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Course Materials: Introduction to Fiction Tool Box
This page contains all the miscellaneous materials you may need to navigate this Introduction to Fiction.
Genre Information:
- Epic: a genre of fiction (from the Greek adjective ἐπικός (epikos'pi), from ἔπος (epos) "word, story, poem"[1]). An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation.
- Novel: a long work of prose fiction defined by a complex plot with causation, conflict, response, opposition, and interaction.
- Short Story: a compact, concentrated work of narrative fiction that ideally creates a single impression, mood, or idea - often focuses on a single character or single action.
- Drama: a play; fiction written for performance on stage by actors.
- Poetry: literary genre characterized by rhythmical quality of language and compressed treatment of language.
Literary Terms:
- Plot: connected plan or pattern of causation in a narrative (what happens in a text).
- Setting: where the plot takes place.
- Characters: the personalities who act in a narrative (the who in a text).
- Freytag Pyramid: graphic illustration of conventional plot progression
Literary Devices (how literature works)
- Tone: the techniques and modes of presentation that reveal or create attitude.
- Narrative Voice: how a story is conveyed (the narrator).
- Omniscient Narrator: all-knowing voice that articulates a story.
- The role of the omniscient narrator is to chronicle the events of a story in an impartial way. He or she has full access to the events and dialogue occuring in the narrative, rendering his or her account the most complete and accurate. This all-knowing, all-seeing narrator type jumps from scene to scene, following characters throughout a story and assessing the progress of the narrative. Retrieved from http://narrative.georgetown.edu/wiki/index.php/Omniscient_narrator.
- Unreliable Narrator: story-telling voice that lacks credibility.
- The opposite of a reliable narrator, an unreliable narrator typically displays characteristics or tendencies that indicate a lack of credibility or understanding of the story. Whether due to age, mental disability or personal involvement, an unreliable narrator provides the reader with either incomplete or inaccurate information as a result of these conditions. Lack of alignment with the "tastes, judgements, [and] moral sense" (Prince 103) of the implied author is a determining factor in a narrator's unreliability. Most notably done by William Faulkner in his novels, the use of a main character with a mental disability or a skewed perspective is indicative of unreliability as well as the under-developedperspective of a child narrator.
- Polyphony: multiple voices (with equal weight).
- Diction: the words used in a narrative (diction may be specific and concrete or general and abstract).
- Syntax: word order and sentence structure.
- Denotation:what a word means (actual definition).
- Connotation: the meanings surrounding or associated with a word (what a word implies, especially in context).
- Metaphorical Language: figure of speech used to enhance understanding or give insight.
- Metaphor: (implied) comparison between two things.
- Simile: comparison of two things with the terms "like" or "as".
- Symbolism: a specific word, idea, or object that represents another idea, value, person, or something else.
- Theme: the central idea of a work.
- Imagery: use of images or word pictures in a narrative.
- Irony: indirection; language that states the opposite of what is intended.
- Humor: capacity to cause laughter.
- Motivation: impulse propelling characters in a fictional text.
- Donnee: literally "given" in French; a set of assumptions on which a work of literature is based.
- Double Entendre: literally "double meaning"; deliberately ambiguous language or statement, often sexual and usually humorous.
Style:
- Verisimilitude: life-like, true, or plausible style.
- Hyperbole: exaggeration.
- Monologue: long speech spoken by a character and directed to self, audience, or an offstage character.
- Satire: an attack on human follies or vices, usually humorous.
- Fantasy (the Fantastic): the creation of events that are dreamlike or fantastic
These definitions are primarily derived from the text Literature.
Author Information:
Other Miscellaneous Information:
Research Links:
- WSU Library Home Page:
- Project Muse (this is an ARTICLE DATABASE that can be accessed THROUGH THE WSU LIBRARY WEBSITE). It's a has scholarly journals on literature for children.
- JSTOR (this is another good article database for literature and culture that can be accessed THROUGH THE WSU LIBRARY WEBSITE).
- Remember to look at the CATALOGUE - there are a LOT of good text resources (which you can "get" via the internet and pick up at the front desk).
- The Nineteenth Century in Print is a Library of Congress online database that has articles and material from the nineteenth century (which may be useful in making arguments/comparisons): http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpcoop/moahtml/snchome.html
- AUTHOR WEBSITES and SOCIETIES: scholarly websites (created by PROFESSORS or UNIVERSITIES) on YOUR AUTHOR can provide helpful information (OR point you towards good sources for your specific text). See author websites above for examples - these can be found by GOOGLING.
- PERIOD WEBSITES: scholarly websites on the TIME PERIOD of your novel/short stories can also be VERY HELPFUL (such as Romantic Circles, Victorian Web and Picturing Literary Modernism).
- Also consider looking for SCHOLARLY WEBSITES on your THEME or topic (the LIBRARY OF CONGRESS webpage has some great, scholarly links).
- There are also periodicals and scholarly websites devoted to YOUR GENRE which may provide you the background information you need to make INSIGHTFUL, CONCRETE comments about your specific text.
- Nineteenth-Century British Supernatural Fiction: Folklore and the Fantastic (2008) by Jason Marc Harris.
This is a link to the class' favorite works of fiction.
Exam Answers:
2120-004 Exam 1 answers.pdf
2120-004 Exam 2 Answers.pdf
2120-004 Exam 3 answers.pdf
Essay Examples:
All of these essays received full credit. All of these examples include strong analysis AND historical/cultural context.
Essay 1: E1b p1.pdf, E1b p2.pdf
Essay 1: E1 p1.pdf, E1 p2.pdf, E1 p3.pdf, E1 p4.pdf
Essay 2: E2 p1.pdf, E2 p2.pdf
Essay 3: E3 p1.pdf, E3 p2.pdf
Thanks to the students who let me share their work here!
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