LA Praxis: Language Arts Content
Elements of a biography:
Describe and discuss the life a a real person
Information is based on fact.
First person accounts are used when available
Incidents, dialogue, and people are accurate and from a reliable source
The person's life story is told with respect to other people and events of the time in which they lived.
Develops an understanding of the people, place, times, and events in which the person lived.
Tells the story in a style and tone that the reader/listener can relate to the person and believe in their
humanness.
Elements of Drama
The essential elements of drama are:
Character
Plot
Theme
Dialogue
Convention
Genre
Audience
Stagecraft
Design
Conversions
Visit this website for detailed information: http://litera1no4.tripod.com/elements.html.
Aristotle’s Six Elements of Drama
Aristotle considered these six things to be essential to good drama.
Plot: This is what happens in the play. Plot refers to the action; the basic storyline of the play.
Theme: While plot refers to the action of the play, theme refers to the meaning of the play.
Theme is the main idea or lesson to be learned from the play. In some cases, the theme of a play is
obvious; other times it is quite subtle.
Characters: Characters are the people (sometimes animals or ideas) portrayed by the actors in
the play. It is the characters who move the action, or plot, of the play forward.
Dialogue: This refers to the words written by the playwright and spoken by the characters in the
play. The dialogue helps move the action of the play along.
Music/Rhythm: While music is often featured in drama, in this case Aristotle was referring to the
rhythm of the actors' voices as they speak.
Spectacle: This refers to the visual elements of a play: sets, costumes, special effects, etc.
Spectacle is everything that the audience sees as they watch the play.
In modern theater, this list has changed slightly, although you will notice that many of the elements
remain the same. The list of essential elements in modern theater are:
Character
Plot
Theme
Dialogue
Convention
Genre
Audience
The first four, character, plot, theme and dialogue remain the same, but the following additions are now
also considered essential elements of drama.
Convention: These are the techniques and methods used by the playwright and director to
create the desired stylistic effect.
Genre: Genre refers to the type of play. Some examples of different genres include, comedy,
tragedy, mystery and historical play.
Audience: This is the group of people who watch the play. Many playwrights and actors
consider the audience to be the most important element of drama, as all of the effort put in to writing
and producing a play is for the enjoyment of the audience.
Elements of an epic poem
An epic poem is a long poem narrating the heroic
exploits of an individual in a way central to the
beliefs and culture of his society. Typical elements are
fabulous adventures, superhuman deeds, polyphonic
composition, majestic language and a craftsmanship
deploying the full range of literary devices,
from lyrical todramatic. Nonetheless, the first epics —
Iliad,Odyssey, Mahabharata, Ramayana — were
created and transmitted orally, a tradition still seen
in Serbian guslars and storytellers throughout Asia.
Being so demanding, epic poetry is counted among man's noblest
creations. Gilgamesh,Mahabharata, Ramayana, Iliad, Odyssey,Aeneid, Beowulf, Poema de mio Cid, La Chanson de
Roland, Divine Comedy, Jerusalem Delivered,Orlando Furiosa, os Lusíadas, Faerie Queen, andParadise Lost are still read
with admiration and enthusiasm. Some long poems are better called mock heroic or satire — The Rape of Lock, Don
Juan, — and others are magnificent failures:Prelude, Hyperion, Idylls of the King, Cantos,There is also the pastoral
tradition, fromTheocritus through Virgil to Milton and others, but the setting is an idealised landscape and the heroic
element is missing.
The Elements and Structure of a Formal Essay
In this class, we will be asking you to use the writing process to write
formal, college level essays. Formal essays must have five basic elements
if they are to be successful:
1. A strong thesis statement with logical supporting points.
2. Body paragraphs that discuss the supporting points in the order
they are mentioned in the thesis statement.
3. Good transitions between paragraphs.
4. A conclusion which summarizes what has been said in the body of
the paper.
5. Appropriate diction and tone.
These five elements are absolutely essential. We will be grading your
papers on whether or not the five elements are present. Each of these
elements is discussed below. At the end of this document is an outline
and brief description of standard essay structure.
1. The Thesis Statement
As you learned from the “Reader as Writer” reading, a thesis is a statement
of fact or opinion that you will defend in the course of your paper. The
thesis statement includes the reasons or points you will be making to
support your initial statement. A thesis statement does two vitally important
things. 1) it establishes the subject and purpose of your paper, 2) it gives
your readers a roadmap of the points that will be discussed in the paper.
Here is an example of an effective thesis statement:
Overall, online learning offers many advantages to a diverse
array of students. Disabled students, adults returning to school
and rural students all benefit greatly from online learning.
Online learning does not come without problems though.
Computers can crash and servers can go down. Dealing with
these problems can be time consuming and frustrating.
Cindy’s paragraph is effective because it states the writer’s opinion (online
learning offers many advantages to a diverse array of students, but online
learning does not come without problems) and her reasons for this
opinion. In the body of her essay, the author went on to discuss in detail 1)
advantages to disabled students; 2) advantages to returning adult
students; 3) advantages to rural students; 4) disadvantages to all students.
Thus, her thesis served as a very effective roadmap for what was to come
in the essay.
Here is an example of an ineffective thesis statement:
I enrolled in my first online computer class this summer. So far I
learned that there are definitely some disadvantages and
advantages of an online class. I feel that I need the interaction
that you get with a usual classroom environment. I like to know
how I'm doing in the class, being able to have questions
answered right away, and meeting my fellow students. I guess
that I am a people person and like the interaction that a
classroom has to offer.
John’s paragraph is ineffective because the reader has no idea what the
author is going to discuss in the paper. Each sentence is a possible topic,
but there is nothing to indicate how the ideas connect to one another, which
ideas are important, or what points the author is going to use to support his
ideas. (Top of Page)
2. Body Paragraphs
As noted above, your body paragraphs need to directly and specifically
discuss the points mentioned in your thesis statement in the order they
are mentioned in your thesis statement. If you don’t do this, your
roadmap isn’t just invalid, it’s misleading, and your readers will become
confused.
When you write the body of your paper, you should always be looking back
at your thesis to see that you’re following the roadmap. If, as you’re writing,
you think of another point it’s important and logical to make, you need to
revise your thesis so that the roadmap is still valid.
A body paragraph takes a point –for example, advantages of online
learning for disabled students—and discuss it in detail, giving examples
and evidence to support that point. Here’s Cindy’s body paragraph on
advantages of online learning for disabled students:
Disabled students are one group of people who benefit greatly
from online learning. Many disabled students face great
obstacles when trying to receive a college education. Just
getting to school can be difficult and expensive. Many schools
do not have specialized computer programs that can help blind
or deaf students. Though schools are now required to provide
sign language interpreters for deaf students, many still miss
things that are discussed in class. Schools are often large,
making it hard for some students to even get to the classrooms.
With online learning, disabled students no longer have to worry
about these things. They are now on the same level as
everyone else.
You see how Cindy has given us examples and reasons why online
learning is advantageous for the disabled. Notice how in her thesis she
simply lists the disabled as one of the groups that benefit from online
learning. She uses the body paragraph to discuss this point in depth and
provide evidence to support it. (Top of Page)
3. Transitions
Providing logical connections between ideas is one of the most important
keys to good writing. If you and I are talking about how uncomfortable the
hot weather has been, and all of a sudden I say “Lobo, my pet slug died,”
you’re going to be completely confused. You won’t know how I got from
the weather to the tragic death of Lobo. What’s missing is the transition,
the thought that links one idea to the next.
Let’s say, on the other hand, that we’re talking about the hot weather, and I
remark “The hot weather isn’t just uncomfortable; it’s dangerous too. In
fact, Lobo my pet slug, insisted on going outside for his daily walk and he
died of heat prostration in two minutes flat.” I’ve built a bridge between the
two ideas with one simple sentence that connects the old idea (hot weather
is uncomfortable) with the new idea (hot weather is dangerous).
The good news about transitions is that they don’t have to be
complicated. They can be as simple as one word or a single
sentence. You just need to be sure that as you read over your paper you
ask yourself what the connection between each of your ideas is. For a list
of good transition words, see the “Paragraphs” document in the “Grammar”
folder under Course Documents. (Top of Page)
4. The Conclusion
It is said that “A conclusion is the place where you got tired of
thinking.” However, this is not supposed to be the case in your
essays. Your conclusion serves two specific functions: 1) it summarizes
what has been said in the body of the paper without repeating it, and 2) it
provides the reader with a relevant final thought on what you want them to
do, think, believe, or understand, now that they've read your essay. Note
that a conclusion is definitely not the place to introduce new ideas.
Here’s a case study of a good conclusion. Maureen was writing about the
positive and negative aspects of online communities. Her thesis statement
was:
Having a virtual classroom as the sole source of instruction is a
growing trend with several wonderful advantages. We can have
discussion where each person’s contribution is uninterrupted,
where gender is not necessarily a factor, where appearances
does not distract us and where many disabilities are no longer a
barrier. There is potential for misunderstanding, false identities,
magnified emotions, and information overload, but the
advantages balance the negatives to make virtual classrooms a
welcome addition to our educational system.
In the body of her paper, Mo discussed the points she raised, setting an
optimistic tone both about the advantages and about the fact that problems
with online classes were resolvable. Her conclusion ties these ideas
together, reminds the reader of thesis without repeating it, and leaves the
reader with a relevant final thought.
As virtual classrooms and our educational systems evolve into
the mainstream, we will need to find the balance between the
advantages and challenges of this new forum for education.
The difficulties the online environment poses do not outweigh
its advantages, particularly since there are solutions to many of
these problems. Ultimately, the fact that education is growing
to include the internet as a standard learning option means we
will have another forum for people to flourish and develop in
their intellect and ability. This is a wonderful opportunity that will
benefit us all.
Notice that Mo hasn’t added any new ideas or arguments in her
conclusion. If you get to the end of your paper and say “Oh! I just thought
of another thing,” do not tack it on to the conclusion. As stated above,
“When you write the body of your paper, you should always be looking
back at your thesis to see that you’re following the roadmap. If, as you’re
writing, you think of another point it’s important and logical to make, you
need to revise your thesis so that the roadmap is still valid.”
Anna’s pet peeve: do not cheat by using the words “in conclusion” to
announce the arrival of your conclusion. The content of your concluding
paragraph should make clear that it is in fact the conclusion without you
having to say it. (Top of Page)
5. Appropriate Diction and Tone
The purpose of this class is to teach you how to write formal, college level
essays. Part of writing these essays is learning the diction (word choice)
and tone customary in this kind of writing. Here are some guidelines for the
appropriate diction and tone of your essays. Note that these guidelines do
not apply to the other kinds of writing you do in this class.
You are writing for an audience of classmates and teachers.
You are speaking to these people in a professional or formal
capacity, as opposed to a casual and friendly capacity (such as we
use in our chat room or email exchanges). Imagine you are dressed
in your nicest clothes and speaking to an audience that has come to
hear you and learn something from you.
Your audience has a basic understanding of your topic and does not
need common or simple terms explained to them.
You should not use slang or informal language in them. One of the
problems with John’s thesis statement in the Thesis section above is
that tone is much to informal.
Your focus should be on facts and ideas rather than rumor and
conjecture.
You should not include “I believe,” “I think,” “I feel,” “In my opinion,”
etc. in your essay. It is assumed that an essay represents your ideas
and opinions. These are useless fillers. Don’t believe me? Try
crossing those phrases out, and you’ll find your sentence works just
as well without them. Note: it’s perfectly fine for you to discuss your
own specific experiences (“Once when I was in a chat room, I had a
five hour conversation with someone about snails.”)
Do not use any version of the phrase “It goes without saying.” If
something goes without saying, your reader will wonder why you are
bothering to say it. You should wonder too. The same goes for “not to
mention.”
Avoid rhetorical questions like “How would you like to . . .” or “What
do you think of that?” These direct addresses to an audience set an
informal, “talky,” tone and don’t actually accomplish anything but
taking up space (since, of course) your audience cannot answer you.
(Top of Page)
Standard Essay Structure
Here’s an overview of how a standard essay is structured. Just something
to keep in mind as you work on formulating your thesis and start thinking
about writing your rough draft.
I. Thesis (A statement of opinion that you will discuss and defend in your
essay)
Example: As more and more people integrate the internet into their work
and private lives, we will see a dramatic increase in both written and verbal
communication skills.
A. Sub Point #1 (Sub points break the thesis down into parts which
you will then discuss at greater length in the body of the paper. Sub
points serve the reader as a road map to the organization of your
paper.)
Example: Writing skills naturally improve with internet use, since almost all
online communication is conducted through the written word.
B. Sub Point #2
Example: In addition, while internet users become more proficient at
writing, their spoken communication skills will also improve, because
writing will give them practice organizing and expressing their ideas.
(Note: you may have more than two sub points)
II. Body
A. Discussion of Sub Point #1
Explain this idea in more detail.
Raise possible objections, problems with this idea.
Answer these objects and defend this idea.
B. Discussion of Sub Point #2
Explain this idea in more detail.
Raise possible objections, problems with this idea.
Answer these objectionss and defend this idea.
Discussion of further Sub Points if you have listed them in your
thesis.
III. Conclusion
Your conclusion restates your thesis (puts it in different words), and leaves
the reader with a relevant final thought on what you want the reader to do,
think, believe, or understand, now that they've read your essay.
History (from Greek ἱστορία - historia, meaning "inquiry, knowledge acquired by investigation"
[2])
is
the study of the human past, with special attention to the written record. Scholars who write about history
are called historians. It is a field of research which uses a narrative to examine and analyse the sequence
of events, and it often attempts to investigate objectively the patterns of cause and effect that determine
events.[3][4] Historians debate the nature of history and its usefulness. This includes discussing the study
of the discipline as an end in itself and as a way of providing "perspective" on the problems of the
present.[5][3][6][7] The stories common to a particular culture, but not supported by external sources (such
as the legends surrounding King Arthur) are usually classified as cultural heritage rather than the
"disinterested investigation" needed by the discipline of history.[8][9]
Literary Terms
Aesthetic distance: degree of emotional involvement in a work of art. The most obvious
example of aesthetic distance (also referred to simply as distance) occurs with paintings. Some
paintings require us to stand back to see the design of the whole painting; standing close, we see
the technique of the painting, say the brush strokes, but not the whole. Other paintings require us
to stand close to see the whole; their design and any figures become less clear as we move back
from the painting.
Similarly, fiction, drama, and poetry involve the reader emotionally to different degrees.
Emotional distance, or the lack of it, can be seen with children watching a TV program or a
movie; it becomes real for them. Writers like Faulkner, the Bronte sisters, or Faulkner pull the
reader into their work; the reader identifies closely with the characters and is fully involved with
the happenings. Hemingway, on the other hand, maintains a greatr distance from the reader.
Alliteration: the repetition of the same sound at the beginning of a word, such as the repetition
of b sounds in Keats's "beaded bubbles winking at the brim" ("Ode to a Nightingale") or
Coleridge's "Five miles meandering in a mazy motion ("Kubla Khan"). A common use for
alliteration is emphasis. It occurs in everyday speech in such prhases as "tittle-tattle," "bag and
baggage," "bed and board," "primrose path," and "through thick and thin" and in sayings like
"look before you leap."
Some literary critics call the reptition of any sounds alliteration. However, there are
specialized terms for other sound-repetitions. Consonance repeats consonants, but not the
vowels, as in horror-hearer. Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds, please-niece-ski-tree.
See rhyme.
An allusion: a brief reference to a person, event, place, or phrase. The writer assumes will
recognize the reference. For instance, most of us would know the difference between a
mechanic's being as reliable as George Washington or as reliable as Benedict Arnold. Allusions
that are commonplace for readers in one era may require footnotes for readers in a later time.
Ambiguity: (1) a statement which has two or more possible meanings; (2) a statement whose
meaning is unclear. Depending on the circumstances, ambiguity can be negative, leading to
confusion or even disaster (the ambiguous wording of a general's note led to the deadly charge of
the Light Brigade in the Crimean War). On the other hand, writers often use it to achieve special
effects, for instance, to reflect the complexity of an issue or to indicate the difficulty, perhaps the
impossibility, of determining truth.
The title of the country song "Heaven's Just a Sin Away" is deliberately ambiguous; at a
religious level, it means that committing a sin keeps us out of heaven, but at a physical level, it
means that committing a sin (sex) will bring heaven (pleasure). Many of Hamlet's statements to
the King, to Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern, and to other characters are deliberately ambiguous,
to hide his real purpose from them.
Ballad: a relatively short narrative poem, written to be sung, with a simple and dramatic action.
The ballads tell of love, death, the supernatural, or a combination of these. Two characteristics of
the ballad are incremental repetition and the ballad stanza. Incremental repetition repeats one or
more lines with small but significant variations that advance the action. The ballad stanza is four
lines; commonly, the first and third lines contain four feet or accents, the second and fourth lines
contain three feet. Ballads often open abruptly, present brief descriptions, and use concise
dialogue.
The folk ballad is usually anonymous and the presentation impersonal. The literary
ballad deliberately imitates the form and spirit of a folk ballad. The Romantic poets were
attracted to this form, as Longfellow with "The Wreck of the Hesperus," Coleridge with the
"Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (which is longer and more elaborate than the folk balad) and
Keats with "La Belle Dame sans Merci" (which more closely resembles the folk ballad).
Characterization: the way an author presents characters. In direct presentation, a character is
described by the author, the narrator or the other characters. In indirect presentation, a character's
traits are revealed by action and speech.
Characters can be discussed in a number of ways.
The protagonist is the main character, who is not necessarily a hero or a heroine.
The antagonist is the opponent; the antagonist may be society, nature, a person, or an
aspect of the protagonist. The antihero, a recent type, lacks or seems to lack heroic traits.
A persona is a fictional character. Sometimes the term means the mask or alter-ego of
the author; it is often used for first person works and lyric poems, to distinguish the writer
of the work from the character in the work.
Characters may be classified as round (three-dimensional, fully developed) or as flat
(having only a few traits or only enough traits to fulfill their function in the work); as
developing (dynamic) characters or as static characters.
A foil is a secondary character who contrasts with a major character; in Hamlet, Laertes
and Fortinbras, whose fathers have been killed, are foils for Hamlet.
Convention: (1) a rule or practice based upon general consent and upheld by society at large; (2)
an arbitrary rule or practice recognized as valid in any particular art or discipline, such as
literature or art (NED). For example, when we read a comic book, we accept that a light bulb
appearing above the head of a comic book character means the character suddently got an idea.
Literary convention: a practice or device which is accepted as a necessary, useful, or
given feature of a genre, e.g., the proscenium stage (the "picture-frame" stage of most
theaters), a soliloquy, the epithet or boast in the epic (which those of you who took Core
Studies 1 will be familiar with).
Stock character: character types of a genre, e.g., the heroine disguised as a man in
Elizabethan drama, the confidant, the hardboiled detective, the tightlipped sheriff, the girl
next door, the evil hunters in a Tarzan movie, ethnic or racial stereotypes, the cruel
stepmother and Prince Charming in fairy tales.
Stock situation: frequently recurring sequence of action in a genre, e.g., rags-to-riches,
boy-meets-girl, the eternal triangle, the innocent proves himself or herself.
Stock response: a habitual or automatic response based on the reader's beliefs or
feelings, rather than on the work itself. A moralistic person might be shocked by any
sexual scene and condemn a book or movie as dirty; a sentimentalist is automatically
moved by any love story, regardless of the quality of the writing or the acting; someone
requiring excitement may enjoy any violent story or movie, regardless of how mindless,
unmotivated or brutal the violence is.
Fiction: prose narrative based on imagination, usually the novel or the short story.
Genre: a literary species or form, e.g., tragedy, epic, comedy, novel, essay, biography, lyric
poem. Click here for a fuller discussion of genres.
Irony: the discrepancy between what is said and what is meant, what is said and what is done,
what is expected or intended and what happens, what is meant or said and what others
understand. Sometimes irony is classified into types: in situational irony, expectations aroused
by a situation are reversed; in cosmic irony or the irony of fate, misfortune is the result of fate,
chance, or God; in dramatic irony. the audience knows more than the characters in the play, so
that words and action have additional meaning for the audience; Socractic irony is named after
Socrates' teaching method, whereby he assumes ignorance and openness to opposing points of
view which turn out to be (he shows them to be) foolish. Click here for examples of irony.
Irony is often confused with sarcasm and satire:
Sarcasm is one kind of irony; it is praise which is really an insult; sarcasm generally
invovles malice, the desire to put someone down, e.g., "This is my brilliant son, who
failed out of college."
Satire is the exposure of the vices or follies of an indiviudal, a group, an institution, an
idea, a society, etc., usually with a view to correcting it. Satirists frequently use irony.
Language can be classified in a number of ways.
Denotation: the literal meaning of a word; there are no emotions, values, or images
associated with denotative meaning. Scientific and mathematical language carries few, if
any emotional or connotative meanings.
Connotation: the emotions, values, or images associated with a word. The intensity of
emotions or the power of the values and images associated with a word varies. Words
connected with religion, politics, and sex tend to have the strongest feelings and images
associated with them.
For most people, the word mother calls up very strong positive feelings and
associations--loving, self-sacrificing, always there for you, understanding; the denotative
meaning, on the other hand, is simply "a female animal who has borne one or more
chldren." Of course connotative meanings do not necessarily reflect reality; for instance,
if someone said, "His mother is not very motherly," you would immediately understand
the difference between motherly (connotation) and mother(denotation).
Abstract language refers to things that are intangilble, that is, which are perceived not
through the senses but by the mind, such as truth, God, education, vice, transportation,
poetry, war, love. Concrete language identifies things perceived through the senses
(touch, smell, sight, hearing, and taste), such as soft, stench, red, loud, or bitter.
Literal language means exactly what it says; a rose is the physical flower. Figurative
language changes the literal meaning, to make a meaning fresh or clearer, to express
complexity, to capture a physical or sensory effect, or to extend meaning. Figurative
language is also called figures of speech. The most common figures of speech are these:
o A simile: a comparison of two dissimilar things using "like" or "as", e.g., "my
love is like a red, red rose" (Robert Burns).
o A metaphor: a comparison of two dissimilar things which does not use "like" or
"as," e.g., "my love is a red, red rose" (Lilia Melani).
o Personification: treating abstractions or inanimate objects as human, that is,
giving them human attributes, powers, or feelings, e.g., "nature wept" or "the
wind whispered many truths to me."
o hyperbole: exaggeration, often extravagant; it may be used for serious or for
comic effect.
o Apostrophe: a direct address to a person, thing, or abstraction, such as "O
Western Wind," or "Ah, Sorrow, you consume us." Apostrophes are generally
capitalized.
o Onomatopoeia: a word whose sounds seem to duplicate the sounds they
describe--hiss, buzz, bang, murmur, meow, growl.
o Oxymoron: a statement with two parts which seem contradictory; examples: sad
joy, a wise fool, the sound of silence, or Hamlet's saying, "I must be cruel only to
be kind"
Elevated language or elevated style: formal, dignitifed language; it often uses more
elaborate figures of speech. Elevated language is used to give dignity to a hero (note the
speechs of heros like Achilles or Agamemnon in the Iliad), to express the superiority of
God and religious matters generally (as in prayers or in the King James version of the
Bible), to indicate the importance of certain events (the ritual language of the traditional
marriage ceremony), etc. It can also be used to reveal a self-important or a pretentious
character, for humor and/or for satire.
Lyric Poetry: a short poem with one speaker (not necessarily the poet) who expresses thought
and feeling. Though it is sometimes used only for a brief poem about feeling (like the sonnet).it
is more often applied to a poem expressing the complex evolution of thoughts and feeling, such
as the elegy, the dramatic monologue, and the ode. The emotion is or seems personal In classical
Greece, the lyric was a poem written to be sung, accompanied by a lyre. Click here for a
discussion of Reading Lyric Poetry.
Meter: a rhythm of accented and unaccented syllables which are organized into patterns,
called feet. In English poetry, the most common meters are these:
Iambic: a foot consisting of an unaccented and accented syllable. Shakespeare often uses
iambic, for example the beginning of Hamlet's speech (the accented syllables are
italicized), "To be or not to be. Listen for the accents in this line from Marlowe,
"Come live with me and be my love." English seems to fall naturally into iambic patterns,
for it is the most common meter in English.
Trochaic: a foot consisting of an accented and unaccented syllable.
Longfellow's Hiawatha uses this meter, which can quickly become singsong (the
accented syllable is italicized):
"By the shores of GitcheGumee
By the shining Big-Sea-water."
The three witches' speech in Macbeth uses it: "Double, double, toil and trouble."
Anapestic: a foot consisting of two unaccented syllables and an accented syllable. These
lines from Shelley's Cloud are anapestic:
"Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb
I arise and unbuild it again."
Dactylic: a foot consisting of an accented syllable and two unaccented syllables, as in
these words: swimingly, mannikin, openly.
Spondee: a foot consisting of two accented syllables, as in the word heartbreak. In
English, this foot is used occasionally, for variety or emphasis.
Pyrrhic: a foot consisting of two unaccented syllables, generally used to vary the
rhythm.
A line is named for the number of feet it contains: monometer: one foot, dimeter: two
feet, trimeter: three feet, tetrameter: four feet, pentameter: five feet, hexameter:six
feet, heptameter: seven feet.
The most common metrical lines in English are tetrameter (four feet) and pentameter (five
feet). Shakespeare frequently uses unrhymed iambic pentameter in his plays; the technical name
for this line is blank verse. In this course, I will not be asking you to identify meters and
metrical lines, but I would like you to have some awareness of their existence.
Modern
English poetry is metrical, i.e., it relies on accented and unaccented syllables. Not all poetry
does; Anglo-Saxon poetry relied on a system of alliteration. Skillful poets rarely use one meter
throughout a poem but use these meters in combinations; however, a poem generally has one
dominant meter.
Ode: usually a lyric poem of moderate length, with a serious subject, an elevated style, and an
elaborate stanza pattern.There are various kinds of odes, which we don't have to worry about in
an introductiory course like this. The ode often praises people, the arts of music and poetry,
natural scenes, or abstract concepts. The Romantic poets used the ode to explore both personal or
general problems; they often started with a meditation on something in nature, as did Keats in
"Ode to a Nightingale" or Shelley in"Ode to the West Wind." Click here for a fuller discussion
of the ode.
Paradox: a statement whose two parts seem contradictory yet make sense with more thought.
Christ used paradox in his teaching: "They have ears but hear not." Or in ordinary conversation,
we might use a paradox, "Deep down he's really very shallow." Paradox attracts the reader's or
the listener's attention and gives emphasis.
Point of view: the perspective from which the story is told.
The most obvious point of view is probably first person or "I."
The omniscient narrator knows everything, may reveal the motivations, thoughts and
feelings of the characters, and gives the reader information.
With a limited omniscient narrator, the material is presented from the point of view of
a character, in third person.
The objective point of view presents the action and the characters' speech, without
comment or emotion. The reader has to interpret them and uncover their meaning.
A narrator may be trustworthy or untrustworthy, involved or uninvolved. Click here for an
illustration of these points of view in the story of Sleeping Beauty.
Rhyme:the repetition of similar sounds. In poetry, the most common kind of rhyme is end
rhyme, which occurs at the end of two or mroe lines. Internal rhyme occurs in the middle of a
line, as in these lines from Coleridge, "In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud" or "Whiles all
the night through fog-smoke white" ("The Ancient Mariner"). There are many kinds of end
rhyme:
True rhyme is what most people think of as rhyme; the sounds are nearly identical-notion, motion, potion, for example.
Weak rhyme, also called slant, oblique, approximate, or half rhyme, refers to words
with similar but not identical sounds, e.g., notion-nation, bear-bore, ear-are. Emily
Dickinson frequently uses partial rhymes.
Eye rhyme occurs when words look alike but don't sound alike--e.g., bear-ear.
Sonnet: a lyric poem consisting of fourteen lines. In English, generally the two basic kinds of
sonnets are the Italian or Petrarchan sonnet and the Shakespearean or Elizabethan sonnet. The
Italian/Petrarchan sonnet is named after Petrarch, an Italian Renaissance poet. The Petrarchan
sonnet consists of an octave (eight lines) and a sestet (six lines). The Shakespearean
sonnet consists of three quatrains (four lines each) and a concluding couplet (two lines). The
Petrarian sonnet tends to divide the thought into two parts; the Shakespearean, into four.
Structure: framework of a work of literature; the organization or over-all design of a work. The
structure of a play may fall into logical divisions and also a mechanical division of acts and
scenes. Groups of stories may be set in a larger structure or frame, like The Canterbury
Tales, The Decameron, or The Arabian Tales.
Style: manner of expression; how a speaker or writer says what he says. Notice the difference in
style of the opening paragraphs of Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms and Mark Twain's The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn:
In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and
the plain to the mountains. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white
in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the channels. Troops went by
the house and down the road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the trees. The
trunks of the trees too were dusty and the leaves fell early that year and we saw the troops
marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling and the
soldiers marching and afterward the road bare and white except for the leaves.
A Farewell to Arms
You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of
Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the
truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Symbol: in general terms, anything that stands for something else. Obvious examples are flags,
which symbolize a nation; the cross is a symbol for Christianity; Uncle Sam a symbol for the
United States. In literature, a symbol is expected to have significance. Keats starts his ode with a
real nightingale, but quickly it becomes a symbol, standing for a life of pure, unmixed joy; then
before the end of the poem it becomes only a bird again.
