What is a literature review?

By prof.Abdelhamid Fouda 

Guidelines for writing a literature review

What is a literature review?

A literature review is not an annotated bibliography in which you summarize briefly each article that you have reviewed. While a summary of the what you have read is contained within the literature review, it goes well beyond merely summarizing professional literature. It focuses on a specific topic of interest to you and includes a critical analysis of the relationship among different works, and relating this research to your work. It may be written as a stand-alone paper or to provide a theoretical framework and rationale for a research study (such as a thesis or dissertation).

Step-by-step guide

These guidelines are adapted primarily from Galvan (2006). Galvan outlines a very clear, step-by-step approach that is very useful to use as you write your review. I have integrated some other tips within this guide, particularly in suggesting different technology tools that you might want to consider in helping you organize your review. In the sections from Step 6-9 what I have included is the outline of those steps exactly as described by Galvan. I also provide links at the end of this guide to resources that you should use in order to search the literature and as you write your review.

In addition to using the step-by-step guide that I have provided below, I also recommend that you (a) locate examples of literature reviews in your field of study and skim over these to get a feel for what a literature review is and how these are written (I have also provided links to a couple of examples at the end of these guidelines (b) read over other guides to writing literature reviews so that you see different perspectives and approaches: Some examples are:

Review of Literature: University of Wisconsin - Madison The Writing Center.How to ..Write a Literature Review: University of California, Santa Cruz University Library).Information Fluency - Literature Review:Washington & Lee UniversityHow to Do A Literature Review? North Carolina A&T State University F.D. Bluford Library.Selected Links to Resources on Writing a Literature Review

Step 1: Review APA guidelines

Read through the links provided below on APA guidelines so that you become familiar with the common core elements of how to write in APA style: in particular, pay attention to general document guidelines (e.g. font, margins, spacing), title page, abstract, body, text citations, quotations.

Step 2: Decide on a topic

It will help you considerably if your topic for your literature review is the one on which you intend to do your final M.Ed. project, or is in some way related to the topic of your final project. However, you may pick any scholarly topic. 

Step 3: Identify the literature that you will review:Familiarize yourself with online databases (see UMD library resource links below for help with this), identifying relevant databases in your field of study.Using relevant databases, search for literature sources using Google Scholar and also searching using Furl (search all sources, including the Furl accounts of other Furl members). Some tips for identifying suitable literature and narrowing your search :Start with a general descriptor from the database thesaurus or one that you know is already a well defined descriptor based on past work that you have done in this field. You will need to experiment with different searches, such as limiting your search to descriptors that appear only in the document titles, or in both the document title and in the abstract.Redefine your topic if needed: as you search you will quickly find out if the topic that you are reviewing is too broad. Try to narrow it to a specific area of interest within the broad area that you have chosen (remember: this is merely an introductory literature review for Educ 7001). It is a good idea, as part of your literature search, to look for existing literature reviews that have already been written on this topic.As part of your search, be sure to identify landmark or classic studies and theorists as these provide you with a framework/context for your study.Import your references into your RefWorks account (see: Refworks Import Directions for guide on how to do this from different databases). You can also enter references manually into RefWorks if you need to. 

Step 4: Analyze the literature

Once you have identified and located the articles for your review, you need to analyze them and organize them before you begin writing:

