1. What is contemporary literature?

(10)

The word, ‘contemporary’ means modern, current or up-to-date, so when we say,

Contemporary Literature, it shows to its readers how a written work created from a particular
period in history through the current era. This type of literature is written after 1940 until the
present, but there are discrepancies shown in many articles about when did this
contemporary literature originate. The literary period of contemporary literature has revealed
a serious theme about “World War,” which grounds in psychological, social, cultural,
political, religious, and economic issues. According to Elle Jay (2020), this era describes a
particular style and quality of writing. Meaning to say, it must be high-caliber, there should
be a formal beauty and/or intricacy, and at the same time, it has the power to associate with
different issues and concerns pertinent in the modern world. He also stated that
contemporary literature is an extension of postmodern literature, but most denote to it as a
literary era of its own. This particular type of literature has various literary genres included in
their forms of writing and style, including flash fiction, slam poetry, short story, plays,
memoirs, and autobiographies. In a literal scent, contemporary literature features a
somewhat modern style of narration, through different genres present in this era, featuring
the reality of anxiety and violence brought by unprecedented war. This is also an era where
people reflect and sense to make change feasible and possible, to counterattack social
inequalities and discrimination by expressing it in the form of writing including the works of
Zora Hurston and Alice Walker, and at the same time, the way of living that followed after
WWII.

Discuss its characteristics. (10)

There are many typical characteristics of contemporary literature that give its readers the
impression to see the status quo of reality.

Contemporary Literature includes reality-based stories with strong characters and a believable
story. This is evident in many contemporary works of literature such as Zora Hurston’s “Their
Eyes Were Watching God”, mainly concerned with finding your own voice and power, with
language as an instrument of failure and success, of selfhood and empowerment, and also “In
Search of Our Mother’s Garden by Alice Walker” according to English literature notes, it talks
about her search of the African American women’s suppressed talent, of the artistic skills and
talents that they lost because of slavery and a forced way of life. These contemporary works of
literature showed and portrayed the real issues and concerns about society, even though the
characters seem to be fictional in nature, it is undeniably accurate to say that, the characters
represented and rendered a strong connection to the message intended by the writer. The
emblematic issues being found in contemporary literature are wars, prejudices, racial tensions,
inequalities—usually the fight for plausible freedom of African Americans against white
Americans.

The setting is usually set in the current or modern era. According to Polyak (2005) one obvious
parallel in settings, ethnic background, experiences, etc. How autobiographical are
contemporary novels? Did personal experience influence the choice of topics? To find out it is
necessary to have a glimpse at the writers’ lives. Meaning to say, contemporary literature sets in
the current era in life and culture, so the setting must also in an up-to-date situation, for the
reader(s) of the contemporary world to feel the familiarity and relevance of the work in their
lives, and in the social framework of a given society, and the author himself/herself.

It is also character-driven than plot-driven. The importance of character has given more stress
than the plot of the story, highlighting how they are going to make a bearing impact and imprint
to their reader by relating to the many sides of life and reality. These characters are usually
hopeless in finding the meaning of life, trying to find strength in their own little ways, searching
for the loss brought by the oppressive, violent, and fearful nature. The lasting value of character
in contemporary works attacks, and holds the repressive society, movements from cruelty to
prosperity, their dreams to change their current state, struggles against the system, and at the
same time the epic scale of fears in their heart.

2. What is popular literature? (10)

Popular literature derives from the Greek term “Populis” which means for people or the
audience. This type of literature is usually fictional writings, intended for the masses and its
main aim is to contribute entertainment to its readers. Unlike contemporary literature, this form
of literature does not seek splendor of standards or academic response or subtlety. Some of the
genres common to popular literature are Romance, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Western Books,
Detective Story or Murder Mystery, Horror or Gothic Novels, and the occult as its subgenre, as
well as comics and cartoon strips. It designed for production, distribution, and consumption for a
large audience typically for leisured reading or escape reading. In an Open Journal website,
Radway (1997) points out that the rise of mass literacy, larger print runs, and popular genres
encouraged publishers to begin “contracting with a large pool of writers who wrote books
regularly and respectively according to editorial specifications by drawing on well-known
material already circulating in the press and on the popular stage.” This is where the process of
popular literature materializes, wherein the publishers published a certain genre for marketing
purposes, and not for the artistic decision, so the quality of their writings controlled, as well as
the status of the masses. Just like how Porter (2005) argued that the mass production of books
increases the number of bad books being published, and so he explained that this will make it
more difficult for the readers to appreciate a good book. Just like the explanation of Moyano
(2019), in Children’s Literature, good books are those that expand awareness—about society or
provide empathy. It also provides an enjoyable read that does not overtly teach or preach, and
at the same time, it embodies quality. Meaning to say, there’s a cognitive value that we can get,
not just on how the story is shown, but also its aesthetic value.

