Narrative Devices and Structure in 'the French Lieutenant's Woman' and 'Our Country's Good'

Intertwined within the novel is the presence of many different genres including letters, articles and magazine clippings, and pictures. At first sight there is the

Beautiful imagery laced amidst a wondrous storyline, accompanied by memorable and lovable characters are all elements pertaining to enjoyable works of fiction. Tales that keep one up late into the night forever reading just “one more page” forever propelling the intrinsic imagination for a novel enthusiast. Yet, at times there are deeper meanings hidden between the lines. Symbols, analogies, and latent parallels all connecting to real life events and situations being portrayed by the author. Using literary theory can bring a more profound understanding of the reading material at hand, as well as unique insight as to what the author was feeling or intending to portray at the time of writing.

At first glance, Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour,” Susan Glaspell’s Trifles, and Henrik Isben’s A Doll House seem to have nothing in common. However, the short story and plays have many similarities. Particularly, five women from these tales— Louise Mallard, Minnie Wright, Mrs. Peters, Mrs. Hale, and Nora Helmer—make drastic decisions that appear to be motiveless. Without context, any reader could be confused by Louise’s death, Nora’s departure, and Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale’s unanimous effort to cover up the murder that Minnie Wright committed, which also seems to lack serious motive. However, all of these women’s settings, situations, and lives have connections that make their motives similar. Emotion motivates all five women—not just

In most novels and stories, the author often writes literature with the literary structure that consists of style and tone suited to the plot. This style and tone enable the author to include archetypal symbols and allusions as well. This is mainly how authors teach us about life-lessons and comparisons with real-life.

“Genres are types of texts that are recognizable to the reader and writers, and meet the needs of the rhetorical situation in which they function.”(Swales 467) I asked Hilgenbrink, What texts or books do police officers use every day? He said “I think the text or book that we use every day is the laws that we enforce.” This is pretty simple because the laws are stated in the state’s constitution which the police officers inforce. Genre is crucial to the development of a discourse

Have you ever wondered why you were forced to take an English course in college, where you had to learn about genre and different forms of writing? Ever also wondered, when am I going to ever use this in everyday life? Well, I am here to tell you there is an explanation to both of those questions and it should make one think about what they are learning on a whole different level. Starting with genre, you should know that pretty much everything has a genre within.

The world of writing is a vast and thoroughly confusing place, so vast in fact that it could not be navigated without an in-depth navigational chart. This chart is composed of and organized by terms that help us get a clearer picture of what we want to see. These terms are genre, audience, and most importantly rhetorical situation. These terms are all interrelated in which you can’t fully explore without having each one identified. One of the motives why writers delve into themselves, to put pen to paper so to speak is to express their views on a topic.

The writer’s style is his personal choice dependent on the setting, plot and characters means these three aspects of the story will be taken by the author and decided how it will best tell his story. The writer must use his skill with words to develop his style for the story, since the reader is completely at the mercy of the writer waiting for his words to write so he can feel, hear, see, smell and contemplate what is going to happen next. The writer must tell the reader what the world looks like and how it changes, who is in it and where the reader is going. One writer will deal with a genre completely different from another, developing their own style and vision. Often a writer’s style can become so familiar readers they can recognize the author just from reading a passage.

In the first chapter of the book, “The Motive for Metaphor”, Frye starts off the book by using a vivid scene of an uninhabited island to illustrate three levels of the human mind and the language for each of them and further explore the use of imagination in literature. Frye then discusses the distinction between the arts and the sciences as “science begins with the world we have to live in, accepting its data and trying to explain its laws” (p23) while “art begins with the world we construct, not the world we see”.(p23) By shedding light on the fundamental difference, Frye argues that literature begins in the imaginative world and stresses his point of an unprogressive literature world even though imagination has no limits.

O 'Connor writes in ways that let us know the characters thoughts without really coming out and telling us. O 'Connor often changes the mood of the story very quickly from amusement to horror and vice - versa. In her stories, grotesque is often used to tie together the seriousness and the comedic situations. "Flannery O 'Connor said of her work, 'the look of the fiction is going to be wild... it is almost of necessity going to be violent and comic; because of the discrepancies it seeks to combine. '" (Walters 7).

Literature is susceptible to misconception. At times, the presentation of content, enticing details, and storyline take away from the morals and ideas being presented in a piece of text. Most times, as a result of focusing on the distracting elements of a novel, audiences fail to recognize the deeper meaning or purpose of why the author choses to include certain sections of a novel. A book’s intention is to accurately express an author’s thoughts, but, many times, the delivery of unfamiliar content results in fear and a lack of understanding from the reader.

Genre is the French word for 'type'. Type is the kind of text it is.

This essay will argue that the commercial success and use of genre in popular fiction alone is not sufficient grounds to condemn it as inferior to so called ‘serious literature’. Arguably, a successful work of genre fiction can be high quality if the right literary techniques are used and if the writing is high quality. This will be shown by examining what elements distinguish literature from popular fiction and offering counter augments to these claims; as well as refuting that the terms ‘formulaic’, ‘commercial’ and ‘escapist’ should be used in a negative context. Additionally, this essay will take two examples of popular fiction; The Black Dahlia by James Elroy and The Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice to demonstrate that popular fiction can have literary qualities.

Genre is known to change discourse by the format the information is presented to the audience (Varela, 2008). It is also a category of composition that is characterized by a particular style, form or content as dictate by Webster Third Dictionary. However Trosborg (n.d) stated that for the past decade, genre identification, classification and description have been scholarly concern. Certain scholars dictate that genre is defined primarily around its basic external criteria such as journals and newspaper discourse while other scholars stand on the opinion that genre can be classify by its communicative purpose, linguistic content and form of role its play in the discourse made (Trosborg, n.d).

To categorise texts, allows us to view the world from another perspective, and make sense of the world. This is the function of genre. This allows the responder to class texts even further into sub genres, which have conventions they follow to. Such as Edgar Allen Poe’s ‘The Purloined Letter’ can be classified into the genre of crime, yet can also be interpreted to fit the conventions of detective crime writing, and mystery. This is made possible through Poe’s utilisation of devices used in mystery and detective novels such as red herrings and denouement.