Overview the articles: Skim the articles to get an idea of the general purpose and content of the article (focus your reading here on the abstract, introduction and first few paragraphs, the conclusion of each article. Tip: as you skim the articles, you may want to record the notes that you take on each directly into RefWorks in the box for User 1. You can take notes onto note cards or into a word processing document instead or as well as using RefWorks, but having your notes in RefWorks makes it easy to organize your notes later.Group the articles into categories (e.g. into topics and subtopics and chronologically within each subtopic). Once again, it's useful to enter this information into your RefWorks record. You can record the topics in the same box as before (User 1) or use User 2 box for the topic(s) under which you have chosen to place this article.Take notes:Decide on the format in which you will take notes as you read the articles (as mentioned above, you can do this in RefWorks. You can also do this using a Word Processor, or a concept mapping program like Inspiration (free 30 trial download), a data base program (e.g. Access or File Maker Pro), in an Excel spreadsheet, or the "old-fashioned" way of using note cards. Be consistent in how you record notes.Define key terms: look for differences in the way keys terms are defined (note these differences).Note key statistics that you may want to use in the introduction to your review.Select useful quotes that you may want to include in your review. Important: If you copy the exact words from an article, be sure to cite the page number as you will need this should you decide to use the quote when you write your review (as direct quotes must always be accompanied by page references). To ensure that you have quoted accurately (and to save time in note taking), if you are accessing the article in a format that allows this, you can copy and paste using your computer "edit --> copy --> paste" functions. Note: although you may collect a large number of quotes during the note taking phase of your review, when you write the review, use quotes very sparingly. The rule I follow is to quote only when some key meaning would be lost in translation if I were to paraphrase the original author's words, or if using the original words adds special emphasis to a point that I am making.Note emphases, strengths & weaknesses: Since different research studies focus on different aspects of the issue being studied, each article that you read will have different emphases, strengths. and weaknesses. Your role as a reviewer is to evaluate what you read, so that your review is not a mere description of different articles, but rather a critical analysis that makes sense of the collection of articles that you are reviewing. Critique the research methodologies used in the studies, and distinguish between assertions (the author's opinion) and actual research findings (derived from empirical evidence).Identify major trends or patterns: As you read a range of articles on your topic, you should make note of trends and patterns over time as reported in the literature. This step requires you to synthesize and make sense of what you read, since these patterns and trends may not be spelled out in the literature, but rather become apparent to you as you review the big picture that has emerged over time. Your analysis can make generalizations across a majority of studies, but should also note inconsistencies across studies and over time.Identify gaps in the literature, and reflect on why these might exist (based on the understandings that you have gained by reading literature in this field of study). These gaps will be important for you to address as you plan and write your review.Identify relationships among studies: note relationships among studies, such as which studies were landmark ones that led to subsequent studies in the same area. You may also note that studies fall into different categories (categories that you see emerging or ones that are already discussed in the literature). When you write your review, you should address these relationships and different categories and discuss relevant studies using this as a framework.Keep your review focused on your topic: make sure that the articles you find are relevant and directly related to your topic. As you take notes, record which specific aspects of the article you are reading are relevant to your topic (as you read you will come up with key descriptors that you can record in your notes that will help you organize your findings when you come to write up your review). If you are using an electronic form of note taking, you might note these descriptors in a separate field (e.g. in RefWorks, put these under User 2 or User 3; in Excel have a separate column for each descriptor; if you use Inspiration, you might attach a separate note for key descriptors.Evaluate your references for currency and coverage: Although you can always find more articles on your topic, you have to decide at what point you are finished with collecting new resources so that you can focus on writing up your findings. However, before you begin writing, you must evaluate your reference list to ensure that it is up to date and has reported the most current work. Typically a review will cover the last five years, but should also refer to any landmark studies prior to this time if they have significance in shaping the direction of the field. If you include studies prior to the past five years that are not landmark studies, you should defend why you have chosen these rather than more current ones.Step 5: Summarize the literature in table or concept map formatGalvan (2006) recommends building tables as a key way to help you overview, organize, and summarize your findings, and suggests that including one or more of the tables that you create may be helpful in your literature review. If you doinclude tables as part of your review each must be accompanied by an analysis that summarizes, interprets and synthesizes the literature that you have charted in the table. You can plan your table or do the entire summary chart of your literature using a concept map (such as using Inspiration)You can create the table using the table feature within Microsoft Word, or can create it initially in Excel and then copy and paste/import the the Excel sheet into Word once you have completed the table in Excel. The advantage of using Excel is that it enables you to sort your findings according to a variety of factors (e.g. sort by date, and then by author; sort by methodology and then date)Examples of tables that may be relevant to your review:Definitions of key terms and concepts.Research methodsSummary of research resultsStep 6: Synthesize the literature prior to writing your review

Using the notes that you have taken and summary tables, develop an outline of your final review. The following are the key steps as outlined by Galvan (2006: 71-79)

