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Introduction to the Study of Literature

Class at Faculty of Education |
OB2301009

Syllabus

Lectures:

Introduction to the course

What is literature, literary studies, functions of literature, language of literature

Meaning (denotation, connotation), categories of words, affective words

Figures of speech (image, epithet, simile, metaphor, personification, metonymy, synecdoche, hyperbole, litotes, euphemism, irony, periphrasis, symbol, myth, allegory)

Political correctness, figures of sound (euphony, cacophony, rhyme, rhythm, alliteration, assonance, consonance, onomatopoeia), rhetorical figures (rhetorical question and answer, antithesis, paradox, allusion)

Syntactic figures (inversion, asyndeton, polysyndeton, zeugma, ellipsis, figures of repetition - simple, incremental, modifying)

Composition of a literary work, structure of an epic story (action, characters, narration)

Structure of an epic story (time of the story, thematic composition), composition of poetry (prosody, metre)

Composition of poetry (rhyme, stanza), lyric genres (ode, elegy, psalm, haiku)

Lyric genres (sonnet, limerick, epigram, aphorism, maxim, proverb), lyric-epic genres (ballad, idyll, paean)

Epic genres (epic, novel, fabliau, exemplum, novelette, short story, legend, myth, fable, parable, fairy tale, anecdote), transitional genres

Dramatic genres, dramatic composition

Annotation

The aim of the course is to introduce students to the specific features of fiction, poetry and drama, as well as to familiarize them with the basic terms and categories of literary studies, which are illustrated with a selection of texts from

Anglo-American literature (short poems, short stories, extracts). The main focus is put on development of the students? ability to analyze the texts from the point of view of their formal structure.