Tone: the writer's attitude toward the material and/or readers. Tone may be playful, formal,
intimate, angry, serious, ironic, outraged, baffled, tender, serene, depressed, etc.
Theme: (1) the abstract concept explored in a literary work; (2) frequently recurring ideas, such
as enjoy-life while-you-can; (3) repetition of a meaningful element in a work, such as references
to sight, vision, and blindness in Oedipus Rex. Sometimes the theme is also called the motif.
Themes in Hamlet include the nature of filial duty and the dilemma of the idealist in a non-ideal
situation. A theme in Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale" is the difficulty of correlating the ideal and
the real.
Tragedy: broadly defined, a literary and particularly a dramatic presentation of serious actions in
which the chief character has a disastrous fate. There are many different kinds and theories of
tragedy, starting with the Greeks and Aristole's definition in The Poetics, "the imitation of an
action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself...with incidents arousing
pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions." In the Middle Ages,
tragedy merely depicted a decline from happiness to misery because of some flaw or error of
judgment. Click here for a fuller discussion of tragedy and the tragic vision.
Aesthetic distance: degree of emotional involvement in a work of art. The most obvious
example of aesthetic distance (also referred to simply as distance) occurs with paintings. Some
paintings require us to stand back to see the design of the whole painting; standing close, we see
the technique of the painting, say the brush strokes, but not the whole. Other paintings require us
to stand close to see the whole; their design and any figures become less clear as we move back
from the painting.
Similarly, fiction, drama, and poetry involve the reader emotionally to different degrees.
Emotional distance, or the lack of it, can be seen with children watching a TV program or a
movie; it becomes real for them. Writers like Faulkner, the Bronte sisters, or Faulkner pull the
reader into their work; the reader identifies closely with the characters and is fully involved with
the happenings. Hemingway, on the other hand, maintains a greatr distance from the reader.
Alliteration: the repetition of the same sound at the beginning of a word, such as the repetition
of b sounds in Keats's "beaded bubbles winking at the brim" ("Ode to a Nightingale") or
Coleridge's "Five miles meandering in a mazy motion ("Kubla Khan"). A common use for
alliteration is emphasis. It occurs in everyday speech in such prhases as "tittle-tattle," "bag and
baggage," "bed and board," "primrose path," and "through thick and thin" and in sayings like
"look before you leap."
Some literary critics call the reptition of any sounds alliteration. However, there are
specialized terms for other sound-repetitions. Consonance repeats consonants, but not the
vowels, as in horror-hearer. Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds, please-niece-ski-tree.
See rhyme.
An allusion: a brief reference to a person, event, place, or phrase. The writer assumes will
recognize the reference. For instance, most of us would know the difference between a
mechanic's being as reliable as George Washington or as reliable as Benedict Arnold. Allusions
that are commonplace for readers in one era may require footnotes for readers in a later time.
Ambiguity: (1) a statement which has two or more possible meanings; (2) a statement whose
meaning is unclear. Depending on the circumstances, ambiguity can be negative, leading to
confusion or even disaster (the ambiguous wording of a general's note led to the deadly charge of
the Light Brigade in the Crimean War). On the other hand, writers often use it to achieve special
effects, for instance, to reflect the complexity of an issue or to indicate the difficulty, perhaps the
impossibility, of determining truth.
The title of the country song "Heaven's Just a Sin Away" is deliberately ambiguous; at a
religious level, it means that committing a sin keeps us out of heaven, but at a physical level, it
means that committing a sin (sex) will bring heaven (pleasure). Many of Hamlet's statements to
the King, to Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern, and to other characters are deliberately ambiguous,
to hide his real purpose from them.
Ballad: a relatively short narrative poem, written to be sung, with a simple and dramatic action.
The ballads tell of love, death, the supernatural, or a combination of these. Two characteristics of
the ballad are incremental repetition and the ballad stanza. Incremental repetition repeats one or
more lines with small but significant variations that advance the action. The ballad stanza is four
lines; commonly, the first and third lines contain four feet or accents, the second and fourth lines
contain three feet. Ballads often open abruptly, present brief descriptions, and use concise
dialogue.
The folk ballad is usually anonymous and the presentation impersonal. The literary
ballad deliberately imitates the form and spirit of a folk ballad. The Romantic poets were
attracted to this form, as Longfellow with "The Wreck of the Hesperus," Coleridge with the
"Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (which is longer and more elaborate than the folk balad) and
Keats with "La Belle Dame sans Merci" (which more closely resembles the folk ballad).
Characterization: the way an author presents characters. In direct presentation, a character is
described by the author, the narrator or the other characters. In indirect presentation, a character's
traits are revealed by action and speech.
Characters can be discussed in a number of ways.
The protagonist is the main character, who is not necessarily a hero or a heroine.
The antagonist is the opponent; the antagonist may be society, nature, a person, or an
aspect of the protagonist. The antihero, a recent type, lacks or seems to lack heroic traits.
A persona is a fictional character. Sometimes the term means the mask or alter-ego of
the author; it is often used for first person works and lyric poems, to distinguish the writer
of the work from the character in the work.
Characters may be classified as round (three-dimensional, fully developed) or as flat
(having only a few traits or only enough traits to fulfill their function in the work); as
developing (dynamic) characters or as static characters.
A foil is a secondary character who contrasts with a major character; in Hamlet, Laertes
and Fortinbras, whose fathers have been killed, are foils for Hamlet.
Convention: (1) a rule or practice based upon general consent and upheld by society at large; (2)
an arbitrary rule or practice recognized as valid in any particular art or discipline, such as
literature or art (NED). For example, when we read a comic book, we accept that a light bulb
appearing above the head of a comic book character means the character suddently got an idea.
Literary convention: a practice or device which is accepted as a necessary, useful, or
given feature of a genre, e.g., the proscenium stage (the "picture-frame" stage of most
theaters), a soliloquy, the epithet or boast in the epic (which those of you who took Core
Studies 1 will be familiar with).
Stock character: character types of a genre, e.g., the heroine disguised as a man in
Elizabethan drama, the confidant, the hardboiled detective, the tightlipped sheriff, the girl
next door, the evil hunters in a Tarzan movie, ethnic or racial stereotypes, the cruel
stepmother and Prince Charming in fairy tales.
Stock situation: frequently recurring sequence of action in a genre, e.g., rags-to-riches,
boy-meets-girl, the eternal triangle, the innocent proves himself or herself.
Stock response: a habitual or automatic response based on the reader's beliefs or
feelings, rather than on the work itself. A moralistic person might be shocked by any
sexual scene and condemn a book or movie as dirty; a sentimentalist is automatically
moved by any love story, regardless of the quality of the writing or the acting; someone
requiring excitement may enjoy any violent story or movie, regardless of how mindless,
unmotivated or brutal the violence is.
Fiction: prose narrative based on imagination, usually the novel or the short story.
Genre: a literary species or form, e.g., tragedy, epic, comedy, novel, essay, biography, lyric
poem. Click here for a fuller discussion of genres.
Irony: the discrepancy between what is said and what is meant, what is said and what is done,
what is expected or intended and what happens, what is meant or said and what others
understand. Sometimes irony is classified into types: in situational irony, expectations aroused
by a situation are reversed; in cosmic irony or the irony of fate, misfortune is the result of fate,
chance, or God; in dramatic irony. the audience knows more than the characters in the play, so
that words and action have additional meaning for the audience; Socractic irony is named after
Socrates' teaching method, whereby he assumes ignorance and openness to opposing points of
view which turn out to be (he shows them to be) foolish. Click here for examples of irony.
Irony is often confused with sarcasm and satire:
Sarcasm is one kind of irony; it is praise which is really an insult; sarcasm generally
invovles malice, the desire to put someone down, e.g., "This is my brilliant son, who
failed out of college."
Satire is the exposure of the vices or follies of an indiviudal, a group, an institution, an
idea, a society, etc., usually with a view to correcting it. Satirists frequently use irony.
Language can be classified in a number of ways.
Denotation: the literal meaning of a word; there are no emotions, values, or images
associated with denotative meaning. Scientific and mathematical language carries few, if
any emotional or connotative meanings.
Connotation: the emotions, values, or images associated with a word. The intensity of
emotions or the power of the values and images associated with a word varies. Words
connected with religion, politics, and sex tend to have the strongest feelings and images
associated with them.
For most people, the word mother calls up very strong positive feelings and
associations--loving, self-sacrificing, always there for you, understanding; the denotative
meaning, on the other hand, is simply "a female animal who has borne one or more
chldren." Of course connotative meanings do not necessarily reflect reality; for instance,
if someone said, "His mother is not very motherly," you would immediately understand
the difference between motherly (connotation) and mother(denotation).
Abstract language refers to things that are intangilble, that is, which are perceived not
through the senses but by the mind, such as truth, God, education, vice, transportation,
poetry, war, love. Concrete language identifies things perceived through the senses
(touch, smell, sight, hearing, and taste), such as soft, stench, red, loud, or bitter.
Literal language means exactly what it says; a rose is the physical flower. Figurative
language changes the literal meaning, to make a meaning fresh or clearer, to express
complexity, to capture a physical or sensory effect, or to extend meaning. Figurative
language is also called figures of speech. The most common figures of speech are these:
o A simile: a comparison of two dissimilar things using "like" or "as", e.g., "my
love is like a red, red rose" (Robert Burns).
o A metaphor: a comparison of two dissimilar things which does not use "like" or
"as," e.g., "my love is a red, red rose" (Lilia Melani).
o Personification: treating abstractions or inanimate objects as human, that is,
giving them human attributes, powers, or feelings, e.g., "nature wept" or "the
wind whispered many truths to me."
o hyperbole: exaggeration, often extravagant; it may be used for serious or for
comic effect.
o Apostrophe: a direct address to a person, thing, or abstraction, such as "O
Western Wind," or "Ah, Sorrow, you consume us." Apostrophes are generally
capitalized.
o Onomatopoeia: a word whose sounds seem to duplicate the sounds they
describe--hiss, buzz, bang, murmur, meow, growl.
o
Oxymoron: a statement with two parts which seem contradictory; examples: sad
joy, a wise fool, the sound of silence, or Hamlet's saying, "I must be cruel only to
be kind"
Elevated language or elevated style: formal, dignitifed language; it often uses more
elaborate figures of speech. Elevated language is used to give dignity to a hero (note the
speechs of heros like Achilles or Agamemnon in the Iliad), to express the superiority of
God and religious matters generally (as in prayers or in the King James version of the
Bible), to indicate the importance of certain events (the ritual language of the traditional
marriage ceremony), etc. It can also be used to reveal a self-important or a pretentious
character, for humor and/or for satire.
Lyric Poetry: a short poem with one speaker (not necessarily the poet) who expresses thought
and feeling. Though it is sometimes used only for a brief poem about feeling (like the sonnet).it
is more often applied to a poem expressing the complex evolution of thoughts and feeling, such
as the elegy, the dramatic monologue, and the ode. The emotion is or seems personal In classical
Greece, the lyric was a poem written to be sung, accompanied by a lyre. Click here for a
discussion of Reading Lyric Poetry.
Meter: a rhythm of accented and unaccented syllables which are organized into patterns,
called feet. In English poetry, the most common meters are these:
Iambic: a foot consisting of an unaccented and accented syllable. Shakespeare often uses
iambic, for example the beginning of Hamlet's speech (the accented syllables are
italicized), "To be or not to be. Listen for the accents in this line from Marlowe,
"Come live with me and be my love." English seems to fall naturally into iambic patterns,
for it is the most common meter in English.
Trochaic: a foot consisting of an accented and unaccented syllable.
Longfellow's Hiawatha uses this meter, which can quickly become singsong (the
accented syllable is italicized):
"By the shores of GitcheGumee
By the shining Big-Sea-water."
The three witches' speech in Macbeth uses it: "Double, double, toil and trouble."
Anapestic: a foot consisting of two unaccented syllables and an accented syllable. These
lines from Shelley's Cloud are anapestic:
"Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb
I arise and unbuild it again."
Dactylic: a foot consisting of an accented syllable and two unaccented syllables, as in
these words: swimingly, mannikin, openly.
Spondee: a foot consisting of two accented syllables, as in the word heartbreak. In
English, this foot is used occasionally, for variety or emphasis.
Pyrrhic: a foot consisting of two unaccented syllables, generally used to vary the
rhythm.
A line is named for the number of feet it contains: monometer: one foot, dimeter: two
feet, trimeter: three feet, tetrameter: four feet, pentameter: five feet, hexameter:six
feet, heptameter: seven feet.
The most common metrical lines in English are tetrameter (four feet) and pentameter (five
feet). Shakespeare frequently uses unrhymed iambic pentameter in his plays; the technical name
for this line is blank verse. In this course, I will not be asking you to identify meters and
metrical lines, but I would like you to have some awareness of their existence.
Modern
English poetry is metrical, i.e., it relies on accented and unaccented syllables. Not all poetry
does; Anglo-Saxon poetry relied on a system of alliteration. Skillful poets rarely use one meter
throughout a poem but use these meters in combinations; however, a poem generally has one
dominant meter.
Ode: usually a lyric poem of moderate length, with a serious subject, an elevated style, and an
elaborate stanza pattern.There are various kinds of odes, which we don't have to worry about in
an introductiory course like this. The ode often praises people, the arts of music and poetry,
natural scenes, or abstract concepts. The Romantic poets used the ode to explore both personal or
general problems; they often started with a meditation on something in nature, as did Keats in
"Ode to a Nightingale" or Shelley in"Ode to the West Wind." Click here for a fuller discussion
of the ode.
Paradox: a statement whose two parts seem contradictory yet make sense with more thought.
Christ used paradox in his teaching: "They have ears but hear not." Or in ordinary conversation,
we might use a paradox, "Deep down he's really very shallow." Paradox attracts the reader's or
the listener's attention and gives emphasis.
Point of view: the perspective from which the story is told.
The most obvious point of view is probably first person or "I."
The omniscient narrator knows everything, may reveal the motivations, thoughts and
feelings of the characters, and gives the reader information.
With a limited omniscient narrator, the material is presented from the point of view of
a character, in third person.
The objective point of view presents the action and the characters' speech, without
comment or emotion. The reader has to interpret them and uncover their meaning.
A narrator may be trustworthy or untrustworthy, involved or uninvolved. Click here for an
illustration of these points of view in the story of Sleeping Beauty.
Rhyme:the repetition of similar sounds. In poetry, the most common kind of rhyme is end
rhyme, which occurs at the end of two or mroe lines. Internal rhyme occurs in the middle of a
line, as in these lines from Coleridge, "In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud" or "Whiles all
the night through fog-smoke white" ("The Ancient Mariner"). There are many kinds of end
rhyme:
True rhyme is what most people think of as rhyme; the sounds are nearly identical-notion, motion, potion, for example.
Weak rhyme, also called slant, oblique, approximate, or half rhyme, refers to words
with similar but not identical sounds, e.g., notion-nation, bear-bore, ear-are. Emily
Dickinson frequently uses partial rhymes.
Eye rhyme occurs when words look alike but don't sound alike--e.g., bear-ear.
Sonnet: a lyric poem consisting of fourteen lines. In English, generally the two basic kinds of
sonnets are the Italian or Petrarchan sonnet and the Shakespearean or Elizabethan sonnet. The
Italian/Petrarchan sonnet is named after Petrarch, an Italian Renaissance poet. The Petrarchan
sonnet consists of an octave (eight lines) and a sestet (six lines). The Shakespearean
sonnet consists of three quatrains (four lines each) and a concluding couplet (two lines). The
Petrarian sonnet tends to divide the thought into two parts; the Shakespearean, into four.
Structure: framework of a work of literature; the organization or over-all design of a work. The
structure of a play may fall into logical divisions and also a mechanical division of acts and
scenes. Groups of stories may be set in a larger structure or frame, like The Canterbury
Tales, The Decameron, or The Arabian Tales.
Style: manner of expression; how a speaker or writer says what he says. Notice the difference in
style of the opening paragraphs of Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms and Mark Twain's The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn:
In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and
the plain to the mountains. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white
in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the channels. Troops went by
the house and down the road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the trees. The
trunks of the trees too were dusty and the leaves fell early that year and we saw the troops
marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling and the
soldiers marching and afterward the road bare and white except for the leaves.
A Farewell to Arms
You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of
Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the
truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Symbol: in general terms, anything that stands for something else. Obvious examples are flags,
which symbolize a nation; the cross is a symbol for Christianity; Uncle Sam a symbol for the
United States. In literature, a symbol is expected to have significance. Keats starts his ode with a
real nightingale, but quickly it becomes a symbol, standing for a life of pure, unmixed joy; then
before the end of the poem it becomes only a bird again.
Tone: the writer's attitude toward the material and/or readers. Tone may be playful, formal,
intimate, angry, serious, ironic, outraged, baffled, tender, serene, depressed, etc.
Theme: (1) the abstract concept explored in a literary work; (2) frequently recurring ideas, such
as enjoy-life while-you-can; (3) repetition of a meaningful element in a work, such as references
to sight, vision, and blindness in Oedipus Rex. Sometimes the theme is also called the motif.
Themes in Hamlet include the nature of filial duty and the dilemma of the idealist in a non-ideal
situation. A theme in Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale" is the difficulty of correlating the ideal and
the real.
Tragedy: broadly defined, a literary and particularly a dramatic presentation of serious actions in
which the chief character has a disastrous fate. There are many different kinds and theories of
tragedy, starting with the Greeks and Aristole's definition in The Poetics, "the imitation of an
action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself...with incidents arousing
pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions." In the Middle Ages,
tragedy merely depicted a decline from happiness to misery because of some flaw or error of
judgment. Click here for a fuller discussion of tragedy and the tragic vision.
The Four Basic Elements Of Any Novel
By Nicholas Sparks
Characters , Plots & Plotting
Elements of a novel
It's critical to understand these elements and how they are related.
Plot -- There are many definitions of plot, but plot is essentially the story, or the events that make up
what the book is about. Plot, of course, is defined by conflict, either internal (Coming to terms with
the loss of a spouse, for example) or external, (A stalker is watching through the window), and the best
plots are both original and interesting. Complexity of the plot is a matter of taste, so is the setting
(such as time period).
No matter what other definition is given, the very best plots are defined by readers with the simple
phrase, "I couldn't put the book down." In other words, a great story.
Character Development -- Bringing the characters to life in the reader's mind. They can range from
thumbnail sketches to deep, wordy, highly detailed biographies of each character. It's important to
note that different genres and stories require different types of character development.
Writing Style -- How the novel is written. Is the writing style efficient or complex? Does the author use
an extensive vocabulary or get straight to the point? Are words used appropriately with regard to
meaning, or do they seem written to showcase the "sound" of a sentence? Style should always be
appropriate for the genre or story. An appropriate style adds to the texture of the novel; an
inappropriate style does just the opposite. Literary fiction tends t lean toward complex sentences with
original language. Thrillers tend to use shorter, more efficient sentences, especially as the pace
quickens in the novel.
Of course, basic writing rules always apply. Limit the use of adverbs when describing dialogue ("he said
angrily" should read, "he said"), avoid words that add unnecessary emphasis ("he was a little tired"
should read, "he was tired," or "she was very thirsty," should read "she was thirsty") avoid cliches (like,
"It was a dark and stormy night,") use words appropriately and with their proper meaning, make the
sentences clear and coherent, make them original without seeming to strain for originality. And most
important of all, "show" whenever possible, don't "tell." In other words, don't write, "Max was angry."
Show me his anger instead. ("Staring into the fire, Max balled his hands into fists. Not this, he thought,
anything but this.")
For a further look at Style and Rules of Composition, see The Elements of Style by Strunk and White.
Length -- Just what it says. How long is the book? The length should be appropriate to the genre and be
appropriate to the story. The Notebook, which in its final form was 45,000 words, was originally 80,000
words before I edited it down. Why did I cut so much? Because the story was so simple (only two main
characters and two settings, and the majority of the novel was devoted to only a couple of days) that
the additional words didn't add much; in fact, all they did was slow the story to a crawl. In The Rescue,
I cut 20% from the original draft for the same reason. In A Bend in the Road, I cut 25%. In Stephen King's
book, On Writing, he says his general rule of thumb is to cut 10%. According to what I've heard about
Hemingway, his advice was to take the first fifty pages of your novel and cut them down to five pages.
Sometimes when writing, less is more. (Ignore the use of the cliche, but it's appropriate here.)
In most books on writing that I've read, this final aspect is often overlooked, though I don't know why.
Length is critically important in novels. How many times, for instance, have you read a novel that
seems to go "on and on?" I've read plenty. Too many, in fact.
Books that are too long are the sign of laziness by the writer and also imply an arrogance of sorts, one
that essentially says to the reader, "I'm the author here and I know what I'm doing, and if you don't like
it, then that says more about you than me, and we both know which one of us is smarter." Not so. Who,
after all, would have seen the movie Jurassic Park if the length of the movie was six hours? As much as
dinosaurs are interesting and exciting, enough is enough sometimes. Why are so many books too long
these days? Because being efficient is difficult and often time-consuming. It's a lot harder to capture a
character's personality fully in one, original paragraph, than it is to take a page to do so. But efficiency
is one of the characteristics of quality writing. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," is a
much stronger opening than taking a paragraph or two to say exactly the same thing.
Likewise with novels or scenes that are too short, and though this doesn't seem to happen as
frequently, it does happen at times. Sometimes, characters scream for more detail about them,
sometimes settings do as well. Sometimes adding "bulk" is important to the overall pacing of a novel. If
too much length is bad, so is a book or scene that's too short.
The prose poem is a type of poetry characterized by its lack of line breaks. Although the prose poem
resembles a short piece of prose, its allegiance to poetry can be seen in the use of rhythms, figures of
speech, rhyme, internal rhyme, assonance (repetition of similar vowel sounds), consonance (repetition of
similar consonant sounds), and images. Early poetry (such as the Iliad and the Odyssey, both written
by Homer approximately 2,800 years ago) lacked conventional line breaks for the simple fact that these
works were not written down for hundreds of years, instead being passed along (and presumably
embellished) in the oral tradition. However, once poetry began to be written down, poets began to
consider line breaks as another important element to the art. With the exception of slight pauses and
inherent rhyme schemes, it is very hard for a listener of poetry to tell where a line actually breaks.
The length of prose poems vary, but usually range from half of a page to three or four pages (those much
longer are often considered experimental prose or poetic prose). Aloysius Bertrand, who first
published Gaspard de la nuit in 1842, is considered by many scholars as the father of the prose poem as a
deliberate form. Despite the recognition given to Bertrand, as well as Maurice de Guerin, who wrote
around 1835, the first deliberate prose poems appeared in France during the 18th Century as writers
turned to prose in reaction to the strict rules of versification by the Academy.
Although dozens of French writers experimented with the prose poem in the 1700s, it was not
until Baudelaire’s work appeared in 1855 that the prose poem gained wide recognition. However, it
was Rimbaud’s book of prose poetry Illuminations, published in 1886, that would stand as his greatest
work, and among the best examples of the prose poem. Additional practitioners of the prose poem (or a
close relative) include Edgar Allen Poe, Max Jacob, James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, Amy Lowell, Gertrude
Stein, and T.S. Eliot.Among contemporary practitioners of the prose poem are: Russell Edson, Robert
Bly,Charles Simic, and Rosmarie Waldrop.
Poets of Interest:
Charles Baudelaire
Russell Edson
N. Scott Momaday
Arthur Rimbaud
Charles Simic
Gertrude Stein
Rosmarie Waldrop
Authors:
Louisa May Alcott: Little Women 1832-1888 Louisa May Alcott (November 29, 1832 – March 6, 1888)
was an American novelist. She is best known for the novel Little Women, set in the Alcott family
home, Orchard House in Concord, Massachusetts and published in 1868. This novel is loosely based on
her childhood experiences with her three sisters.
Maya Angelou: I Know Why the caged bird sings Angelou's use of fiction-writing techniques such as
dialogue, characterization, and development of theme, setting, plot, and language has often resulted in
the placement of her books into the genre of autobiographical fiction, but Angelou has characterized them
as autobiographies.
Ray Bradbury ay Douglas Bradbury (born August 22, 1920) is an
American mainstream, fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer.
Best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles, Bradbury is widely
considered one of the greatest and most popular American writers ofspeculative fiction of the twentieth
century.
Ray Bradbury's popularity has been increased by more than 20 television shows and films using his
writings (see Adaptations of his work).
Main article: List of works by Ray Bradbury
Although he is often described as a science fiction writer, Bradbury does not box himself into a particular
narrative categorization:
First of all, I don't write science fiction. I've only done one science fiction book and that's Fahrenheit 451, based on
reality. Science fiction is a depiction of the real. Fantasy is a depiction of the unreal. So Martian Chronicles is not
science fiction, it's fantasy. It couldn't happen, you see? That's the reason it's going to be around a long time—
because it's a Greek myth, and myths have staying power.[9]
On another occasion, Bradbury observed that the novel touches on the alienation of people by media:
In writing the short novel Fahrenheit 451 I thought I was describing a world that might evolve in four or five decades.
But only a few weeks ago, in Beverly Hills one night, a husband and wife passed me, walking their dog. I stood
staring after them, absolutely stunned. The woman held in one hand a small cigarette-package-sized radio, its
antenna quivering. From this sprang tiny copper wires which ended in a dainty cone plugged into her right ear. There
she was, oblivious to man and dog, listening to far winds and whispers and soap-opera cries, sleep-walking, helped
up and down curbs by a husband who might just as well not have been there. This was not fiction. [10]
Besides his fiction work, Bradbury has written many short essays on the arts and culture, attracting the
attention of critics in this field. Bradbury was a consultant for the American Pavilion at the 1964 New York
World's Fair and the original exhibit housed in Epcot's Spaceship Earth geosphere at Walt Disney
World [11][12][13].
Bradbury was a close friend of Charles Addams and collaborated with him on the creation of the macabre
"Family" enjoyed by New Yorker readers for many years and later popularized as The Addams Family.
Bradbury called them the Elliotts and placed them in rural Illinois. His first story about them was
"Homecoming," published in the New Yorker Halloween issue for 1946, with Addams illustrations. He and
Addams planned a larger collaborative work that would tell the family's complete history, but it never
materialized and according to a 2001 interview they went their separate ways. [14] In October 2001,
Bradbury published all the Family stories he had written in one book with a connecting narrative, From the
Dust Returned, featuring a wraparound Addams cover.[15]
In 1953, Bradbury published perhaps his most famous work, Fahrenheit 451, a powerfully
gripping tale of a futuristic society that outlaws the possession of books. Montag, a fireman and
hero of the story, undergoes a complete character transformation, finally joining a group of
nomads who commit classic literature to memory.
Stephan Crane Stephen Crane (November 1, 1871 – June 5, 1900) was an American novelist, short
story writer, poet and journalist. Prolific throughout his short life, he wrote notable works in
theRealist tradition as well as early examples of American Naturalism and Impressionism. He is
recognized by modern critics as one of the most innovative writers of his generation.
The eighth surviving child of highly devout parents, Crane was raised in several New Jersey towns
and Port Jervis, New York. He began writing at the age of 4 and had published several articles by the age
of 16. Having little interest in university studies, he left school in 1891 and began work as a reporter and
writer. Crane's first novel was the 1893 Bowerytale Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, which critics generally
consider the first work of American literary Naturalism. He won international acclaim for his 1895 Civil
War novel The Red Badge of Courage, which he wrote without any battle experience.
In 1896, Crane endured a highly publicized scandal after acting as a witness for a suspected prostitute.
Late that year he accepted an offer to cover the Spanish-American War as awar correspondent. As he
waited in Jacksonville, Florida for passage to Cuba, he met Cora Taylor, the madam of a brothel with
whom he would have a lasting relationship. While en route to Cuba, Crane's ship sank off the coast of
Florida, leaving him marooned for several days in a small dinghy. His ordeal was later described in his
well-known short story, "The Open Boat". During the final years of his life, he covered conflicts
in Greece and Cuba, and lived in England with Cora, where he befriended writers such as Joseph
Conrad and H. G. Wells. Plagued by financial difficulties and ill health, Crane died of tuberculosis in
a Black Forest sanatorium at the age of 28.
At the time of his death, Crane had become an important figure in American literature. He was nearly
forgotten, however, until two decades later when critics revived interest in his life and work. Stylistically,
Crane's writing is characterized by descriptive vividness and intensity, as well as
distinctive dialects and irony. Common themes involve fear, spiritual crisis and social isolation. Although
recognized primarily for The Red Badge of Courage, which has become an American classic, Crane is
also known for his unconventional poetry and heralded for short stories such as "The Open Boat", "The
Blue Hotel", "The Monster" and "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky". His writing made a deep impression on
20th century writers, most prominent among them Ernest Hemingway, and is thought to have inspired
the Modernists and the Imagists.
rane's work is often thematically driven by Naturalistic and Realistic concerns, including ideals versus
realities, spiritual crises and fear. These themes are particularly evident in Crane's first three
novels, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, The Red Badge of Courage and George's Mother.[171] The three
main characters search for a way to make their dreams come true, but ultimately suffer from crises of
identity.[172] In The Red Badge of Courage, the main character both longs for the heroics of battle but
ultimately fears it, demonstrating the dichotomy of courage and cowardice. He experiences the threat of
death, misery and a loss of self.[173]
Extreme isolation from society and community is also apparent in Crane's work. During the most intense
battle scenes in The Red Badge of Courage, for example, the story's focus is predominately "on the inner
responses of a self unaware of others".[174] In "The Open Boat", "An Experiment in Misery" and other short
stories, Crane uses experiments with light, motion and color to express different degrees of
epistemological uncertainty.[175] Similar to other Naturalistic works, Crane scrutinizes the position of man,
who has been isolated not only from society, but also from God and nature. "The Open Boat", for
example, distances itself from the old Romantic optimism and affirmation of man's place in the world by
concentrating on the characters' isolation.[176]
[edit]Novels
Beginning with the publication of Maggie: A Girl of the Streets in 1893, Crane was recognized by critics
mainly as a novelist. Maggie was initially rejected by numerous publishers because of its atypical and
true-to-life depictions of class warfare, which clashed with the common, sentimental tales of that time.