Consider your purpose and voice before beginning to write. In the case of this Educ 7001 introductory literature review, your initial purpose is to provide an overview of the topic that is of interest to you, demonstrating your understanding of key works and concepts within your chosen area of focus. You are also developing skills in reviewing and writing, to provide a foundation on which you will build in subsequent courses within your M.Ed. and ultimately in your final project. In your final project your literature review should demonstrate your command of your field of study and/or establishing context for a study that you have done.Consider how you reassemble your notes: plan how you will organize your findings into a unique analysis of the picture that you have captured in your notes. Important: A literature review is notseries of annotations (like an annotated bibliography). Galvan (2006:72) captures the difference between an annotated bibliography and a literature review very well: "...in essence, like describing trees when you really should be describing a forest. In the case of a literature review, you are really creating a new forest, which you will build by using the trees you found in the literature you read."Create a topic outline that traces your argument: first explain to the reader your line or argument (or thesis); then your narrative that follows should explain and justify your line of argument. You may find the program Inspiration useful in mapping out your argument (and once you have created this in a concept map form, Inspiration enables you to convert this to a text outline merely by clicking on the "outline" button). This can then be exported into a Microsoft Word document.Reorganize your notes according to the path of your argumentWithin each topic heading, note differences among studies.Within each topic heading, look for obvious gaps or areas needing more research.Plan to describe relevant theories.Plan to discuss how individual studies relate to and advance theoryPlan to summarize periodically and, again near the end of the reviewPlan to present conclusions and implicationsPlan to suggest specific directions for future research near the end of the reviewFlesh out your outline with details from your analysisStep 7: Writing the review (Galvan, 2006: 81-90)Identify the broad problem area, but avoid global statementsEarly in the review, indicate why the topic being reviewed is importantDistinguish between research finding and other sources of informationIndicate why certain studies are importantIf you are commenting on the timeliness of a topic, be specific in describing the time frameIf citing a classic or landmark study, identify it as suchIf a landmark study was replicated, mention that and indicate the results of the replicationDiscuss other literature reviews on your topicRefer the reader to other reviews on issues that you will not be discussing in detailsJustify comments such as, "no studies were found."Avoid long lists of nonspecific referencesIf the results of previous studies are inconsistent or widely varying, cite them separatelyCite all relevant references in the review section of thesis, dissertation, or journal articleStep 8: Developing a coherent essay (Galvan, 2006: 91-96)If your review is long, provide an overview near the beginning of the reviewNear the beginning of a review, state explicitly what will and will not be coveredSpecify your point of view early in the review: this serves as the thesis statement of the review.Aim for a clear and cohesive essay that integrates the key details of the literature and communicates your point of view (a literature is not a series of annotated articles).Use subheadings, especially in long reviewsUse transitions to help trace your argumentIf your topic teaches across disciplines, consider reviewing studies from each discipline separatelyWrite a conclusion for the end of the review: Provide closure so that the path of the argument ends with a conclusion of some kind. How you end the review, however, will depend on your reason for writing it. If the review was written to stand alone, as is the case of a term paper or a review article for publication, the conclusion needs to make clear how the material in the body of the review has supported the assertion or proposition presented in the introduction. On the other hand, a review in a thesis, dissertation, or journal article presenting original research usually leads to the research questions that will be addressed.Check the flow of your argument for coherence.Reference:

Galvan, J. (2006). Writing literature reviews: a guide for students of the behavioral sciences ( 3rd ed.). Glendale, CA: Pyrczak Publishing.

ResourcesUMD & library resources and links:UMD library research collectionsRefworks Import Directions: Links to step-by-step directions on how to important to Refworks from different databasesWriting guidelines:Purdue OWL (Online Writing Lab): A user-friendly writing lab that parallels with the 5th edition APA manual.APA guidelines:APA Style Essentials: overview of common core of elements of APA style.APA Style for Electronic Media and URL's: commonly asked questions regarding how to cite electronic mediaExamples of literature reviews:Maguire, L. (2005). Literature review – faculty participation in online distance education: barriers and motivators. Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, Volume 8, No. 1, Spring 2005. State University of West Georgia, Distance Education Center

Pun is a play

By prof.Abdelhamid Fouda 

Pun Definition:-

A pun is a play on words that produces a humorous effect by using a word that suggests two or more meanings, or by exploiting similar sounding words that have different meanings.

Humorous effects created by puns depend upon the ambiguities the words entail. These ambiguities arise mostly in homophones and homonyms. For instance, in the sentence, “A happy life depends on a liver,” the word liver can refer to the bodily organ, or simply a person who lives. Similarly, in the saying “Atheism is a non-prophet institution,” the word “prophet” is used instead of “profit” to produce a humorous effect.

Common Pun Examples

In everyday life, pun examples are found intentionally or accidentally, used in jokes and witty remarks.

The life of a patient of hypertension is always at steak.

Why do we still have troops in Germany? To keep the Russians in Czech.

A horse is a very stable

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

An elephant’s opinion carries a lot of weight.

