Innovations in the teaching of literature (1) Putting stylistic analysis in its place (original) (raw)

Stylistic Analysis and the Teaching of Literature: A Linguistic Approach

2012

The present work explores the possibilities of adopting a language based approach to the teaching of literature in the English language classroom. The work is necessitated by the fact that there has been an urgent need to re-examine the traditional approach to the literature teaching which has relied on literary criticism. The teacher devotes most of his time to discussing the social and literary background and very little time to the literary work itself. An analysis of a literary work can no longer be treated as a matter of personal insight and understanding alone. The students can make use of their knowledge of linguistics and grammar in the literature class. Bright and McGregor (1976: 222) begin their model lesson with the reading of the poem without any direct introduction because what is not in the poem does not matter. The literary work should be the focus of the lesson and not the background.

Stylistics and the Teaching of Literature

London: Longman, 1975

In Stylistics Richard Bradford provides a definitive introductory guide to modern critical ideas on literary style and stylistics. The book includes examples of poems, plays and novels from Shakespeare to the present day.

Stylistics and Linguistic Analyses of Literary Works

2019

A linguistic analysis of literature has caused debates among linguists and between linguists and literary critics. The debate among linguists occurs because they have different opinions regarding the nature of literary language, while the debate between linguists and literary scholars arises as literary scholars question the authority of linguistics to study literary writings. Therefore, in this paper I argue that the language of literature is similar to that of non-literary texts, and I also believe that because the centrality of language in literary writings, linguistics, as the study of language, has the authority to study literature. One linguistic approach to literature is stylistics, which studies the forms, functions, and meanings of literary language in a detailed and systematic way.

13-17 Stylistics in language and literature.pdf

VEDA PUBLICATIONS, 2018

Language as we all know is an important or should I say an indispensable tool for human communication as it is through language that knowledge is transferred, meaning is created and understood ensuring social as well as scientific development of human society. It’s true not only for speech but also in writing, both being two of the most potential uses of language. After becoming a university subject in 1960s English language has being the target of literary critics. They have accused the linguists for being too dry when it comes to analysis of a piece of writing. And the linguists have accused the literary scholars for being to subjective, imaginative unambiguous for the same task. To bridge the differences or the gap between the two, stylistics a branch of applied linguistics functions to analyse the use of language literary texts. However it's not limited to the study of literature alone but is also stretched to varieties of writings like texts related to media and journalism, the advertisements etc. This paper is an attempt to explore the link between language and its most creative use that is Literature. Through this paper I aim to show the features of language and creative uses under which these forms are put to appeal to human senses and make a piece of literature alive whether it's romance, tragedy or comedy.

Using Stylistics to Teach Literature to Non-Native Speakers

This chapter discusses the benefits of using Stylistics to teach literature and language to non-native speakers of English. It argues that the analytical precision offered by Stylistics is useful for learners of English who often have a better grasp of structural elements of language than native English speakers. Consequently, Stylistics can be a useful methodology to use in the interpretation of otherwise difficult literary texts.

STYLISTICS - INTEGRATING LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE TEACHING

Conference proceedings , 2019

In a world where reading literature is becoming an almost extinct activity, especially among students, and language learning is seeing an ever-increasing rate, it is interesting to look at ways in which these two fields can help one another out. Literature can help increase motivation, interest and activity among language students, whereas language activities can help students tackle even the more difficult texts and give them a sense of accomplishment. This essay will look at several approaches to integrating literature and language, with a focus on stylistics.

Using Stylistics to Interpret Literary Texts in the EFL Classroom

Stylistics plays a key role in interpreting pieces of literary writing. It is considered to be the most appropriate and principled approach to study literary texts regarding its comprehensive nature that tries to link two disciplines, linguistics and literary criticism. Focusing on the various linguistic features of texts, stylistics seems to be a powerful tool that-if used properly-can endorse English as Foreign Language (EFL) students to analyze and appreciate literature in all its manifestations in a practical and objective way. The present paper aims at showing the effectiveness of opting for the stylistic analysis in the EFL context. It also attempts to accentuate the significance of the aforementioned approach in facilitating learning literature and making it an enjoyable task for both teachers and learners as well. The overall goal of this research is to investigate whether stylistics is an effective and relevant approach to analyze literary texts.