Rather than focusing on those that make up the very rich or middle class, the novel's characters are
lower-class denizens of New York's Bowery.[177] The chief character, Maggie, descends into prostitution
after being led astray by her lover. Although the novel's plot is simple, its dramatic mood, quick pace and
portrayal of Bowery life have made it memorable. Maggie is not merely an account of slum life as it is also
meant as a representation of eternal symbols. In his first draft, Crane did not give his characters proper
names. Instead, they were identified as epithets: Maggie, for example, was the girl who "blossomed in a
mud-puddle" and Pete, her seducer, was a "knight".[178] The novel is dominated by bitter irony and anger
as well as destructive morality and treacherous sentiment. Critics would later call the novel "the first dark
flower of American Naturalism" for its distinctive elements of naturalistic fiction. [179]
Ernest Hemingway (shown here around 1950) believed The Red Badge of Courage was "one of the finest books of
[American] literature".
Written thirty years after the end of the Civil War and before Crane had any experience of battle, The Red
Badge of Courage was innovative stylistically as well as psychologically. Often described as a war novel,
it focuses less on battle and more on the main character's psyche and his reactions and responses in a
wartime situation.[180] Told in a third-person limited point of view, it reflects the private experience of Henry
Fleming, a young soldier who flees from combat, rather than upon the external world. The Red Badge of
Courage is notable in its vivid descriptions and well-cadenced prose, both of which help create suspense
within the story.[181] Similarly, by substituting epithets for characters' names ("the youth", "the tattered
soldier"), Crane injects an allegorical quality into his work, making his characters point to a specific
characteristic of man.[182] Like Crane's first novel, The Red Badge of Courage has a heavily ironic tone
which increases in severity as the novel progresses. The title of the work itself is ironic; Henry wishes
"that he, too, had a wound, a red badge of courage", echoing a wish to have been wounded in battle. The
wound he does receive (from the rifle butt of a fleeing Union soldier), however, is not a badge of courage
but a badge of shame.[183]
There is a strong connection in the novel between humankind and nature, a frequent and prominent
concern in Crane's fiction and poetry throughout his career. Whereas contemporary writers (Ralph Waldo
Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau) focused on a sympathetic bond on the two
elements, Crane wrote from the perspective that human consciousness distanced humans from nature.
In The Red Badge of Courage, this distance is paired with a great number of references to animals, and
men with animalistic characteristics: people "howl", "squawk", "growl", or "snarl". [184] Since the resurgence
of Crane's popularity in the 1920s, The Red Badge of Courage has been deemed a major American text.
The novel has been anthologized numerous times, including in Ernest Hemingway's 1942 collection Men
at War: The Best War Stories of All Time. In the introduction, Hemingway wrote that the novel "is one of
the finest books of our literature, and I include it entire because it is all as much of a piece as a great
poem is."[185]
Crane's later novels have not received as much critical recognition, however. After the success of The
Red Badge of Courage, Crane chose to write another tale set in the Bowery.George's Mother is less
allegorical and more personal than his two previous novels, and it focuses on the conflict between a
church-going, temperance-adhering woman (thought to be based on Crane's own mother) and her single
remaining offspring, who is a naive dreamer.[186] Critical response to the novel was mixed. The Third
Violet, a romance that was written quickly after the publication ofThe Red Badge of Courage, is typically
considered as Crane's attempt to appeal to popular audiences.[187] Crane considered it a "quiet little
story", and although it contained autobiographical details, the characters have been deemed inauthentic
and stereotypical.[188] Crane's second to last novel, Active Service, revolves around the Greco-Turkish
War of 1897, with which the author was familiar. Although noted for its satiricaltake on
the melodramatic and highly passionate works that were popular of the nineteenth century, the novel was
not successful. It is generally accepted by critics that Crane's work suffered at this point due to the speed
which he wrote in order to meet high expenses.[189] His last novel, a suspenseful and picaresque work
entitled The O'Ruddy, was finished posthumously by Robert Barr and published in 1903.[190]
Daniel Defoe
Daniel Defoe (c.1659 – 24 April 1731[1]), born Daniel Foe, was an English writer, journalist,
and pamphleteer, who gained enduring fame for his novel Robinson Crusoe. Defoe is notable for being
one of the earliest proponents of the novel, as he helped to popularise the form in Britain, and is even
referred to by some as one of the founders of the English novel.[2] A prolific and versatile writer, he wrote
more than five hundred books, pamphlets, and journals on various topics (including politics, crime,
religion, marriage, psychology and the supernatural). He was also a pioneer of economic journalism.
efoe's famous novel Robinson Crusoe (1719) tells of a man's shipwreck on a deserted island and his
subsequent adventures.
The author may have based part of his narrative on the true story of the Scottish castaway Alexander
Selkirk. He may have also been inspired by the Latin or English translation of a book by the AndalusianArab Muslim polymath Ibn Tufail, who was known as "Abubacer" in Europe. The Latin edition of the book
was entitled Philosophus Autodidactus and it was an earlier novel that is also set on a desert
island.[8][9][10][11]
Tim Severin's book Seeking Robinson Crusoe (2002) unravels a much wider range of potential sources of
inspiration for Robinson Crusoe. Severin concludes his thorough investigations by stating that the real
Robinson Crusoe figure was a castaway surgeon to the Duke of Monmouth named Henry Pitman.
Pitman's short book about his real-life desperate escape from a Caribbean penal colony for his part in
the Monmouth Rebellion, his shipwrecking and subsequent desert island misadventures, was published
by J.Taylor of Paternoster Street, London, whose son William Taylor later published Defoe's novel.
Severin argues that since Pitman appears to have lived in the lodgings above the father's publishing
house and that Defoe himself was a mercer in the area at the time, Defoe may have met Pitman in
person and learned of his real-life experiences as a castaway first-hand. If he didn't meet Pitman directly,
Severin points out, Defoe, upon submitting even a mere draft of a novel about a castaway to his
publisher, would undoubtedly have learned about Pitman's book published by his father, especially since
the interesting castaway had previously lodged with them at their former premises.
Severin also provides sufficient evidence in his book that another publicised case[12] of a real-life
marooned Miskito Central American man named only as Will may have caught Defoe's attention, which
led to the depiction of Man Friday, in his novel.
"One day, about noon, going towards my boat, I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a
man's naked foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen on the sand."
— Robinson Crusoe
The novel has been variously read as an allegory for the development of civilisation, as a manifesto of
economic individualism, and as an expression of European colonial desires. But it also shows the
importance of repentance and illustrates the strength of Defoe's religious convictions. Early critics, such
as Robert Louis Stevenson, admired it, saying that the footprint scene in Crusoe was one of the four
greatest in English literature, and most unforgettable.[3] It has inspired a new genre, the Robinsonade, as
works like Johann Wyss's The Swiss Family Robinson (1812) adapt its basic premise, and has provoked
modern postcolonial responses, including J. M. Coetzee's Foe (1986), and Michel Tournier's Vendredi ou
les limbes du Pacifique (in English, Friday) (1967). Two sequels followed, Defoe's Farther
Adventures (1719) and his Serious Reflections (1720). Jonathan Swift'sGulliver's Travels (1726) in part
parodies Defoe's adventure novel.
Defoe's next novel was Captain Singleton (1720), a bipartite adventure story whose first half covers a
traversal of Africa, and whose second half taps into the contemporary fascination with piracy. It has been
commended for its depiction of the homosexual relationship between the eponymous hero and his
religious mentor, the Quaker, William Walters.[citation needed]
Colonel Jack (1722) follows an orphaned boy from a life of poverty and crime to colonial prosperity,
military and marital imbroglios, and religious conversion, always guided by a quaint and misguided notion
of becoming a gentleman.
Also in 1722, Defoe wrote Moll Flanders, another first-person picaresque novel of the fall and eventual
redemption of a lone woman in seventeenth century England. The titular heroine appears as a whore,
bigamist and thief, lives in The Mint, commits adultery and incest, yet manages to keep the reader's
sympathy.
Moll Flanders and Defoe's final novel Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress (1724) are examples of the
remarkable way in which Defoe seems to inhabit his fictional (yet "drawn from life") characters, not least
in that they are women. The latter narrates the moral and spiritual decline of a high society courtesan.
A work that is often read as if it were non-fiction is his account of the Great Plague of London in 1665: A
Journal of the Plague Year, a complex historical novel published in 1722. In November 1703, a hurricanelike storm hit London, now known as The Great Storm. (It remains one of the greatest storms in British
history.) Yet another of the remarkable events in Defoe's life, the storm was the subject of his book The
Storm.[3]Defoe describes the aftermath of the incident this way: “The streets lay so covered with tiles and
slates from the tops of the houses [. . .] that all the tiles in fifty miles round would be able to repair but a
small part of it."[3] Later, Defoe also wrote Memoirs of a Cavalier (1720), set during the Thirty Years
War and the English Civil Wars.
Emily Dickenson Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) was an American
poet. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a successful family with strong community ties, she lived a
mostly introverted and reclusive life. After she studied at the Amherst Academy for seven years in her
youth, she spent a short time at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary before returning to her family's house
in Amherst. Thought of as an eccentric by the locals, she became known for her penchant for white
clothing and her reluctance to greet guests or, later in life, even leave her room. Most of her friendships
were therefore carried out by correspondence.
Although Dickinson was a prolific private poet, fewer than a dozen of her nearly eighteen hundred poems
were published during her lifetime.[2] The work that was published during her lifetime was usually altered
significantly by the publishers to fit the conventional poetic rules of the time. Dickinson's poems are
unique for the era in which she wrote; they contain short lines, typically lack titles, and often use slant
rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization and punctuation.[3] Many of her poems deal with themes of
death and immortality, two recurring topics in letters to her friends.
Although most of her acquaintances were probably aware of Dickinson's writing, it was not until after her
death in 1886—when Lavinia, Emily's younger sister, discovered her cache of poems—that the breadth of
Dickinson's work became apparent. Her first collection of poetry was published in 1890 by personal
acquaintances Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd, both of whom heavily edited the
content. A complete and mostly unaltered collection of her poetry became available for the first time in
1955 when The Poems of Emily Dickinson was published by scholar Thomas H. Johnson. Despite
unfavorable reviews and skepticism of her literary prowess during the late 19th and early 20th century,
critics now consider Dickinson to be a major American poet.[4]
Major themes
Dickinson left no formal statement of her aesthetic intentions and, because of the variety of her themes,
her work does not fit conveniently into any one genre. She has been regarded,
alongside Emerson (whose poems Dickinson admired), as a Transcendentalist.[131] However, Farr
disagrees with this analysis saying that Dickinson's "relentlessly measuring mind ... deflates the airy
elevation of the Transcendental".[132] Apart from the major themes discussed below, Dickinson's poetry
frequently uses humor, puns, irony and satire.[133]
Flowers and gardens. Farr notes that Dickinson's "poems and letters almost wholly concern
flowers" and that allusions to gardens often refer to an "imaginative realm ... wherein flowers [are]
often emblems for actions and emotions".[134] She associates some flowers,
like gentians and anemones, with youth and humility; others with prudence and insight.[134] Her poems
were often sent to friends with accompanying letters and nosegays.[134] Farr notes that one of
Dickinson's earlier poems, written about 1859, appears to "conflate her poetry itself with the posies":
"My nosegays are for Captives – / Dim – long expectant eyes – / Fingers denied the plucking, /
Patient till Paradise – / To such, if they sh'd whisper / Of morning and the moor – / They bear no other
errand, / And I, no other prayer".[134]
The Master poems. Dickinson left a large number of poems addressed to "Signor", "Sir" and
"Master", who is characterized as Dickinson's "lover for all eternity". [135] These confessional poems
are often "searing in their self-inquiry" and "harrowing to the reader" and typically take their
metaphors from texts and paintings of Dickinson's day. [135] The Dickinson family themselves believed
these poems were addressed to actual individuals but this view is frequently rejected by scholars.
Farr, for example, contends that the Master is an unattainable composite figure, "human, with specific
characteristics, but godlike" and speculates that Master may be a "kind of Christian muse". [135]
Morbidity. Dickinson's poems reflect her "early and lifelong fascination" with illness, dying and
death.[136] Perhaps surprisingly for a New England spinster, her poems allude to death by many
methods: "crucifixion, drowning, hanging, suffocation, freezing, premature burial, shooting, stabbing
and guillotinage".[136] She reserved her sharpest insights into the "death blow aimed by God" and the
"funeral in the brain", often reinforced by images of thirst and starvation. Dickinson scholar Vivian
Pollak considers these references an autobiographical reflection of Dickinson's "thirsting-starving
persona", an outward expression of her needy self-image as small, thin and frail.[136] Dickinson's most
psychologically complex poems explore the theme that the loss of hunger for life causes the death of
self and place this at "the interface of murder and suicide".[136]
Gospel poems. Throughout her life, Dickinson wrote poems reflecting a preoccupation with the
teachings of Jesus Christ and, indeed, many are addressed to him.[137] She stresses the Gospels'
contemporary pertinence and recreates them, often with "wit and American colloquial
language".[137] Scholar Dorothy Oberhaus finds that the "salient feature uniting Christian poets ... is
their reverential attention to the life of Jesus Christ" and contends that Dickinson's deep structures
place her in the "poetic tradition of Christian devotion" alongside Hopkins, Eliot and Auden.[137] In a
Nativity poem, Dickinson combines lightness and wit to revisit an ancient theme: "The Savior must
have been / A docile Gentleman – / To come so far so cold a Day / For little Fellowmen / The Road to
Bethlehem / Since He and I were Boys / Was leveled, but for that twould be / A rugged billion Miles –
".[137]
The Undiscovered Continent. Academic Suzanne Juhasz considers that Dickinson saw the
mind and spirit as tangible visitable places and that for much of her life she lived within
them.[138] Often, this intensely private place is referred to as the "undiscovered continent" and the
"landscape of the spirit" and embellished with nature imagery. At other times, the imagery is darker
and forbidding—castles or prisons, complete with corridors and rooms—to create a dwelling place of
"oneself" where one resides with one's other selves.[138] An example that brings together many of
these ideas is: "Me from Myself – to banish – / Had I Art – / Impregnable my Fortress / Unto All Heart
– / But since myself—assault Me – / How have I peace / Except by subjugating / Consciousness. /
And since We're mutual Monarch / How this be / Except by Abdication – / Me – of Me?".[138]
Major themes
Dickinson left no formal statement of her aesthetic intentions and, because of the variety of her themes,
her work does not fit conveniently into any one genre. She has been regarded,
alongside Emerson (whose poems Dickinson admired), as a Transcendentalist.[131] However, Farr
disagrees with this analysis saying that Dickinson's "relentlessly measuring mind ... deflates the airy
elevation of the Transcendental".[132] Apart from the major themes discussed below, Dickinson's poetry
frequently uses humor, puns, irony and satire.[133]
Flowers and gardens. Farr notes that Dickinson's "poems and letters almost wholly concern
flowers" and that allusions to gardens often refer to an "imaginative realm ... wherein flowers [are]
often emblems for actions and emotions".[134] She associates some flowers,
like gentians and anemones, with youth and humility; others with prudence and insight.[134] Her poems
were often sent to friends with accompanying letters and nosegays.[134] Farr notes that one of
Dickinson's earlier poems, written about 1859, appears to "conflate her poetry itself with the posies":
"My nosegays are for Captives – / Dim – long expectant eyes – / Fingers denied the plucking, /
Patient till Paradise – / To such, if they sh'd whisper / Of morning and the moor – / They bear no other
errand, / And I, no other prayer".[134]
The Master poems. Dickinson left a large number of poems addressed to "Signor", "Sir" and
"Master", who is characterized as Dickinson's "lover for all eternity".[135] These confessional poems
are often "searing in their self-inquiry" and "harrowing to the reader" and typically take their
metaphors from texts and paintings of Dickinson's day.[135] The Dickinson family themselves believed
these poems were addressed to actual individuals but this view is frequently rejected by scholars.
Farr, for example, contends that the Master is an unattainable composite figure, "human, with specific
characteristics, but godlike" and speculates that Master may be a "kind of Christian muse". [135]
Morbidity. Dickinson's poems reflect her "early and lifelong fascination" with illness, dying and
death.[136] Perhaps surprisingly for a New England spinster, her poems allude to death by many
methods: "crucifixion, drowning, hanging, suffocation, freezing, premature burial, shooting, stabbing
and guillotinage".[136] She reserved her sharpest insights into the "death blow aimed by God" and the
"funeral in the brain", often reinforced by images of thirst and starvation. Dickinson scholar Vivian
Pollak considers these references an autobiographical reflection of Dickinson's "thirsting-starving
persona", an outward expression of her needy self-image as small, thin and frail.[136] Dickinson's most
psychologically complex poems explore the theme that the loss of hunger for life causes the death of
self and place this at "the interface of murder and suicide".[136]
Gospel poems. Throughout her life, Dickinson wrote poems reflecting a preoccupation with the
teachings of Jesus Christ and, indeed, many are addressed to him. [137] She stresses the Gospels'
contemporary pertinence and recreates them, often with "wit and American colloquial
language".[137] Scholar Dorothy Oberhaus finds that the "salient feature uniting Christian poets ... is
their reverential attention to the life of Jesus Christ" and contends that Dickinson's deep structures
place her in the "poetic tradition of Christian devotion" alongside Hopkins, Eliot and Auden.[137] In a
Nativity poem, Dickinson combines lightness and wit to revisit an ancient theme: "The Savior must
have been / A docile Gentleman – / To come so far so cold a Day / For little Fellowmen / The Road to
Bethlehem / Since He and I were Boys / Was leveled, but for that twould be / A rugged billion Miles –
".[137]
The Undiscovered Continent. Academic Suzanne Juhasz considers that Dickinson saw the
mind and spirit as tangible visitable places and that for much of her life she lived within
them.[138] Often, this intensely private place is referred to as the "undiscovered continent" and the
"landscape of the spirit" and embellished with nature imagery. At other times, the imagery is darker
and forbidding—castles or prisons, complete with corridors and rooms—to create a dwelling place of
"oneself" where one resides with one's other selves.[138] An example that brings together many of
these ideas is: "Me from Myself – to banish – / Had I Art – / Impregnable my Fortress / Unto All Heart
– / But since myself—assault Me – / How have I peace / Except by subjugating / Consciousness. /
And since We're mutual Monarch / How this be / Except by Abdication – / Me – of Me?".[138]
Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, (born circa 1818 –
February 20, 1895) was an American abolitionist, women's
suffragist, editor,orator, author, statesman and reformer. Called "The Sage of Anacostia" and
"The Lion of Anacostia", Douglass is one of the most prominent figures in African
Americanand United States history.
He was a firm believer in the equality of all people, whether black, female, Native American, or
recent immigrant. He was fond of saying, "I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody
to do wrong."
Writings
A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845)
"The Heroic Slave." Autographs for Freedom. Ed. Julia Griffiths, Boston: Jewett and Company,
1853. pp. 174-239.
My Bondage and My Freedom (1855)
Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881, revised 1892)
Douglass also was editor of the abolitionist newspaper The North Star from 1847 to 1851. He
merged The North Star with another paper to create the Frederick Douglass' Paper.
Speeches
"The Church and Prejudice"
Self-Made Men
3) How did Douglass use traditional notions of what it means
to be an American in order to build a characterization of
himself that showed slaves could be "real" Americans?
Begin by thinking once again about how Douglass depicts himself in his writing, and
then consider the ways in which other texts written by, for, or about "self-made" men
provide a context for understanding Frederick Douglass's representation of his own
life and ideas. You'll find the necessary resources at:
Frederick Douglass: Autobiography as Argument
Responses to Frederick Douglass--the Man and the "Character"--as Arguments For
and Against Slavery
Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography
Nineteenth Century Conduct Books
A Popular Nineteenth Century Book for Boys: The Bobbin Boy or How Nat Got an
Education
Ralph Walden Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882) was an American essayist, philosopher,
and poet, best remembered for leading the Transcendentalist movement of the mid 19th century. His
teachings directly influenced the growing New Thought movement of the mid 1800s.[1] He was seen as a
champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society.
Emerson gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating
and expressing the philosophy of Transcendentalism in his 1836 essay, Nature. As a result of this ground
breaking work he gave a speech entitled The American Scholar in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes,
Sr. considered to be America's "Intellectual Declaration of Independence".[2] Considered one of the
great orators of the time, Emerson's enthusiasm and respect for his audience enraptured crowds. His
support for abolitionism late in life created controversy, and at times he was subject to abuse from crowds
while speaking on the topic. When asked to sum up his work, he said his central doctrine was "the
infinitude of the private man."[3]
iterary career and Transcendentalism
Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1859
Emerson and other like-minded intellectuals founded the Transcendental Club, which served as a center
for the movement. Its first official meeting was held on September 19, 1836.[41] Emerson anonymously
published his first essay, Nature, in September 1836. A year later, on August 31, 1837, Emerson
delivered his now-famous Phi Beta Kappaaddress, "The American Scholar",[42] then known as "An
Oration, Delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge"; it was renamed for a collection of
essays in 1849.[43]In the speech, Emerson declared literary independence in the United States and urged
Americans to create a writing style all their own and free from Europe. [44] James Russell Lowell, who was
a student at Harvard at the time, called it "an event without former parallel on our literary
annals".[45] Another member of the audience, Reverend John Pierce, called it "an apparently incoherent
and unintelligible address".[46]
In 1837, Emerson befriended Henry David Thoreau. Though they had likely met as early as 1835, in the
fall of 1837, Emerson asked Thoreau, "Do you keep a journal?" The question went on to have a lifelong
inspiration for Thoreau.[47]
On July 15, 1838,[48] Emerson was invited to Divinity Hall, Harvard Divinity School for the school's
graduation address, which came to be known as his "Divinity School Address". Emerson discounted
Biblical miracles and proclaimed that, while Jesus was a great man, he was not God: historical
Christianity, he said, had turned Jesus into a "demigod, as the Orientals or the Greeks would
describe Osiris or Apollo".[49] His comments outraged the establishment and the
general Protestant community. For this, he was denounced as anatheist,[49] and a poisoner of young
men's minds. Despite the roar of critics, he made no reply, leaving others to put forward a defense. He
was not invited back to speak at Harvard for another thirty years.[50]
The Transcendental group began to publish its flagship journal, The Dial, in July 1840.[51] They planned
the journal as early as October 1839, but work did not begin until the first week of 1840.[52] George
Ripley was its managing editor[53] and Margaret Fuller was its first editor, having been hand-chosen by
Emerson after several others had declined the role.[54] Fuller stayed on for about two years and Emerson
took over, utilizing the journal to promote talented young writers including William Ellery Channing and
Thoreau.[47]
In January 1842, Emerson's first son Waldo died from scarlet fever.[55] Emerson wrote of his grief in the
poem "Threnody" ("For this losing is true dying"),[56] and the essay "Experience". In the same
year, William James was born, and Emerson agreed to be his godfather.
It was in 1842 that Emerson published Essays, his second book, which included the famous essay, "SelfReliance." His aunt called it a "strange medley of atheism and false independence," but it gained
favorable reviews in London and Paris. This book, and its popular reception, more than any of Emerson's
contributions to date laid the groundwork for his international fame. [57]
Bronson Alcott announced his plans in November 1842 to find "a farm of a hundred acres in excellent
condition with good buildings, a good orchard and grounds". [58] Charles Lane purchased a 90-acre
(360,000 m2) farm in Harvard, Massachusetts in May 1843 for what would become Fruitlands, a
community based on Utopian ideals inspired in part by Transcendentalism.[59] The farm would run based
on a communal effort, using no animals for labor, and its participants would eat no meat and use no wool
or leather.[60] Emerson said he felt "sad at heart" for not engaging in the experiment himself. [61] Even so,
he did not feel Fruitlands would be a success. "Their whole doctrine is spiritual", he wrote, "but they
always end with saying, Give us much land and money".[62] Even Alcott admitted he was not prepared for
the difficulty in operating Fruitlands. "None of us were prepared to actualize practically the ideal life of
which we dreamed. So we fell apart", he wrote.[63] After its failure, Emerson helped buy a farm for Alcott's
family in Concord[62] which Alcott named "Hillside".[63]
The Dial ceased publication in April 1844; Horace Greeley reported it as an end to the "most original and
thoughtful periodical ever published in this country".[64]
Emerson made a living as a popular lecturer in New England and much of the rest of the country. From
1847 to 1848, he toured England, Scotland, and Ireland.[65] He also visited Paris between the February
Revolution and the bloody June Days. When he arrived, he saw the stumps where trees had been cut
down to form barricades in the February riots. On May 21 he stood on the Champ de Mars in the midst of
mass celebrations for concord, peace and labor. He wrote in his journal: "At the end of the year we shall
take account, & see if the Revolution was worth the trees."[66] He had begun lecturing in 1833; by the
1850s he was giving as many as 80 per year.[67] Emerson spoke on a wide variety of subjects and many
of his essays grew out of his lectures. He charged between $10 and $50 for each appearance, bringing
him about $800 to $1,000 per year.[68] His earnings allowed him to expand his property, buying eleven
acres of land by Walden Pond and a few more acres in a neighboring pine grove. He wrote that he was
"landlord and waterlord of 14 acres, more or less".[62]
In 1845, Emerson's journals show he was reading the Bhagavad Gita and Henry Thomas
Colebrooke's Essays on the Vedas.[69] Emerson was strongly influenced by the Vedas, and much of his
writing has strong shades of nondualism. One of the clearest examples of this can be found in his essay
"The Over-soul":
We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise
silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE. And this deep
power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every
hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We
see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining
parts, is the soul.[70]
Emerson was introduced to Indian philosophy when reading the works of French philosopher Victor
Cousin.[71]
In February 1852, Emerson and James Freeman Clarke and William Henry Channing edited an edition of
the works and letters of Margaret Fuller, who had died in 1850.[72] Within a week of her death, her New
York editor Horace Greeley suggested to Emerson that a biography of Fuller, to be called Margaret and
Her Friends, be prepared quickly "before the interest excited by her sad decease has passed
away".[73] Published with the title The Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli,[74] Fuller's words were heavily
censored or rewritten.[75] The three editors were not concerned about accuracy; they believed public
interest in Fuller was temporary and that she would not survive as a historical figure. [76] Even so, for a
time, it was the best-selling biography of the decade and went through thirteen editions before the end of
the century.[74]
Walt Whitman published the innovative poetry collection Leaves of Grass in 1855 and sent a copy to
Emerson for his opinion. Emerson responded positively, sending a flattering five-page letter as a
response.[77]Emerson's approval helped the first edition of Leaves of Grass stir up significant
interest[78] and convinced Whitman to issue a second edition shortly thereafter. [79] This edition quoted a
phrase from Emerson's letter, printed in gold leaf on the cover: "I Greet You at the Beginning of a Great
Career".[80] Emerson took offense that this letter was made public [81] and later became more critical of the
work.[82]
Centenary Edition
The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson
I - Nature, Addresses & Lectures
o Nature
Nature- Introduction
Chapter I - Nature
Chapter II - Commodity
Chapter III - Beauty
Chapter IV - Language
Chapter V - Discipline
Chapter VI - Idealism
Chapter VII - Spirit
Chapter VIII - Prospects
o Addresses & Lectures
The American Scholar
Divinity School Address
Literary Ethics
The Method of Nature
Man the Reformer
Introductory Lecture on the
Times
The Conservative
The Transcendentalist
The Young American
VIII - Letters and Social
Aims
o Poetry and
Imagination
o Social Aims
o Eloquence
o Resources
o The Comic
o Quotation and
Originality
o Progress of Culture
o Persian Poetry
o Inspiration
o Greatness
o Immortality
IX - Poems
o Poems
X - Lectures &
Biographical Sketches
o Demonology
o Aristocracy
o Perpetual Forces
o Education
II - Essays I
o I History
o II Self-Reliance
o III Compensation
o IV Spiritual Laws
o V Love
o VI Friendship
o VII Prudence
o VIII Heroism
o IV The Over-Soul
o X Circles
o XI Intellect
o XII Art
III - Essays II
o I The Poet
o II Experience
o III Character
o IV Manners
o V Gifts
o VI Nature
o VII Politics
o VIII Nominalist and Realist
o IX New England Reformers
o V Gifts
IV - Representative Men
o Uses of Great Men
o Plato or the Philosopher
o Swedenborg or the Mystic
o Montaigne or the Skeptic
o Shakespeare or the Poet
o Napoleon or the Man of the World
o Goethe or the Writer
V - English Traits
o Chapter I First Visit to England
o Chapter II Voyage to England
o Chapter III Land
o Chapter IV Race
o Chapter V Ability
o Chapter VI Manners
o Chapter VII Truth
o Chapter VIII Character
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
The Superlative
The Sovereignty of
Ethics
The Preacher
The Man of Letters
The Scholar
Plutarch
Life and Letters in New
England
Ezra Ripley, D. D.