What is the difference between a conductor and a teacher? The conductor minds the trainand a teacher trains the mind.

Examples of Pun in Literature

In literature, puns have been used by famous writers throughout history.

Example #1: William Shakespeare

In constructing puns, William Shakespeare was a master craftsman. We find many examples of puns in his plays. Let us have a look at some of them:

“It is the unkindest tied that ever any man tied.” (Richard III)

“Now is the winter of our discontent … made glorious summer by this sun of York.” (Richard III)

“Not I, believe me. You have dancing shoes with nimble soles; I have a soul of lead” (Romeo and Juliet)

Claudius: “… But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son…” Hamlet: [aside] “A little more than kin, and less than kind.” (Hamlet)

 

Example #2: A Hymn to God the Father (By John Donne)

John Donne’s A Hymn to God the Father has several examples of pun.

“When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done for I have more.

That at my death Thy Son / Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore

And having done that, Thou hast done;

I fear no more.”

He is playing with his name Donne, and with the name of his wife Anne More. Besides, he uses Son, referring to the Christ, instead of the sun.

Example #3: The Importance of being Earnest (By Oscar Wilde)

Oscar Wilde employs puns in his play The Importance of being Earnest. Jack Earnest tells Aunt Augusta, in Act III:

“On the contrary, Aunt Augusta, I’ve now realised for the first time in my life the vital Importance of Being Earnest.”

Similarly, in Act III we see Jack puns his family name again:

“I always told you, Gwendolen, my name was Ernest, didn’t I? Well, it is Ernest after all. I mean it naturally is Ernest.”

Here Jack discovers his father’s name, which makes him truly earnest.

Example #4: Great Expectations (By Charles Dickens)

Charles Dickens plays around with words in his novel Great Expectations. In his opening chapter, Pip says:

“They seemed to think the opportunity lost, if they failed to point the conversation to me, every now and then, and stick the point into me”

Note the pun in the use of the word “point.” We see another interesting example in Chapter 2:

“Tickler was a wax-ended piece of cane, worn smooth by collision with my tickled frame.”

The writer puns the word “tickle”.

Example #5: Lolita (By Vladimir Nabokov)

We notice a unique use of multilingual puns in Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. For example, the name of the character Humbert is a pun in two languages. In French it means “Shadow,” and in Spanish it means “man.” Similarly, Lolita changing her name to “Dolores,” which means “pain” in Latin, and her nickname “Dolly” refers to a toy in English.

Function of Pun

Apart from being witty and humorous, puns add profound meanings to texts, and shape the way in which the text is interpreted by the readers. By playing with the words, the writers reveal their cleverness and the cleverness of their characters. Besides, puns in a literary works act as a source of comic relief, or an intentional effort on the part of the writer, to show his or her creative ability in using language.

Definition of linguistics

By prof.Abdelhamid Fouda 

The scientific study of human speech including the units,nature,structure and modification of language.(Merriam Webster Dictionary).

Linguists:

These are people who study linguistics.

The part of linguistics that is concerned with the structure of language is divided into a number of subfields:

*Phonetics* - the study of speech sounds in their physical aspects

*Phonology* - the study of speech sounds in their cognitive aspects

*Morphology* - the study of the formation of words

*Syntax* - the study of the formation of sentences

*Semantics* - the study of meaning

*Pragmatics* - the study of language use

Aside from language structure, other perspectives on language are represented in specialized or interdisciplinary branches:

-Dialectology

-Computational Linguistics

-Neurolinguistics

-Applied linguistics

-Language acquisition

-Psycholinguistics

-Sociolinguistics

-Linguistic anthropology

-Generative linguistics

-Cognitive linguistics

-Computational linguistics

-Descriptive linguistics

-Historical linguistics

-Comparative linguistics

-Etymology

-Stylistics

-Prescription

-Corpus linguistics

-Neurolinguistics

-Paralinguistic 

-Bilinguistics 

Dear Learners,

Let’s start from today’s Topic:

*What is Phonetics?* 

 

There are *three types* of the study of the sounds of language. 

*Acoustic Phonetics* is the study of the physical properties of sounds. 

*Auditory Phonetics* is the study of the way listeners perceive sounds. 

*Articulatory Phonetics*  is the study of how the vocal tracts produce the sounds. This article will only describe articulatory phonetics.

The discrepancy between spelling and sounds led to the formation of the *International Phonetics Alphabet (IPA.)* The symbols used in this alphabet can be used to represent all sounds of all human languages.

