Focus on Words

UNIT 9 A Feeling of Style
Literary skills
A. Literature creates images which are more real than real people; it interprets life
through the author’s eyes with the help of his experience and vision. You read literature
to see some events in a new way. Few remember the name of Selkirk today but you can
hardly find a person who is not acquainted with the story of Robinson Crusoe. For
years people believed that Sherlock Holmes was a real person and sent letters to Baker
Street. Moreover, when Conan Doyle decided to stop writing the series with Sherlock
Holmes and wrote a story where Holmes disappears in an accident, his readers
addressed the queen asking her to help revive their favourite hero.
B. Artistic works include prose, poetry and drama. Prose is represented by fiction
and non-fiction. Fiction includes novels and short stories; non –fiction includes essays,
letters, autobiographies, speeches and newspapers. Poetry may be lyrical, dramatic,
epic and narrative. Drama can also be different: it may be a tragedy, a comedy, a
melodrama, etc. Stories may be historical, detective stories, thrillers, science fiction,
humorous stories and others. Romances tell of love and adventure. Today horror stories
have become very popular.
A piece of literature is written in a certain style, by which we mean the purpose of
a written work, tone, mood, imagery, the language and so on. The message that the
writer wants to get across to the reader is called the theme.
Writers of fiction use different literary elements in their work including
a. setting - time and place where the story takes place. Setting can be written in
the form of narration or description. A description creates picture with words. You try
to picture how it looks. A description will add important details to a piece of writing. It
can create a very specifi c unique picture in the reader’s mind. A good description helps
the reader see, hear, taste and touch what is being described. In other words a
description often appeals to senses making the picture more vivid. In narration events
are told in a straightforward manner.
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