hi guys this is jen and i make useful english lit study videos on shakespeare poetry fiction literary devices and more to help you get top grades so in today's video i want to clarify a key concept that seems to trip up lots of students and that's the difference between form and structure if you're studying english literature you're bound to have come across these two terms and they're so important because your ability to engage with form and structure not just language is one of the things that will set you apart as a top grade student some students avoid talking about form and structure and stick to talking about the lower hanging fruits like simile and personification that's usually because they're unsure as to what form and structure mean or how they're different and how they can go about discussing them so in the rest of this video let's clear it up once and for all so that next time you analyze a passage you'll be able to take on language form and structure with all the confidence of a top grade lit student so fun fact about jen my dad loves cars and ever since i was little he would often regale me with the latest slowdown from top gear much to my indifference sorry dad okay so you might be like cool story gem but what does this have to do with anything well that's because i want us to think about form and structure in terms of cars in literature form would be the different types of cars say an suv a truck a hatchback a saloon a caravan you name it while structure would be the specific parts of a car your cylinders valves camshaft pistons tires etc so just as a range rover sport consists of six cylinders so a villanelle contains six stances specifically five test sets followed by one core train and just as a ford mustang is powered by eight cylinders so petrarchan sonnet always begins with eight lines i.e an octave range rover sport and ford mustang are the forms while the number of cylinders are part of the structure so in a similar vein the villanelle and petrarchan sonnet are forms whereas the test sets chord trains and octaves are all structural components in poetry what we'll see from this analogy then is that structure creates form in poetry structural elements such as stats line links rhyme schemes etc often help us determine a poem's form for example a text which contains five seven five syllables in three consecutive lines would be a haiku which is a poetic form likewise in prose structural elements such as rising action climax cliffhangers or even more granular features like epigraphs paragraphs and point of view shifts help us understand whether the text is a short story allegory essay novel etc to flip it around then another way of thinking about the relationship between form and structure is that form contains structure so in literary analysis these two terms are dependent not separate concepts which means that any observation of structure must also lead to a discussion on form and vice versa by the way guys i'd massively appreciate it if you could hit the thumbs up button below subscribe to my channel and switch on that bell notification if you find this video helpful so far this would really help me carry on making these useful english lit study videos so that you can get top grades in the subject and we can inspire more people to enjoy the study of literature [Music] so the first thing we'll notice about the poem structure is that it's largely regular and consistent except for the last stanza which contains four lines compared to the three lines in each of the previous stances so since we know that three line stances are called test sets and four line stances are called or trains we'll be able to make our first comment about poems structure it contains five ter sets followed by one portrait we'll also see that the final lines of each stanza are two repeated alternating lines and that there are two sets of end rhymes which overarch the entire poem therefore also being of a chain rhyme scheme together these features fit the prescription for a villanelle which is a fixed first form that had originated in france and was later adopted by english poets without making our structural observations we wouldn't have been able to conclude that the form of this poem is a villanelle unless of course you already knew that by googling but that doesn't count so let's now look at one more example this time from prose a good text to use here is mary shelley's frankenstein so what's so special about this novel is that it begins with a series of letters specifically from the north pole explorer robert wharton who writes to his sister margaret now these letters are used to introduce the scientist frankenstein's personal account of creating the monster within which the monster's anecdote is also included halfway into the narrative the final chapter resumes the letter format in walton's voice which echoes the epistolary frame structure introduced at the start and we know that pistillary means of a letter format what these structural shifts tell us is that the form of frankenstein is an embedded narrative as evidenced by the tripartite story within story within story structure those three voices being of robert walton frankenstein and frankenstein's monster and there you go guys i hope this video clarifies for you how form is different from structure but more importantly how they are related and how you can comment on them accurately in your next literature essay remember structure creates form and form contains structure and as always if you found this video helpful please do hit the thumbs up button below subscribe to my channel and switch on that bell notification so you never miss a top grade english lit study video from yours truly and i'll see you guys in the next video bye