Contemporary

Literature
 Contemporary Literature
• 1950- PRESENT 29 “This literary era defines a
time period but it also describes particular style
and quality of writing.”
What is Contemporary Literature?
• The literature of the contemporary period not only
refers to a quality/style of writing but also to poetry
and prose, which includes works of fiction such as:
novels, novellas, essays, and dramatic works.
 Characteristics of the Contemporary Style

• Reality-based stories
• Believable story-line, sometimes portraying a harsher reality
or degradation of society
• Current, modern setting
• “Well-defined, realistic, highly developed” and strong
character (s).
• Well-structured
• Writing is “more character driven than plot driven”
GENRES OF CONTEMPORARY
LITERATURE
STORY
 WHAT IS A STORY?
• A story or narrative is a connected series of events told through words
(written or spoken), imagery (still and moving), body language,
performance, music, or any other form of communication. You can tell
a story about anything, and the events described can be real or
imaginary; covering both fiction and nonfiction; and leaving no topic,
genre, or style untouched.
• There are stories about all things and all times; past, present and
future. As such, stories are of great value to human culture, and are
some of the oldest, most important parts of life.
TYPES OF
STORIES
 Fiction stories
• Fiction stories are based on made-up or • Adventure stories
imaginary events. There are dozens upon
dozens of types of fiction stories and • Historical fiction
genres, including but not at all limited to:
• Fantasy
• Fairy tales
• Science-fiction
• Folklore • Love stories
• Mythology • Horror stories
• Legends
• Ghost stories
• Epics
• Dramas • Bedtime stories
 Non-fiction stories
• Non-fiction stories can cover any • Crime and justice 32
kind of real-life event or • Science
experience. But, they often fall
into these kinds of categories: • Love
• Family
• Historical events • Travel stories
• News and current events • Survivor stories
• Biographies and autobiographies • War stories
• Memories and experiences
• Cultural history
 IMPORTANCE OF STORY
• Stories are, have been, and always will be an absolutely essential part
of human culture. Stories are how we learn about each other, our
past, and our cultures.
• Whether they are created for entertainment or to recount a real-life
event—new stories are literally being lived, told, and created every
second of every day. So, even if there was only one story for every
person who ever lived, that would still be billions of stories in the
world; it would be impossible to measure how many have existed.
POETRY
 WHAT IS A POETRY?
• Poetry is a type of literature based on the interplay of words and
rhythm. It often employs rhyme and meter. In poetry, words are
strung together to form sounds, images, and ideas that might be too
complex or abstract to describe directly.
• Poetry was once written according to fairly strict rules of meter and
rhyme, and each culture had its own rules.
• The opposite of poetry is “prose” – that is, normal text that runs
without line breaks or rhythm. This article, for example, is written in
prose.
ELEMENTS OF
POETRY
 STRUCTURE
1. Poetic Line – the words that form a single line of poetry.
2. Stanza – a section of a poem named for the number of lines it contains.
3. Enjambment – when there is no written or natural pause at the end of
a poetic line, so that the word-flow carries over to the next line.
4. Placement – the way words and poetic lines are placed on the page of
a poem.
5. Verse – a line in traditional poetry that is written in meter.
6. Capitalization and Punctuation – In poetry, rules of capitalization and
punctuation are not always followed; instead, they are at the service of
the poet’s artistic vision.
 SOUNDS
1. Rhythm – the basic beat in a line of a poem.
2. Meter – a pattern of stressed and unstressed (accented and
unaccented) syllables (known as a foot) in a line of poetry.
3. End Rhyme – same or similar sounds at the end of words
that finish different lines.
4. Internal Rhyme – same or similar sounds at the end of
words within a line.
5. Rhyme Scheme – a pattern of rhyme in a poem.
 IMAGERY
1. Precise Language – the use of specific words to
describe a person, place, thing, or action.
2. Sensory Details – the use of descriptive details that
appeal to one or more of the five senses.
 FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
1. Verbal Irony or Sarcasm – when you mean the opposite of
what you say.
2. Situational Irony – when the outcome of a situation is the
opposite of what is expected.
3. Pun – a humorous phrase that plays with the double
meaning or the similar sounds of words.
4. Allusion- a reference to a familiar person, place, or event.
5. Idiom - a cultural expression that cannot be taken literally.
 POETIC FORMS
1. Acrostic – a poem in which the first letter of each word forms a
word – usually a name – if read downward.
2. Couplet – two lines of poetry that rhyme and usually form one
complete idea.
3. Haiku - a Japanese three-line poetic form – usually about nature –
with lines of five, seven, and five syllables, respectively.
4. Quatrain – a stanza made up of four lines, often containing a rhyme
scheme.
5. Cinquain – a five-line untitled poem, where the syllable pattern
increases by two for each line, except for the last line, which ends in
two syllables (2,4,6,8.2).
 POETIC FORMS
6. Limerick – a humorous rhyming poem written in five lines and having a
particular meter. It often begins with “There once was a…”
7. Sonnet – a poem that is 14 lines long, generally written in iambic
pentameter.
