fiction
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Fiction is the classification
for any story or similar work derived
from imagination—in other words,
not based strictly on history or fact. Fiction can be expressed in a variety of
formats, including writings, live performances, films, television programs, animations, video games, and role-playing games, though the term
originally and most commonly refers to the narrative forms of literature , including the novel, novella, short story, and play. Fiction does not refer to a specific mode or genre, unless used in its narrowest sense to mean a
"literary narrative". Fiction is
traditionally regarded as the opposite of non-fiction, whose creators
assume responsibility for presenting only the historical and factual truth;
however, the distinction between fiction and non-fiction can be blurred, for
example, in postmodern literature.
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genre
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Genre
is most popularly known as a category of literature, music, or other forms of art or entertainment, whether written
or spoken, audio or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria, yet
genres can be aesthetic, rhetorical, communicative, or functional. Genres
form by conventions that change over time as new genres are invented and the use of old
ones is discontinued. Often, works fit into multiple genres by way of
borrowing and recombining these conventions. Stand alone texts, works, or
pieces of communication may have individual styles, but genres are amalgams
of these texts based on agreed upon or socially inferred conventions. Some
genres may be rigid with strictly adhered to guidelines while others may be
very flexible.
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stanza
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In poetry,
a stanza is a
grouped set of lines within a poem, usually set off from other stanzas by a
blank line or indentation. Stanzas can have regular rhyme and metrical
schemes, though stanzas are not strictly required to have
either. There are many unique forms of stanzas. Some
stanzaic forms are simple, such as four-line quatrains.
Other forms are more complex, such as the Spenserian stanza. Fixed
verse poems, such as sestinas,
can be defined by the number and form of their stanzas. The term stanza is similar to strophe,
though strophe is sometimes used to refer to irregular set of lines, as
opposed to regular, rhymed stanzas.
For example
I had no time to hate, because
The grave would hinder me, And life was not so ample I Could finish enmity. Nor had I time to love; but since Some industry must be, The little toil of love, I thought, Was large enough for me. |
W.H. Auden
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Wystan
Hugh Auden was an English-American poet. Auden's poetry was noted for
its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics,
morals, love, and religion, and its variety in tone, form and content. He is
best known for love poems such as "Funeral Blues," poems on
political and social themes such as "September 1, 1939" and "The Shield of Achilles," poems on cultural and psychological themes such as The Age of Anxiety, and poems on religious themes such as "For the Time Being" and "Horae Canonicae." He
was born in York, grew up in and
near Birmingham in a professional
middle-class family. He attended English independent schools and studied
English at Christ Church, Oxford. After a few months in Berlin in 1928–29 he spent five
years (1930–35) teaching in English public schools, then travelled to Iceland
and China in order to write books about his journeys. In 1939 he moved to the
United States and became an American citizen in 1946. He taught from 1941 to
1945 in American universities, followed by occasional visiting professorships
in the 1950s. From 1947 to 1957 he wintered in New York and summered in Ischia; from 1958 until the end of his life he wintered in New
York (in Oxford in 1972–73) and summered in Kirchstetten, Austria.
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✱Stop all the clocks, cut off
the telephone
BY W. h. Auden
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