Discuss its characteristics. (10)

There are several characteristics of popular literature which helps it to be broadly

accepted by all readers of ages that makes the work successful.
 We have a vivid, racy, and exciting plot. These characteristics of popular literature have
something to do with establishing the excitement effect—helping to establish the consistency of
character’s thoughts and movements and keeping the reader’s attention about evolving the
characters growth and the excitement of plot in the story. According to Favor (2013), it’s all
about developing plot and character, as any writing in any genre must do. Keeping the pace fast
and the plot moving is really important for beginning writers, since many struggles when the plot
isn’t moving. He also added that, the emerging writers have trouble writing sharp dialogue and
sometimes their scenes will ramble and become dull if they don’t have plot points moving things
forward. This is really about establishing delight and enthusiasm to the reader, and to make
them continue reading as they unveiled exciting plots, vivid movements of the plot, and racy
element to make the work a popular work.

It also contains sensory imagery and engaging characters. Sensory imagery is a literary
device used to describe the language as a form to imagine the world of the piece of literature by
fetching the reader to imagine using the different types of sensory imagery. According to Secor
(1900), in his study about visual reading, the word as a sign of an idea may exist in tahe mind in
four ways: auditory image, visual image, and motor image either hand motor or articulatory. This
is really important in writing literary works, because the readers may evoke their keen sense in
different mental imagery present in literary works, and by picturing the scene, readers can have
a strong idea and judgment about the work of art. It is also notable to include that, part of the
success of popular literature is about incorporating the dynamism and reputation of the
character in the story, as we delve into what is on their mind, how are they going to make it, and
by the power of the author, all of it comes alive—thriving and entertaining—through our mental
imagery. One good example of a work of art in literature is Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë (1847). 

Popular Literature also contains an easily understood language and no abstract problems. It
is highly suggested that the authors should use familiarized language, or the easy to
comprehend language, especially if your target audience is wide or a majority of the people, so
by combining a language that is easy to understand, it helps the reader establish an impression
and launch an impact upon reading it. There is also a shred of evidence that characters have no
abstract problems, meaning to say, that the character(s) know(s) what he needs to know to
subsist in the world that he or she is living 

3. What are the differences between literary fiction and genre fiction? (10)

Literary fiction tends to follow non-conventional plot structures while containing embedded
symbolism and allegory. aspiring to say, it gives the reader the main focus on language as a
language—a portal to reality, its seriousness and subtlety, to grasp the world of ideas, the
believable issues mirroring the inner and outer lives and it's more character-driven than plot-
driven. In line with Chiaet (2013), literary fiction focuses on the psychology of the character,
and their relationships. This psychological awareness carries over into the important world,
which is filled with complicated individuals whose inner lives are usually difficult to fathom.
Although literary fiction tends to be more realistic than popular fiction, the characters disrupt
reader expectations, undermining prejudices, and stereotypes. They support and teach us
 values about social behavior, like the importance of understanding those that are different
from ourselves. This only implies that the works of literary fiction are well-defined and highly-
developed characters and plot with a practical theme, emphasizing the societal problems
and/or issues. it's also important to notice that the quilt of literary fiction is more elusive, and
you'll also spot some stickers on the front cover saying its artistic award—booker prize or
Hugo Award.

Genre Fiction on the opposite hand could be a generic term for popular, during which the
works are usually imaginative or creative writing, designed for production, distribution, and
consumption of the work. In keeping with (Milhorn, 2006, pp. 1–3) Genre fiction is that the
fiction of emotion, its primary purpose is to evoke feelings, and therefore the goal is to
entertain the readers. It’s typically characterized by an excellent deal of dialogue, engaging
characters, and plots that are exciting. Aiming to say, its emphasis is on the plot; how it
arouses the entertaining purpose for the readers of all ages. The apparent function of genre
fiction could be a marketing tool, controlling the standard of the works. This sort of fiction
usually contains fantastical elements, romance, fantasy or technological advances, thriller,
gothic and graphic novels. The titles here are what precisely the novels all about—story first
—it may be a policewoman dealing from a criminal offense, an ideal love or post-apocalyptic
world et cetera. Thus, genre fiction is an element of what we call leisured reading, wherein
we imagined the emotions, the artistic descriptions of the work, and therefore the plot that's
electrifying.

