FORM AND CONTENT IN LITERARY WORK
These are the key concepts to consider when analyzing literary work. Any literary work must have form and content. There is no way one can separate the two concepts understanding form and content will help you to produce your own literary works and easily decipher. The works produced by other artists.
FORM:
This part contains all techniques used by the artist for artistic effect. In this part the artist choose the best techniques that will enable him/her to decipher the message to the readers/ audience. It is impossible for the work of art to exist without form.
Form contains the following elements style, plot, flashback, foreshadowing, Characters, suspend, language, setting, point of view etc. Through these elements and artist communicate to
his/her reader’s listeners or viewers.
i) STYLE
This is the way the author decide to present his/her work, in this; every author has his/her unique way of writing. For instance Ngugi wa Thing'o in his novel “Grain of wheat” uses biblical quotation. So if you observe. Many works of Ngugi you will conclude that Ngugi prefer biblical question in his work that been the case we say this is Ngugi style.
Not only that but also Chinua Achebe has the tendency of using Igbo proverbs, vocabularies and mixing of languages so again this is Achebe’s Style.
Generally, style can be achieved by choice of vocabularies, use of certain figure of speech, incorporating feature of Oral literature like songs, proverbs and other Oral literature genres.
NB: One can be in a good position to say, this is a style of a certain author only if one has gone a number of readings of that particular author.
ii) FORESHADOWING.
This is the technique by the hint of the action which will follow later in the story is given. For example you may be reading a play and find some where a Knife is show. As we continue reading it
we find that one of the characters has used it to kill him/herself. The we conduce that it is a fore shadowing.
iii)SETTING:
This can be described in-terms, of place and time Basing on the occurrence of events presented in the work, so setting depends on time and place for example the novel “The Beautiful. Ones are not yet. Born” is set in Ghana offer independence. There are clues that can help a student/ reader to identify the setting of a particular work. As follow:-
- Actual names of place and people.
- Physical features
- The actual history of the place
-Social context in which events take place e.g. church, school, Wedding ceremony.
-The authors name and history. E.g.:- Atufigwegwe, Mwaifuge, Twikasige etc.
-The culture of people at that particular place described. E.g.:- Type of food eaten, type of clothes worn, economic activities carried out, ways of worshiping, type of dances, the way people
marry and bury dead bodies etc
- So there are some of the clues that can assist learns to identify the setting of a given literary work.
iv) PLOT
This is the arrangement of e vents in a literary work. Plot out to have unit, means incidents are supposed to be arranged in a good mariner to shed how those incidents are related.
Plot may be chronological or mixed up chronological in the sense that incident are arranges in series basing on the way they occurred ie from he beginning to the end (1, 2, 3, 4…)
Mixed plot means that incidents are not arranged chronologically not in series. In this you may find the incident that supposes to be presented at the beginning is found at the end or middle. For ex ample you may be introduced the death of a certain main character then about his/her birth and at the end about his/her diseases.
Plot has five stages/ parts these are expository, rising action/ confrontations, climax/ point of not he turn, falling action and resolution.
Thus, Dramatic plot has the following structure. Point of no return/climax.
NB: If the work of art follow this sequence e then it is chronological plot the viscera is also true.
v) CHARACTER & CHARACTERIZATION
CHARACTER:
Is a person or thing that given a role to play in a literary work. In a novel or play there are people who carry the message of the artists so through these people we understand what the artist wants to tell us.
CHARACTERIZATION:-
Is the process of giving attributes to a character or an artist gives attribute to a character keenly so as to en-reach the intended massage to the reader/ listeners/ viewers or the society at large.
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