INTRODUCTION TO LITERATURE
Literature is any written material on a definite subject, topic or theme eg. religious literature, medical literature, etc.
Also Literature can be any fictive (creative) writings and sayings of individuals or a people eg. Ghanaian literature, English Literature, African Literature.
Types Of Literature
Oral literature is a performed artt which in most cases uses spoken words as a medium of communication. eg folktale: songs, laments, praise songs, and work songs, folk drama; myth, and closely related legend and historical recitation.
Written literature is a form of literature which is expressed through written forms. eg. story books. poems, plays etc.
BRANCHES OF LITERATURE (GENRES) OF LITERATURE
PROSE, DRAMA and POETRY
Prose is any literary work that uses direct narrative forms of stories in fictive or real.
Drama is a story in a play form that can be acted on stage.
Poetry is a literary work set in verse form.
TYPES OF PROSE
Nonfictional prose. Prose that is a true story or factual account of events or information is nonfiction.
Textbooks, newspaper articles, and instruction manuals all fall into this category. Anne Frank’s Diary of a
Young Girl, composed entirely of journal excerpts, recounts the young teen’s experience of hiding with
her family in Nazi-occupied Netherlands during World War II.
Fictional prose. A literary work of fiction. This is the most popular type of literary prose, used in novels
and short stories, and generally has characters, plot, setting, and dialogue.
Heroic prose. A literary work that is either written down or preserved through oral tradition, but is
meant to be recited. Heroic prose is usually a legend or fable. The twelfth-century Irish tales revolving
around the mythical warrior Finn McCool are an example of heroic prose.
Prose poetry. Poetry written in prose form. This literary hybrid can sometimes have rhythmic and
rhyming patterns. French poet Charles Baudelaire wrote prose poems, including “Be Drunk” which starts
off: “And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of
your room.”