4. Give at least five (5) examples of emerging literature. (10)

According to a video presented by Raianne Joy V. Maulion of the Philippine Normal University,
Emerging literature is the rise of literary genres of the 21 st century that deals with the current
themes and issues that breaks the traditional way of writing.

Here are some of the examples of emerging literature:

Chick Literature, it is a genre fiction which addresses issues of womanhood, often humorously
and light-heartedly. It is typically features a female protagonist whose womanhood is heavily
thematized in the plot.

Flash Fiction is a style of fictional literature or fiction of extreme brevity. There is no widely
accepted definition of the length of the category.

Erotic Literature comprises fictional and factual stories and account of sexual relationships
which have the power to or are intended to arouse readers sexually.

Science Fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginative content such as futuristic settings,
futuristic science and technology, space travel, time travel, faster than light travel, parallel
universes and extraterrestial life.
Graphic Novels is a book made up of comic content. Although the word “novel” normally refers
to long fictional works, the term “graphic novels” is applied broadly and includes fiction,
nonfiction and anthologized work, or as stated by Somers (2018), it is a series of works
collected into a single volume, usually with a unifying theme or subject. 

a. Cite an example for each and give its plot. (10)

Chick Literature

 Example: Emma: by Jane Austen. Matchmaker Emma Woodhouse is the popular rich
girl in town but has no idea how to handle her own love life. This novel has been turned
into several films and even adapted for modern-day audiences as the movie Clueless,
starring Alicia Silverstone.

Flash Fiction

 “Widow’s First Year,” Joyce Carol Oates

Ernest Hemingway’s (apocryphal) six-word story might be more famous — but this four-
word story from Joyce Carol Oates has it beaten in the brevity stakes:
“I kept myself alive.”

Pulled from the anthology Hint Fiction, a collection of works running 25 words or less,
this story reveals a key trick of the flash fictionist’s trade: let the title to do the heavy
lifting. In isolation, “I kept myself alive” might be construed as a feel-good mantra — but in
the context of the title, it provides a morbid twist on the setup-punchline structure of a
joke.

Erotic Literature

 'Delta of Venus' by Anaïs Nin

Delta of Venus is the sultry adventure of Elena Martin (Audie England), a young female
American writer in Paris during the dawn of WWII. All of the stories Elena writes involves
her as the star of her own erotic adventures which are secretly contracted by her lover,
Lawrence Walters (Costas Mandylor) from a distance. Once this truth is revealed to
Elena, her reaction is strong and she transforms from a sexually innocent and unfeeling
girl, to a woman who feels everything. She rejects her lover as she leaves Paris to return
to America once France is invaded.

Science Fiction

 The Time Machine, first novel by H. G. Wells, published in book form in 1895.

The Time Machine, H. G. Wells’s first novel, is a “scientific romance” that inverts the
nineteenth-century belief in evolution as progress. The story follows a Victorian scientist,
who claims that he has invented a device that enables him to travel through time, and
has visited the future, arriving in the year 802,701 in what had once been London.
 There, he finds the future race, or, more accurately, races, because the human species
has “evolved” into two distinct forms. Above ground live the Eloi—gentle, fairy-like,
childish creatures, whose existence appears to be free of struggle. However, another
race of beings exists—the Morlocks, underground dwellers who, once subservient, now
prey on the feeble, defenseless Eloi. By setting the action nearly a million years in the
future, Wells was illustrating the Darwinian model of evolution by natural selection, “fast-
forwarding” through the slow process of changes to species, the physical world, and
the solar system.

Graphic Novels

 Maus by Art Spiegelman (which won the Pulitzer Prize)

Maus tells two separate but entangled stories: that of concentration camp
survivor Vladek Spiegelman's experiences during World War II and that of the
relationship between him and his son Artie. Artie, who is interviewing his father about his
experiences for a prospective graphic novel about the Holocaust, narrates the scenes in
the present (roughly 1978–87), while Vladek narrates the scenes in the past. Vladek's
war stories are told in parallel to what is currently happening in the tenuous relationship
between father and son.

