We explain what a description is and what a literary description consists of. Also, the types of description that exist.
What is description?
The description is a discursive tool that allows to explain the characteristics of the subjects, of the events that take place, of the physical spaces where they develop, even of the sensations that one has, both in real situations or in texts from fiction.
The description includes everything that man can characterize. It is about putting into words those ideas that persons they figure in their mind by what comes to them, fundamentally, through their senses, and they want to manifest it through the language.
The prayers Descriptive are not action sentences. The descriptions characterize something and do not assign it particular behaviors, but rather stop at its general characteristics.
Even when what you want to describe is an action, the description will be a world apart where you are not telling how it behaves, but how it is. The description often characterizes something in relation to a given time and space. The historical novel, for example, places great value on this resource.
Literary description
People have always sought to put into words not only what they see, but also what they feel, and that is where the literature. In the stories, the fragments in which you want to describe some objective phenomenon, such as the events of a trial, and those in which you want to explain the characteristics of something more subjective, such as the sensations of a person, are usually differentiated.
- In the first case, the character of the personal, since the one who writes is simply a witness who sees or hears something, and is communicating it as it happened. In a way, it operates like a camera or a tape recorder.
- In the second case, there is a place for the pen to stand out, and if the description is good, it sinks deep into the psyche or soul of the reader, to the point that they can even take those sensations as their own.
It can be said that the cases of objective descriptions prevail in journalistic and popular science texts, while subjective descriptions are common in books. stories or in the novels.
Types of descriptions
Descriptions can be classified according to what will be described. Let's look at the different classes:
- Topography. Understood as the description of the scenery of a piece of terrain that necessarily involves personal optics, and probably human experiences that influence the perception over space.
- Chronography That description of a period of weather. As said, it is not about describing an action, but about talking about the characteristics (social, natural, political, cultural) of an era.
- Post-topography, etopeia, and portraiture. To refer to the descriptions about living beings (people or animals). In the first case, we speak exclusively of the physical characteristics, even if it were a portion of the body (if that portion is exaggerated, it is a caricature). In the Ethiopian, it is spoken of the social and moral qualities (character, personality, traditions). The portrait aims to make a comprehensive description of the person, encompassing the previous two.
- Crinography. When what is being described is an object.
Undoubtedly the descriptions will vary according to who performs it and according to the point of view that he adopts. Literature draws heavily on this resource.