First Additional Language: Literature
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English First Additional Language
Study guide: Literature
Grade 11
CAPS aligned
A Mills D Slabbert T Stolp
PREFACE
PRESCRIBED BOOKS
NOVEL: Dreaming of Light by Jayne Bauling.
POETRY: Poems from all over. Oxford University Press.
Introduction
To get the most out of this study guide, you are advised to:
• Follow the suggested timetable. The amount of literature that must be completed within six to seven months can be quite daunting if you are not constantly working on it.
• Know your texts well. The examiner does not know which notes you have worked from and may even ask something that was not in your notes. They want to test whether you have developed the ability to think critically about, analyse, and interpret what you have read.
• Study the Glossary of Literary Terms in the front of the study guide and make sure you are familiar with the terms for each genre. If you do not know what these terms mean you will not be able to understand some of the questions in the exam and you will not be able to respond well to these questions.
• Do the homework activities on your own (without the aid of the facilitator’s guide). This is very important. These questions help you to practise your skills in answering exam questions. The examiner can often see that you know the text but because you have not mastered the skill of answering questions in a specific way, you will not receive the marks.
• Look at old exam papers. There are many old exam papers and memoranda on the internet, which you may find useful. Even if the literature question papers are about other genres or texts than those you have studied, it remains useful to see how questions are formulated and how answers should be formulated (as seen in the memoranda). Your questions will be set in the same manner.
• All the poems you must study are in the anthology. The study guide provides detailed analyses of the prescribed poems. Read the information in the anthology.
STUDY TIPS AND METHODS
In preparing for your literature tests and exams make sure that you are familiar with the texts. You can never read your prescribed poems and novel too many times. When answering questions, make sure you understand how the questions are formulated.
Question word What is expected of you when you answer the question?
Analyse Find the main ideas and explain how they link together.
Apply
Use your knowledge and reasoning to give a good suggestion or answer to the question.
Comment on the effectiveness of … Say why a point or image (e.g. metaphor, alliteration) has an impact and give reasons/examples to justify your opinion.
Compare or contrast Say how things are similar or how they are different.
Define Give the formal meaning/definition of a concept.
Describe Say what happened in a logical order (e.g. Describe what led to Leontes becoming jealous).
Evaluate Explain why you say something is good or bad.
Explain
List
Justify
Use your own words to describe something or say why something happened.
Use one word or phrase only, items presented one beneath the other; may be numbered.
Illustrate Explain using examples from the text.
Give valid reasons why you have interpreted something in a specific way or why the writer has done something in a particular way.
Relate Indicate the connection between things or explain how things happened.
Substantiate Support your opinion with clear references to, or quotations from, the text. (Do not quote unless you are instructed to do so.)
Summarise State the main features of an argument, leaving out all unnecessary detail or examples.
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6
Week 7
Week 8
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6
YEAR PLAN
Lesson 1: ‘We wear the mask’
Lesson 2: ‘The English are so nice’
Lesson 3: ‘African Poem’
Lesson 4: Dreaming of Light
Chapter 1
Lesson 5: Dreaming of Light
Chapter 2
Lesson 6: Dreaming of Light
Chapter 3
Lesson 7: Dreaming of Light
Chapter 4
Lesson 8: Dreaming of Light
Chapter 4
Sample
Lesson 9: ‘Eating poetry’
Lesson 10: ‘The Man’
Lesson 11: Dreaming of Light
Chapter 5
Lesson 12: Dreaming of Light
Chapter 6
Lesson 13: Dreaming of Light
Chapter 7
Lesson 14: Dreaming of Light
Chapter 7
TERM 3
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6
Lesson 15: ‘Home’
Lesson 16: ‘From the Air’
Lesson 17: ‘The Ride’
Lesson 18: Dreaming of Light
Chapter 8
Lesson 19: Dreaming of Light
Chapter 9
Lesson 20: Dreaming of Light
Chapter 10
Week 7 The characters
Lesson 21: Dreaming of Light
Week 8
TERM 4
Chapter 10
Weeks 1 – 4 Revision – November examination
*Additional notes and updated lesson plans are available online on the Optimi Learning Portal (OLP). Refer to OLP for all other lesson content.
LESSON ELEMENTS
Vocabulary
The meaning of new words to fully understand the text/content.
Activity
Core content and questions to test the learner’s knowledge.
For the curious Encouragement to do in-depth research about the content. Expand the activity and exercise to such an extent that learners are encouraged to explore.
Poetry
Sample
People have been telling stories since the beginning of time.
What is the purpose of literature and why do
we study it?
Cultures are built on stories, histories, myths, legends, fables and so on.
If we are to understand and participate in the culture to which we belong, we must first learn about the stories our culture has been built around. And while books aren’t the only stories out there, they are one of the most important. Literature teaches us about the world around us, about the histories and peoples of other times and places. It surely is more fun to read a novel about another time or place than to learn about it from a textbook.
Literature builds your vocabulary and improves your reading and writing skills. The best way to become a better writer is to read more. Learners who read more often have an advantage when it comes to writing. Literature has so many purposes: to enlighten, to protest, to challenge, to educate, inform, comfort, confront, express and even to heal in some cultures. It is also a form of entertainment and allows us to use our imagination to visualise the story in our own mind.
