What is a literary text

Literary texts

A literary text is a type of text whose main objective is to highlight the poetic or aesthetic function of its discourse.. Therefore, it goes back to textual typologies and language functions (referential, expressive, appellative, metalinguistic, poetic). The characteristic of a text that is literary and that differentiates it from a non-literary text (journalistic, advertising, scientific, expository, argumentative, scientific, descriptive, legal texts, etc.), is the transmission of ideas in a careful, aesthetic way. , within the many styles that exist.

The literary component gives a lot of play and there are maximum possibilities, so some literary texts also share features with other texts, such as description, exposition, or argumentation. Likewise, within this type of texts, the following three divisions that include the different types of literary texts (lyrical, narrative and dramatic), as well as their characteristics, stand out.

Features of literary texts

  • Aesthetic function and great expressive capacity. The main purpose of these texts is to move the reader through the appropriate choice of words, the use of figures or literary resources.
  • They are usually marred by a strong subjectivism. And it can even move persuasion through argumentation, albeit implicitly.
  • Style. It is unlimited by the creative freedom of the author; it can also respond to the characteristics of an artistic movement.
  • fictional character. Except for one trial literary texts are mostly recreations of reality, or away from it. The themes can be equally innumerable, but plausible.
  • The extension can be very varied; especially the narrative texts stand out for this (see a micro-story or a novel).

Types of literary texts

lyrical literary texts

text with poem and ring

The main characteristic of these texts is that they are mostly written in verse.. However, this has been changing over the last century in universal literature. Now there are many types of poems that may not be written in verse or texts that may be what is called "poetic prose." However, if we have to stick to the classical conception, these literary texts are formed through stanzas that have the particularity of being very varied; they have a rhythm and may or may not rhyme.

The extension ranges from the couplet to extensive poems that most of the time portray the author's intimate expression. It is the most personal channel of the poet to carry out reflections or talk about various topics that are transcendent, or that show feelings of their own or shared by other human beings. They are texts that have many possibilities because they use various literary resources and, where appropriate, rhetorical figures.. Examples: the quatrain, the sonnet, the lira, the couplet, or the tenth.

Close my eyes the last

shadow that the white day will take me,

and can unleash this soul of mine

time to his anxious eagerness flattery;

[…] (Fragment of a sonnet from the Poetic work of Francisco de Quevedo).

narrative literary texts

book with glasses

The novel, the story or the short story predominate. They are texts written in prose that describe and tell the action of a story.. It contains fundamental literary elements for this type of text, such as the narrator, the characters, the dialogues, the space, the time, the plot and the theme. In addition to the dialogues, the description in these texts is relatively important, although there are some who make a very brief description and others carry out a more detailed one. In this sense it will depend on the type of story and the style of the author. Nevertheless, the action will be equally predominant, because it is what characterizes a text that tells a story and advances the course of events (in an introduction, a middle and an outcome) with more or less tension.

Likewise, the extension that can be a few lines in the case of micro-stories, or hundreds and hundreds of pages that a novel can have, is also relevant. These texts are fictional, more or less realistic, fantastic, or of a specific genre. (romance, adventure, horror, history, science fiction).

Finally, By making such a minimalist classification, the essays would also be included here, although they have a more didactic function.. But they are also prose texts. Some more examples of narrative literary texts are the legend, the fable or the short story.

When he woke up, the dinosaur was still there.

(Micro-story by Augusto Monterroso).

dramatic literary texts

theater curtain

This written literature has as its ultimate goal the representation. Throughout all ages we think of them as the script for a play. However, today there are literary texts that are written to be adapted for film and television. Another fundamental characteristic of them is that they lack a narrator; they use only dialogues and stage directions that direct the action, space or time, or the characters themselves. But there is no narrating voice that organizes the rest of the elements.

The themes are infinite, but as it is also a succession of actions, an order is needed and they are normally divided into three acts., as if they were the introduction, the middle and the outcome of the narrative texts. However, the avant-garde and the new theater have transformed the play, so there is room for more types of dramatic creations. Currently dramatic texts are usually in prose; but throughout history these have been conceived in verse. In general, there are three basic types of these texts: comedy, tragedy, and drama.

CHUSA: Put your stuff out there. Look, that's the bathroom, there's the mattress. We have "María" planted in that pot, but it hardly grows, there is little light. (Seeing the face that Jaimito is making). She is going to stay here.

JAIMITO: Yes, on top of me. If we don't fit, aunt, we don't fit. He puts everyone he finds here. The other day to the mute, today to this one. Did you believe that this is the El Buen Pastor shelter, or what?

CHUSA: Don't be rude.

ELENA: I don't want to bother. If you do not want, I do not stay and I go.

JAIMITO: That's right, we don't want to.

(Fragment of Bajarse al moroby José Luis Alonso de Santos).


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