*Phonology*

Definition: 

Phonology is the study of how sounds are organized and used in natural languages.

The phonological system of a language includes

*an inventory of sounds and their features, and

*rules which specify how sounds interact with each other.

Phonology is just one of several aspects of language. It is related to other aspects such as phonetics, morphology, syntax, and pragmatics.

Here is an illustration that shows the place of phonology in an interacting hierarchy of levels in linguistics:

*Comparison* 

(Phonology and phonetics)

Phonetics:Is the basis for phonological analysis.

Phonology: Is the basis for further work in morphology, syntax, discourse, and orthography design.

Phonetics: Analyzes the production of all human speech sounds, regardless of language.

Phonology: Analyzes the sound patterns of a particular language by determining which phonetic sounds are significant, and

explaining how these sounds are interpreted by the native speaker.

*Lecture 2-Part 2*

There are 44 traditional sounds (IPA) 

word-sounds or phonemes. 

English contains 19 vowel sounds—5 short vowels, 6 long vowels, 3 diphthongs, 2 'oo' sounds, and 3 r-controlled vowel sounds—and 25 consonant sounds.

*The 5 Short Vowel Sounds* 

The five short vowel sounds in English are a, e, i, o, and u.

short a: and, as, and after

short e: pen, hen, and lend

short i: it and in

short o: top and hop

short u: under and cup

Remember that these sounds are not necessarily indicative of spelling. 

Note that the above words all contain the vowel whose sound they make but this is not always the case. 

A word might sound as if it contains a certain vowel that is not there. Examples of words whose short vowel sounds do not correspond with their spelling are busy and does.

*The 6 Long Vowel Sounds*

The six long vowel sounds in English are a, e, i, o, u, and oo.

long a: make and take

long e: beet and feet

long i: tie and lie

long o: coat and toe

long u (pronounced "yoo"): music and cute

long oo: goo and droop

Examples of words whose long vowel sounds do not correspond with their spelling are they, try, fruit, and few.

*The R-Controlled Vowel Sounds*

An r-controlled vowel is a vowel whose sound is influenced by the r that comes before it. The three r-controlled vowel sounds are ar, er, and or.

ar: bark and dark

er: her, bird, and fur

or: fork, pork, and stork

It is important that students pay close attention to the er sound in words because it can be created by an r-controlled e, i, or u. These vowels are all transformed into the same sound when an r is attached to the end of them. More examples of this include better, first, and turn.

*The 18 Consonant Sounds* 

The letters c, q, and x are not denoted by unique phonemes because they are found in other sounds. The c sound is covered by k sounds in words like crust, crunch, and create and by s sounds in words like cereal, city, and cent (the c is found in the spelling of these words only but does not have its own phoneme). The q sound is found in kw words like backward and Kwanza. The x sound is found in ks words like kicks.

b: bed and bad

k: cat and kick

d: dog and dip

f: fat and fig

g: got and girl

h: has and him

j: job and joke

l: lid and love

m: mop and math

n: not and nice

p: pan and play

r: ran and rake

s: sit and smile

t: to and take

v: van and vine

w: water and went

y: yellow and yawn

z: zipper and zap

The Blends

Blends are formed when two or three letters combine to create a distinct consonant-sound, often at the beginning of a word. In a blend, the sounds from each original letter are still heard, they are just blended quickly and smoothly together. The following are common examples of blends.

bl: blue and blow

cl: clap and close

fl: fly and flip

gl: glue and glove

pl: play and please

br: brown and break

cr: cry and crust

dr: dry and drag

fr: fry and freeze

gr: great and ground

pr: prize and prank

tr: tree and try

sk: skate and sky

sl: slip and slap

sp: spot and speed

st: street and stop

sw: sweet and sweater

spr: spray and spring

str: stripe and strap

*The 7 Digraph Sounds*

A digraph is formed when two consonants come together to create an entirely new sound that is distinctly different from the sounds of the letters independently. These can be found anywhere in a word but most often the beginning or end. Some examples of common digraphs are listed below.

ch: chin and ouch

sh: ship and push

th: thing

th: this

wh: when

ng: ring

nk: rink

Remember,there are two sounds that th can make and be sure to provide plenty of examples.