Genre
Genre means a type of art, literature, or music characterised by a specific form, content, and style. Literature has three main genres: poetry, drama, and prose (divided into fiction and nonfiction). All these genres have features and functions that distinguish them from one another. It is important for you to know which genre you are reading to understand the message it conveys and to be able to analyse it. Make sure you know the correct terminology for each genre and use these terms when you write essays and answer questions.
Poetry
Sample
Poetry follows a metre and rhythm in each line and syllable. There are epic, narrative, romantic, dramatic, and lyric poems. You have heard of and studied odes, sonnets, elegies, and ballads.
Often poetry uses figurative language, such as metaphor, simile, onomatopoeia, hyperbole, and alliteration to create a heightened effect and this elevates the language the poet uses from normal speech to poetry.
Drama
Drama is performed in front of an audience. It is also called a play. Its written text contains dialogues and stage directions. This genre has further categories such as comedy, tragedy, and tragicomedy. William Shakespeare is known as the father of English drama.
His well-known plays include Taming of the Shrew, Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet. Greek playwrights were the pioneers in this field, such as Sophocles’ masterpiece Oedipus Rex and Antigone, while modern dramas include Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller.
Prose
Unlike poetry, prose focuses on characters and plot, rather than focusing on sounds. It includes short stories and novels, while fiction and non-fiction are its subgenres. Prose is further categorised into essays, speeches and interpretations.
Fiction
A fictional work may incorporate fantastical and imaginary ideas from everyday life. It comprises elements such as plot, exposition, foreshadowing, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. Popular examples of literary fiction include Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird
Non-Fiction
Non-fiction could be creative like a personal essay, or factual, like a scientific paper. It may also use figurative language, however, not unlike poetry, or fiction. Sometimes, non-fiction tells a story, like an autobiography, or conveys information to readers.
Sample
Other examples of non-fiction include biographies, diaries, memoirs, journals, fantasies, mysteries, and romances.
How to use the glossaries
Some of the terms only appear once, because they have the same function in poetry, drama, and prose – so go through all three lists to find the one you are looking for.
‘Beowulf’ is the oldest and longest epic poem in English. Written between 700 and 750 AD, it tells the story of the brave warrior and his battles with the monster, Grendel and a dragon guarding a hoard of treasure.
GLOSSARY OF POETRY TERMS
Alliteration
Sample
Allusion
The repetition of identical consonant sounds, most often at the beginning of words: ‘the flying furry fox’ or ‘steaming soup’. Alliteration is used to reinforce the meaning, to link related words or to provide tone and colour.
A passing reference to a person, place, thing, or event. Typically, writers allude to something they suppose the reader will already know about. The concept may be real or imaginary, referring to anything from fiction, to folklore, to historical events.
His nose gets longer whenever he talks.
Anaphora
Antithesis
Apostrophe
Assonance
Ballad
Words repeat at the beginning of successive clauses, phrases, or sentences. This is done for emphasis and typically adds rhythm to a passage.
In William Blake’s ‘London’, he uses anaphora:
‘In every cry of every Man, In every infant’s cry of fear, In every voice, in every ban, The mind-forg’d manacles I hear’
SampleTwo terms, phrases or ideas that contrast or have opposite meanings:
‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness …’
A speaker directly addresses someone (or something) that is not present or cannot respond. The entity being addressed can be absent, dead, or imaginary, but it can also be an inanimate object (stars or the ocean), an abstract idea (love or fate), or a being (such as a muse or god).
For example, John Keats begins his ‘Ode to a Grecian Urn’ by addressing the Urn: ‘Thou still unravished bride of quietness’ and directs the whole poem to the Urn and the figures represented on it.
The repetition of identical vowel sounds in different words close to one another.
The example is from Edgar Allen Poe’s ‘The Raven’:
‘Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore — While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.’
The ballad is typically arranged in quatrains and usually the second- and fourth lines rhyme (although this is not a rule). Ballads tell a story and began as folk songs and continue to be used today in modern music.
Blank verse
Cliché
‘A ballad of John Silver’ (John Masefield)
‘We were schooner-rigged and rakish, with a long and lissome hull, And we flew the pretty colours of the cross-bones and the skull; We’d a big black Jolly Roger flapping grimly at the fore, And we sailed the Spanish Water in the happy days of yore.
We’d a long brass gun amidships, like a well-conducted ship, We had each a brace of pistols and a cutlass at the hip; It’s a point which tells against us, and a fact to be deplored, But we chased the goodly merchant-men and laid their ships aboard.’
SampleDid you notice the allusion?
John Silver, the crossbones and the skull, the Jolly Roger – all these elements allude to the story of Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. You will get better at allusion the more you read. This will help you to recognise subtle details and references to other works.
Iambic pentameter that doesn’t rhyme. Blank verse is like normal speech but creates a musical effect. It tends to capture the attention of the readers and the listeners, which is its aim.