Chardon Street
Convention
Mary Moody Emerson
Samuel Hoar
Thoreau
Carlyle
George L. Stearns
Character
XI - Miscellanies
I - XV
o I The Lord's Supper
o II Historical Discourse
at Concord
o III Letter to President
Van Buren
o IV Emancipation in the
British West Indies
o V War
o VI The Fugitive Slave
Law - Concord
o VII
o VIII The Assault upon
Mr. Sumner
o IX Speech on Affairs in
Kansas
o X John Brown--Speech
at Boston
o XI John Brown-Speech at Salem
o XII Theodore Parker
o XIII American
Civilization
o XIV The Emancipation
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
IX Cockayne
X Wealth
XI Aristocracy
XII Universities
XIII Religion
XIV Literature
XV The Times
XVI Stonehenge
XVII Personal
XVIII Result
XIX Speech at Manchester
VI - Conduct of Life
o I Fate
o II Power
o III Wealth
o IV Culture
o V Behavior
o VI Worship
o VII Considerations by the Way
o VIII Beauty
o IX Illusions
VII - Society and Solitude
o Chapter I Society and Solitude
o Chapter II Civilization
o Chapter III Art
o Chapter IV Eloquence
o Chapter V Domestic Life
o Chapter VI Farming
o Chapter VII Works and Days
o Chapter VIII Books
o Chapter IX Clubs
o Chapter X Courage
o Chapter XI Success
o Chapter XII Old Age
o
Proclamation
XV Abraham Lincoln
XVI - XXX
o XVI Harvard
Commemoration
Speech
o XVII Dedication of the
Soldiers' Monument
o XVIII Editors' Address
o XIX Address to
Kossuth
o XX Woman
o XXI ConsecrationSleepy Hollow
Cemetery
o XXII Robert Burns
o XXIII Shakspeare
o XXIV. Humboldt
o XXV Walter Scott
o XXVI Speech at
Banquet in Honor of
Chinese Embassy
o XXVII Remarks at
Organization of Free
Religious Association
o XXVIII Speech at 2nd
Free Religious Assoc
o XXIX Address at
Opening of Concord
Free Public Library
o XXIX Address Concord
Free Public Library
o XXX The Fortune of
the Republic
XII - Natural History of
Intellect
o Natural History of
Intellect
o The Celebration of
Intellect
o Country Life
o Concord Walks
o
o
o
o
Boston
Michael Angelo
Milton
Art and Criticism
Additional Material
Papers From the Dial
o I Thoughts on Modern
Literature
o II Walter Savage
Landor
o III Prayers
o IV Agriculture in
Massachusetts
o V Europe and
Europeon Books
o VI Past and Present
o VII A Letter
o VIII The Tragic
Selected Bibliography on
Emerson
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) was
an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are evocative of the Jazz Age, a term he
coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. Fitzgerald is
considered a member of the "Lost Generation" of theTwenties. He finished four novels, This Side of
Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, Tender is the Night and his most famous, the celebrated
classic, The Great Gatsby. A fifth, unfinished, novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon was published
posthumously. Fitzgerald also wrote many short stories that treat themes of youth and promise along with
despair and age.F. Scott Fitzgerald
Novels
This Side of Paradise (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1920)
The Beautiful and Damned (New York: Scribner, 1922)
The Great Gatsby (New York: Scribner, 1925)
Tender Is the Night (New York: Scribner, 1934)
The Last Tycoon – originally The Love of the Last Tycoon – (New York: Scribners, published
posthumously, 1942)
[edit]Other
works
Themes in Work of F. Scott Fitzgerald
This is an excerpt from the paper...
The purpose of this research is to relate themes in The Great Gatsby to general themes found in F. Scott Fitzgerald's
other works.
Following the publication of his first novel, This Side of Paradise, in 1920, F. Scott Fitzgerald proclaimed his belief
that "'an author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of
ever afterward'" (Bruccoli 12). While Fitzgerald was being somewhat facetious in this remark, he also revealed a
central motivation for his literary creations: the desire to represent the attitudes, values, and aspirations of his
generation. Fitzgerald succeeded in all three goals, becoming the literary spokesman for the Jazz Age and creating a
body of work admired for its craftsmanship and brilliant social insights. While not a prodigious author--he completed
only four novels during his career--Fitzgerald is regarded today as one of the preeminent writers of the Lost
Generation.
This Side of Paradise was essentially autobiographical, based on Fitzgerald's college years at Princeton. In his work,
he established himself as "the chief historian of the emergent debutantes and playboys . . . devoted to a romantic
portrayal of their adventures" (Goldhurst 32). Like many of his contemporaries, Fitzgerald emphasized the need to
rely on immediate, personal experiences as the legitimate source of artistic expression. In This Side of Paradise,
Fitzgerald attempted the delicate balancing act of re-creating perso
...
d readers. Of course, part of Fitzgerald's enduring popularity is owing to his glamorous, extravagant lifestyle, and to
his highly romanticized relationship with his wife Zelda. The public could not know of his constant financial worries,
which were alleviated time and time again by the understanding Perkins. Perhaps that knowledge merely would have
enhanced the Fitzgerald mystique, which exists outside the body of work produced by the author. But in creating Jay
Gatsby, Fitzgerald managed to enhance the mystique and ensure for them both an enduring place in American
literature. The Great Gatsby has become "firmly fixed in popular culture, in academic evaluation of literary
achievement, and--perhaps most telling and most important--in the literature of other writers" (Bruccoli 23). Gatsby
is the character most closely associated with glamor and romanticism of Fitzgerald's own life--and with the themes of
disillusionment and loss of innocence that pervade all of Fitzgerald's work. Fitzgerald's work, The Great Gatsby in
particular, embodied not only the views of the Lost Generation, but also the sense of lost innocence that has become
a dominant theme in American art since the 1920s. Whether that innocent time ever existed,
Anne Frank
Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank (
pronunciation (help·info); 12 June 1929 in Frankfurt am Main – early
March 1945 in Bergen Belsen) was a Jewish girl who was born in the city of Frankfurt am Main in Weimar
Germany, and who lived most of her life in or near Amsterdam, in the Netherlands. By nationality, she
was officially considered aGerman until 1941, when she lost her nationality owing to the anti-Semitic
policies of Nazi Germany. She gained international fame posthumously following the publication of her
diary which documents her experiences hiding during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World
War II.
Anne and her family moved from Germany to Amsterdam in 1933, the same year as the Nazis gained
power in Germany. By the beginning of 1940 they were trapped in Amsterdam due to the Nazi occupation
of the Netherlands. As persecutions of the Jewish population increased in July 1942, the family went into
hiding in the hidden rooms of her father Otto Frank's office building. After two years, the group was
betrayed and transported to concentration camps. Seven months after her arrest, Anne Frank died
of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, within days of the death of her sister, Margot Frank.
Her father Otto, the only survivor of the family, returned to Amsterdam after the war to find that her diary
had been saved, and his efforts led to its publication in 1947. It was translated from its original Dutch and
first published in English in 1952 as The Diary of a Young Girl.
The diary, which was given to Anne on her 13th birthday, chronicles her life from 12 June 1942 until 1
August 1944. It has been translated from the original Dutch into many languages, has become one of the
world's most widely read books, and has been the basis for several plays and films. Anne Frank has been
acknowledged for the quality of her writing, and has become one of the most renowned and most
discussed victims of the Holocaust.
Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963) was an American poet. He is highly regarded for
his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech.[1] His work frequently
employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine
complex social and philosophical themes. A popular and often-quoted poet, Frost was honored frequently
during his lifetime, receiving four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry.
Interpretation
The poem has two recognized interpretations; one is a more literal interpretation, while the other is more
ironic.
Readers often see the poem literally, as an expression of individualism. Critics typically view the poem as
ironic.[1] – "'The Road Not Taken,' perhaps the most famous example of Frost's own claims to conscious
irony and 'the best example in all of American poetry of a wolf in sheep's clothing.'" [2] – and Frost himself
warned "You have to be careful of that one; it's a tricky poem – very tricky."[3] Frost intended the poem as
a gentle jab at his great friend and fellow poet Edward Thomas whom he used to take walks through the
forest with (Thomas always complained at the end that they should have taken a different path) and
seemed amused at this certain interpretation of the poem as inspirational.[4]
[edit]Literal
interpretation
According to the literal (and more common) interpretation, the poem is inspirational,
a paean to individualism and non-conformism.
This poem is commonly known as "the path less traveled' by some, but its correct name is "the road not
taken." The names refer to two different roads, the correct name referring to the one the traveler did not
take.
The poem's last lines, where the narrator declares that taking the road "less traveled by" has "made all
the difference," can be seen as a declaration of the importance of independence and personal freedom.
"The Road Not Taken" seems to illustrate that once one takes a certain road, there is no turning back.
Although one might change paths later on, the past cannot be changed. It can be seen as showing that
choice is very important, and is a thing to be considered. And that you will never know what the other path
was like, so you may regret never knowing (the sigh), although it was still worth it because you made the
right choice by knowing that you were able to exercise your personal freedom and independence.
However, the poem can only be understood with this interpretation if the reader focuses solely on the last
two lines. The second and third stanzas use the descriptions "just as fair", "had worn them really about
the same", and "both that morning equally lay" which clearly indicate that there was in fact no "less
travelled" road and, thus, the speaker is not the iconoclast he claims to be. The "literal" understanding of
the poem's meaning can be attributed to the fact that the last two lines are often quoted without the
preceding context.
This interpretation seems connected with misremembering the title as "The Road Less Traveled", since it
places emphasis on the choice made, not the opportunities foregone.
[edit]Ironic
interpretation
The ironic interpretation, widely held by critics,[1][5] is that the poem is instead about regret and personal
myth-making, rationalizing our decisions.
In this interpretation, the final two lines:
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
are ironic – the choice made little or no difference at all, the speaker's protestations to the
contrary. The speaker admits in the second and third stanzas that both paths may be equally
worn and equally leaf-covered, and it is only in his future recollection that he will call one road
"less traveled by".
The sigh, widely interpreted as a sigh of regret, might also be interpreted ironically: in a 1925
letter to Crystine Yates of Dickson, Tennessee, asking about the sigh, Frost replied: "It was my
rather private jest at the expense of those who might think I would yet live to be sorry for the
way I had taken in life."[6]
Quoted in the 1987 New Zealand television miniseries Erebus : The Aftermath by Justice Peter
Mahon, Q.C., in his portrayal by Frank Finlay.
[edit]Text
of the Poem
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
two roads diverged in a wood, and I -I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
S.E. Hinton
S. E. Hinton irrevocably altered the course of juvenile literature in America with her first
novel.The Outsiders was published when she was seventeen and was her stark answer to
the fluffy high school stories about proms and dates typical of the 1960s. "Where is reality?"
she asked in an essay explaining her motivation in the New York Times Book Review. In
other narratives for teens, she could not find "the drive-in social jungle ... the behind-thescenes politicking that goes on in big schools, the cruel social system," or the teenagers
who lived in those settings. In contrast, her story was real, graphic, emotional, and true to
the challenges of being a teenager in twentieth-century America. In addition, it was an
exciting narrative that captured teenagers' attention. It drew a wide audience, particularly
boys who were reluctant readers. Thirty years after its publication, the novel remains
immensely popular and has sold more than four million copies in the United States. Its
adaptation to film was a great success as well.
The novel is the story of a traumatic time in the life of a recently orphaned fourteen-yearold boy named Ponyboy Curtis. He lives on the East Side, a member of the lower class and a
gang of "greasers." Quiet and dreamy, Ponyboy has conflicts with his older brother and
guardian, Darrel, who keeps the family together. The greasers—whom Ponyboy
distinguishes from "hoods"—are the heroes of the tale. Set against them are the upper-class
socials, or Socs, who enjoy drinking, driving nice cars, and beating up greasers. The
circumstances of this social situation result in the death of three teens. The story explores
the themes of class conflict, affection, brotherly love, and coming of age in a way that
young people readily appreciate. This novel's portrayal of disaffected youth has been
criticized for its violent content, but it is now regarded as a classic of juvenile literature. It
can be considered one of the first examples of the "young adult" genre, and after its
publication literature for teens gained a new realism, depth, and respect for its audience.
The Outsiders Summary
The Greaser Gang
The Outsiders opens with the recollections of Ponyboy Curtis, the narrator of the story. He
tells the reader in the first paragraph that he is a "greaser," from the poor neighborhood of
his hometown. In the second paragraph, however, he explains that he is different from
other greasers in his love of movies and books. Ponyboy is daydreaming after a Paul
Newman movie when he is jumped by a gang of upper-class rich kids, known as socials, or
"Socs." It is only the intervention of his two brothers and their friends that saves Ponyboy
from being badly injured. The greasers have good reason to fear the Socs, a group of whom
beat their friend Johnny so badly that he began to carry a switchblade wherever he went.
Partly for this reason, Ponyboy's oldest brother Darry yells at him for going to the movies
unaccompanied, and Pony relates that he feels that he can never please Darry.
On the next night, Pony and Johnny accompany Dallas Winston, the most hardened member
of their gang, to a drive-in movie. There Dally begins to harass two Soc girls who are there
without dates. After one of the girls, Cherry Valance, tells Dally to leave them alone, he
leaves. She and Ponyboy strike up a conversation. Dally returns, and when Johnny tells him
to leave the girls alone, Dally stalks off for good. Later Two-Bit will join them, scaring
Johnny in the process. Later Cherry asks, and Pony tells, why Johnny seems so jumpy and
scared. After hearing how the Socs nearly killed Johnny, Cherry tells Ponyboy that "things
are rough all over," but he does not believe her.
young adult books
The Outsiders (1967, novel)
That Was Then, This Is Now (1971, novel)
Rumble Fish (1975, novel)
Tex (1979, novel)
Taming the Star Runner (1988, novel)
[edit]Juvenile
books
Big David, Little David (1995, picture book)
The Puppy Sister (1995, chapter book)
[edit]Adult
books
Hawkes Harbor (2004, novel)
Some of Tim's Stories (2006, short stories)
Zora Neal Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston (January 7, 1891[1][2] – January 28, 1960) was an American folklorist and author
during the time of the Harlem Renaissance. Of Hurston's four novels and more than 50 published short
stories, plays, and essays, she is best known for her 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Hurston's work slid into obscurity for decades, for a number of cultural and political reasons.
Many readers objected to the representation of African American dialect in Hurston's novels, given the
racially charged history of dialect fiction in American literature. Her stylistic choices in terms of dialogue
were influenced by her academic experiences. Thinking like a folklorist, Hurston strove to represent
speech patterns of the period which she documented through ethnographic research. [citation needed] For
example, a character in Jonah's Gourd Vine expresses herself thusly:
John Keats (pronounced /ˈkiːts/, "keets") (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an
English poet who became one of the key figures of the Romantic movement. Along with Lord
Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, Keats was one of the second generation of Romantic poets.
During his short life, his work was not well received by critics, but his posthumous influence
on poets such as Alfred Tennyson and Wilfred Owen was significant. The poetry of Keats was
characterised by elaborate word choice and sensual imagery, most notably in a series
of odes which remain among the most popular poems in English literature. The letters of Keats,
which include the development of his aesthetic theory of negative capability,[1] are among the
most celebrated by any English poet. Ode to a Nightingale
As a poet of the Romantic school, his inspiration often comes from a new regard for wild, untrammelled,
and "pure" nature. His work reflects other Romantic themes such as medievalism (Isabella), the heroic
isolation of the narrator (Ode to a Nightingale), folk lore (The Eve of St. Agnes), classical myth
(Lamia or Hyperion), and the primacy of freedom and feeling (Ode on Melancholy). He found great
inspiration in poets such asSpenser, Shakespeare, Milton, and Dryden.
Keats' odes, which many consider to be his most distinctive poetical achievements, were all composed in
1819. Algernon Charles Swinburne, in his entry on Keats for the 1882 edition of the Encyclopedia
Britannica, was scathing in his criticism of Keats's early poems
"The rawest and the rankest rubbish of his fitful spring, ... frequently detestable, a mixture of
sham Spenserian and mock Wordsworthian, alternately florid and arid... some of the most vulgar
and fulsome doggrel ever whimpered by a vapid and effeminate rhymester in the sickly stage of
whelphood"
but rapt in admiration for Keats's "unequalled and unrivalled odes", about which he wrote:
"Of these perhaps the two nearest to absolute perfection, to the triumphant achievement and
accomplishment of the very utmost beauty possible to human words, may be that to Autumn and that
on a Grecian Urn ; the most radiant, fervent, and musical is that to a Nightingale; the most pictorial and
perhaps the tenderest in its ardour of passionate fancy is that to Psyche; the subtlest in sweetness of
thought and feeling is that on Melancholy. Greater lyrical poetry the world may have seen than any that
is in these; lovelier it surely has never seen, nor ever can it possibly see... The Ode to a Nightingale, [is]
one of the final masterpieces of human work in all time and for all ages " [37]
Nelle Harper Lee (born April 28, 1926) is an American author known for her 1960 novel To Kill a
Mockingbird. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom of theUnited States for her
contribution to literature in 2007.[1]
Many details of To Kill a Mockingbird are apparently autobiographical. Like Lee, the tomboy (Scout) is the
daughter of a respected small-town Alabama attorney. The plot involves a legal case, the workings of
which would have been familiar to Lee, who studied law. Scout's friend Dill is supposed to have been
inspired by Lee's childhood friend and neighbor, Truman Capote, while Lee is the model for a character in
Capote's first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms.
Harper Lee has downplayed autobiographical parallels. Yet Truman Capote, mentioning the character
Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird, described details he considered biographical: "In my original version
of Other Voices, Other Rooms I had that same man living in the house that used to leave things in the
trees, and then I took that out. He was a real man, and he lived just down the road from us. We used to
go and get those things out of the trees. Everything she wrote about it is absolutely true. But you see, I
take the same thing and transfer it into some Gothic dream, done in an entirely different way." [7]
Plot Overview
S COUT FINCH LIVES with her brother, Jem, and their widowed father, Atticus, in the sleepy Alabama town of
Maycomb. Maycomb is suffering through the Great Depression, but Atticus is a prominent lawyer and the Finch
family is reasonably well off in comparison to the rest of society. One summer, Jem and Scout befriend a boy
named Dill, who has come to live in their neighborhood for the summer, and the trio acts out stories together.
Eventually, Dill becomes fascinated with the spooky house on their street called the Radley Place. The house
is owned by Mr. Nathan Radley, whose brother, Arthur (nicknamed Boo), has lived there for years without
venturing outside.
Scout goes to school for the first time that fall and detests it. She and Jem find gifts apparently left for them in a
knothole of a tree on the Radley property. Dill returns the following summer, and he, Scout, and Jem begin to
act out the story of Boo Radley. Atticus puts a stop to their antics, urging the children to try to see life from
another person’s perspective before making judgments. But, on Dill’s last night in Maycomb for the summer,
the three sneak onto the Radley property, where Nathan Radley shoots at them. Jem loses his pants in the
ensuing escape. When he returns for them, he finds them mended and hung over the fence. The next winter,
Jem and Scout find more presents in the tree, presumably left by the mysterious Boo. Nathan Radley
eventually plugs the knothole with cement. Shortly thereafter, a fire breaks out in another neighbor’s house,
and during the fire someone slips a blanket on Scout’s shoulders as she watches the blaze. Convinced that
Boo did it, Jem tells Atticus about the mended pants and the presents.
To the consternation of Maycomb’s racist white community, Atticus agrees to defend a black man named Tom
Robinson, who has been accused of raping a white woman. Because of Atticus’s decision, Jem and Scout are
subjected to abuse from other children, even when they celebrate Christmas at the family compound on Finch’s
Landing. Calpurnia, the Finches’ black cook, takes them to the local black church, where the warm and closeknit community largely embraces the children.
Atticus’s sister, Alexandra, comes to live with the Finches the next summer. Dill, who is supposed to live with
his “new father” in another town, runs away and comes to Maycomb. Tom Robinson’s trial begins, and when
the accused man is placed in the local jail, a mob gathers to lynch him. Atticus faces the mob down the night
before the trial. Jem and Scout, who have sneaked out of the house, soon join him. Scout recognizes one of
the men, and her polite questioning about his son shames him into dispersing the mob.
At the trial itself, the children sit in the “colored balcony” with the town’s black citizens. Atticus provides clear
evidence that the accusers, Mayella Ewell and her father, Bob, are lying: in fact, Mayella propositioned Tom
Robinson, was caught by her father, and then accused Tom of rape to cover her shame and guilt. Atticus
provides impressive evidence that the marks on Mayella’s face are from wounds that her father inflicted; upon
discovering her with Tom, he called her a whore and beat her. Yet, despite the significant evidence pointing to
Tom’s innocence, the all-white jury convicts him. The innocent Tom later tries to escape from prison and is shot
to death. In the aftermath of the trial, Jem’s faith in justice is badly shaken, and he lapses into despondency
and doubt.
Despite the verdict, Bob Ewell feels that Atticus and the judge have made a fool out of him, and he vows
revenge. He menaces Tom Robinson’s widow, tries to break into the judge’s house, and finally attacks Jem
and Scout as they walk home from a Halloween party. Boo Radley intervenes, however, saving the children
and stabbing Ewell fatally during the struggle. Boo carries the wounded Jem back to Atticus’s house, where the
sheriff, in order to protect Boo, insists that Ewell tripped over a tree root and fell on his own knife. After sitting
with Scout for a while, Boo disappears once more into the Radley house.
Later, Scout feels as though she can finally imagine what life is like for Boo. He has become a human being to
her at last. With this realization, Scout embraces her father’s advice to practice sympathy and understanding
and demonstrates that her experiences with hatred and prejudice will not sully her faith in human goodness.
Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
The Coexistence of Good and Evil
The most important theme of To Kill a Mockingbird is the book’s exploration of the moral nature of human
beings—that is, whether people are essentially good or essentially evil. The novel approaches this question by
dramatizing Scout and Jem’s transition from a perspective of childhood innocence, in which they assume that
people are good because they have never seen evil, to a more adult perspective, in which they have
confronted evil and must incorporate it into their understanding of the world. As a result of this portrayal of the
transition from innocence to experience, one of the book’s important subthemes involves the threat that hatred,
prejudice, and ignorance pose to the innocent: people such as Tom Robinson and Boo Radley are not
prepared for the evil that they encounter, and, as a result, they are destroyed. Even Jem is victimized to an
extent by his discovery of the evil of racism during and after the trial. Whereas Scout is able to maintain her
basic faith in human nature despite Tom’s conviction, Jem’s faith in justice and in humanity is badly damaged,
and he retreats into a state of disillusionment.
The moral voice of To Kill a Mockingbird is embodied by Atticus Finch, who is virtually unique in the novel in
that he has experienced and understood evil without losing his faith in the human capacity for goodness.
Atticus understands that, rather than being simply creatures of good or creatures of evil, most people have both
good and bad qualities. The important thing is to appreciate the good qualities and understand the bad qualities
by treating others with sympathy and trying to see life from their perspective. He tries to teach this ultimate
moral lesson to Jem and Scout to show them that it is possible to live with conscience without losing hope or
becoming cynical. In this way, Atticus is able to admire Mrs. Dubose’s courage even while deploring her
racism. Scout’s progress as a character in the novel is defined by her gradual development toward
understanding Atticus’s lessons, culminating when, in the final chapters, Scout at last sees Boo Radley as a
human being. Her newfound ability to view the world from his perspective ensures that she will not become
jaded as she loses her innocence.
The Importance of Moral Education
Because exploration of the novel’s larger moral questions takes place within the perspective of children, the
education of children is necessarily involved in the development of all of the novel’s themes. In a sense, the
plot of the story charts Scout’s moral education, and the theme of how children are educated—how they are
taught to move from innocence to adulthood—recurs throughout the novel (at the end of the book, Scout even
says that she has learned practically everything except algebra). This theme is explored most powerfully
through the relationship between Atticus and his children, as he devotes himself to instilling a social conscience
in Jem and Scout. The scenes at school provide a direct counterpoint to Atticus’s effective education of his
children: Scout is frequently confronted with teachers who are either frustratingly unsympathetic to children’s
needs or morally hypocritical. As is true of To Kill a Mockingbird’s other moral themes, the novel’s conclusion
about education is that the most important lessons are those of sympathy and understanding, and that a
sympathetic, understanding approach is the best way to teach these lessons. In this way, Atticus’s ability to put
himself in his children’s shoes makes him an excellent teacher, while Miss Caroline’s rigid commitment to the
educational techniques that she learned in college makes her ineffective and even dangerous.
The Existence of Social Inequality
Differences in social status are explored largely through the overcomplicated social hierarchy of Maycomb, the
ins and outs of which constantly baffle the children. The relatively well-off Finches stand near the top of
Maycomb’s social hierarchy, with most of the townspeople beneath them. Ignorant country farmers like the
Cunninghams lie below the townspeople, and the white trash Ewells rest below the Cunninghams. But the
black community in Maycomb, despite its abundance of admirable qualities, squats below even the Ewells,
enabling Bob Ewell to make up for his own lack of importance by persecuting Tom Robinson. These rigid social
divisions that make up so much of the adult world are revealed in the book to be both irrational and destructive.
For example, Scout cannot understand why Aunt Alexandra refuses to let her consort with young Walter
Cunningham. Lee uses the children’s perplexity at the unpleasant layering of Maycomb society to critique the
role of class status and, ultimately, prejudice in human interaction.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Gothic Details
The forces of good and evil in To Kill a Mockingbird seem larger than the small Southern town in which the
story takes place. Lee adds drama and atmosphere to her story by including a number of Gothic details in the
setting and the plot. In literature, the term Gothic refers to a style of fiction first popularized in eighteenthcentury England, featuring supernatural occurrences, gloomy and haunted settings, full moons, and so on.
Among the Gothic elements in To Kill a Mockingbird are the unnatural snowfall, the fire that destroys Miss
Maudie’s house, the children’s superstitions about Boo Radley, the mad dog that Atticus shoots, and the
ominous night of the Halloween party on which Bob Ewell attacks the children. These elements, out of place in
the normally quiet, predictable Maycomb, create tension in the novel and serve to foreshadow the troublesome
events of the trial and its aftermath.
Small-Town Life
Counterbalancing the Gothic motif of the story is the motif of old-fashioned, small-town values, which manifest
themselves throughout the novel. As if to contrast with all of the suspense and moral grandeur of the book, Lee
emphasizes the slow-paced, good-natured feel of life in Maycomb. She often deliberately juxtaposes smalltown values and Gothic images in order to examine more closely the forces of good and evil. The horror of the
fire, for instance, is mitigated by the comforting scene of the people of Maycomb banding together to save Miss
Maudie’s possessions. In contrast, Bob Ewell’s cowardly attack on the defenseless Scout, who is dressed like a
giant ham for the school pageant, shows him to be unredeemably evil.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
Mockingbirds
The title of To Kill a Mockingbirdhas very little literal connection to the plot, but it carries a great deal of
symbolic weight in the book. In this story of innocents destroyed by evil, the “mockingbird” comes to represent
the idea of innocence. Thus, to kill a mockingbird is to destroy innocence. Throughout the book, a number of
characters (Jem, Tom Robinson, Dill, Boo Radley, Mr. Raymond) can be identified as mockingbirds—innocents
who have been injured or destroyed through contact with evil. This connection between the novel’s title and its
main theme is made explicit several times in the novel: after Tom Robinson is shot, Mr. Underwood compares
his death to “the senseless slaughter of songbirds,” and at the end of the book Scout thinks that hurting Boo
Radley would be like “shootin’ a mockingbird.” Most important, Miss Maudie explains to Scout: “Mockingbirds
don’t do one thing but . . . sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” That Jem and
Scout’s last name is Finch (another type of small bird) indicates that they are particularly vulnerable in the racist
world of Maycomb, which often treats the fragile innocence of childhood harshly.
Boo Radley
As the novel progresses, the children’s changing attitude toward Boo Radley is an important measurement of
their development from innocence toward a grown-up moral perspective. At the beginning of the book, Boo is
merely a source of childhood superstition. As he leaves Jem and Scout presents and mends Jem’s pants, he
gradually becomes increasingly and intriguingly real to them. At the end of the novel, he becomes fully human
to Scout, illustrating that she has developed into a sympathetic and understanding individual. Boo, an intelligent
child ruined by a cruel father, is one of the book’s most important mockingbirds; he is also an important symbol
of the good that exists within people. Despite the pain that Boo has suffered, the purity of his heart rules his
interaction with the children. In saving Jem and Scout from Bob Ewell, Boo proves the ultimate symbol of good.