8. Free Verse – a poem that does not follow a predictable form or rhyme
scheme or metric pattern.
9. List or Catalog Poem – a poem in the form of a list, that uses sensory
details and precise language to persuade the reader to take notice of what is
being listed.
10. Villanelle – a challenging poetic form that includes five tercets (aba
rhyme) followed by a quatrain (abaa rhyme) and a pattern of repetition of
lines 1 and 3 of the first stanza.
 IMPORTANCE OF POETRY
• Poetry is probably the oldest form of literature, and probably
predates the origin of writing itself. The oldest written manuscripts
we have are poems, mostly epic poems telling the stories of ancient
mythology. Examples include the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Vedas
(sacred texts of Hinduism).
• This style of writing may have developed to help people memorize
long chains of information in the days before writing. Rhythm and
rhyme can make the text more memorable, and thus easier to
preserve for cultures that do not have a written language.
DRAMA
 DRAMA
• Drama is a mode of fictional representation through dialogue and
performance. It is one of the literary genres, which is an imitation of
some action. Drama is also a type of a play written for theater,
television, radio, and film. In simple words, a drama is a composition
in verse or prose presenting a story in pantomime or dialogue. It
contains conflict of characters, particularly the ones who perform in
front of audience on the stage. The person who writes drama for
stage directions is known as a “dramatist” or “playwright.”
 TYPES OF DRAMA
1. Comedy – Comedies are lighter in tone than ordinary works, and provide a happy
conclusion. The intention of dramatists in comedies is to make their audience laugh.
Hence, they use quaint circumstances, unusual characters, and witty remarks.
2. Tragedy – Tragic dramas use darker themes, such as disaster, pain, and death.
Protagonists often have a tragic flaw — a characteristic that leads them to their downfall.
3. Farce – Generally, a farce is a nonsensical genre of drama, which often overacts or
engages slapstick humor.
4. Melodrama – Melodrama is an exaggerated drama, which is sensational and appeals
directly to the senses of the audience. Just like the farce, the characters are of a single
dimension and simple, or may be stereotyped.
5. Musical Drama – In musical dramas, dramatists not only tell their stories through acting
and dialogue, but through dance as well as music. Often the story may be comedic,
though it may also involve serious subjects
 FUNCTION OF DRAMA
• Drama is one of the best literary forms through which dramatists can
directly speak to their readers, or the audience, and they can receive
instant feedback of audiences. A few dramatists use their characters
as a vehicle to convey their thoughts and values, such as poets do
with personas, and novelists do with narrators. Since drama uses
spoken words and dialogues, thus language of characters plays a vital
role, as it may give clues to their feelings, personalities, backgrounds,
and change in feelings. In dramas the characters live out a story
without any comments of the author, providing the audience a direct
presentation of characters’ life experiences
 Eighteen Challenges in
Contemporary Literature
 Eighteen Challenges in Contemporary
Literature
1. Literature is language-based and national; contemporary society is globalizing
and polyglot.
2. Vernacular means of everyday communication "”cellphones, social networks,
streaming video "” are moving into areas where printed text cannot follow.
3. Intellectual property systems failing.
4. Means of book promotion, distribution and retail destabilized.
5. Ink-on-paper manufacturing is an outmoded, toxic industry with steeply
rising costs.
6. Core demographic for printed media is aging faster than the general
population. Failure of print and newspapers is disenfranchising young
apprentice writers.
 Eighteen Challenges in Contemporary
Literature
7. Media conglomerates have poor business model; economically rationalized "culture
industry" is actively hostile to vital aspects of humane culture.
8. Long tail Balkanizes audiences, disrupts means of canon-building and fragments literary
reputation.
9. Digital public-domain transforms traditional literary heritage into a huge, cost-free,
portable, searchable database, radically transforming the reader's relationship to belle-
lettres
10. Contemporary literature not confronting issues of general urgency; dominant best-
sellers are in former niche genres such as fantasies, romances and teen books.
11. Barriers to publication entry have crashed, enabling huge torrent of sub literary and/or
nonliterary textual expression.
12. Algorithms and social media replacing work of editors and publishing houses; network
socially-generated texts replacing individually-authored texts.
 Eighteen Challenges in Contemporary
Literature
13. "Convergence culture" obliterating former distinctions between media; books
becoming one minor aspect of huge tweet/ blog/ comics/ games / soundtrack/
television / cinema / ancillary merchandise pro-fan franchises.
14. Unstable computer and cell phone interfaces becoming world's primary
means of cultural access. Compositor systems remake media in their own hybrid
creole image.
15. Scholars steeped within the disciplines becoming cross-linked jack-of-all-
trades virtual intelligentsia.
16. Academic education system suffering severe bubble-inflation.
17. Polarizing civil cold war is harmful to intellectual honesty.
18. The Gothic fate of poor slain Poetry is the specter at this dwindling feast.