*Diphthongs and Other Special Sounds*

A diphthong is essentially a digraph with vowels—it is formed when two vowels come together to create a new sound in a single syllable as the sound of the first vowel glides into the second. These are usually found in the middle of a word. See the list below for examples.

oi: oil and toy

ow: owl and ouch

ey: rain

Other special sounds include:

short oo: took and pull

aw: raw and haul

zh: vision

Surrealism

By prof.Abdelhamid Fouda 

 Definition & Examples 

I. What is Surrealism?

Surrealism (pronounced suhr-REAL-ism) is a literary and artistic movement in which the goal is to create something bizarre and disjointed, but still somehow understandable. Surrealist paintings and novels often have a dreamlike quality – they sort of make sense, but they’re extremely bizarre and hard to follow.

 II. Examples and Explanations

Example 1

The artist M.C. Escher provides a superb example of surrealism in art. His art is “realistic” in a sense – it employs perspective, and contains physical objects that seem like they could be real. But it is ultimately irrational. For example, his famous lithograph Relativity shows a twisting knot of staircases going in all different directions. At first glance, it is a three-dimensional, fairly realistic drawing of staircases. But if you try to follow the staircases individually, you become hopelessly lost. The appearance of rationality turns out to be an illusion.

Example 2

It was the end of sorrow lies. The rail stations were dead, flowing like bees stung from honeysuckle. The people hung back and watched the ocean, animals flew in and out of focus. The time had come. Yet king dogs never grow old – they stay young and fit, and someday they might come to the beach and have a few drinks, a few laughs, and get on with it. But not now. The time had come; we all knew it. But who would go first? (André Breton, Le Champs Magnetiques)

It would be hard to miss the weirdness in this passage. But at the same time, it’s not completely weird. It hovers somewhere between sense and nonsense, which makes it an excellent example of surrealism.

III. The Importance of Surrealism

Surrealism emerged as a direct response to World War I. In that terrible war, people all over Europe experienced the devastation of industrialized warfare for the first time – brave soldiers charged headlong into machine gun fire and were cut down in their masses like cows in a slaughterhouse. The war also brought such horrors as chemical warfare and the deliberate bombing of civilian population centers; the sheer scale of the war was unprecedented. And it left an entire generation deeply traumatized.

In the wake of these horrific events, nothing seemed to make sense. The old certainties that had given life meaning – religion, nationalism, etc. – had burned up in the fires of war. How could artists and novelists create anything meaningful in a world so bitter and damaged? One answer was surrealism. By embracing the world’s chaos and irrationality, surrealist artists helped European culture recover from the trauma of World War I.

Today, surrealism is less popular than it was in the immediate aftermath of the war, perhaps because the traumas of war are not as broadly shared. But there are still many artists, writers, and filmmakers who feel that surrealism is the best way to express their worldview and create beauty out of meaninglessness.

IV. Examples of Surrealism in Literature

Example 1

Not all literary surrealism is quite as weird as the Andre Beton passage we saw in section 2. (On the surrealist spectrum, that quote falls closer to absurdism than to magical realism.) In some cases, authors create a narrative that seems easy to understand, but that has bizarre and irrational events. In Franz Kafka’s A Country Doctor, for example, the doctor experiences an increasingly strange sequence of deaths before ultimately being stripped of his clothing and laid into bed with a man whose body is decaying while he is still alive. Like much of Kafka’s work, the story is chilling in its details, and very accurately replicates the experience of a nightmare, but at the sentence level it is written quite clearly.

Example 2

What miracle is this? This giant tree.

 It stands ten thousand feet high

 But doesn’t reach the ground. Still it stands.

 Its roots must hold the sky.

Mark Daneilewski’s House of Leaves is composed of small snippets of text, all pasted together in a seemingly random collection lacking chronological structure or order. Each snippet makes some sense on its own, but not much – and it’s hard to connect the different snippets together. By reading carefully, though, readers can discern multiple horror stories that have been stitched together into a single book. Indeed, some of the snippets come from books about the book, and books about those books, and so on.

 V. Examples of Surrealism in Popular Culture

Example 1

Video games have recently started employing surrealism, especially in the horror genre. For example, the first-person shooter E.A.R. puts the player in a series of creepy, abandoned spaces squaring off against supernatural enemies. The game simulates the main character’s experience as he slowly goes insane, and the player is never entirely sure what’s real and what’s a hallucination. Much of the imagery is Kafka-esque in its imitation of a nightmare.

Example 2

Supernatural urban legends often have a surreal component to them. For example, the Slenderman is a tall, faceless man in a black suit who purportedly appears in photographs of people before they die. Although the Slenderman is easy to envision, he is deeply unnerving due to his surreal lack of human features, motivations, and personality.