Ode on a Grecian Urn
Ode to Psyche
To Autumn
Ode on Melancholy
Ode on Indolence
Ode to Fancy
Ode - (Bards of Passion and of Mirth)
Lines on the Mermaid Tavern
Robin Hood - To a Friend
Ode to Apollo
[edit]Other
poems by John Keats
I stood tiptoe upon a little hill
Specimen of an induction to a poem
Calidore - a fragment
To Some Ladies
On Receiving a Curious Shell, and a Copy of Verses from the Same Ladies
To - Georgiana Augusta Wylie, afterwards Mrs. George Keats
To Hope
Imitation of Spenser
Three Sonnets on Woman
Sleep and Poetry
On Death
Women, Wine, and Snuff
Fill For Me a Brimming Bowl
Isabella or The Pot of Basil
To a Young Lady who Sent Me a Laurel Crown
On Receiving a Laurel Crown from Leigh Hunt
To the Ladies who Saw me Crown'd
Hymn to Apollo
The Eve of St. Agnes
Helen Adams Keller (June 27, 1880 – June 1, 1968) was an American author, political
activist and lecturer. She was the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Artsdegree.[1][2] The story of
how Keller's teacher, Annie Sullivan, broke through the isolation imposed by a near complete lack of
language, allowing the girl to blossom as she learned to communicate, has become known worldwide
through the dramatic depictions of the play and film The Miracle Worker.
A prolific author, Keller was well traveled and was outspoken in her opposition to war. She campaigned
for women's suffrage, workers' rights, and socialism, as well as many other progressive causes.
One of Keller's earliest pieces of writing, at the age of eleven, was The Frost King (1891). There were
allegations that this story had been plagiarized from The Frost Fairies by Margaret Canby. An
investigation into the matter revealed that Keller may have experienced a case of cryptomnesia, which
was that she had Canby's story read to her but forgot about it, while the memory remained in her
subconscious.[1]
At the age of 22, Keller published her autobiography, The Story of My Life (1903), with help from Sullivan
and Sullivan's husband, John Macy. It includes words that Keller wrote and the story of her life up to age
21, and was written during her time in college.
Keller wrote The World I Live In in 1908 giving readers an insight into how she felt about the world. [14] Out
of the Dark, a series of essays on Socialism, was published in 1913.
Her spiritual autobiography, My Religion, was published in 1927 and re-issued as Light in my Darkness. It
advocates the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg, the controversial mystic who gives a spiritual
interpretation of the Last Judgment and second coming of Jesus Christ, and the movement named after
him, Swedenborgianism.
Keller wrote a total of 12 published books and several articles.
Madeleine L'Engle (November 29, 1918 – September 6, 2007)[1] was an American writer best known for
her Young Adult fiction, particularly the Newbery Medal-winningA Wrinkle in Time and its sequels A Wind
in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters, and An Acceptable Time. Her works reflect her strong
interest in modern science. Tesseracts, for example, are featured prominently in A Wrinkle in
Time, mitochondrial DNA in A Wind in the Door, and organ regeneration in The Arm of the Starfish.
Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963), commonly referred to
as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as Jack, was an Irish-bornBritish[1] novelist,
academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist. He is also known for
his fiction, especially The Screwtape Letters,The Chronicles of Narnia and The Space Trilogy.
Lewis was a close friend of J. R. R. Tolkien, and both authors were leading figures in the English faculty
at Oxford University and in the informal Oxford literary group known as the "Inklings". According to his
memoir Surprised by Joy, Lewis had been baptised in the Church of Ireland at birth, but fell away from his
faith during his adolescence. Owing to the influence of Tolkien and other friends, at the age of 32, Lewis
returned to Christianity, becoming "a very ordinary layman of the Church of England".[2] His conversion
had a profound effect on his work, and his wartime radio broadcasts on the subject of Christianity brought
him wide acclaim.
In 1956, he married the American writer Joy Gresham, 17 years his junior, who died four years later of
cancer at the age of 45.
Lewis died three years after his wife, as the result of a heart attack. His death came one week before
what would have been his 65th birthday. Media coverage of his death was minimal, as he died on 22
November 1963 – the same day that U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and the same
day as the death of another famous author, Aldous Huxley.
Lewis's works have been translated into more than 30 languages and have sold millions of copies over
the years. The books that make up The Chronicles of Narnia have sold the most and have been
popularised on stage, in TV, in radio, and in cinema.
Jack London (January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916)[1][2][3][4] was an American author who wrote The
Call of the Wild, White Fang, and The Sea Wolf along with many other popular books. A pioneer in the
then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction, he was one of the first Americans to make a
lucrative career exclusively from writing.[5]
he Call of the Wild is a novel by American writer Jack London. The plot concerns a
previously domesticated and even somewhat pampered dog named Buck, whose primordial instincts
return after a series of events finds him serving as a sled dog in the treacherous, frigid Yukon during the
days of the 19th-century Klondike Gold Rushes in which sled dogs were bought at generous prices.
Published in 1903, The Call of the Wild is London's most-read book, and it is generally considered his
best, the masterpiece of his so-called "early period".[1] Because theprotagonist is a dog, it is sometimes
classified as a juvenile novel, suitable for children, but it is dark in tone and contains numerous scenes of
cruelty and violence.
London followed the book in 1906 with White Fang, a companion novel with many similar plot elements
and themes as Call of the Wild, although following a mirror image plot in which a wild wolf becomes
civilized by a mining expert from San Francisco named Weedon Scott.
The Yeehat, a group of Alaskan Native Americans portrayed in the novel, are a fiction of London's.[2]
Lois Lowry (born Lois Ann Hammersberg[2] on March 20, 1937) is an American author of children's
literature. She began her career as a photographer and a freelance journalist during the early 1970s. Her
work as a journalist drew the attention of Houghton Mifflin and they encouraged her to write her first
children's book, A Summer to Die, which was published in 1977. She has since written more than 30
books for children and published an autobiography. Two of her works have been awarded the
prestigious Newbery Medal: Number the Stars in 1990, and The Giver in 1994.
As an author, Lowry is known for writing about difficult subject matters within her works for children. She
has explored such complex issues as racism, terminal illness,murder, and the Holocaust among other
challenging topics. Her skill at writing on such matters has brought her both praise and criticism. In
particular, her work The Giverhas been met with a diversity of reactions from schools in America, some of
which have adopted her book as a part of the mandatory curriculum, while others have prohibited the
book's inclusion in classroom studies.
Herman Melville (August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, short
story writer, essayist and poet who is often classified as part of dark romanticism. He is best known for his
novel Moby-Dick and novella Billy Budd, the latter which was published posthumously.
His first three books gained much attention, the first becoming a bestseller, but after a fast-blooming
literary success in the late 1840s, his popularity declined precipitously in the mid-1850s and never
recovered during his lifetime. When he died in 1891, he was almost completely forgotten. It was not until
the "Melville Revival" in the early 20th century that his work won recognition, most notably MobyDick which was hailed as one of the chief literary masterpieces of both American and world literature.
Themes of gender and sexuality
Although not the primary focus of Melville scholarship, there has been an emerging interest in the role of
gender and sexuality in some of Melville's writings.[19][20][21] Some critics, particularly those interested in
gender studies, have explored the existence of male-dominant social structures in Melville's fiction.[22] For
example, Alvin Sandberg claimed that "The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids" offers "an
exploration of impotency, a portrayal of a man retreating to an all-male childhood to avoid confrontation
with sexual manhood" from which the narrator engages in "congenial" digressions in heterogeneity. [23] In
line with this view Warren Rosenberg argues the homosocial "Paradise of Bachelors" is shown to be
"superficial and sterile."[21] David Harley Serlin observes in the second half of Melville's diptych, "The
Tartarus of Maids," the narrator gives voice to the oppressed women he observes: "As other scholars
have noted, the "slave" image here has two clear connotations. One describes the exploitation of the
women's physical labor, and the other describes the exploitation of the women's reproductive organs. Of
course, as models of women's oppression, the two are clearly intertwined."[24] In the end the narrator is
never fully able to come to terms with the contrasting masculine and feminine modalities. Issues of
sexuality have been observed in other works as well. Rosenberg notes Taji, in "Mardi", and the
protagonist in "Pierre" "think they are saving young "maidens in distress" (Yillah and Isabel) out of the
purest of reasons but both are also conscious of a lurking sexual motive."[21] When Taji kills the old priest
holding Yillah captive, he states "remorse smote me hard; and like lightning I asked myself whether the
death deed I had done was sprung of virtuous motive, the rescuing of a captive from thrall, or whether
beneath the pretense I had engaged in this fatal affray for some other selfish purpose, the companionship
of a beautiful maid."[25] In "Pierre" the motive for his self-sacrifice for Isabel is admitted: "womanly beauty
and not womanly ugliness invited him to champion the right."[26] Rosenberg argues "This awareness of a
double motive haunts both books and ultimately destroys their protagonists who would not fully
acknowledge the dark underside of their idealism. The epistemological quest and the transcendental
quest for love and belief are consequently sullied by the erotic."[21]
Melville fully explores the theme of sexuality in his major poetical work "Clarel." When the narrator is
separated from Ruth, with whom he has fallen in love, he is free to explore other sexual (and religious)
possibilities before deciding at the end of the poem to participate in the ritualistic order marriage
represents. In the course of the poem "he considers every form of sexual orientation - celibacy,
homosexuality, hedonism, and heterosexuality-raising the same kinds of questions as when he considers
Islam or Democracy."[21]
Other critics have suggested possible homoerotic overtones in some works. Commonly given examples
of the latter from Moby Dick are the interpretation of male bonding from what they term the "marriage bed"
episode involving Ishmael and Queequeg, and the "Squeeze of the Hand" chapter describing the
camaraderie of sailors extracting spermaceti from a dead whale.[27] Although some of these critics have
speculated that what they perceive to be themes of gender and sexuality in his writings may be reflective
of his own personal beliefs, there is no biographical evidence to support these claims.[28] Still others have
argued "Ahab's pursuit of the whale, which can be associated with the feminine in its shape, mystery, and
in its naturalness, represents the ultimate fusion of the epistemological and sexual quest."[21]
Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950),[1] better known by his pen name George Orwell,
was an English novelist and journalist. His work is marked by keen intelligence and wit, a profound
awareness of social injustice, an intense, revolutionary opposition to totalitarianism, a passion for clarity in
language and a belief indemocratic socialism.[2]
Considered perhaps the 20th century's best chronicler of English culture,[3] he wrote literary
criticism and poetry, as well as fiction and polemical journalism. He is best known for
the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) and the satirical novella Animal Farm (1945).
His Homage to Catalonia (1938), an account of his experiences as a volunteer on the Republican side in
the Spanish Civil War, and his numerous essays are widely acclaimed. Orwell's influence on
culture, popular and political, continues. Several of his neologisms, along with the term Orwellian, have
entered the language.
n his essay Politics and the English Language (1946), Orwell wrote about the importance of honest and
clear language and said that vague writing can be used as a powerful tool of political manipulation.
In Nineteen Eighty-Four he described how the state controlled thought by controlling language, making
certain ideas literally unthinkable. The adjective Orwellian refers to the frightening world of Nineteen
Eighty-Four, in which the state controls thought and misinformation is widespread. Several words and
phrases from Nineteen Eighty-Four have entered popular language. Newspeak is a simplified and
obfuscatory language designed to make independent thought impossible. Doublethink means holding two
contradictory beliefs simultaneously. The Thought Police are those who suppress all dissenting
opinion. Prolefeed is homogenized, manufactured superficial literature, film and music, used to control
and indoctrinate the populace through docility. Big Brother is a supreme dictator who watches everyone.
From Orwell's novel Animal Farm comes the sentence, "All animals are equal, but some animals are
more equal than others", describing theoretical equality in a grossly unequal society. Orwell may have
been the first to use the term cold war, in his essay, "You and the Atomic Bomb", published in Tribune, 19
October 1945. He wrote: "We may be heading not for general breakdown but for an epoch as horribly
stable as the slave empires of antiquity. James Burnham's theory has been much discussed, but few
people have yet considered its ideological implications;— this is, the kind of world-view, the kind of
beliefs, and the social structure that would probably prevail in a State which was at once unconquerable
and in a permanent state of 'cold war' with its neighbours."[57]
In "Politics and the English Language," George Orwell provides six rules for writers:[58]
Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
Never use a long word where a short one will do.
If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
Never use the passive voice where you can use the active.
Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday
English equivalent.
Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, editor and literary
critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and
the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the
inventor of the detective-fiction genre. He is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre
of science fiction.[1] He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing
alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.[2]
He was born as Edgar Poe in Boston, Massachusetts; he was orphaned young when his mother died
shortly after his father abandoned the family. Poe was taken in by John and Frances Allan,
of Richmond, Virginia, but they never formally adopted him. He attended the University of Virginia for one
semester but left due to lack of money. After enlisting in the Army and later failing as an officer's cadet
at West Point, Poe parted ways with the Allans. Poe's publishing career began humbly, with an
anonymous collection of poems, Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827), credited only to "a Bostonian".
Poe switched his focus to prose and spent the next several years working for literary journals and
periodicals, becoming known for his own style of literary criticism. His work forced him to move between
several cities, including Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City. In Baltimore in 1835, he
married Virginia Clemm, his 13-year-old cousin. In January 1845, Poe published his poem "The Raven" to
instant success. His wife died of tuberculosis two years later. He began planning to produce his own
journal, The Penn (later renamed The Stylus), though he died before it could be produced. On October 7,
1849, at age 40, Poe died in Baltimore; the cause of his death is unknown and has been variously
attributed to alcohol, brain congestion, cholera, drugs, heart disease, rabies, suicide, tuberculosis, and
other agents.[3]
Poe and his works influenced literature in the United States and around the world, as well as in
specialized fields, such as cosmology and cryptography. Poe and his work appear throughout popular
culture in literature, music, films, and television. A number of his homes are dedicated museums today.
Literary style and themes
1860s portrait by Oscar Halling after an 1849 daguerreotype
Genres
Poe's best known fiction works are Gothic,[77] a genre he followed to appease the public taste.[78] His most
recurring themes deal with questions of death, including its physical signs, the effects of decomposition,
concerns of premature burial, the reanimation of the dead, and mourning.[79] Many of his works are
generally considered part of the dark romanticism genre, a literary reaction to transcendentalism,[80] which
Poe strongly disliked.[81] He referred to followers of the movement as "Frogpondians" after the pond
on Boston Common.[82] and ridiculed their writings as "metaphor-run", lapsing into "obscurity for
obscurity's sake" or "mysticism for mysticism's sake."[83] Poe once wrote in a letter toThomas Holley
Chivers that he did not dislike Transcendentalists, "only the pretenders and sophists among them."[84]
Beyond horror, Poe also wrote satires, humor tales, and hoaxes. For comic effect, he used irony and
ludicrous extravagance, often in an attempt to liberate the reader from cultural conformity. [78] In fact,
"Metzengerstein", the first story that Poe is known to have published, [85] and his first foray into horror, was
originally intended as a burlesque satirizing the popular genre.[86] Poe also reinvented science fiction,
responding in his writing to emerging technologies such as hot air balloons in "The Balloon-Hoax".[87]
Poe wrote much of his work using themes specifically catered for mass market tastes. [88] To that end, his
fiction often included elements of popular pseudosciences such asphrenology[89] and physiognomy.[90]
Literary theory
Poe's writing reflects his literary theories, which he presented in his criticism and also in essays such as
"The Poetic Principle".[91] He disliked didacticism[92] and allegory,[93]though he believed that meaning in
literature should be an undercurrent just beneath the surface. Works with obvious meanings, he wrote,
cease to be art.[94] He believed that quality work should be brief and focus on a specific single effect.[91] To
that end, he believed that the writer should carefully calculate every sentiment and idea. [95] In "The
Philosophy of Composition", an essay in which Poe describes his method in writing "The Raven", he
claims to have strictly followed this method. It has been questioned, however, if he really followed this
system. T. S. Eliot said: "It is difficult for us to read that essay without reflecting that if Poe plotted out his
poem with such calculation, he might have taken a little more pains over it: the result hardly does credit to
the method."[96] Biographer Joseph Wood Krutch described the essay as "a rather highly ingenious
exercise in the art of rationalization".[97]
Jerome David "J. D." Salinger (pronounced /ˈsælɪndʒər/; born January 1, 1919) is an American author,
best known for his 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye, as well as his reclusive nature. He has not
published an original work since 1965 and has not been interviewed since 1980.
Raised in Manhattan, Salinger began writing short stories while in secondary school, and published
several stories in the early 1940s before serving in World War II. In 1948 he published the critically
acclaimed story "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" in The New Yorker magazine, which became home to
much of his subsequent work. In 1951 Salinger released his novel The Catcher in the Rye, an immediate
popular success. His depiction of adolescent alienation and loss of innocence in the protagonistHolden
Caulfield was influential, especially among adolescent readers.[1] The novel remains widely read and
controversial,[2] selling around 250,000 copies a year.
The success of The Catcher in the Rye led to public attention and scrutiny: Salinger became reclusive,
publishing new work less frequently. He followed Catcher with a short story collection, Nine
Stories (1953), a collection of a novella and a short story, Franny and Zooey (1961), and a collection of
two novellas, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963). His last
published work, a novella entitled "Hapworth 16, 1924," appeared in The New Yorker on June 19, 1965.
Afterward, Salinger struggled with unwanted attention, including a legal battle in the 1980s with
biographer Ian Hamilton and the release in the late 1990s of memoirs written by two people close to
him: Joyce Maynard, an ex-lover; and Margaret Salinger, his daughter. In 1996, a small publisher
announced a deal with Salinger to publish "Hapworth 16, 1924" in book form, but amid the ensuing
publicity, the release was indefinitely delayed. He made headlines around the globe in June 2009, after
filing a lawsuit against another writer for copyright infringement resulting from that writer's use of one of
Salinger's characters from Catcher in the Rye.[3]
n a contributor's note Salinger gave to Harper's Magazine in 1946, he wrote: "I almost always write about
very young people", a statement which has been referred to as his credo.[101]Adolescents are featured or
appear in all of Salinger's work, from his first published short story, "The Young Folks", to The Catcher in
the Rye and his Glass family stories. In 1961, the critic Alfred Kazin explained that Salinger's choice of
teenagers as a subject matter was one reason for his appeal to young readers, but another was "a
consciousness [among youths] that he speaks for them and virtually to them, in a language that is
peculiarly honest and their own, with a vision of things that capture their most secret judgments of the
world."[102] Salinger's language, especially his energetic, realistically sparse dialogue, was revolutionary at
the time his first stories were published, and was seen by several critics as "the most distinguishing thing"
about his work.[103]
Salinger identified closely with his characters,[80] and used techniques such as interior monologue, letters,
and extended telephone calls to display his gift for dialogue. Such style elements also "[gave] him the
illusion of having, as it were, delivered his characters' destinies into their own keeping."[104] Recurring
themes in Salinger's stories also connect to the ideas of innocence and adolescence, including the
"corrupting influence of Hollywood and the world at large",[105] the disconnect between teenagers and
"phony" adults,[105] and the perceptive, precocious intelligence of children.[24]
Contemporary critics discuss a clear progression over the course of Salinger's published work, as
evidenced by the increasingly negative reviews received by each of his three post-Catcher story
collections.[100][106]Ian Hamilton adheres to this view, arguing that while Salinger's early stories for the
"slicks" boasted "tight, energetic" dialogue, they had also been formulaic and sentimental. It took the
standards of The New Yorkereditors, among them William Shawn, to refine his writing into the "spare,
teasingly mysterious, withheld" qualities of "A Perfect Day for Bananafish", The Catcher in the Rye, and
his stories of the early 1950s.[107] By the late 1950s, as Salinger became more reclusive and involved in
religious study, Hamilton notes that his stories became longer, less plot-driven, and increasingly filled
with digression and parenthetical remarks.[108]Louis Menand agrees, writing in The New Yorker that
Salinger "stopped writing stories, in the conventional sense.... He seemed to lose interest in fiction as an
art form—perhaps he thought there was something manipulative or inauthentic about literary device and
authorial control."[24] In recent years, Salinger's later work has been defended by some critics; in
2001, Janet Malcolm wrote in The New York Review of Books that "Zooey" "is arguably Salinger's
masterpiece.... Rereading it and its companion piece "Franny" is no less rewarding than rereading The
Great Gatsby."[100]
William Shakespeare
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the poet and playwright. For other persons of the same name, see William
Shakespeare (disambiguation). For other uses of "Shakespeare", see Shakespeare (disambiguation).
William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564 – died 23 April 1616)[a] was
an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English languageand the
world's preeminent dramatist.[1] He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon".[2][b] His
surviving works, including some collaborations, consist of 38 plays,[c] 154 sonnets, two long narrative
poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language and
are performed more often than those of any other playwright.[3]
Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway,
who bore him three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet andJudith. Between 1585 and 1592, he began
a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part owner of a playing company called the Lord
Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613,
where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive, and there has been
considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, sexuality, religious beliefs, and
whether the works attributed to him were written by others.[4]
Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1589 and 1613.[5][d] His early plays were
mainly comedies and histories, genres he raised to the peak of sophistication and artistry by the end of
the sixteenth century. He then wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, King Lear,
and Macbeth, considered some of the finest works in the English language. In his last phase, he
wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances, and collaborated with other playwrights.
Many of his plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. In 1623,
two of his former theatrical colleagues published the First Folio, a collected edition of his dramatic works
that included all but two of the plays now recognised as Shakespeare's.
Shakespeare's work has made a lasting impression on later theatre and literature. In particular, he
expanded the dramatic potential of characterisation, plot, language, andgenre.[141] Until Romeo and Juliet,
for example, romance had not been viewed as a worthy topic for tragedy. [142] Soliloquies had been used
mainly to convey information about characters or events; but Shakespeare used them to explore
characters' minds.[143] His work heavily influenced later poetry. The Romantic poets attempted to revive
Shakespearean verse drama, though with little success. Critic George Steiner described all English verse
dramas from Coleridge to Tennyson as "feeble variations on Shakespearean themes."[144]
Shakespeare influenced novelists such as Thomas Hardy, William Faulkner, and Charles Dickens. The
American novelist Herman Melville's soliloquies owe much to Shakespeare; his Captain Ahab in MobyDick is a classic tragic hero, inspired by King Lear.[145] Scholars have identified 20,000 pieces of music
linked to Shakespeare's works. These include two operas by Giuseppe Verdi, Otello and Falstaff, whose
critical standing compares with that of the source plays.[146] Shakespeare has also inspired many painters,
including the Romantics and the Pre-Raphaelites. The Swiss Romantic artist Henry Fuseli, a friend
of William Blake, even translated Macbeth into German.[147] The psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud drew on
Shakespearean psychology, in particular that of Hamlet, for his theories of human nature.
In Shakespeare's day, English grammar and spelling were less standardised than they are now, and his
use of language helped shape modern English.[148] Samuel Johnsonquoted him more often than any other
author in his A Dictionary of the English Language, the first serious work of its type.[149] Expressions such
as "with bated breath" (Merchant of Venice) and "a foregone conclusion" (Othello) have found their way
into everyday English speech.[150]
Shakespeare was a respected poet and playwright in his own day, but his reputation did not rise to its
present heights until the nineteenth century. The Romantics, in particular, acclaimed Shakespeare's
genius, and the Victorians worshipped Shakespeare with a reverence that George Bernard Shaw called
"bardolatry".[6] In the twentieth century, his work was repeatedly adopted and rediscovered by new
movements in scholarship and performance. His plays remain highly popular today and are constantly
studied, performed and reinterpreted in diverse cultural and political contexts throughout the world
During the Romantic era, Shakespeare was praised by the poet and literary philosopher Samuel Taylor
Coleridge; and the critic August Wilhelm Schlegel translated his plays in the spirit of German
Romanticism.[161] In the nineteenth century, critical admiration for Shakespeare's genius often bordered
on adulation.[162] "That King Shakespeare," the essayistThomas Carlyle wrote in 1840, "does not he
shine, in crowned sovereignty, over us all, as the noblest, gentlest, yet strongest of rallying signs;
indestructible".[163] The Victoriansproduced his plays as lavish spectacles on a grand scale.[164] The
playwright and critic George Bernard Shaw mocked the cult of Shakespeare worship as "bardolatry". He
claimed that the new naturalism of Ibsen's plays had made Shakespeare obsolete.[165]
Mary Shelley (née Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was a British
novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic
novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818). She also edited and promoted the works of her
husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political
philosopher William Godwin, and her mother was the philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft.
Mary Godwin's mother died when she was eleven days old; afterwards, she and her older halfsister, Fanny Imlay, were raised by her father. When Mary was four, Godwin married his neighbour, Mary
Jane Clairmont. Godwin provided his daughter with a rich, if informal, education, encouraging her to
adhere to his liberal political theories. In 1814, Mary Godwin began a romantic relationship with one of her
father’s political followers, the married Percy Bysshe Shelley. Together with Mary's stepsister, Claire
Clairmont, they left for France and travelled through Europe; upon their return to England, Mary was
pregnant with Percy's child. Over the next two years, she and Percy faced ostracism, constant debt, and
the death of their prematurely born daughter. They married in late 1816 after the suicide of Percy
Shelley's first wife, Harriet.
In 1816, the couple famously spent a summer with Lord Byron, John William Polidori, and Claire
Clairmont near Geneva, Switzerland, where Mary conceived the idea for her novel Frankenstein. The
Shelleys left Britain in 1818 for Italy, where their second and third children died before Mary Shelley gave
birth to her last and only surviving child, Percy Florence. In 1822, her husband drowned when his sailing
boat sank during a storm in the Bay of La Spezia. A year later, Mary Shelley returned to England and
from then on devoted herself to the upbringing of her son and a career as a professional author. The last
decade of her life was dogged by illness, probably caused by the brain tumour that was to kill her at the
age of 53.
Until the 1970s, Mary Shelley was known mainly for her efforts to publish Percy Shelley's works and for
her novel Frankenstein, which remains widely read and has inspired many theatrical and film adaptations.
Recent scholarship has yielded a more comprehensive view of Mary Shelley’s achievements. Scholars
have shown increasing interest in her literary output, particularly in her novels, which include the historical
novels Valperga (1823) and Perkin Warbeck (1830), the apocalyptic novel The Last Man (1826), and her
final two novels, Lodore (1835) and Falkner (1837). Studies of her lesser-known works such as the travel
book Rambles in Germany and Italy (1844) and the biographical articles for Dionysius Lardner's Cabinet
Cyclopaedia (1829–46) support the growing view that Mary Shelley remained a
political radical throughout her life. Mary Shelley's works often argue that cooperation and sympathy,
particularly as practised by women in the family, were the ways to reform civil society. This view was a
direct challenge to the individualistic Romantic ethos promoted by Percy Shelley and
the Enlightenment political theories articulated by her father, William Godwin.
Enlightenment and Romanticism
Frankenstein, like much Gothic fiction of the period, mixes a visceral and alienating subject matter with
speculative and thought-provoking themes.[172] Rather than focusing on the twists and turns of the plot,
however, the novel foregrounds the mental and moral struggles of the protagonist, Victor Frankenstein,
and Shelley imbues the text with her own brand of politicised Romanticism, one that criticised the
individualism and egotism of traditional Romanticism.[173] Victor Frankenstein is like Satan in Paradise
Lost, and Prometheus: he rebels against tradition; he creates life; and he shapes his own destiny. These
traits are not portrayed positively; as Blumberg writes, "his relentless ambition is a self-delusion, clothed
as quest for truth".[174] He must abandon his family to fulfill his ambition.[175]
The frontispiece to the 1831Frankenstein by Theodor von Holst, one of the first two illustrations for the novel [176]
Mary Shelley believed in the Enlightenment idea that people could improve society through the
responsible exercise of political power, but she feared that the irresponsible exercise of power would lead
to chaos.[177] In practice, her works largely criticise the way 18th-century thinkers such as her parents
believed such change could be brought about. The creature in Frankenstein, for example, reads books
associated with radical ideals but the education he gains from them is ultimately useless. [178] Shelley's
works reveal her as less optimistic than Godwin and Wollstonecraft; she lacks faith in Godwin's theory
that humanity could eventually be perfected.[179]
As literary scholar Kari Lokke writes, The Last Man, more so than Frankenstein, "in its refusal to place
humanity at the center of the universe, its questioning of our privileged position in relation to
nature ... constitutes a profound and prophetic challenge to Western humanism."[180] Specifically, Mary
Shelley's allusions to what radicals believed was a failed revolution in France and the Godwinian,
Wollstonecraftian, and Burkean responses to it, challenge "Enlightenment faith in the inevitability of
progress through collective efforts".[181] As in Frankenstein, Shelley "offers a profoundly disenchanted
commentary on the age of revolution, which ends in a total rejection of the progressive ideals of her own
generation".[182] Not only does she reject these Enlightenment political ideals, but she also rejects the
Romantic notion that the poetic or literary imagination can offer an alternative.[183]
Politics
Critics have until recently cited Lodore and Falkner as evidence of increasing conservatism in Mary
Shelley's later works. In 1984, Mary Poovey influentially identified the retreat of Mary Shelley’s reformist
politics into the "separate sphere" of the domestic.[184] Poovey suggested that Mary Shelley
wrote Falkner to resolve her conflicted response to her father's combination of libertarian radicalism and
stern insistence on social decorum.[185] Mellor largely agreed, arguing that "Mary Shelley grounded her
alternative political ideology on the metaphor of the peaceful, loving, bourgeois family. She thereby
implicitly endorsed a conservative vision of gradual evolutionary reform."[186] This vision allowed women to
participate in the public sphere but it inherited the inequalities inherent in the bourgeois family.[187]
However, in the last decade or so this view has been challenged. For example, Bennett claims that Mary
Shelley's works reveal a consistent commitment to Romantic idealism and political reform [188] and Jane
Blumberg's study of Shelley's early novels argues that her career cannot be easily divided into radical and
conservative halves. She contends that "Shelley was never a passionate radical like her husband and her
later lifestyle was not abruptly assumed nor was it a betrayal. She was in fact challenging the political and
literary influences of her circle in her first work."[189] In this reading, Shelley's early works are interpreted
as a challenge to Godwin and Percy Bysshe Shelley's radicalism. Victor Frankenstein's "thoughtless
rejection of family", for example, is seen as evidence of Shelley's constant concern for the domestic. [190]
Percy Bysshe Shelley 4 August 1792 – 8 July 1822; pronounced /ˈpɜrsi ˈbɪʃ ˈʃɛli/)[2] was one of the
major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded among the finest lyric poets in the English
language. He is most famous for such classic anthology verse works as Ozymandias, Ode to the West
Wind, To a Skylark, and The Masque of Anarchy, which are among the most popular and critically
acclaimed poems in the English language. His major works, however, are long visionary poems which
included Prometheus Unbound, Alastor, Adonaïs, The Revolt of Islam, and the unfinished The Triumph of
Life. The Cenci (1819) and Prometheus Unbound (1820) were dramatic plays in five and four acts
respectively. He also wrote the Gothic novels Zastrozzi (1810) and St. Irvyne (1811) and the short
works The Assassins (1814) and The Coliseum (1817).
Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron. The novelist Mary Shelley was
his second wife.
Shelley never lived to see the extent of his success and influence in generations to come. Some of his
works were published, but they were often suppressed upon publication. Up until his death, with
approximately 50 readers as his audience, it is said that he made no more than 40 pounds from his
writings. In 1813, at age 21 Shelley "printed" his first major poem, Queen Mab. He set the press and ran
250 copies of this radical and revolutionary tract. Queen Mab was infused with scientific language and
naturalizing moral prescriptions for an oppressed humanity in an industrializing world. He intended the
poem to be private and distributed it among his close friends and acquaintances. About 70 sets of the
signatures were bound and distributed personally by Shelley, and the rest were stored at William Clark's
bookshop in London. A year before his death, in 1821, one of the shopkeepers caught sight of the
remaining signatures. The shopkeeper bound the remaining signatures, printed an expurgated edition,
and distributed the pirated editions through the black market. The copies were–in the words of Richard
Carlisle– "pounced upon," by the Society for the Prevention of Vice. Shelley was dismayed upon
discovering the piracy of what he considered to be not just a juvenile production but a work that could
potentially "injure rather than serve the cause of freedom." He sought an injunction against the
shopkeeper, but since the poem was considered illegal, he was not entitled to the copyright. William Clark
was imprisoned for 4 months for publishing and distributing Queen Mab. Between 1821 and the 1830s
over a dozen pirated editions of Queen Mab were produced and distributed among and by the laboring
classes fueling, and becoming a bible for, Chartism.[3]
Probably his most famous short poem, “Ozymandias” was published in 1818. The second-hand
narration attempts to resurrect the once powerful king's might while the exotic setting of Egypt and
desert sands helps illuminate the struggle between artist and subject. Shelley often attracted criticism
and controversy for his outspoken challenges to oppression, religion, and convention as in his political
poem “The Masque of Anarchy” (1819), a critical look at the Peterloo massacre;
Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on youYe are many — they are few.
Amy Tan (Chinese: 譚恩美; pinyin: Tán Enmei) (born February 19, 1952) is an American writer
of Chinese descent whose works explore mother-daughter relationships. In 1993, Tan's adaptation of her
most popular fiction work, The Joy Luck Club, became a commercially successful film.
Tan has written several other books, including The Kitchen God's Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses,
and The Bonesetter's Daughter, and a collection of non-fiction essays entitled The Opposite of Fate: A
Book of Musings. Her most recent book, Saving Fish From Drowning, explores the tribulations
experienced by a group of people who disappear while on an art expedition in the jungles of Burma. In
addition, Tan has written two children's books: The Moon Lady (1992) and Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese
Cat (1994), which was turned into an animated series airing on PBS. She has also appeared on PBS in a
short spot encouraging children to write.
Tan received her bachelor's and master's degrees in English and linguistics from San José State
University, and later did doctoral linguistics studies at UC Santa Cruz andUC Berkeley.[1]
Currently, she is the literary editor for West, Los Angeles Times' Sunday magazine, and did an uncredited
rewrite on The Replacement Killers at the request of Mira Sorvino.[citation needed] She is a resident
of Sausalito, California.
She is a member of the Rock Bottom Remainders, a rock band consisting of published writers,
including Barbara Kingsolver, Matt Groening, Dave Barry and Stephen King, among others.[2]
High-context Cultures and Low-context Cultures
The Joy Luck Club explores the clash between Chinese culture and American culture.
One way of understanding the difference is to look at communication in these
cultures. Chinese culture can be classified as a high-context culture and American
culture as a low-context culture. First I will define these terms, then explain the
significance of these two categories, and finally apply them toThe Joy Luck Club.
Culture is the way of living which a group of people has developed and
transmits from one generation to the next. It includes concepts, skills,
habits of thinking and acting, arts, institutions, ways of relating to the
world, and agreement on what is significant and necessary to know.
Race, ethnicity, class, and gender are cultural creations; they derive their
meanings from the culture.
Context is the whole situation, background, or environment connected to
an event, a situation, or an individual.
A high-context culture is a culture in which the individual has
internalized meaning and information, so that little is explicitly stated in
written or spoken messages. In conversation, the listener knows what is
meant; because the speaker and listener share the same knowledge and
assumptions, the listener can piece together the speaker's meaning. China
is a high-context culture.
A low-context culture is one in which information and meaning are
explicitly stated in the message or communication. Individuals in a lowcontext culture expect explanations when statements or situations are
unclear, as they often are. Information and meaning are not internalized
by the individual but are derived from context, e.g., from the situation or
an event. The United States is a low-context culture.
High-context Cultures
In a high-context culture, the individual acquires cultural information and meaning
from obedience to authority, through observation and by imitation. To acquire
knowledge in this way and to internalize it, children must be carefully trained. High-
context cultures are highly stable and slow to change, for they are rooted in the past;
one example is the Chinese practice of ancestor worship. They are also unified and
cohesive cultures.
In such cultures, the individual must know what is meant at the covert or unexpressed
level; the individual is supposed to know and to react appropriately. Others are
expected to understand without explanation or specific details. Explanations are
insulting, as if the speaker regards the listener as not knowledgeable or socialized
enough to understand. To members of a low-context culture, speakers in a highcontext culture seem to talk around a subject and never to get to the point.
The bonds among people are very strong in a high-context culture. People in authority
are personally and literally responsible for the actions of subordinates, whether in
government, in business, or in the family. (In the U.S., on the other hand, the general
practice is to find a "fall guy" or scapegoat who takes the blame for those with more
power and status.) In a high-context culture, the forms (conventional ways of
behaving) are important; the individual who does not observe the forms is perceived
negatively; the negative judgments for an individual's bad behavior may extend to the
entire family.
In embarrassing or awkward situations, people act as though nothing happened.
Individuality, minor disagreements, and personality clashes are ignored, so that no
action has to be taken. Taking action tends to be taken seriously, because once started
an action must generally be completed. Individuals can't stop an action because they
change their minds, because they develop another interest, because unforeseen
consequences arise, or because something better comes along. Consequently there is
greater caution or even reluctance to initiate an undertaking or to give a promise.
Chinese parents may overlook a child's behavior, because they expect that the strong
family tradition, which is based on ancestors, will cause the child ultimately to behave
properly.
The Clash of Low-context and High-context Cultures in The Joy Luck Club
In a low-context culture, as Edward T. Hall explains, "Most of the information must
be in the transmitted message in order to make up for what is missing in the context
(both internal and external)." In a low-context culture change is rapid and easy; bonds
between people are looser; action is undertaken easily and can be changed or stopped
once initiated.
The mothers in The Joy Luck Club expect their daughters to obey their elders and so
learn by obedience, by observation and by imitation, as they did in China. Their elders
did not explain. Because the mothers internalized values and knowledge, they seem to
assume that knowledge is innate and that it is present in their daughters and only has
to be brought out or activated. The internalization is so psychologically complete and
so much a part of the mothers' identities that they speak of it as physical. Am-mei, for
instance, sees in her mother "my own true nature. What was beneath my skin. Inside
my bones" (p. 40); to her, connection to her mother or filial respect is "so deep it is in
your bones" (p. 41).
But in this country, the mothers' warnings, instructions, and example are not
supported by the context of American culture, and so their daughters do not
understand. They resent and misinterpret their mothers' alien Chinese ways and
beliefs. Similarly, the mothers do not understand why they do not have the kind of
relationships with their daughters that they had with their mothers in China. The Joy
Luck mothers were so close to their own mothers that they saw themselves as
continuations of their mothers, like stairs.
The communication problems that arise when one speaker is from a high-context
culture and the other is from a low-context culture can be seen in the conversations of
June and Suyuen, "My mother and I never really understood one another. We
translated each other's meanings and I seemed to hear less than what was said, while
my mother heard more" (p. 27). June looks for meaning in what is stated and does not
understand that her mother omits important information because she assumes her
daughter knows it and can infer it; her mother, on the other hand, looks for meaning in
what has not been stated and so adds to what has been stated explicitly and comes up
with meanings that surprise her daughter.
The difficulties of growing up in a family from a high-context culture and living in a
low-context culture appear in other Asian-American writers. The narrator of Maxine
Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior is unable to decide whether figures she sees are
real persons or ghosts, whether stories she is told are true or fiction, what the meaning
of those stories is, why she is told the stories, and whether an event really happens or
is imagined.
The Talk Story
One way of maintaining and instructing children in traditional ways which Chinese
immigrants adopted is the traditional Chinese talk story. According to Linda Ching
Sledge, the talk story "served to redefine an embattled immigrant culture by providing
its members immediate, ceremonial access to ancient lore"; it also "retained the
structure of Chinese oral wisdom (parables, proverbs, formulaic description, heroic
biography, casuistical dialogue)." In the talk-story the narrator expects the listener to
grasp the point, which is often not stated (unlike the Western Aesop's Fables). Tan
adopts the Chinese talk story in the mothers' warning stories to their daughters. The
talk story serves another function in this novel; E.D. Huntley explains,
Talk story enables women who have been socialized into silence for most of their
lives--the Joy Luck mothers, for instance--to reconfigure the events of those lives into
acceptable public utterances: painful experiences are recast in the language of folk
tale; cautionary reminders become gnomic phrases; real life takes on the contours of
myth. More significantly, the act of performing talk story allows the storyteller to
retain a comfortable distance between herself and her audience. Thus, the storyteller
manages in some fashion to maintain the silence to which she is accustomed, as well
as to speak out and share with others the important stories that have shaped her into
the person that she is.
An issue for both mothers and daughters is finding a voice, that is, finding a way to
express the essential self.
Amy Tan
Amy Tan does not see herself as primarily a Chinese-American writer focusing on the
immigrant experience. She objects to being limited because of her heritage,
Placing on writers the responsibility to represent a culture is an onerous burden.
Someone who writes fiction is not necessarily writing a depiction of any generalized
group, they are writing a very specific story. There's also a danger in balkanizing
literature, as if it should be read as sociology, or politics, or that it should answer
questions like "What does The Hundred Secret Senses have to teach us about Chinese
culture?" As opposed to treating it as literature--as a story, language, memory.
Even though the main characters in all three of her novels are Chinese or ChineseAmerican, she sees her writing as having larger concerns, "What my books are about
is relationships and family. I've had women come up to me and say they've felt the
same way about their mothers, and they weren't immigrants." She sees the writer as
"storyteller, teacher, and enchanter." And she believes the reason we read and write is
"to feel more deeply, to see more clearly, to know what questions to ask, and to
formulate what we believe."
The Joy Luck Club
The Joy Luck Club was a critical and a popular success. Over 2,000,000 copies were
sold, Tan received $1.23 million for the paperback rights, and it has been translated
into seventeen languages--including Chinese.
It was originally intended as a collection of short stories, an origin which is still
apparent. "The Red Candle" could stand alone, even though it is an integral part of the
novel. The novel successfully combines numerous kinds of writing; Tan draws on the
biography, the autobiography, the memoir, history, mythology, the folk tale, and the
talk story.
The novel has a balanced structure; this is appropriate because the Chinese value
balance and harmony. There are four sections, and there are four tales within each
section. Because Suyuen Woo died before the novel opens, her daughter June speaks
for both of them; this structural device expresses the harmony or understanding that
the mothers and daughters finally arrive at. Because June speaks for herself and her
mother, her narrative bridges two cultures and the two lives of mother and daughter.
The four sections and tales parallel the four directions, which have symbolic value for
the Chinese. It is not chance that in the mahjong games, Suyuen's corner was east, for
" The East is where everything begins" (p. 22). Suyuan founded the Joy Luck Club,
and China (the East) is where the mothers begin and where the daughters' identities
also begin. It is where the novel ends, with Jing-mei finding her full identity.
The short tales that precede each section introduce the theme of that section.
"Feathers from a thousand Li Away" has the feel of a fairy tale. It is about the
mothers' hopes for their daughters and about transformation, "the swan that
becomes more than was hoped for" (p. 3). Although communication is
impossible because of the language difference, the mother in the tale waits
patiently to communicate with her daughter. The feather is the mothers'
Chinese heritage, which they want to pass on to their daughters. This section
gives us the mother's stories in China.
"The Twenty-Six malignant Gates" introduces the mothers' protectiveness,
which is expressed in warnings. The daughters ignore the warnings, to their
own harm. This section presents the daughters' childhood traumas and
development and their lack of communication with their mothers.
"American Translation" refers to the American daughters as the reflections or
duplicates of their Chinese mothers; hence,they are translations. The daughters,
now adults, discover that their mothers'warnings and advice were valid.
"Queen Mother of the Western Skies" states the theme explicitly, "How to lose
your innocence but not your hope" (p. 239) The mothers are the Queen Mother,
whose wisdom the daughters should listen to. The mothers, who lose their
innocence through their terrible sufferings, never lose hope for their daughters.
The living mothers and daughters come to an understanding, and there is hope
for the daughters and their relationship with their mothers; June/Jing-mei
completes her relationship with her dead mother and experiences her Chinese
identity.
Themes in The Joy Luck Club
Identity.
The stories tell of events which shape the identities of the mothers and
daughters and give direction to their lives. Though David Denby is speaking of
the movie, his description applies equally well to the novel, "each story centers
on a moment of creation or self-destruction in a woman's life, the moment
when her identity becomes fixed forever." The mothers do not question their
identities, having come from a stable culture into which their families were
integrated. Their daughters, however, are confused about their identities.
Communication between American daughters and Chinese mothers.
The mothers see their duty as encouraging and, if necessary, pushing their
daughters to succeed; therefore, they feel they have a right to share in their
success (the Chinese view). The daughters see the mothers as trying to live
through them and thereby preventing them from developing as separate
individuals and from leading independent lives (the American view).
The link of the Chinese mothers and Chinese daughters.
The Chinese mothers form a continuity with their mothers in China, a
connection which they want to establish with their American daughters.
Love, loss, and redemption.
Throughout there exists what David Gates calls a "ferocious love between
mother and daughter" both in China and in this country. But the women also
suffer loss, which ranges from separation to abandonment to rejection, in the
mother-daughter relationship and in the male-female relationship. Sometimes
the loss is overcome and the love re-established.
Connection of the past and the present.
The mothers' past lives in China affect their daughters' lives in this country, just
as the daughters' childhood experiences affect their identities and adult lives.
Power of language.
Without proficiency in a common language, the Chinese mothers and American
daughters cannot communicate. St. Clair cannot communicate with his wife,
and so he changes her name and her birth date, taking away her identity as a
tiger. Lena St. Clair mistranslates for her father and for her mother. Also, words
have great power.
Expectation and reality.
The mothers have great hopes for their daughters; their expectations for their
daughters include not just success but also freedom. They do not want their
daughters' lives to be determined by a rigid society and convention, as in an
arranged marriage, and made unhappy as theirs were. The American reality
fulfilled their expectations in unanticipated and unacceptable ways. Another
way of expressing this theme is The American Dream and its fulfillment.
Chinese culture versus American culture.
This conflict appears throughout the novel, from the struggles of the mothers
and daughters to Lena St. Clair's Chinese eyes and American appearance and
Lindo Jong's Chinese face and her American face.
Imagery
Food.
Food expresses love. June cooks a dish her father likes after her mother's death
to comfort him. It also shows relationships, like the competition in cooking
among the mothers. Waverly uses this competition to manipulate her mother
into inviting Rich to dinner; she arranges to eat at Auntie Suyuan's house. Food
also reveals character. Waverly selfishly takes the best crabs for her daughter,
Rich, and herself; June considerately takes the worst crab so her mother won't
get it. Food makes cultural statements; the first meal Jing-mei has in China with
her relatives is American fast food. Food also affirms life, as the Joy Luck
meals at Kweilin. And it marks significant events--Lindo meets her husband at
New Year when fish are being caught and cooked, and afterward she sees him
at red egg ceremonies. When she arrives at her future husband's home, she is
sent to the kitchen, a mark of her low status; another mark of her subordination
is her cooking to please her husband and mother-in-law. An-mei almost dies
after boiling soup spills on her neck.
Clothing.
Clothing expresses cultural identity and clashes as well as hides identity.
Suyuan brings expensive silk dresses from China, then has to wear hand-medown Western clothes which are too big. As an old lady, she dresses strangely
and wears colors which clash. In a photograph taken when Ying-ying arrives in
this country, she is wearing a Chinese dress with a Western jacket which is too
big. On the boat to Tientsin, An-mei is surprised at her mother's sudden
appearance in Western dress and is thrilled at her own new dress; the change to
Western clothing represents both the start of a new life and estrangement from
Chinese tradition.
Dreams.
Dreams allow us to move between the conscious level and the unconscious
level, to express hidden feelings. June dreams of telling her sisters of her
mother's death and being rejected. A dream brings release in another sense;
Lindo makes up a dream to escape her marriage without dishonoring her
family.
Wind and directions.
Waverly thinks of wind in her relationship with her mother and in her chess
playing. Because "the north wind had blown luck and my husband my way,"
Ying-ying keeps the window open to blow "the spirit and heart" of her
womanizing husband back; instead the north wind blows him "past my
bedroom and out the back door" (p. 281).
Websites on Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club
Amy Tan
Suggestions for teaching The Joy Luck Club.
Annina's Amy Tan Page
Interviews with Amy Tan, biography.
Crystal's Amy Tan Page
Stories of women in The Joy Luck Club and links.
The Joy Luck Lady
Feature story from The Detroit News>
Voices from the Gaps: Women Writers of Color: Amy Tan
Biography, selected bibliography, related links.
J. R. R. Tolkien John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE (pronounced /ˈtɒlkiːn/[1]; in General
American
also /ˈtoʊlkiːn/[2]) (3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer, poet,philologist,
and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord
of the Rings and The Silmarillion.
Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford from 1925 to 1945, and Merton
Professor of English Language and Literature from 1945 to 1959.[3] He was a close friend of C. S.
Lewis—they were both members of the informal literary discussion group known as the Inklings. Tolkien
was appointed aCommander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II on 28 March 1972.
After his death, Tolkien's son, Christopher, published a series of works based on his father's extensive
notes and unpublished manuscripts, including The Silmarillion. These, together with The Hobbit and The
Lord of the Rings, form a connected body of tales, poems, fictional histories, invented languages, and
literary essays about an imagined world called Arda, and Middle-earth[4] within it. Between 1951 and 1955
Tolkien applied the word legendarium to the larger part of these writings.[5]
While many other authors had published works of fantasy before Tolkien, [6] the great success of The
Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings when they were published in paperback in the United States led directly
to a popular resurgence of the genre. This has caused Tolkien to be popularly identified as the "father" of
modern fantasy literature[7]—or more precisely, high fantasy.[8] Tolkien's writings have inspired many other
works of fantasy and have had a lasting effect on the entire field. In 2008, The Times ranked him sixth on
a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".[9]
Themes
Good vs. Evil
The conflict between good and evil is the main theme of Tolkien'sHobbit. The
good creatures strive for a peaceful existence, while the evil creatures cause
suffering. In the novel, the quest to reclaim the treasure is considered a
righteous cause. Even Bilbo, a gentle hobbit reluctant to get involved, is
ultimately convinced to join the quest because he believes it to be a noble
mission.
The wizard Gandalf also believes in a good cause. He is a wise and just being
who wanders the realm improving the quality of life. A decent judge of
character, he recognizes Bilbo's resourcefulness. Elrond, Beorn, and Bard are
also examples of the many good and courageous beings who live in Middleearth.
Evil creatures constantly threaten the forces of good. The mighty dragon Smaug
destroys towns.....
Mark Twain
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mark Twain
Genres
Fiction, historical fiction, children's literature, non-fiction, travel
literature, satire, essay,philosophical literature, social commentary, literary
criticism
Notablework(s) Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Influenced[show]
Signature
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910),[3] better known by the pen
name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. Twain is most noted for his novels Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn, which has since been called the Great American Novel,[4] and The Adventures of
Tom Sawyer. He is extensively quoted.[5][6] During his lifetime, Twain became a friend to presidents,
artists, industrialists, and European royalty.
Twain enjoyed immense public popularity, and his keen wit and incisive satire earned him praise from
both critics and peers. Upon his death he was lauded as the "greatest American humorist of his
age,"[7] and William Faulkner called Twain "the father of American literature".[8]
Alice Malsenior Walker (born February 9, 1944) is an American author. She has written at length on
issues of race and gender, and is most famous for the critically acclaimed novel The Color Purple for
which she won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She was born and raised in Georgia.
Walker's first book of poetry was written while she was still a senior at Sarah Lawrence, and she took a
brief sabbatical from writing when she was in Mississippi working in the civil rights movement. Walker
resumed her writing career when she joined Ms. magazine as an editor before moving to
northern California in the late 1970s. An article she published in 1975 was largely responsible for the
renewal of interest in the work of Zora Neale Hurston, who was a large source of inspiration for Walker's
writing and subject matter. In 1973, Walker and fellow Hurston scholar Charlotte D. Hunt discovered
Hurston's unmarked grave in Ft. Pierce, Florida. Both women paid for a modest headstone for the
gravesite.[14]
In addition to her collected short stories and poetry, Walker's first novel, The Third Life of Grange
Copeland, was published in 1970. In 1976, Walker's second novel, Meridian, was published. The novel
dealt with activist workers in the South during the civil rights movement, and closely paralleled some of
Walker's own experiences.
In 1982, Walker would publish what has become her best-known work, the novel The Color Purple. The
story of a young black woman fighting her way through not only racist white culture but patriarchal black
culture was a resounding commercial success. The book became a bestseller and was subsequently
adapted into a critically acclaimed 1985 movie as well as a 2005 Broadway musical play.
Walker has written several other novels, including The Temple of My Familiar and Possessing the Secret
of Joy (which featured several characters and descendants of characters from The Color Purple) and has
published a number of collections of short stories, poetry, and other published work.
Her works typically focus on the struggles of blacks, particularly women, and their struggle against
a racist, sexist, and violent society. Her writings also focus on the role of women of color in culture and
history. Walker is a respected figure in the liberal political community for her support of unconventional
and unpopular views as a matter of principle.
Additionally, Walker has published several short stories, including the 1973 Everyday Use, in which she
discusses feminism, racism against blacks, and the issues raised by young black people who leave home
and lose respect for their parents' culture.[15]
In 2007, Walker gave 122 boxes of manuscripts and archive material to Emory University's Manuscript,
Archives, and Rare Book Library[16]. In addition to drafts of writings such as The Color Purple,
unpublished poems and writings, and correspondence with editors, the collection includes extensive
correspondence with family members, friends and colleagues, an early treatment of the film script for The
Color Purple that was never used, syllabi from courses she taught, and fan mail. The collection also
contains a scrapbook of poetry compiled when Walker was 15 entitled "Poems of a Childhood Poetess".
In 2009, she was one of the signers of a letter protesting the inclusion of films about Israel at the Toronto
Film Festival.
Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 – 13 August 1946)[1] was an English author, best known for
his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many genres, including contemporary
novels, history, politics and social commentary. Together with Jules Verne, Wells has been referred to as
"The Father of Science Fiction".[2]
Wells was an outspoken socialist and sympathetic to pacifist views, although he supported the First World
War once it was under way, and his later works became increasingly political and didactic. His middle
period novels (1900–1920) were less science-fictional; they covered lower-middle class life (The History
of Mr Polly) and the 'New Woman' and the Suffragettes (Ann Veronica).
Wells's first non-fiction bestseller was Anticipations (1901).[13] When originally serialised in a magazine it
was subtitled, "An Experiment in Prophecy", and is considered his most explicitly futuristic work.
Anticipating what the world would be like in the year 2000, the book is interesting both for its hits (trains
and cars resulting in the dispersion of population from cities to suburbs; moral restrictions declining as
men and women seek greater sexual freedom; the defeat of German militarism, and the existence of
a European Union) and its misses (he did not expect successful aircraft before 1950, and averred that
"my imagination refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocate its crew and founder at
sea").
Statue of a The War of the Worlds tripod, erected as a tribute to H. G. Wells inWoking town centre, UK.
His early novels, called "scientific romances", invented a number of themes now classic in science
fiction in such works as The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Invisible Man, The War of
the Worlds, When the Sleeper Wakes, and The First Men in the Moon. He also wrote other, non-fantastic
novels that have received critical acclaim includingKipps and the satire on Edwardian advertising, TonoBungay.
Wells wrote several dozen short stories and novellas, the best known of which is "The Country of the
Blind" (1904). His short story "The New Accelerator" was the inspiration for the Star Trek episode Wink of
an Eye.[14]
Walter Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist, journalist,
and humanist. He was a part of the transition between Transcendentalismand realism, incorporating both
views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the
father of free verse.[1] His work was very controversial in its time, particularly his poetry collection Leaves
of Grass, which was described as obscene for its overt sexuality.
Born on Long Island, Whitman worked as a journalist, a teacher, a government clerk, and a volunteer
nurse during the American Civil War in addition to publishing his poetry. Early in his career, he also
produced a temperance novel, Franklin Evans (1842). Whitman's major work, Leaves of Grass, was first
published in 1855 with his own money. The work was an attempt at reaching out to the common person
with an American epic. He continued expanding and revising it until his death in 1892. After a stroke
towards the end of his life, he moved to Camden, New Jersey where his health further declined. He died
at age 72 and his funeral became a public spectacle.[2][3]
Whitman's sexuality is often discussed alongside his poetry. Though biographers continue to debate his
sexuality, he is usually described as either homosexual orbisexual in his feelings and
attractions.[4] However, there is disagreement among biographers as to whether Whitman had actual
sexual experiences with men.[5] Whitman was concerned with politics throughout his life. He supported
the Wilmot Proviso and opposed the extension of slavery generally. His poetry presented an egalitarian
view of the races, and at one point he called for the abolition of slavery, but later he saw the abolitionist
movement as a threat to democracy.[6]
Whitman's work breaks the boundaries of poetic form and is generally prose-like.[1] He also used unusual
images and symbols in his poetry, including rotting leaves, tufts of straw, and debris. [102] He also openly
wrote about death and sexuality, including prostitution.[82] He is often labeled as the father of free verse,
though he did not invent it.[1]
Poetic theory
Whitman wrote in the preface to the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, "The proof of a poet is that his
country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it." He believed there was a
vital, symbiotic relationship between the poet and society.[103] This connection was emphasized especially
in "Song of Myself" by using an all-powerful first-person narration.[104] As an American epic, it deviated
from the historic use of an elevated hero and instead assumed the identity of the common
people.[105] Leaves of Grass also responded to the impact that recent urbanization in the United States
had on the masses.[106]
James Mercer Langston Hughes, (February 1, 1902 – May 22, 1967) was
an American poet, novelist, playwright, short story writer, and columnist. He was one of the earliest
innovators of the new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is best-known for his work during the Harlem
Renaissance. He is also best known for what he wrote about the Harlem Renaissance, "Harlem was in
vogue."
Harlem Renaissance: Zora Hurston, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen (March 30, 1903–January 9,
1946) was an American Romantic poet. Cullen was one of the leading African American poets of his time,
associated with the generation of black poets of the Harlem Renaissance.
British Romantics; John Keats, Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley
Transcendentalism: Waldo, Thoreau, Emerson
Old English literature encompasses literature written in Old English (also called Anglo-Saxon), during
the 600-year Anglo-Saxon period of England, from the mid-5th century to the Norman Conquest of 1066.
These works include genres such as epic poetry, hagiography, sermons, Bible translations, legal
works, chronicles, riddles, and others. In all there are about 400 surviving manuscripts from the period, a
significant corpus of both popular interest and specialist research.
Among the most important works of this period is the poem Beowulf, which has achieved national
epic status in Britain. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle otherwise proves significant to study of the era,
preserving a chronology of early English history, while the poem Cædmon's Hymn from the 7th century
survives as the oldest extant work of literature in English.