4. In “The Sky is Gray,” what does the attitude of the black man at the colored
café reveal about inner racism? What lesson does the mother teach James at
the colored café? (10)

Life is filled with ironies and satires jumbled together creating a lasting and horrifying impact
reflecting the grotesque side of a person. In the story of The Sky is Gray by Ernest J.
Gaines, Inner racism had been one of the serious problem in the story, inside the colored café,
when James narrated that the black man “keeps on looking at her” Mama as if like she is
different from her, no wonder when she told to her son that they “Got to pay something for their
heat”, she knows already that even though it is a colored café where one should feel accepted,
loved and feel a concern, but the cycle is off beam—people belittle them—of their racial status
and the poverty of their imagination to detached and reducing their existence as part of the
colored society. It is relevant to add when the teacher at the story said that “We should
question, and question and question—question everything.” It is correct, when you start
searching about your situation, existence, liberty or even the concept of God and white or
colored men, you can understand what is really happening, in an open space where the world
they are living in was alienated or withdrawn because of people’s ego and ideology that are
corrupt and malice aforethought. James was able to grasp the reality when he learned that
some people are opportunist, biased and indecent. He saw how her Mama stood so firm, and
the courage that she had taught him, that there were people who had the worst head with worst
interest in their core. Seeing the idea of this story—a mother raising his son to be a full grown
and learned man is a preparation, both mental and physical for what might come in his life. I
know that it is hard for the part of the mother to be authoritarian, but she has to do it, simply
because she experienced the possible worst scenarios in life, and all she ever wanted was for
her son to understand the resoluteness of her motive, which had taught James about the ill-
disposed world.

5. What role does religion play in the story “The Sky is Gray?” (10)

The relevance of faith as a part of the totality of the story creates tension and gravity about
beliefs as something hollow, and it doesn't reflect action, for action is restricted only to itself,
when one sees the harsher reality.

In the story, we saw the strain between the preacher—“he’s big and fat and he’s got a black
suit. He’s got a gold chained too.” and also the student, reading his book as James
described within the story. The strain started when their views of the faith contradict one
another. The preacher appears to stick only to what his religion believed, which keeps him
to be oversensitive and volatile with any opposing views. However, his deeds controvert the
religious teachings, when he slapped the scholar just because the coed questions his beliefs
saying that, “we should question, and question, and question, and question everything”, this
suggests that he was chained in a very mortal cage confining himself in an exceedingly
belief that had taught him to be hubristic and contemptuous, when someone deliberately
raised awareness about, being ignorant is different from recognizing the transformative
reality that's harsh and repressive.

The preacher seems to worry only about his religion, and therefore the gold chained in his
neck as James stated within the story has a sway to the reader that, he was chained only to
follow and to not question what's really happening. The strain ends when the scholar said
that he must slap the opposite side of his face too, which he did before he leaves. This is
often the becoming of incarcerating our heart and mind, and inept to guage intention to
determine the larger lens—to be open for interpretations, and see it because, it is the
movement for an improved chance. The space of the people filling the gaps because they
were oppressed of their racial background cannot grasp the potential benefits of faith, not
until their rights weren't violated—when word speaks when faith and reason combine to
determine the larger picture of the undying and endless path of racism and injustices

7. “Roman Fever” explores the urge that human beings sometimes feel to return to
the past in attempt to reconcile its contradictions with the present. Discuss the features
and traits that Mrs. Slade uses to unravel the mysteries and enigmas of the past. (10)
The story, Roman Fever feels the urge to travel the past through the form of narrating those
undying memories from beautiful ruins of Colosseum, unfolding hidden secrets, jealousy,
irritation and paradox in life.

We know that from the start of the story, Mrs. Slade was vocal from everything that had
happened in the beautiful ruins of Colosseum in Rome. When she tells everything about their
memories, how Grace Ansley caught the Roman Fever, when she compares her daughter to
Mrs. Ansley’s daughter as no match, for her daughter was not as brilliants as Mrs. Ansley’s
daughter. She also unravels the secret mystery of the letter, imagining her triumphant and
uproarious laughter which became her greatest downfall, when Mrs. Ansley and Delphin really
met at night in the darkness of Colosseum.

Mrs. Slade became insolent when she said to her friend that she should envy her, for at the end
of the day, she had Delphin and her daughter, but the turn of events became grisly and horrid,
when Mrs. Grace Ansley said that, I should not envy you, for I have Barbara. It symbolizes their
reckless love inside the beautiful ruins of the Colosseum. These features and traits of Mrs. Alida
Slade unravels the secrecies about their past friendship, up to their present with a shocking and
perturbing revelations. Their concealed disgusts and insecurities with each other’s traits and
personality, and on how their knitted threads about their past revealed with a much contradiction
or the paradox of life, that her pursuit of her own happiness of defeating her friend in a serious
conversation became her unhappiness because of those prudent actions they had made, and
the lasting consequences of it affecting their present life.
Reference

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American, 4(9), 4. http://talkingteaching.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Reading-
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 Christine Joy Maulion. (2015, August 21). Emerging literary genres in the 21st century
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 E. (2020a, January 14). 7 Flash Fiction Stories That Are Worth (a Tiny Amount of) Your
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worth-a-tiny-amount-of-your-time/

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