 

VI. Related Terms

Realism

Realism, clearly enough, is the idea that literature should be realistic. That is, it imitates the real world as much as possible, and tries to avoid saying anything that does not make sense.

Magical Realism

Magical realism is an outgrowth of surrealism. In this literary style, the world is basically believable, but it contains a few supernatural, surreal, or bizarre elements. For example, the film Pan’s Labyrinth has a basically realistic plot, but its main character is a little girl whose world is full of monsters and magic – the line between imagination and reality is never entirely clear.

Absurdism

Absurdism is even more bizarre than surrealism. In a surrealist novel, the characters or situations might not make sense, but they can still be pictured or imagined. In an absurdist novel, even this is impossible. The novel might even be written in animal sounds, or be otherwise incomprehensible to human beings.

These terms all lie along a spectrum, from most absurd to most realistic. Absurdism is the most absurd – so absurd that it comes close to complete nonsense. Surrealism may seem normal on the surface, but any attempt to make sense of it quickly fails. Magical Realism is fairly realistic, but has certain fanciful elements. And Realism lacks all fanciful or absurd elements.

Vanity Fair By M. Thackeray

By prof.Abdelhamid Fouda 

Vanity Fair is an English novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, which follows the lives of Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley amid their friends and families during and after the Napoleonic Wars. It was first published as a 19-volume monthly serial from 1847 to 1848, carrying the subtitle Pen and Pencil Sketches of English Society, reflecting both its satirisation of early 19th-century British society and the many illustrations drawn by Thackeray to accompany the text. It was published as a single volume in 1848 with the subtitle A Novel without a Hero, reflecting Thackeray's interest in deconstructing his era's conventions regarding literary heroism. It is sometimes considered the "principal founder" of the Victorian domestic novel.

Summary : The story is framed by its preface  and coda as a puppet show taking place at a fair; the cover illustration of the serial instalments was not of the characters but of a troupe of comic actors at Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park. The narrator, variously a show manageror writer, appears at times within the work itself and is somewhat unreliable, repeating a tale of gossip at second or third hand.

London, 1814. Rebecca Sharp ("Becky"), daughter of an art teacher and a French dancer, is a strong-willed, cunning, moneyless, young woman determined to make her way in society. After leaving school, Becky stays with Amelia Sedley ("Emmy"), who is a good-natured, simple-minded, young girl, of a wealthy London family. There, Becky meets the dashing and self-obsessed Captain George Osborne (Amelia's betrothed) and Amelia's brother Joseph ("Jos") Sedley, a clumsy and vainglorious but rich civil servant home from the East India Company. Hoping to marry Sedley, the richest young man she has met, Becky entices him, but she fails. George Osborne's friend Captain William Dobbin loves Amelia, but only wishes her happiness, which is centred on George.

Becky Sharp says farewell to the Sedley family and enters the service of the crude and profligate baronet Sir Pitt Crawley, who has engaged her as a governess to his daughters. Her behaviour at Sir Pitt's house gains his favour, and after the premature death of his second wife, he proposes marriage to her. However, he finds that she has secretly married his second son, Captain Rawdon Crawley, but Becky very much regrets having done this as she had no idea that his father's wife would die so soon after. Sir Pitt's elder half sister, the spinster Miss Crawley, is very rich, having inherited her mother's fortune, and the whole Crawley family compete for her favour so she will bequeath them her wealth. Initially her favourite is Rawdon Crawley, but his marriage with Becky enrages her. First she favours the family of Sir Pitt's brother, but when she dies, she has left her money to Sir Pitt's oldest son, also called Pitt.

Metonymy

By prof.Abdelhamid Fouda 

Metonymy Definition

Metonymy is a figure of speech that replaces the name of a thing with the name of something else with which it is closely associated. We can come across examples of metonymy both from literature and in everyday life.

Metonymy, Synecdoche, and Metaphor

Metonymy is often confused with another figure of speech called “synecdoche.” These devices resemble one another, but are not the same. Synecdoche refers to a thing by the name of one of its parts. For example, calling a car “a wheel” is a synecdoche, as a part of a car – the “wheel” – stands for the whole car.

In a metonymy, on the other hand, the word we use to describe another thing is closely linked to that particular thing, but is not a part of it. For example, the word “crown” is used to refer to power or authority is a metonymy. It is not a part of the thing it represents.