Anglo-Saxon literature has gone through different periods of research—in the 19th and early 20th
centuries the focus was on the Germanic roots of English, later the literary meritswere emphasized, and
today the focus is upon paleography and the physical manuscripts themselves more generally: scholars
debate such issues as dating, place of origin, authorship, and the connections between Anglo-Saxon
culture and the rest of Europe in the Middle Ages.
Middle English is the name given by historical linguists to the diverse forms of the English language in
use between the late 11th century and about 1470, when theChancery Standard, a form of London-based
English, began to become widespread, a process aided by the introduction of the printing
press into England by William Caxton in the late 1470s. By that time the variant of
the Northumbrian dialect (prevalent in Northern England) spoken in southeast Scotland was developing
into the Scots language. The language of England as used after this time, up to 1650, is known as Early
Modern English.
Unlike Old English, which tended largely to adopt Late West Saxon scribal conventions in the immediate
pre-Conquest period, Middle English as a written language displays a wide variety of scribal (and
presumably dialectal) forms. However, the diversity of forms in written Middle English may signify neither
greater variety of spoken forms of English than could be found in pre-Conquest England, nor a faithful
representation of contemporary spoken English (though presumably greater fidelity to this than may be
found in Old English texts).
Rather, this diversity suggests the gradual end of the role of Wessex as a focal point and trend-setter for
scribal activity, and the emergence of more distinct local scribal styles and written dialects, and a general
pattern of transition of activity over the centuries that follow, as Northumbria, East Anglia and London
emerge successively as major centres of literary production, with their own generic interests.
Geoffrey Chaucer | John Gower | Sir Gawain and the Green Knight | William Langland and Piers Plowman
Julian of Norwich | Margery Kempe | Thomas Malory | John Lydgate | Thomas Hoccleve | Paston Letters
Everyman | Medieval Plays | Middle English Lyrics | Essays and Articles | Additional Medieval Sources
King Henry VIII | Queen Elizabeth I | John Fisher | William Tyndale | Sir Thomas More | John Heywood
Thomas Sackville | Nicholas Udall | John Skelton | Sir Thomas Wyatt | Henry Howard | Thomas Cranmer
Hugh Latimer | Roger Ascham | Sir Thomas Hoby | Richard Hooker | George Gascoigne | Sir Philip Sidney
John Lyly | Thomas Nashe | John Foxe | Edmund Spenser | Robert Southwell | Robert Greene | George Peele
Thomas Kyd | Christopher Marlowe | William Shakespeare | Fulke Greville | Thomas Campion | Thomas Hariot
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Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke | Samuel Daniel | Emilia Lanyer | Articles | Resources | Search
©1996-2009 Anniina Jokinen. All Rights Reserved. Created April 3, 1996. Last update on July 14, 2009.
"Introduction" is copyright © 1998, W. W. Norton & Company; it is a link to Norton Topics Online.
"Mr. Shakespeare and the Internet" is © Terry A. Gray. The Æmilia Lanyer site is © Kari McBride.
Art: "Allegory of the Tudor Succession", c. 1572. Attr. to Lucas de Heere. Sudeley Castle.
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British Literature through Time
Click one of the links below to go directly to literary time period information.
British Literature through Time
Anglo-Saxon
Neoclassical/Restoration
Modern/Post-Modern
Medieval
Romantic
Contemporary
Renaissance
Victorian
American literature is the written or literary work produced in the area of the United States and Colonial
America. For more specific discussions of poetry and theater, see Poetry of the United
States and Theater in the United States. During its early history, America was a series of British colonies
on the eastern coast of the present-day United States. Therefore, its literary tradition begins as linked to
the broader tradition of English literature. However, unique American characteristics and the breadth of its
production usually now cause it to be considered a separate path and tradition.
Contents
[hide]
1 Colonial literature
2 Post-independence
3 Unique American style
4 American poetry
5 Realism, Twain and James
6 Turn of the century
7 Depression-era literature
8 Post-World War II
9 1970 - 2000
10 Millennial and Immigrant literature
11 See also
o
11.1 Minority focuses in American literature
o
11.2 Additional genres
12 References
13 Notes
14 External links
[edit]Colonial
literature
Some of the earliest forms of American literature were pamphlets and writings extolling the benefits of the
colonies to both a European and colonist audience. Captain John Smith could be considered the first
American author with his works: A True Relation of ... Virginia ... (1608) and The General Historie of
Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles (1624). Other writers of this manner included Daniel
Denton, Thomas Ashe, William Penn, George Percy, William Strachey, Daniel Coxe, Gabriel Thomas,
and John Lawson.
The religious disputes that prompted settlement in America were also topics of early writing. A journal
written by John Winthrop discussed the religious foundations of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Edward
Winslowalso recorded a diary of the first years after the Mayflower's arrival. Other religiously influenced
writers included Increase Mather and William Bradford, author of the journal published as a History of
Plymouth Plantation, 1620–47. Others like Roger Williams and Nathaniel Ward more fiercely argued state
and church separation.
Some poetry also existed. Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor are especially noted. Michael
Wigglesworth wrote a best-selling poem, The Day of Doom, describing the time of judgment. Nicholas
Noyes was also known for his doggerel verse.
Other late writings described conflicts and interaction with the Indians, as seen in writings by Daniel
Gookin, Alexander Whitaker, John Mason, Benjamin Church, and Mary Rowlandson. John
Eliot translated the Bibleinto the Algonquin language.
Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield represented the Great Awakening, a religious revival in the
early 18th century that asserted strict Calvinism. Other Puritan and religious writers include Thomas
Hooker,Thomas Shepard, John Wise, and Samuel Willard. Less strict and serious writers
included Samuel Sewall, Sarah Kemble Knight, and William Byrd.
The revolutionary period also contained political writings, including those by colonists Samuel
Adams, Josiah Quincy, John Dickinson, and Joseph Galloway, a loyalist to the crown. Two key figures
were Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine. Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac and The Autobiography of
Benjamin Franklin are esteemed works with their wit and influence toward the formation of a budding
American identity. Paine's pamphlet Common Sense and The American Crisis writings are seen as
playing a key role in influencing the political tone of the period.
During the revolution itself, poems and songs such as "Yankee Doodle" and "Nathan Hale" were popular.
Major satirists included John Trumbull and Francis Hopkinson. Philip Morin Freneau also wrote poems
about the war's course.
[edit]Post-independence
In the post-war period, The Federalist essays by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John
Jay presented a significant historical discussion of American government organization and republican
values. Thomas Jefferson's United States Declaration of Independence, his influence on the American
Constitution, his autobiography, the Notes on the State of Virginia, and his many letters solidify his spot
as one of the most talented early American writers. Fisher Ames, James Otis, and Patrick Henry are also
valued for their political writings and orations.
Much of the early literature of the new nation struggled to find a uniquely American voice in existing
literary genre, and this tendency was also reflected in novels. European forms and styles were often
transferred to new locales and critics often saw them as inferior.
[edit]Unique
American style
With the War of 1812 and an increasing desire to produce uniquely American literature and culture, a
number of key new literary figures emerged, perhaps most prominently Washington Irving, William Cullen
Bryant,James Fenimore Cooper, and Edgar Allan Poe. Irving, often considered the first writer to develop
a unique American style[citation needed] (although this has been debated) wrote humorous works
in Salmagundi and the well-known satire A History of New York, by Diedrich Knickerbocker (1809). Bryant
wrote early romantic and nature-inspired poetry, which evolved away from their European origins. In
1832, Poe began writing short stories – including "The Masque of the Red Death," "The Pit and the
Pendulum," "The Fall of the House of Usher," and "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" – that explore
previously hidden levels of human psychology and push the boundaries of fiction
toward mystery and fantasy. Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales about Natty Bumppo (which includes The
Last of the Mohicans) were popular both in the new country and abroad.
Humorous writers were also popular and included Seba Smith and Benjamin P. Shillaber in New
England and Davy Crockett, Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, Johnson J. Hooper, Thomas Bangs Thorpe,
and George Washington Harris writing about the American frontier.
The New England Brahmins were a group of writers connected to Harvard University and its seat
in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The core included James Russell Lowell, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,
and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Ralph Waldo Emerson.
In 1836, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), an ex-minister, published a startling nonfiction work
called Nature, in which he claimed it was possible to dispense with organized religion and reach a lofty
spiritual state by studying and responding to the natural world. His work influenced not only the writers
who gathered around him, forming a movement known as Transcendentalism, but also the public, who
heard him lecture.
Emerson's most gifted fellow-thinker was perhaps Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), a resolute
nonconformist. After living mostly by himself for two years in a cabin by a wooded pond, Thoreau
wrote Walden, a book-length memoir that urges resistance to the meddlesome dictates of organized
society. His radical writings express a deep-rooted tendency toward individualism in the American
character. Other writers influenced by Transcendentalism were Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller, George
Ripley, Orestes Brownson, and Jones Very.[1]
Naturalism was a literary movement taking place from 1865 to 1900 that used detailed realism to
suggest that social conditions, heredity, and environment had inescapable force in shaping human
character. It was depicted as a literary movement that seeks to replicate a believable everyday reality, as
opposed to such movements as Romanticism or Surrealism, in which subjects may receive highly
symbolic, idealistic, or even supernatural treatment. Naturalism is the outgrowth of Realism, a
prominent literary movement in mid-19th-century France and elsewhere. Naturalistic writers were
influenced by the evolution theory of Charles Darwin.[1] They believed that one's heredity and social
environment determine one's character. Whereas realism seeks only to describe subjects as they really
are, naturalism also attempts to determine "scientifically" the underlying forces (e.g. the environment or
heredity) influencing the actions of its subjects. Naturalistic works often include uncouth or sordid subject
matter; for example, Émile Zola's works had a frankness about sexuality along with a pervasive
pessimism. Naturalistic works exposed the dark harshness of life, including poverty, racism, sex,
prejudice, disease, prostitution, and filth. As a result, naturalistic writers were frequently criticized for
being too blunt.
Contents
[hide]
1 Defining Characteristics
2 Literary Naturalism in the United
States
3 See also
4 References
5 Sources
6 External links
[edit]Defining
Characteristics
de ses os en pointe[2]
Another characteristic of literary naturalism is detachment from the story. The author often tries to
maintain a tone that will be experienced as 'objective.' Also, an author will sometimes achieve detachment
by creating nameless characters (though, strictly speaking, this is by environmental factors, and that
he/she can do nothing about it.) Another common characteristic is a surprising twist at the end of the
story. Equally, there tends to be in naturalist novels and stories a strong sense that nature is indifferent to
human struggle. These are only a few of the defining characteristics of naturalism, however.
Naturalism is an extension of realism, and may be better understood by studying the basic precepts of
that literary movement. The term naturalism itself came from Emile Zola [3] It is believed that he sought a
new idea to convince the reading public of something new and more modern in his fiction. He argued that
his innovation in fiction-writing was the creation of characters and plots based on the scientific method.
[edit]Literary
Naturalism in the United States
In the United States, the genre is associated principally with writers such as Abraham Cahan, Ellen
Glasgow, David Graham Phillips, John Steinbeck, Jack London, Edith Wharton, and most
prominently Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, and Theodore Dreiser. The term naturalism operates primarily
in counter distinction to realism, particularly the mode of realism codified in the 1870s and 1880s, and
associated with William Dean Howells and Henry James.
It is important to clarify the relationship between American literary naturalism, with which this entry is
primarily concerned, from the genre also known as naturalism that flourished in France
What is Modernism?
Don't confuse Modernism in Literature or the Modernists movement with the standard
dictionary definition of modern. Modernism in Literature is not a chronological
designation. Modernism in Literature consists of literary work possessing certain loosely
defined characteristics. The following characteristics of Modernism answer the question
what is Modernism?
Modernism is marked by a strong and intentional break with tradition. This break
includes a strong reaction against established religious, political, and social
views.
Modernists believe the world is created in the act of perceiving it; that is, the
world is what we say it is.
Modernists do not subscribe to absolute truth. All things are relative.
Modernists feel no connection with history or institutions. Their experience is that
of alienation, loss, and despair.
Modernists champion the individual and celebrate inner strength.
Modernists believe life is unordered.
Modernists concern themselves with the sub-conscious.
British Modernism
The horrors of World War I (1914-19), with its accompanying atrocities and senselessness
became the catalyst for the Modernist movement in literature and art. Modernist authors
felt betrayed by the war, believing the institutions in which they were taught to believe
had led the civilized world into a bloody conflict. They no longer considered these
institutions as reliable means to access the meaning of life, and therefore turned within
themselves to discover the answers.
Their antipathy towards traditional institutions found its way into their writing, not just in
content, but in form. Popular English Modernists include the following:
James Joyce - His most experimental and famous work, Ulysses, completely
abandons generally accepted notions of plot, setting, and characters.
Ford Madox Ford - The Good Soldier examines the negative effect of war.
Virginia Woolf - To the Lighthouse, as well, strays from conventional forms,
focusing on Stream of Consciousness.
Stevie Smith - Novel on Yellow Paper parodies conventionality.
Aldous Huxley - Brave New World protests against the dangers and nature of
modern society.
D.H. Lawrence - His novels reflected on the dehumanizing effect of modern
society.
T.S. Eliot - Although American, Eliot's The Wasteland is associated with London
and emphasizes the emptiness of Industrialism.
American Modernism
Known as "The Lost Generation" American writers of the 1920s
Brought Modernism to the United States. For writers like Hemingway and Fitzgerald,
World War I destroyed the illusion that acting virtuously brought about good. Like their
British contemporaries, American Modernists rejected traditional institutions and forms.
American Modernists include:
Ernest Hemingway - The Sun Also Rises chronicles the meaningless lives of the
Lost Generation. Farewell to Arms narrates the tale of an ambulance driver
searching for meaning in WWI.
F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby shows through its protagonist, Jay Gatsby,
the corruption of the American Dream.
John Dos Passos, Hart Crane, and Sherwood Anderson are other prominent
writers of the period.
Mini Lesson: Make a chart to identify aspects of modernism. In the left column list the
characteristics of modernism; in the middle column find specific passages; in the right
column write an analysis of the passage.
Literary Movements
These brief descriptions of literary movements make an easy day of notes for you. Cut
and paste. I don't care.
1. Realism in Literature
2. American Literature: American Romanticism Overview
3. Lesson Plans: Modernism in Literature
4. Naturalism in Literature
5. British Romanticism: Poems for the High School Classroom
The term Postmodern literature is used to describe certain tendencies in post-World War II literature. It
is both a continuation of the experimentation championed by writers of the modernist period (relying
heavily, for example, on fragmentation, paradox, questionable narrators, etc.) and a reaction against
Enlightenment ideas implicit in Modernist literature. Postmodern literature, like postmodernism as a
whole, is hard to define and there is little agreement on the exact characteristics, scope, and importance
of postmodern literature. However, unifying features often coincide with Jean-François Lyotard's concept
of the "meta-narrative" and "little narrative," Jacques Derrida's concept of "play," and Jean Baudrillard's
"simulacra." For example, instead of the modernist quest for meaning in a chaotic world, the postmodern
author eschews, often playfully, the possibility of meaning, and the postmodern novel is often a parody of
this quest. This distrust of totalizing mechanisms extends even to the author; thus postmodern writers
often celebrate chance over craft and employ metafiction to undermine the author's "univocal" control (the
control of only one voice). The distinction between high and low culture is also attacked with the
employment of pastiche, the combination of multiple cultural elements including subjects and genres not
previously deemed fit for literature. A list of postmodern authors often varies; the following are some
names of authors often so classified, most of them belonging to the generation born in the interwar
period: William Burroughs (1914-1997), Alexander Trocchi (1925-1984), Kurt Vonnegut (19222007), John Barth (b. 1930), Donald Barthelme (1931-1989), E. L. Doctorow(b. 1931), Robert
Coover (1932), Jerzy Kosinski (1933-1991) Don DeLillo (b. 1936), Thomas Pynchon (b. 1937), Ishmael
Reed (1938), Kathy Acker (1947-1997), Paul Auster (b. 1947)[1], Orhan Pamuk (b. 1952).
CRITICAL APPROACHES TO LITERATURE
Described below are nine common critical approaches to the literature.
Quotations are from X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia's _Literature: An
Introduction
to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama_, Sixth Edition (New York: HarperCollins,
1995),
pages 1790-1818.
* Formalist Criticism: This approach regards literature as "a unique form
of
human knowledge that needs to be examined on its own terms." All the
elements necessary for understanding the work are contained within the
work itself. Of particular interest to the formalist critic are the
elements of form-style, structure, tone, imagery, etc.-that are found
within the text. A primary goal for formalist critics is to determine
how
such elements work together with the text's content to shape its effects
upon readers.
* Biographical Criticism: This approach "begins with the simple but
central
insight that literature is written by actual people and that
understanding
an author's life can help readers more thoroughly comprehend the work."
Hence, it often affords a practical method by which readers can better
understand a text. However, a biographical critic must be careful not to
take the biographical facts of a writer's life too far in criticizing
the
works of that writer: the biographical critic "focuses on explicating
the
literary work by using the insight provided by knowledge of the author's
life.... [B]iographical data should amplify the meaning of the text, not
drown it out with irrelevant material."
* Historical Criticism: This approach "seeks to understand a literary work
by investigating the social, cultural, and intellectual context that
produced it-a context that necessarily includes the artist's biography
and
milieu." A key goal for historical critics is to understand the effect
of
a literary work upon its original readers.
* Gender Criticism: This approach "examines how sexual identity influences
the creation and reception of literary works." Originally an offshoot of
feminist movements, gender criticism today includes a number of
approaches, including the so-called "masculinist" approach recently
advocated by poet Robert Bly. The bulk of gender criticism, however, is
feminist and takes as a central precept that the patriarchal attitudes
that have dominated western thought have resulted, consciously or
unconsciously, in literature "full of unexamined 'male-produced'
assumptions." Feminist criticism attempts to correct this imbalance by
analyzing and combatting such attitudes-by questioning, for example, why
none of the characters in Shakespeare's play Othello ever challenge the
right of a husband to murder a wife accused of adultery. Other goals of
feminist critics include "analyzing how sexual identity influences the
reader of a text" and "examin[ing] how the images of men and women in
imaginative literature reflect or reject the social forces that have
historically kept the sexes from achieving total equality."
* Psychological Criticism: This approach reflects the effect that modern
psychology has had upon both literature and literary criticism.
Fundamental figures in psychological criticism include Sigmund Freud,
whose "psychoanalytic theories changed our notions of human behavior by
exploring new or controversial areas like wish-fulfillment, sexuality,
the
unconscious, and repression" as well as expanding our understanding of
how
"language and symbols operate by demonstrating their ability to reflect
unconscious fears or desires"; and Carl Jung, whose theories about the
unconscious are also a key foundation of mythological criticism (see
below). Psychological criticism has a number of approaches, but in
general, it usually employs one (or more) of three approaches:
1. An investigation of "the creative process of the artist:
what is the
nature of literary genius and how does it relate to normal
mental
functions?"
2. The psychological study of a particular artist, usually
noting how
an author's biographical circumstances affect or influence
their
motivations and/or behavior.
3. The analysis of fictional characters using the language and
methods
of psychology.
* Sociological Criticism: This approach "examines literature in the
cultural, economic and political context in which it is written or
received," exploring the relationships between the artist and society.
Sometimes it examines the artist's society to better understand the
author's literary works; other times, it may examine the representation
of
such societal elements within the literature itself. One influential
type
of sociological criticism is Marxist criticism, which focuses on the
economic and political elements of art, often emphasizing the
ideological
content of literature; because Marxist criticism often argues that all
art
is political, either challenging or endorsing (by silence) the status
quo,
it is frequently evaluative and judgmental, a tendency that "can lead to
reductive judgment, as when Soviet critics rated Jack London better than
William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Edith Wharton, and Henry James,
because he illustrated the principles of class struggle more clearly."
Nonetheless, Marxist criticism "can illuminate political and economic
dimensions of literature other approaches overlook."
* Mythological Criticism: This approach emphasizes "the recurrent
universal
patterns underlying most literary works." Combining the insights from
anthropology, psychology, history, and comparative religion,
mythological
criticism "explores the artist's common humanity by tracing how the
individual imagination uses myths and symbols common to different
cultures
and epochs." One key concept in mythlogical criticism is the archetype,
"a
symbol, character, situation, or image that evokes a deep universal
response," which entered literary criticism from Swiss psychologist Carl
Jung. According to Jung, all individuals share a "`collective
unconscious,' a set of primal memories common to the human race,
existing
below each person's conscious mind"-often deriving from primordial
phenomena such as the sun, moon, fire, night, and blood, archetypes
according to Jung "trigger the collective unconscious." Another critic,
Northrop Frye, defined archetype in a more limited way as "a symbol,
usually an image, which recurs often enough in literature to be
recognizable as an element of one's literary experience as a whole."
Regardless of the definition of archetype they use, mythological critics
tend to view literary works in the broader context of works sharing a
similar pattern.
* Reader-Response Criticism: This approach takes as a fundamental tenet
that
"literature" exists not as an artifact upon a printed page but as a
transaction between the physical text and the mind of a reader. It
attempts "to describe what happens in the reader's mind while
interpreting
a text" and reflects that reading, like writing, is a creative process.
According to reader-response critics, literary texts do not "contain" a
meaning; meanings derive only from the act of individual readings.
Hence,
two different readers may derive completely different interpretations of
the same literary text; likewise, a reader who re-reads a work years
later
may find the work shockingly different. Reader-response criticism, then,
emphasizes how "religious, cultural, and social values affect readings;
it
also overlaps with gender criticism in exploring how men and women read
the same text with different assumptions." Though this approach rejects
the notion that a single "correct" reading exists for a literary work,
it
does not consider all readings permissible: "Each text creates limits to
its possible interpretations."
* Deconstructionist Criticism: This approach "rejects the traditional
assumption that language can accurately represent reality."
Deconstructionist critics regard language as a fundamentally unstable
medium-the words "tree" or "dog," for instance, undoubtedly conjure up
different mental images for different people-and therefore, because
literature is made up of words, literature possesses no fixed, single
meaning. According to critic Paul de Man, deconstructionists insist on
"the impossibility of making the actual expression coincide with what
has
to be expressed, of making the actual signs [i.e., words] coincide with
what is signified." As a result, deconstructionist critics tend to
emphasize not what is being said but how language is used in a text. The
methods of this approach tend to resemble those of formalist criticism,
but whereas formalists' primary goal is to locate unity within a text,
"how the diverse elements of a text cohere into meaning,"
deconstructionists try to show how the text "deconstructs," "how it can
be
broken down ... into mutually irreconcilable positions." Other goals of
deconstructionists include (1) challenging the notion of authors'
"ownership" of texts they create (and their ability to control the
meaning
of their texts) and (2) focusing on how language is used to achieve
power,
as when they try to understand how a some interpretations of a literary
work come to be regarded as "truth."
SHARED INQUIRY CRITICAL APPROACH
Shared Inquiry discussion model has been developed by the Junior Great Books Foundations and is
used as an approach to classroom discussion of difficult questions in complex text. Participants
explore questions of genuine doubt by supporting ideas with details from the text.
This lesson is modeled in the MCPS Grade 7 English Instructional Guide.
Students have read the novel, Freak the Mighty. and are using the Shared Inquiry discussion model
to share insights into the questions, “Max would not have changed if he had not made friends with
Kevin. What do you think?”
Goals
o
The goal for using Shared Inquiry is to facilitate the development of self-reliant thinkers,
readers, and writers.
Indicators
o Analyze important ideas in literary text (3.7.1.6)
o Apply comprehension and literary analysis strategies and skills for a variety of listening
purposes and setting. (6.7.1.2)
Mastery Objective
o Students will be able to participate in a Shared Inquiry discussion in order to interpret text.
In the reader-response critical approach, the primary focus falls on the reader and the
process of reading rather than on the author or the text.
Theoretical Assumptions:
Literature is a performative art and each reading is a performance, analogous
to playing/singing a musical work, enacting a drama, etc. Literature exists only
when it is read; meaning is an event (versus the New Critical concept of the
"affective fallacy").
The literary text possesses no fixed and final meaning or value; there is no one
"correct" meaning. Literary meaning and value are "transactional," "dialogic,"
created by the interaction of the reader and the text. According to Louise
Rosenblatt, a poem is "what the reader lives through under the guidance of
the text."
Varying Emphases:
How readers interpret texts: Sometimes called "subjective." May deal with
published "readings" of texts and/or study nonprofessional readings (e.g., students).
These critics explain similarities in readings in varying ways:
"styles" or "identity themes" of readers are similar (Norman Holland-psychoanalytic approach): cf. George Dillon's classification of students'
responses to Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily":
o "Character-Action-Moral Style" ("connected knowers")--treat literature
as coextensive with experience
o "Diggers for Secrets"--find hidden meanings in literature, psychoanalyze
motives of characters, etc.
o "Anthropologists"--look for cultural patterns, norms, values [e.g.
feminists, New Historicists].
readers belong to same "interpretive communities" (Stanley Fish) with shared
reading strategies, values and interpretive assumptions (i.e., shared
"discourse"); concept of the "informed reader."
readers are situated in a common cultural/historical setting and shaped by
dominant discourses and ideologies (New Historicist emphasis). "Reception
theory/aesthetics" studies the changing responses of the general reading
public over time.
How texts govern reader: Focus on how texts guide, constrain, control reading; often
use linguistic, stylistic, narratological methods of analysis. Wolfgang Iser argues that
the text in part controls the reader's responses but contains "gaps" that the reader
creatively fills. There is a tension between
"the implied reader," who is established by the "response-inviting structures"
of the text; this type of reader is assumed and created by the work itself
"the actual reader," who brings his/her own experiences and preoccupations
to the text
Reading
The Reading section provides an introduction to why reading is important in the content
areas and information on strategic reading. Choose from the links below to access
classroom applications for the following reading techniques:
Questioning
Reading Expository Text
Vocabulary
How to Read a Textbook
Reading and Interpreting Diverse Materials
What Content Area Reading Involves
Reading in content areas, such as science, history, and social studies, implies that students
can read and understand expository texts. Not only are these texts characterized by their
factual information, but this information is often conveyed using multisyllabic technical
words. Another common feature of expository texts is the way they are structured. For
example, they may rely on cause/effect, compare-contrast, or sequencing.
When students read in the content areas they interact with the text before, during, and
after reading. Before reading, they draw on their prior knowledge, set a purpose, and
anticipate questions. During reading, they use word identification strategies (e.g., structural
analysis, syllabication) to decode unfamiliar multisyllabic words and context clues to figure
out the meaning of technical terms. They read between the lines to make inferences. After
reading, students reflect, synthesize ideas across sources, and make further interpretations.
Drawing on their diverse abilities and needs, readers interact with the text on three levels.
The first level is the literal level—reading and understanding the factual information in the
text. The second level is inferential—reading between the lines to make sense of ideas
through connecting to past experiences and knowledge. The third level is evaluation—
forming conclusions and developing viewpoints based on analysis of the information.
Who the reader is—in terms of prior experiences, strengths, abilities, skills, needs, and
difficulties—affects the individual's meaning-making process. For example, a student who
has visited the Boston Aquarium and collected specimens in tidal pools on a Cape Cod beach
will be able to draw on his or her prior knowledge when reading a text about marine
biology. If this student has read other materials about sea life, then some vocabulary words
might already be familiar.
Why Teaching Reading is Important in the Content Areas
Although content area teachers might like to assume that all students can comprehend
texts, identify the words in the texts, understand the meaning of these words, use
information from texts to construct knowledge, and demonstrate their understanding, this is
not always the case. If students cannot read, then they are hindered in developing content
area knowledge. In today's educational context, where no child is to be left behind, every
content area teacher has a responsibility to help students successfully and productively
access, read, and understand texts.
How to Help Students Become Strategic Readers
All content knowledge teachers can help their students become better content readers by
using reading strategies. Research has shown that when students are given instruction in
strategies they make significant gains on measures of reading comprehension over students
trained with conventional instruction.
Reading strategies draw on the different approaches that good readers use to read actual
text in their classrooms. These strategies include making connections, questioning,
inferring, determining importance, visualizing, synthesizing, and monitoring for meaning.
Two seminal books on the teaching of reading strategies are Strategies That Work and
Mosaic of Thought. To help students become strategic readers, teachers can model different
strategies, coach students, provide prompts, offer encouragement, and give feedback at
just the right time.
We have collected web sites that demonstrate research-based strategies for content area
reading. We provide descriptions and links to additional information, lesson plans, and
classroom examples.
Sites That Matter
Check out the sites below for more information on content area reading.
General Information on Teaching Content Reading |
Teacher Lessons and Tools for Content Reading
General Information on Teaching Content Reading
Center on Instruction Reading Strand
This web page offers over 50 resources and materials to help educators improve reading
outcomes for students in grades K-12, prevent reading difficulties from developing in the
early grades, and meet instructional challenges of students’ diverse abilities and readiness
for learning to read.
www.centeroninstruction.org/resources.cfm?category
=reading&subcategory=&grade_start=&grade_end
When skillful readers pick up a new book, their minds go into "anticipation mode;"
they have developed a set of strategies that help them get ready to read. They
examine such things as: the cover and its art work, the book flaps, excerpts from the
reviews, the writer's biography, the number of pages and print size; often these readers
will open to several points in the text to sample the style and voice of the writer.
