Literary appreciation revolves around reading, understanding, analyzing and making judgement of a work of art. It helps in detecting the style, theme, diction, figurative devices, tone, and other elements of literature.

Literary appreciation makes the reader get the meanings of a book, get the value and make it relevant in contemporary society. Also, it enables the reader to journey into the writer’s muse, thought, values and emotions when s/he is writing the work of art. It makes the reader go into details, in fact, at times, even more than the writer’s knowledge of his/her work.

By reading a work of art – drama, prose, poetry – a reader is expected to study, understand, analyse and evaluate the literary work. S/he should be able to make critical judgement concerning what s/he reads.

So, in any examination, students will be given unseen prose, drama or poetry, it is now left to the literary wit of the students that will determine his/her success in the aspect of making critical judgement about appreciation of a work of literature.

The Benefits of Literary Appreciation

Literary appreciation helps the reader think critically. The reader will have the opportunity to think about the effect of a literary work in contemporary society.
It gives the reader value. By evaluating a work of art, the reader tends to learn much and know much and it formulates the reader’s knowledge.
Literary appreciation helps the reader to undergo the feelings of the writer. The reader will traverse into the source of the writer’s disposition to write the work of art. Through literary appreciation, the reader will be connected to the emotion of the writer while writing the literary work.
It shows the values and the beauty of the work of art. The essence of writing any book of literature is to give value to society. People tend to learn about different cultures, plots, stories, and settings used in literary works. And it makes the people understand the reason for writing the work of art.
Literary appreciation enables the proper analysis of literary work. Not many books are embellished with the sauces (literary devices). There are many that really lack the elements of literature. So, literary appreciation will help people to make critical judgement about the work if it is literary or non literary.
Elements of Literary Appreciation

The elements of literary appreciation. I have discussed drama, prose and poetry with their types and elements and also figures of speech. All of them are essential in literary appreciation.

First off, in any work of art, there are six important elements that I will first discuss here; they are; subject matter, background, setting, style, theme, literary devices.

Subject Matter
Subject matter is also known as summary. It is a detailed account, though brief, of the work of art. It is the issues or points that the writer discusses in the book. Each work of art has topics that are discussed or shown: the topics are the subject matter. It is the summary of the plot of a story. The difference between the plot and subject matter is longevity. However, the subject matter tries not to go into all details but the important ones in the work of art.

Background
No one just takes a pen to write a story, drama or poem. However, something propel him or her to put pen on paper in order to write. The background gives the issues that propel the writer to write the story. It gives the reader cursor to see things beyond what is written in the book. The background revolves around the setting, the issues that make the writer write the work of art, the reasons why s/he writes it and the points s/he is trying to make.

For instance: Richard Wright’s writings center on the racial segregation that the black in America passed through in his lifetime. He wrote about their plights – marginalization, imposition, racial segregation, and other unpalatable experiences experienced by Africans living in American in the early 1900s.

Setting
Setting refers to the time and place of a literary work. Every literary work, either prose, drama, or poetry has a setting. It is noteworthy for any literatus to understand the time and place of a work of art. The place may be physical, spatial, temporal or psychological.

The reader has to study the environment of which the plot takes place. It can be on a tree, in the house, in a palace, at the river bank, in a hotel, just to mention a few. In a bigger sense, it can be a state or a country or a continent. The reader must take cognizance of the place in a work of art.

Also, to study the time is essential. A work of art can be BC or AD; it can be the time of monarchy, or the time of civilization. It can also be in any century. What makes the reader to know the time of a work of art is their dressing, the words that the characters or poetic persona use, the place that they live and everything that they do.

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Also read:

Meter in Poetry
https://www.emeritushub.com/meter-in-poetry

Rhyme in Poetry
https://www.emeritushub.com/rhyme-in-poetry/

Rhyme Scheme
https://www.emeritushub.com/rhyme-scheme/

Figures of Speech
https://www.emeritushub.com/figure-of-speech/