‘Tintern Abbey’ (William Wordsworth)
‘Five years have past; five summers, with the length Of five long winters! and again I hear These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs With a soft inland murmur. —Once again Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs, That on a wild secluded scene impress Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect The landscape with the quiet of the sky.’
Refers to an expression that has been overused to the extent that it loses its original meaning or novelty: abandon ship, the grass is always greener, silence is golden
Couplet
Diction
Enjambment
Foot
Consists of two lines with the same metre or rhyme that are equal in length. In the case of the latter, you would refer to it as a rhyming/heroic couplet, which is very common in poetry and has the rhyme scheme: aa, bb, cc and so on.
Diction refers to the poet’s choice of words, phrases, sentence structures and the order of the words in a poem.
Poetic diction usually refers to the poet not adhering to the rules and conventions of standard written and spoken language when it comes to sentence structure, word order, the use of very old or newly coined words.
Sample
When reading a poem, consider the different meanings the words may have and how their arrangement in the poem adds to or changes those meanings. Diction reflects the writer’s vision and steers the reader’s thoughts. Poets choose words for a specific effect, e.g. a coat isn’t torn; it is tattered. Remember that each word in a poem, play or novel has a purpose.
A line with no end punctuation but running over to the next line.
Four of the first eight lines of Shakespeare’s ‘Sonnet 116’ are enjambed:
‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love That alters when it alteration finds Or bends with the remover to remove: O no! It is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken …’
A group of two or more syllables, one of which is stressed. The most common feet in poetry contain either a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable (trochee) or an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable (iamb):
Thĕ cúr | fĕw tólls | thĕ knéll | ŏf pár | tĭng dáy. |
The iambic pentameter is the most natural and common type of metre in English and elevates speech to poetry.
Hyperbole
Idiom
Internal rhyme (middle rhyme)
Overstatement/exaggeration for serious, ironic or comic effect:
‘I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you Till China and Africa meet, And the river jumps over the mountain And the salmon sing in the street .’
The tall tale of the American West is a form used mainly for comic effect. For example, Paul Bunyan, the huge lumberjack who eats 50 pancakes in one minute and dug the Grand Canyon with his axe.
SampleAn idiom is a saying, phrase, or fixed expression that has a figurative meaning different from its literal meaning:
‘Fog’ (Carl Sandburg) The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on.
The idiom referred to in this poem is ‘nothing ever lasts’. In the poem, the city appears to be normal as usual activities are taking place. However fog comes silently like a cat and everything changes. There is no visibility and most of the work comes to a halt. Even the poet has to sit and wait for the fog to go away.
Finally after waiting for sometime, it moves on. Again change happens and so the poem depicts that nothing lasts forever.
Rhyme within a line of poetry, i.e. the middle words and the end words rhyme with one another:
‘Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping …’
Irony
Surprising, interesting, or amusing contradictions or contrasts. Verbal irony: words are used to suggest the opposite of their usual meaning.
‘All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.’ Animal Farm (George Orwell)
Irony of situation: an event occurs that directly contradicts expectations.
From The Crucible (Arthur Miller)
SampleDANFORTH [reaches out and holds her face, then]: Look at me! To your own knowledge, has John Proctor ever committed the crime of lechery? [In a crisis of indecision, she cannot speak.] Answer my question! Is your husband a lecher?
ELIZABETH [faintly]: No, sir.
DANFORTH: Remove her!
PROCTOR: Elizabeth, tell the truth!
DANFORTH: She has spoken. Remove her!
PROCTOR [crying out]: Elizabeth, I have confessed it!
ELIZABETH: Oh, God! [The door closes behind her.]
REMEMBER
There is a difference between irony and sarcasm. Do not confuse the two when you analyse a poem or write an essay. Verbal irony communicates the opposite of what is said, while sarcasm is a form of irony that is directed at a person, with the intent to criticise or mock
It compares two things that are not alike but do have something in common.
Unlike a simile, where two things are compared directly using like or as, a metaphor’s comparison is more indirect, usually made by stating something is something else.
Metaphor
Metre
Metonymy
‘Dreams’ (Langston Hughes)
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die Life is a broken-winged bird That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
SampleThe number of feet in a line of verse, e.g. iambic pentameter. The metre is determined by the pattern of stronger and weaker stresses on the syllables in the words in a line of verse.
Metonymy replaces the name of a thing with the name of something else with which it is closely associated.
Do not confuse metonymy with synecdoche!
Although they may seem the same, they are not. Synecdoche refers to a thing by the name of one of its parts/a part of something represents the whole, e.g. ‘new wheels’ refers to a new car and is a synecdoche, as a part of a car – the ‘wheel’ – represents the whole car.
In metonymy, the word we use to describe another thing is closely linked to that thing but is not a part of it, e.g. ‘the crown’ is used to refer to a king and his authority and ‘Hollywood’ can be used for the film industry. It is not a part of the thing it represents.
From Robert Frost’s ‘Out, Out–’
‘The boy’s first outcry was a rueful laugh, As he swung toward them holding up the hand Half in appeal, but half as if to keep The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all—’
Frost uses metonymy to describe blood spilling. Blood can spill, life cannot, but we know that blood is associated with life.