organization where they build libraries and provide books

Africa – Story of catastrophe; no possibility of feelings more complex than pity, no

possibility of a connection as human equals.
Africa is a continent full of catastrophes: There are immense ones, such as the horrific rapes
in Congo and depressing ones, such as the fact that 5,000 people apply for one job vacancy in
Nigeria.
Mexicans – “the abject immigrant”

“not authentically African” The professor told me that my characters were too much like him,
an educated and middle-class man. My characters drove cars. They were not starving. Therefore,
they were not authentically African.
 ▪ John Lok - who sailed to west Africa in 1561; “beasts who have no houses,”; "They
are also people without heads, having their mouth and eyes in their breasts."
▪ Rudyard Kipling – “half devil, half child”
▪ Mourid Barghouti – a Palestinian Poet, writes that if you want to dispossess a people,
the simplest way to do it is to tell their story and to start with, "secondly."
▪ Chinua Achebe – “a balance of stories”
▪ Muhtar Bakare - a remarkable man who left his job in a bank to follow his dream and start
a publishing house; people who could read, would read, if you made literature affordable
and available to them.
▪ Funmi Iyanda - a fearless woman who hosts a TV show in Lagos, and is determined to
tell the stories that we prefer to forget
▪ Alice Walker – American Writer; “They sat around, reading the book themselves,
listening to me read the book, and a kind of paradise was regained."

It is impossible to talk about the single story without talking about power.
Nkali - an Igbo word; "to be greater than another."
Like our economic and political worlds, stories too are defined by the principle of nkali:
How they are told, who tells them, when they're told, how many stories are told,
are really dependent on power.
Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the
definitive story of that person

SINGLE STORIES (perspective)

- Creates stereotypes
- “Not that they are untrue, but they are incomplete”
- They make one story, the only story

(3) CONSEQUENCES:
• Robs dignity
• Difficult to recognize equal humanity
• Emphasize differences other than similarities

(4) STORIES MATTER.

• To disposses.
• To malign.
• To empower.
• To humanize
• Can repair broken dignity
The Haiyan Dead (2013; experience during Typhoon Yolanda; originally written
in Native Language)
MERLIE M. ALUNAN

• Visayan Region
• Lilian Jerome Thornton Award for non-fiction
• National Book Award
• Professor Emeritus of the University of the Philippines Visayas, Tacloban

do not sleep.

They walk the streets with us climb stairs

of roofless houses latchless windows blown-off doors

they’re looking for the bed by the window

cocks crowing at dawn lizards in the eaves

they’re looking for the men who loved them

at night the women they crawled to like puppies

to the teats the babe they held in arms the boy

who climbed trees the Haiyan dead

are looking in the rubble for the child they had been

the youth they once were the bride with flowers

in her hair perfumed red-lipped women

white-haired father gap-toothed crone

selling peanuts by the church door the drunk

by a street lamp waiting for his house to come by

the dreaming girl under the moon the Haiyan dead

are looking for the moon washed out

in a tumult of water that melted their bodies

they're looking for their bodies that once

moved to the dance to play to the rhythms of love

moved in the simple ways—before wind lifted sea

and smashed it on the land—of breath talk words

shaping in their throats lips tongues

the Haiyan dead are looking for a song they used to love

a poem a prayer they'd raised that the sea had swallowed

before it could be said the Haiyan dead are looking

for the eyes of God gone suddenly blind in the sudden murk

white wind seething water salt sand black silt—

and that is why the Haiyan dead will walk among us

endlessly sleepless…
The Road Runner an American cartoon character, a speedy, slender, blue and purple
bird who continually frustrated the efforts of a coyote (Wile E. Coyote) to catch him.
In a series of animated short films, the fleet-footed Road
Runner races along the highways of the American
Southwest, his legs and feet moving so fast that they form
a wheel-like blur, with Wile E. Coyote in hot pursuit.
In each episode, the coyote sets an elaborate trap for the
bird. The scheme always backfires as a result of either the
trap’s chronic unreliability or Coyote’s own ineptitude.
Road Runner, never captured or damaged, responds with
a characteristic “Beep! Beep!” (his only communication)
and runs off.

Mayon