Literature and Other Subjects; Building Words with Prefixes and Suffixes

25 min

In June 1816 an eighteen-year-old Englishwoman, Mary Godwin (soon to be Mary Shelley), sat by Lake Geneva listening to the poets Lord Byron and Percy Shelley discuss whether electricity, then called galvanism, might one day bring a dead body back to life. Her answer was a novel, Frankenstein, published in 1818. In it a young scientist builds a living creature, then runs from what he has made. Telling his story to the ship's captain who has rescued him from the Arctic ice, Victor Frankenstein warns:

Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge…
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818)

Two centuries later, scientists arguing about cloning or artificial intelligence still say "Frankenstein". A novel has become part of a scientific debate. Literature is never only about literature: it is a meeting place for every subject you study.

Definition

interdisciplinary reading: reading a literary work with the questions and knowledge of another subject (history, science, geography…), and using literature to throw light on that subject.
context: the historical, social and cultural situation in which a text was written and is read.
morpheme: the smallest part of a word that carries meaning. un + forget + able has three.
root (base): the core of a word, which carries its main meaning. liter (from Latin littera, "letter") in literary.
affix: a morpheme added to a root. A prefix goes before it and usually changes the meaning (retell); a suffix goes after it and often changes the word class (narrator, narrative).

Part 1: Literature meets the other subjects

Subject	What literature gives it	Example
History	The feel of a period: how ordinary people lived, spoke and suffered, which records often leave out	Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart (1958) shows an Igbo village in Nigeria as missionaries and colonial rule arrive at the end of the 1800s
Biology, medicine and health	Human stories about illness, epidemics and the ethics of science	Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) describes London during the plague of 1665: shut-up houses, fear and rumour; Frankenstein asks what scientists owe to what they create
Geography and environment	Landscape, climate and land use seen through human eyes	Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country (1948) opens with green hills above valleys where the soil has been torn away, and links ruined land to broken families
Religious studies	Sacred texts contain stories, poems and parables that are read as literature too	The story of Joseph is told in Genesis (chapters 37 to 50) in the Bible and in Surah Yusuf (chapter 12) of the Qur'an
Mathematics	Pattern, counting and logic in poetry and puzzles	Lines of verse are measured by counting syllables and stresses; Lewis Carroll, author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865), was a mathematics lecturer at Oxford
Psychology	The inner life of characters: motive, fear, guilt, memory	Why does Victor Frankenstein run from his creature instead of caring for it?
Languages	Vocabulary, grammar in use, translation and style	Comparing a Kinyarwanda proverb with its English translation shows what is lost and kept
Music and fine arts	Songs are poems set to music; illustrations and plays turn words into images and action	Rwandan songs sung to the inanga often tell a story in verse

Two writers show how close the subjects can be. The Russian writer Anton Chekhov was a practising doctor, and the creator of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle, trained in medicine at Edinburgh; both put a doctor's habit of careful observation into their stories.

Warning

A novel is not a textbook. Defoe was a small child in 1665; his Journal is told by an invented narrator who signs himself only "H. F.". It is carefully researched fiction. Use literature to understand how a time felt, then check facts in historical sources.
Don't confuse literal (exact, word for word), literary (to do with literature) and literate (able to read and write). All three come from the Latin littera, "letter".
Dialogue does not mean "two people talking". The Greek prefix is dia- ("through, across"), not di- ("two"); a dialogue can have five speakers.

Part 2: Language focus: building words with prefixes and suffixes

Literary study has its own vocabulary, and most of it is built from a few roots and a set of affixes. Learn the parts and you can work out hundreds of words.

Prefixes: they change the meaning

Prefix	Meaning	Words you will meet in this course
un-	not	unreliable (narrator), unhappy (ending)
in-, il-, im-, ir-	not	inaccurate, illiterate, impossible, irregular (rhythm)
dis-	not; the opposite of	disbelief, dishonest
mis-	wrongly	misread, misunderstand
re-	again	retell, reread, rewrite
pre-, post-	before, after	preface, pre-colonial, postcolonial, postscript
anti-, ant-	against	antihero, antagonist
proto-, prot-	first	prototype, protagonist
auto-	self	autobiography
mono-, dia-	one; through, across	monologue (one speaker), dialogue (speech across people)
inter-	between	interpret, interaction
co-	together	co-author, coherent

The "not" prefix in- changes to suit the next sound: il- before l (illogical, illiterate), im- before b, m, p (imbalance, immortal, impossible) and ir- before r (irregular, irrelevant). That is why these words have a double letter.

Suffixes: they usually change the word class

Suffix	Makes a…	Examples
-er, -or, -ist	noun: a person who does it	writer, narrator, novelist, dramatist
-tion, -sion, -ment, -ness, -ity	noun: an action, state or quality	narration, conclusion, entertainment, darkness, creativity
-ism	noun: a movement or belief	Romanticism, realism, criticism
-al, -ic, -ary, -ive, -ous	adjective	oral, poetic, literary, narrative, humorous
-ise (-ize), -ify	verb	dramatise, summarise, personify
-ly	adverb	poetically, dramatically

Spelling rules when adding a suffix. (1) Drop a silent e before a suffix that starts with a vowel: imagine → imagination, narrate → narrator; keep it before a consonant: excite → excitement. (2) Change y to i after a consonant: happy → happiness, beauty → beautiful. (3) Double a final consonant after a short, stressed vowel: begin → beginning, forget → unforgettable; but visit → visited, because the stress is on the first syllable.

