The main components of a literary text

Due to the reader's analysis of a literary text it arises as a unity of the basic components:

„ the compositional and genre unity, including the settings, conflict, plot lines and turns, text partitioning;

„ the system of characters;

„ the tonal system i.e. the author's usage of expressive means and stylistic devices for creating specific stylistic effects and the atmosphere of the text;

„ the author's image, including the narrator and narrative, the dominant point of view, forms of presentation;

„ the message (idea / concept) of the text;

„ the theme (thematic planes) of the text;

„ the image of the reader

Literaryanalysisisalsoknownasliterarycriticism. Inthiscontext, "criticism" means a closereadingandinterpretationof a literarytext, suchas a poem, a shortstory, a play, a novel, oreven a movie. Theelementsthatmakeup a literaryworkarecloselyexaminedfortheirmeaningandsignificance. Someoftheseelementsaretheme, character, andplot. Regardlessofwhataspectyouchoosetodiscuss, youranalysiswillfocusononecontrollingideathatcanbestatedinonedirectsentence. Forexample: "Althoughmostcriticsregard W.Shakespeare's AntonyandCleopatra as a greatlovetragedy, itisactually a mockeryof a tragedy, forCleopatraisincapableoflove, andAntonyisinterestedonlyinsex." Thenyou introduceevidencefromtheplaytoproveyourcentralcontrollingidea / thesis.

Plot and plot structure of a literary text

Plot is a series of interlinked events in which the characters of the story participate

„ Does the author include all possible events into a story?

„ What kind of events does he take into account?

„ What is the difference between an action and an event?

Event is an external/internal change of the situation of the story

„ To external changes belong numerous natural changes of the objective reality.

„ Under internal changes we mean mental changes in the inner state of the character.

Event vs incident

INCIDENTS:

„ Don’t lead to important consequences

„ Potential, just cloudy possibilities

„ Don’t change the outcome of the story

EVENTS:

„ Have important consequences

„ It is a pivotal point

„ Cause reactions and change the outcome of the story

„ Have later repercussions

The main distinguishing features of event

„ relevant – it should be important in a definite fictional world;

„ unexpected – it should break all the characters expectations. If the action is ordinary it's not an event;

„ consequential – it should change the character, his lifestyle;

„ unrepeatable – it shouldn't return the character into the previous situation. It should be a one-time action.

As to the typology of events, they may be:

punctual or drawn out;

single or repeating;

closed or open;

preserving creation or destroying entities;

cyclic or not cyclic.

Scene is a little independent story, built on talk, connected and sequential actions, description and background material.

It has meaning.

It has a point: one thing that needs to be shown.

It conveys mood, attitudes, a sense of time and place, advance the plot, demonstrate the characters.

Plot is a series of events

„ Event is always logically relate d to the message, the theme, the conflict of the story and is psychologically related to the development of the characters in the story.

„ Event is always suggestive, and to interpret a story means to discover the role the events play in conveying the message of the story.

„ Every plot is a series of meaningful events as the writer selects the events which are meaningful to the message of the story, which reveal certain features of the main characters, their motives and morals.

„ Plot is a planned arrangement of actions and events. They do not occur in a haphazard way, they are causally related. It means that each event is the result of some prior events, and the cause of some subsequent events.

''The king died and then the queen died"

“The king died and then the queen died of grief"

Modem critics distinguish five main elements of plot structure. They are:

Exposition which introduces the characters and describes the setting. It contains all the necessary preliminaries to the events of the plot. Besides it introduces the nature of conflict that sets the plot in motion. It's the beginning of an unstable situation. 

Rising actions (complications) – a series of events which complicate and heighten the conflict, the beginning of the unstable situation.

Climax – the most important event of the story where the major decision is made.

Falling actions (denouement) a typically brief period in which there is less intensity of the conflict, and the untying of complications takes place.

Resolution – the end of the conflict, thebeginning of the stable situation.

The elements of plot structure can be presented with the help of pyramid. It is called a Freytag Pyramid as the diagram first was proposed by German critic Gustav Freytag (19 C).

In exposition the writer introduces the theme, the characters of the story. It contains all the necessary preliminaries to the events of the plot, casts light on the circumstances influencing the development of the characters.

As to its length it may be compressed into one sentence or extended into several paragraphs. Extended exposition provides the reader with information about when and where the events take place, who the characters are and what the story is about. If the characters and backgrounds are not special, not much exposition is required.

Setting is a particular place, time and the social context the events of the plot are set in. A social context of a story is a product of time and place. We have to understand where we are, in which period of time, in which society if we are to interpret correctly the other elements in the story.  We must learn enough about the society— its customs, values, possibilities— to know what the characters are free to do, to choose, and what they may not do.

Setting can be:

dark or light,

melancholy or gay,

real or imaginary,

concrete or symbolic,

"a slice of life'¹ or a cultural panorama,

a moment or an eternity

but it cannot exist without description.