Metonymy is also different from a metaphor, which draws resemblance between two different things. For instance, in the sentence, “You are sunlight and I moon,” (Sun and Moon by Miss Saigon), sunlight and the moon, and humans are quite different things without any association. However, metaphor attempts to describe one thing in terms of another based on a supposed similarity.

Metonymy, however, develops a relation on the grounds of close association, as in “The White House is concerned about terrorism.” The White House here represents the people who work in it.

Examples of Metonymy in Everyday Life

For a better understanding, let us observe a few metonymy examples:

“England decides to keep check on immigration.” (England refers to the government.)

“The pen is mightier than the sword.” (Pen refers to written words, and sword to military force.)

“The Oval Office was busy in work.” (The Oval Office is a metonymy, as it stands for people who work in the office.)

“Let me give you a hand.” (Hand means help.)

Examples of Metonymy in Literature

Example #1: Julius Caesar (By William Shakespeare)

The given lines are from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Act I:

“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.”

Mark Anthony uses “ears” to say that he wants the people present to listen to him attentively. It is a metonymy because the word “ears” replaces the concept of paying attention.

 

Example #2: Gone with the Wind (By Margaret Mitchell)

This line is from Margaret Mitchell’s novel Gone with the Wind:

“I’m mighty glad Georgia waited till after Christmas before it secedes or it would have ruined the Christmas parties.”

Scarlett uses the word “Georgia” to point out everything that makes up the state: its citizens, politicians, and the government. It is a metonymy extremely common in the modern world, where the name of a country or state refers to a whole nation and its government. Thus, it renders brevity to the ideas.

Example #3: Out, Out (By Robert Frost)

These lines are taken from Out, Out, by Robert Frost:

“As he swung toward them holding up the hand

Half in appeal, but half as if to keep

The life from spilling“

In these lines, the expression “The life from spilling” refers to the spilling of blood. It develops a link between life and blood. The loss of too much blood means loss of life.

Example #4: Yet Do I Marvel (By Countee Cullen)

These lines are from Countee Cullen’s poem Yet Do I Marvel:

“The little buried mole continues blind,

Why flesh that mirror Him must someday die…”

Here, Cullen uses “flesh” to represent humans, and questions God about why we have to die when we are created in His likeness.

Example #5: Lycidas (By John Milton)

These lines are from Lycidas, written by John Milton:

“But now my oat proceeds,

And listens to the herald of the sea

That came in Neptune’s plea,

He asked the waves, and asked the felon winds,

What hard mishap hath doomed this gentle swain?”

In the above-mentioned lines, John Milton uses “oat” for a musical instrument made out of an oat stalk. Thus, “oat” represents the song that the poet is composing next to the ocean.

Function of Metonymy

Generally, metonymy is used in developing literary symbolism, meaning it gives more profound meanings to otherwise common ideas and objects. Texts exhibit deeper or hidden meanings, thus drawing readers’ attention. In addition, the use of metonymy helps achieve conciseness. For instance, “Rifles were guarding the gate” is more concise than “The guards with rifles in their hands were guarding the gate.”

Furthermore, like other literary devices, metonymy is employed to add a poetic color to words to make them come to life. The simple ordinary things are described in a creative way to insert this “life” factor to literary works.

Types of Books

By prof.Abdelhamid Fouda 

1. Science fiction: books about an imagined future, typically dealing with imaginative concepts such as spaceflight, time travel, and extraterrestrial life.

2. Satire: books that criticize certain people or ideas in a humorous way

3. Drama: books that are based on realistic characters dealing with emotional themes

4. Action and Adventure: fast-paced books that center on a key character in a dangerous or risky situation.

5. Romance: books that are based on love stories 

6. Mystery: books about a puzzling crime, especially a murder.

7. Horror: books that aim to frighten, scare, or startle its readers or viewers by inducing feelings of horror and terror.

8. Self help: written with the intention to instruct its readers on solving personal problems.

9. Encyclopedia: a book giving information on many subjects, typically arranged alphabetically.

10. Dictionary: a book that lists the words of a language (typically in alphabetical order) and gives their meaning

11. Comics: a periodical containing short funny stories (strips), intended chiefly for children

12. Biography: an account of someone's life written by someone else.

13. Autobiographies: an account of a person's life written by that person.

14. Fantasy: books that use magic or other supernatural elements as a main plot element, theme, or setting