One root, a whole family

Word	Class	Meaning
literal	adjective	exact; taking words in their basic meaning
literacy	noun	the ability to read and write
literate / illiterate	adjective	able / not able to read and write
literary	adjective	to do with literature
literature	noun	imaginative works of spoken or written language

Worked example: the right form of the word

Task: Complete each sentence with the correct form of the word in brackets.

In 1817 the poet Coleridge said that readers of fantasy grant a "willing suspension of ___" (believe).
Step 1: after "of" we need a noun. Step 2: the noun of believe is belief. Step 3: "suspension of belief" makes no sense; the reader stops doubting, so we need the opposite: disbelief.
The story is told by an ___ narrator who lies to us (rely).
Step 1: before a noun we need an adjective: reliable, where y becomes i before -able. Step 2: a narrator who lies is not reliable, so add un-: unreliable. Note that "an" before a vowel sound fits.
Mary Shelley ___ a debate about science that is still going on (dramatic).
Step 1: the sentence needs a past-tense verb. Step 2: verb from drama: dramatise. Step 3: past tense: dramatised (American spelling: dramatized).
Rwanda has raised adult ___ through evening classes (literate).
Step 1: after an adjective ("adult") we need a noun. Step 2: literate → literacy (the -te becomes -cy, as in accurate → accuracy).

Tip

Read words from the inside out. Faced with a long new word, find the root first, then peel off the affixes one by one: un-forget-t-able: "forget" → "able to be forgotten" → "not able to be forgotten". In an exam, this lets you explain a word you have never seen.

"Prefixes and Suffixes", an English Language Learning Tips video from English with Cambridge. Listen for how a prefix changes meaning while a suffix changes the word class, and add two new examples of each to the tables above.

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Practice

Name three subjects other than English and give, for each, one way literature connects with it.
Why should a history student be careful when using Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year as evidence?
Split into prefix, root and suffix, and give the meaning: (a) retelling (b) irregular (c) prehistoric.
Add the correct "not" prefix: (a) ___logical (b) ___mortal (c) ___responsible (d) ___visible.
Give the word class of each word and one more word from the same family: (a) narrator (b) poetic (c) personify.
Complete with the right form of the word in brackets: (a) The ___ of the story is a girl of twelve. (narrate) (b) His speech was full of ___ (humour) jokes. (c) Many of the old tales were never written down because their tellers were ___ (literate).
Choose one novel, poem or story you know and explain in about 100 words how it could be used in a lesson in another subject.

Show answersHide answers

For example: history (a novel shows how people lived in a period); biology or health (Defoe's account of the plague; the ethics of science in Frankenstein); geography (landscape and erosion in Cry, the Beloved Country); religious studies (the Joseph story in Genesis and Surah Yusuf).
It is fiction: Defoe was a small child in 1665 and the narrator "H. F." is invented, although the book is carefully researched. It shows what the plague felt like, but its facts must be checked against historical records.
(a) re- (again) + tell + -ing: telling again. (b) ir- (not) + regular: not regular. (c) pre- (before) + historic (to do with history, i.e. written records): from the time before written records.
(a) illogical (b) immortal (c) irresponsible (d) invisible.
(a) noun (narration, narrate, narrative). (b) adjective (poet, poem, poetry, poetically). (c) verb (person, personal, personification).
(a) narrator (b) humorous (c) illiterate (these tellers could not read and write; the stories lived in memory).
Answers vary. A good answer names the work, the other subject and a specific link, e.g. Frankenstein in a biology lesson on medical ethics: Victor's refusal to care for his creature can open a discussion of a scientist's responsibility for the results of an experiment.

Quick check

A student quotes Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year as an eyewitness record of 1665. What is wrong with this?

Key points

Literature connects with history, science, health, geography, religion, mathematics, psychology, languages and the arts; read it with their questions, but check facts in proper sources, because a novel is not a textbook.
Prefixes change a word's meaning (un-, re-, pre-, post-, auto-); in- becomes il-, im- or ir- before l, b/m/p and r.
Suffixes usually change the word class (-or, -ist, -tion, -ism: nouns; -al, -ic, -ary, -ive: adjectives; -ise, -ify: verbs; -ly: adverbs). Watch the spelling rules for e, y and double consonants.

Sources and credits

Quotation from Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), Project Gutenberg: public domain. Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year (1722), Project Gutenberg: public domain. Coleridge's phrase is from Biographia Literaria (1817): public domain.
Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe) and Cry, the Beloved Country (Alan Paton) are in copyright and are only summarised here.
Image: Portrait of Mary Shelley, Richard Rothwell, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Video: Prefixes and Suffixes | English Language Learning Tips, English with Cambridge, embedded from YouTube.
The subject table, word-formation diagram, tables, worked example, notes and practice were written by Ganzaa.

1Part 1: Literature meets the other subjects

2Part 2: Language focus: building words with prefixes and suffixes

Prefixes: they change the meaning

Suffixes: they usually change the word class

One root, a whole family

Part 1: Literature meets the other subjects

Part 2: Language focus: building words with prefixes and suffixes