Struggling readers will often skip all of these strategies as possible ways to approach a
text; therefore, if we can design activities that will help them to anticipate "the big
ideas" that will be revealed, it may provide an initial "hook" that draws them into the
text.
What does it look like?
Anticipation Guides are often structured as a series of statements with which the
students can choose to agree or disagree. They can focus on the prior knowledge that
the reader brings to the text, or the "big ideas" or essential questions posed (implicitly
or explicitly) by the writer as a way for the reader to clarify his/her opinions before
reading the text and then compare them to the writer's message as they read.
The following is an example of an anticipation guide for Shakespeare'sHamlet.
Anticipation Guide
Hamlet
Directions: On the continuum in front of each of the numbers, place an "x" that indicates where you stand in
regard to the statement that follows. Be prepared to defend and support your opinions with specific examples.
After reading the text, compare your opinions on those statements with the author's implied and/or stated
messages.
Agree
Disagree
------------------------ 1.
------------------------ 2.
------------------------ 3.
------------------------ 4.
------------------------ 5.
------------------------ 6.
------------------------ 7.
------------------------ 8.
------------------------ 9.
Families generally have a member's best interests in mind.
Having a clear goal, and the ambition to achieve it, is honorable.
Power eventually corrupts the people who have it.
Revenge is the only way to gain true justice.
A person's immoral choices can come back to haunt him/her
One must take a stand against injustice, even if the personal cost is great.
A person has to confront death in order to understand life's meaning.
Moral courage is more difficult to accomplish than physical courage.
Evil often spirals out of control.
Click here for a Word version of an Anticipation Guide template
How could I use, adapt or differentiate it?
Use them as a preparation for a preliminary discussion on one or more of the ideas as a
way to introduce the text (dialogue, debate, Socratic seminar, jigsaw discussion).
Develop one or more of them as writing prompts (journal, essay, persuasive piece).
Have students chose one (or more) and "track them" throughout the piece of literature.
Return to them at the end of the play, novel, essay, etc. for clarification and closure.
Differentiate this activity to make it more inductive (and challenging) by
simply giving students a list of the themes and have them generate a list of
statements for an anticipation guide
Anticipation Guide
Hamlet
Directions: On the continuum in front of each of the numbers, place an "x" that indicates where you stand
in regard to the statement that follows. Be prepared to defend and support your opinions with specific
examples. After reading the text, compare your opinions on those statements with the author's implied
and/or stated messages.
Agree
Disagree
------------------------ 1.
------------------------ 2.
------------------------ 3.
------------------------ 4.
------------------------ 5.
------------------------ 6.
------------------------ 7.
------------------------ 8.
------------------------ 9.
Families generally have a member's best interests in mind.
Having a clear goal, and the ambition to achieve it, is honorable.
Power eventually corrupts the people who have it.
Revenge is the only way to gain true justice.
A person's immoral choices can come back to haunt him/her
One must take a stand against injustice, even if the personal cost is great.
A person has to confront death in order to understand life's meaning.
Moral courage is more difficult to accomplish than physical courage.
Evil often spirals out of control.
Teaching Contextual Analysis Steps:
1.
Tell students that they can sometimes use context clues to figure out the meaning of an unfamiliar
word they come across in their reading. Remind them that context clues are the words, phrases,
and sentences surrounding an unfamiliar word that can give hints or clues to its meaning. Inform
students that although these clues can prove to be helpful, they can sometimes be misleading.
2.
Teach (Model)
o
Definition context clues
Give students copies of the Context Clues Chart [PDF: 2 pages / 64 kb].
Go over the chart, identifying the types of context clues and discussing the
example for each one. Tell students that they should refer to the chart as
they learn more about the different types of context clues.
Explain to students that in a definition clue the author provides the reader
with the specific definition, or meaning, of a word right in the sentence.
Point out that words such as are, is, means, and refers to can signal that a
definition clue may follow. Then print the following sentence on a
transparency or write it on the board:
A yacht is an expensive vessel propelled by sail or power and used for
cruising or racing.
o
Read aloud the first sentence.
Say: I'm going to look for a context clue to help me understand the
meaning of the word “yacht”.
Underline or circle “yacht”.
Say: In the sentence, I see the word “is”. The word “is” can signal a
definition context clue.
Underline “is” using a different color marker.
Say: The phrase “an expensive vessel” follows the word “is”.
Underline the context clue in a different color.
Say: A yacht is an expensive vessel propelled by sail or power and used
for cruising or racing. The author has given a definition context clue.
3.
Allow time for students to practice using context clues to construct meaning of unknown words
and provide corrective feedback and support as needed.
Additional Instructional Extensions:
Cloze activities are a nice way to practice context clues as they invite students to use context to identify the
meaning of unknown words. Other extensions include: talking about words, teaching in context whenever possible,
focusing on a developing meaning of a few words at a time, using literature, using semantic mapping, concept of
definition, and the Frayer model to develop students’ vocabulary, and encouraging students to use context to
predict the meaning of unknown words.
ASSESSMENT:
Use informal assessment to assess and monitor students’ understanding of using context clues to identify
unknown words. Ask students to explain their choices and thinking and also use the Context Clues Chart as a
means of assessing which context clues they use and how they use this new knowledge to construct meaning
about unfamiliar words.
Using the Informal Reading Inventory
The Informal Reading Inventory (IRI) is an individually administered survey designed
to help you determine a student's reading instructional needs.
A student's performance on the IRI will help you determine the instructional level and
the amount and kind of support the student is likely to need in Invitations to Literacy.
Specifically, the IRI will help you assess a student's strengths and needs in these
areas:
word recognition
word meaning
reading strategies
comprehension
The IRI materials consist of a Student Booklet and a Test Manual. They contain word
lists and reading selections for these levels of Invitations to Literacy: Levels 1.1-1.3,
1.4-1.5, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.
In the Student Booklet, there are two or three reading passages for each level of the
inventory. They are excerpts from selections at the same grade level of the reading
program.
The Test Manual contains the information and materials you need to administer and
score the IRI.
While an IRI is regarded as a suitable tool for determining students' reading abilities
and needs, it is not infallible. You should use the information from the IRI and the
Baseline Group Tests, along with any other information you have about a student, to
make an initial instructional plan. After you have observed the student for two to three
weeks, you should have a better idea of the student's reading abilities. Your
observations may suggest different strengths and needs. Adjustments should be made
as necessary.
Metacognition
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Metacognition is defined as "cognition about cognition", or "knowing about knowing."[1] It can take many
forms; "it includes knowledge about when and where to use particular strategies for learning or for
problem solving."[1] "Metamemory, individuals' knowledge about memory, is an especially important form
of metacognition."[1] Differences in metacognitive processing across cultures have not been widely
studied, but could provide better outcomes in cross-cultural learning between teachers and
students.[2] Some evolutionary psychologists hypothesize that metacognition is used as a survival tool,
which would make metacognition the same across cultures.[2] Writings on metacognition can be traced
back at least as far as De Anima and the Parva Naturalia of the Greek philosopher Aristotle.[3]
Metacognition and Three Types of Knowledge
To increase their metacognitive abilities, students need to possess and be aware of three kinds of
content knowledge: declarative, procedural, and conditional. Declarative knowledge is the
factual information that one knows; it can be declared—spoken or written. An example is
knowing the formula for calculating momentum in a physics class (momentum = mass times
velocity). Procedural knowledge is knowledge of how to do something, of how to perform the
steps in a process; for example, knowing the mass of an object and its rate of speed and how to
do the calculation. Conditional knowledge is knowledge about when to use a procedure, skill,
or strategy and when not to use it; why a procedure works and under what conditions; and why
one procedure is better than another. For example, students need to recognize that an exam word
problem requires the calculation of momentum as part of its solution.
This notion of three kinds of knowledge applies to learning strategies as well as course content.
When they study, students need the declarative knowledge that (1) all reading assignments are
not alike; for example, that a history textbook chapter with factual information differs from a
primary historical document, which is different from an article interpreting or analyzing that
document. They need to know that stories and novels differ from arguments. Furthermore they
need to know that there are different kinds of note taking strategies useful for annotating these
different types of texts. And (2) students need to know how to actually write different kinds of
notes (procedural knowledge), and (3) they need to know when to apply these kinds of notes
when they study (conditional knowledge). Knowledge of study strategies is among the kinds of
metacognitive knowledge, and it too requires awareness of all three kinds of knowledge.
III. Metacognition and Study Strategies
Research shows that explicitly teaching study strategies in content courses improves learning.
(Commander & Valeri-Gold, 2001; Ramp & Guffey, 1999; Chiang, 1998; El-Hindi, 1997;
McKeachie, 1988). Research also shows that few instructors explicitly teach study strategies;
they seem to assume that students have already learned them in high school—but they haven’t.
(McKeachie, 1988). Rote memorization is the usual learning strategy—and often the only
strategy—employed by high school students when they go to college (Nist, 1993).
Study strategies are diverse and don’t work in every context. For example, reading for
information acquisition won’t work in a literature course and won’t work if students are
supposed to critically evaluate an article. But students who have learned only the strategy of
reading to pass a quiz on the information will not go beyond this strategy. Study strategies don’t
necessarily transfer into other domains. Students need to know they have choices about which
strategies to employ in different contexts. And students who learn study skills in one course need
to apply study strategies in other contexts than where they first learned it.
Students need to monitor their application of study strategies. Metacognitive awareness of their
learning processes is as important as their monitoring of their learning of the course content.
Metacognition includes goal setting, monitoring, self-assessing, and regulating during thinking
and writing processes; that is, when they’re studying and doing homework. An essential
component of metacognition is employing study strategies to reach a goal, self-assessing one’s
effectiveness in reaching that goal, and then self-regulating in response to the self-assessment.
IV. Monitoring Problems with Learning
When students monitor their learning, they can become aware of potential problems. Nickerson,
Perkins, and Smith (1985) in The Teaching of Thinking have categorized several types of
problems with learning.
A. Problems with Process; Making errors in encoding, operations, and goals:
1.Errors in Encoding
Missing important data or not separating relevant from irrelevant data. For example,
some literature students will base their interpretation of a poem on just the first stanza.
2.Errors in Operations
Failing to select the right subskills to apply. For example, when proofreading, some
students will just read to see if it sounds right, rather than making separatepasses that
check for fragments, subject-verb misagreement, and other errors they have learned
from experience they are likely to make.
Failing to divide a task into subparts. For example, some math students will jump right to what
they think is the final calculation to get the desired answer.
3. Errors in Goal Seeking
Misrepresenting the task. For example, students in a speech communication class instead of
doing the assigned task of analyzing and classifying group communication strategies used in
their group discussions will just write a narrative of who said what.
Not understanding the criteria to apply. For example, when asked to evaluate the support
provided for the major claim of an article, students will explain why they liked the article rather
than apply appropriate evaluative criteria.
B. Problems with Cognitive Load
Too many subskills necessary to do a task. For example, some students might have
not yet learned how to carry out all the steps in a complex nursing procedure.
Not enough automatic, internalized subskills. For example, students in an argument and
persuasion class might have to check their notes on how to analyze persuasive strategies because
they have not internalized the procedure.
C. Problems with Abilities
Lacking the level of needed mental abilities. For example, students are asked to think
abstractly about general concepts and issues, but they can only think concretely about
specific situations.
A good way to discover what kind of errors students are making in their thinking
processes is to get them to unpack their thinking, to tell you step by step how they are
going about the task. By listening to how they are doing the cognitive task, an
instructor can detect where the student is going wrong. Asking students to describe
their thinking processes also develops their metacognitive abilities—a very necessary
skill to improve thinking.
V. Metacognition and Motivation
Metacognition affects motivation because it affects attribution and self-efficacy. When students
get results on tests and grades on assignments (especially unexpected results such as failures),
they perform a mental causal search to explain to themselves why the results happened. When
they achieve good results, students tend to attribute the result to two internal factors: their own
ability and effort. When they fail, they might attribute the cause to these same internal factors or
they might, in a self-protective rationalization, distance themselves from a sense of personal
failure by blaming external causes, such as an overly difficult task, an instructor’s perverse
testing habits, or bad luck. This tendency to attribute success to ability and effort promotes future
success because it develops confidence in one’s ability to solve future unfamiliar and challenging
tasks. The converse is also true. Attributing failure to a lack of ability reduces self-confidence
and reduces the student’s summoning of intellectual and emotional abilities to the next
challenging tasks; attribution theory also explains why such students will be unwilling to seek
help from tutors and other support services: they believe it would not be worth their effort. In
addition to blaming failure on external causes, underachievers often “self-handicap” themselves
by deliberately putting little effort into an academic task; they thereby protect themselves from
attributing their failure to a painful lack of ability by attributing their failure to lack of effort
(Stage et al, 1998) (Click here for a review and summary of Creating Learning Centered
Classrooms by Stage et al.)
Literary Types
Literary Terms
Poetry Lesson
Genre is an important word in the English class. We teach different genres of
literature such as poetry, short stories, myths, plays, non-fiction, novels, mysteries,
and so on. When we speak about a kind of literature we are really speaking about a
genre of literature. So when someone asks you what genre of literature you like, you
might answer, poetry, novels, comics, and so on.
Carla Beard: Who knows why we call it figurative language?
Student: Because you have to figure out what it means!
Peggy Smith: Cut out newspaper headlines and titles of articles- especially from the
sports section. Paste them on a posterboard and number them. Have students identify
the figure of speech by number and explain in concrete terms what the line is saying.
Some examples from today's Plain Dealer: "Buckeyes clip ice-cold Gophers", "New
Crop of Garden Catalogs", "The Heat is Back on Steel Makers". These are pretty
lame, but usually there are some good pickings in the daily newspaper.
Allegory
Alliteration
Allusion
Amplification
Anagram
Analogy
Anaphora For Hannah in UK
anastrophe
Anthropomorphism
Animal related words
Antithesis
Aphorism
Apostrophe/Authorial Intrusion
Archetype
Assonance
Asyndeton
Bibliomancy
Bildungsroman
Cacophony
Caesura
Characterization
Chiasmus
Circumlocution
Conflict
Connotation
Consonance
Denotation
Deus ex Machina
Diction
Doppelganger
Ekphrastic
Emulation
Epilogue
Epithet
Euphemism
Euphony
Faulty Parallelism
Flashback
Foil
Foreshadowing
Hyperbaton
Hyperbole
Imagery
Internal Rhyme
Inversion
Irony
Juxtaposition
Kennings
Malapropism
Metaphor
Metonymy
Motif
Mood
Negative Capability
Nemesis
Onomatopoeia
Oxymoron
Paradox
Pathetic Fallacy
Periphrasis
Periodic Structure
Personification
Point of View
Plot
Polysyndeton
Portmanteau
Prologue
Puns
Rhyme Scheme
Rhythm & Rhyme
Satire
Setting
Simile
Spoonerism
Stanza
Stream of Consciousness
Syllepsis
Symbol
Synecdoche
Synesthesia
Syntax
Theme
Tone
Tragedy
Understatement
Verisimilitude
Verse
For specific types of poetry like sonnet, ode, etc, go HERE
Other Sources
BedfordStMartins
The Forest of Rhetoric
Literary Terms.
Literary and Rhetorical Terms The Department of English, University of Victoria
More Lit Terms from Joel Sommer Littauer
Rhetorical Figures
Virtual Salt A Glossary of Literary Terms from Robert Harris
Virtual Salt Rhetorical Devices from R Harris.
Wikipedia Literary Terms.
Words of Art
Writing Tools from Matthew Alexander
Phonics refers to a method for teaching speakers of English to read and write that language. Phonics
involves teaching how to connect the sounds of spoken English with letters or groups of letters (e.g., that
the sound /k/ can be represented by c, k, ck or ch spellings) and teaching them to blend the sounds of
letters together to produce approximate pronunciations of unknown words.
Phonics is a widely used method of teaching to read and decode words, although it is not without
controversy (see "History and controversy" below). Children begin learning to read using phonics usually
around the age of 5 or 6. Teaching English reading using phonics requires students to learn the
connections between letter patterns and the sounds they represent. Phonics instruction requires the
teacher to provide students with a core body of information about phonics rules, or patterns.
The Reading Workshop is a teaching method in which the goal is to
teach students strategies for reading and comprehension. The
workshop model allows teachers to differentiate and meet the needs
of all their students. Reading Workshop helps to foster a love of reading
and gives students chances to practice reading strategies
independently and with guidance. This workshop model is similar to
the Writing Workshop model.
Many school districts use the Reading Workshop Model but there are
other models of literacy instruction as well. Please see Balanced
Literacy Framework page for more information on another literacy
model of instruction. If you plan to use the Reading Workshop Model,
you should teach phonics and word work at another time.
This page gives a basic overview of the Reading Workshop.
Components of the Reading Workshop:
Time:
Component:
10 - 15
minutes
Mini-lesson
5 - 10
minutes
Read-aloud (can be in
conjunction with mini-lesson)
30 - 60
minutes
Independent Reading &
Conferring
Guided Reading
Response and Reflection
5 minutes
Sharing
Description of each component:
From Revisiting The Reading Workshop
Mini-lesson:
Read Aloud:
The mini-lessons for
the Reading
Workshop teach
concepts, strategies,
and techniques for
reading and
comprehension while
encouraging students to read and
The read-aloud is an
activity in which the
teacher reads a book
aloud to the whole
group. The purpose of
the read-aloud is to
model appropriate
reading behaviors and reading
strategies. It is also a time to expose
interact with good literature. The
10-15 minute mini-lessons gives
teachers the opportunity to give
direct instruction to students and
model the lessons using authentic
literature. Sample mini-lessons can
include:
comprehension strategies
procedures for Reading
Workshop
reading strategies and skills
literary elements
literary techniques (i.e. voice,
descriptive words, etc.)
Sites on Mini-lessons:
Procedural Minilessons
Literary Mini-lessons
Strategies/Skills
Mini-lessons
List of Possible Minilessons
Sample Minilessons
Mosaic Teaching
Tools
Mini-lessons by Ms.
Gregory
Reading Workshop
Lessons
children to a variety of genres and
literary styles. The teacher has an
opportunity to show students the joys
of reading and teach them how to
think and discuss text. Teachers should
have a set purpose for each readaloud and should read with the
proper fluency, rhythm, and
intonation.
The read aloud can be used in
conjunction with the mini-lesson. It
provides students with the opportunity
to see the teacher model the lesson
using an authentic text.
Sites on Read-Alouds:
Read Alouds
Why Read Aloud?
List of Read Alouds
Recommended
Titles
Reading Aloud to
Children
Components of a
Read Aloud
Independent Reading & Conferring: Guided Reading:
Independent
Reading is the heart
of the Reading
Workshop. This is
the time when
students practice
strategies modeled in the minilesson or practice reading.
Students can read alone, in pairs,
or in small response groups.
Teachers have the opportunity to
confer with students or teach
guided reading lessons or have a
Guided reading is a
form of small group
instruction -- the
teacher works with a
small group of
students that are on
the same reading
level. Each student usually has their
own text and the teacher works with
the students on skills depending on
their needs, whether it is phonemic
awareness, work attack skills, fluency,
or reading comprehension. Guided
reading is done during independent
reading. For more on guided
small-group lesson on a specific
strategy or skill. Teachers can also
do various assessments such as
running records, retellings, or
keeping anecdotal notes on
children's progress.
reading, go to theGuided
Reading page.
Some activities include:
Responding to text in reader's
response notebook.
Participate in literature circles.
Story chat with a group of
students.
Work with a reading partner.
Do some silent reading
Sites on Independent Reading or
Conferring:
Plan for and
Monitor IR
Developing Reading
Plans
Independent
50 Reproducible
Reading Contract Strategy Sheets That
Build
Comprehension
During Independent
Reading
Response & Reflection:
Sharing:
Students need
The class
opportunities to
regroups to
respond and reflect
discuss what
about what they
they learned
are reading. It helps
or did in their
clarify their thinking, groups, such as which strategies
ponder questions, and develop
they employed for reading, or
divergent thinking.
projects they worked on. Share
time is VERY IMPORTANT and should
There are many ways students can
not be skipped. Some of the
respond to text:
benefits include:
share connections made with
text or mini-lessons
use a reader's response journal
to write responses and
reactions while they are
reading or afterwards
keep a reading log
respond to directions given by
teacher (i.e. write a summary,
fill in a character map, etc.)
have conversations with
teacher or classmates about
their reading
See the Reader's Response page
for more ideas.
Some great strategies for sharing
include:
Sites on Reader's Response:
Instant
Independent
Reading Response
Activities
Independent
Reading Activities
That Keep Kids
Learning. . . While You
Teach Small Groups
(Grades 3-6)
Graphic Organizers Literary Elements
Reader's Response Reader's Response
Journals
Journal (Great slide
show!!)
a way to assess what
students have and have not
learned.
students learn to listen, think,
and talk about their learning
keeps kids on task, knowing
that they will have to discuss
their work during share time
Knee to knee: partners go
knee to knee to discuss a
teacher's question or share
what they learned/did in
Reading Workshop.
Individual Share: teacher
asks one student to share
something they practiced
that the teacher noticed
during Reading Workshop.
Group Share: Have students
sit in groups to have
discussion on a topic or a
strategy.
More Sites:
Managing Reading
Workshop
Reader's & Writer's
Workshop
Differentiation in a
Reading Workshop
Reader's Workshop
Reading/Writing
Workshop
Use of Time in
Reading Workshop
Reading Workshop
by Laura Candler
Teach Literacy
Reading Workshop
Classroom
Management
Reading Workshop
Reflecting on
Reading Workshop
A must see! Contains video
clips!
the concept of reciprocal teaching:
"Definition: Reciprocal teaching refers to an instructional activity that takes place in
the form of a dialogue between teachers and students regarding segments of text. The
dialogue is structured by the use of four strategies: summarizing, question generating,
clarifying, and predicting. The teacher and students take turns assuming the role of
teacher in leading this dialogue.
Purpose: The purpose of reciprocal teaching is to facilitate a group effort between
teacher and students as well as among students in the task of bringing meaning to the
text. Each strategy was selected for the following purpose:
Summarizing provides the opportunity to identify and integrate the
most important information in the text. Text can be summarized across
sentences, across paragraphs, and across the passage as a whole. When
the students first begin the reciprocal teaching procedure, their efforts
are generally focused at the sentence and paragraph levels. As they
become more proficient, they are able to integrate at the paragraph and
passage levels.
Question generating reinforces the summarizing strategy and carries the
learner one more step along in the comprehension activity. When
students generate questions, they first identify the kind of information
that is significant enough to provide the substance for a question. They
then pose this information in question form and self-test to ascertain that
they can indeed answer their own question. Question generating is a
flexible strategy to the extent that students can be taught and encouraged
to generate questions at many levels. For example, some school
situations require that students master supporting detail information;
others require that the students be able to infer or apply new information
from text.
Clarifying is an activity that is particularly important when working
with students who have a history of comprehension difficulty. These
students may believe that the purpose of reading is saying the words
correctly; they may not be particularly uncomfortable that the words, and
in fact the passage, are not making sense. When the students are asked to
clarify, their attention is called to the fact that there may be many
reasons why text is difficult to understand (e.g., new vocabulary, unclear
reference words, and unfamiliar and perhaps difficult concepts). They
are taught to be alert to the effects of such impediments to
comprehension and to take the necessary measures to restore meaning
(e.g., reread, ask for help).
Predicting occurs when students hypothesize what the author will
discuss next in the text. In order to do this successfully, students must
activate the relevant background knowledge that they already possess
regarding the topic. The students have a purpose for reading: to confirm
or disprove their hypotheses. Furthermore, the opportunity has been
created for the students to link the new knowledge they will encounter in
the text with the knowledge they already possess. The predicting strategy
also facilitates use of text structure as students learn that headings,
subheadings, and questions imbedded in the text are useful means of
anticipating what might occur next.
In summary, each of these strategies was selected as a means of aiding students to
construct meaning from text as well as a means of monitoring their reading to ensure
that they are in fact understanding what they read.
Research Base: For the past five years, Palincsar and Brown (1985) have conducted a
series of studies to determine the effectiveness of reciprocal teaching. The initial
studies were conducted by adult tutors working with middle school students in pairs
and by Chapter 1 teachers working with their small reading groups averaging five in
number. The students were identified to be fairly adequate decoders but very poor
comprehenders, typically performing at least two years below grade level on
standardized measures of comprehension. Instruction took place over a period of 20
consecutive school days. The effectiveness was evaluated by having the students read
passages about 450 to 500 words in length and answer 10 comprehension questions
from recall. The students completed five of these passages before reciprocal teaching
instruction began and one during each day of instruction. Performance on these
assessment passages indicated that all but one of the experimental students achieved
criterion performance, which we identified as 70 percent accuracy for four out of five
consecutive days.
These results were in contrast to the group of control students, none of whom
achieved criterion performance. In addition, qualitative changes were observed in the
dialogue that occurred daily. For example, the experimental students functioned more
independently of the teachers and improved the quality of their summaries over time.
In addition, students' ability to write summaries, predict the kinds of questions
teachers and tests ask, and detect incongruities in text improved. Finally, these
improvements were reflected in the regular classroom as the experimental students'
percentile rankings went from 20 to 50 and above on texts administered in social
studies and science classes.
When the same instructional procedure was implemented in larger classes with groups
ranging in size from 8 to 18, 71 percent of the students achieved criterion performance
as opposed to 19 percent of the control students who were involved in individualized
skill instruction. Furthermore, teachers observed fewer behavior problems in their
reciprocal teaching groups than in their control groups." (pp. 19-20)
Semantic Feature Analysis
Very often you'll find yourself in a situation in which you need
to sort out the similarities and differences among a group of
events, people, objects or ideas. A technique that can help you
do that is called Semantic Feature Analysis.
Semantic Feature Analysis uses a grid to help you explore how a
set of things are related to one another. By analyzing the grid
you'll be able to see connections, make predictions and master
important concepts. You'll also realize things that you don't
know yet, so you'll know what additional research you need to
do.
Procedure
1. Identify the general topic to be analyzed.
2. Make a list of typical examples or ideas related to the
topic. From this point on, we'll refer to these as the
"elements" to be analyzed.
3. On an overhead transparency, chalkboard, sheet of paper,
or within a computer program begin a sample chart. Put
five to 10 of the elements in your list across the top row of
the chart.
4. Make a list in the leftmost column of the grid some
features or characteristics that some of the elements
might have.
5. Look at the cells in the grid and ask yourself, does this
element have this feature? If the answer is yes, put a "+"
sign in the grid. If the answer is no, put a "-". If you don't
know, leave it blank.
6. As you work your way through the grid, ideas will occur to
you about additional elements or features to add. Keep
adding them as long as they seem to add to your
understanding of the topic.
7. When the grid is completed to your satisfaction, it's time
to take a look at it and see what patterns emerge. Ask
yourself...
o Which columns are similar to each other? What
features do the elements in these columns have in
common? Is there a name for the grouping of these
elements? Could you make one up?
Which rows are similar to each other? What elements
are tagged in the same way in those rows? What does
this similarity tell you about these features?
o Which cells are still blank? Where can I go to find the
information I'll need to complete those cells?
8. When you've completed this first look at your grid, write
up a summary of what you've learned. Your summary
should answer the questions listed above.
o
Example
The example is from a social studies class.
Identify the general topic to be analyzed. The topic or
category selected was nations of the Pacific Rim.
2. Make a list of typical examples or ideas related to the
topic. Let's look at the U.S, Russia, Japan, Australia, New
Zealand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, the Phillipines, Indonesia,
Singapore, and China.
3. Put five to 10 of the elements in your list across the top
row of the chart.
4. Make a list in the leftmost column of the grid some
features or characteristics that some of the elements
might have.
5. Place a + in cells in which a given element has that
feature, a - where it doesn't, and leave it blank if you
don't know. Here is how the grid might look at this point:
1.
U.S.A. Russia Japan Australia Taiwan Phillipines Indonesia Singapore China
Democratic
gov't
+
+
Population
more than
100M
+
+
Centrally
Planned
Economy
-
+
+
-
+
+
+
-
-
-
-
-
-
+
-
+
-
-
-
+
+
+
6. Add more columns and rows as ideas for additional
features and elements occur to you.
7. After completing the grid, summarize what you've found
and what you still don't know. (a full blown example will
be here in the next version of this document).
GRAMMAR
English grammar is here understood as the body of rules describing the properties of the English
language. A language is such that its elements must be combined according to certain patterns. This
article is concerned with (and restricted to) morphology, the building blocks of language, and syntax, the
construction of meaningful phrases, clauses andsentences with the use of morphemes and words.
The grammar of any language is commonly approached in two different ways: A descriptivist, usually
based on a systematic analysis of a large text corpus and describing grammatical structures thereupon;
and a prescriptivist, which attempts to use the identified rules of a given language as a tool to govern the
linguistic behaviour of speakers (seeLinguistic prescription and Descriptive linguistics). Prescriptive
grammar concerns itself with several open disputes in English grammar, often representing changes in
usage over time.
There are a number of historical, social and regional variations of the English language. For
example, British English and American English have several lexical differences; however, the
grammatical differences are not equally conspicuous, and will be mentioned only when appropriate.
Further, the many dialects of English have divergences from the grammar described here; they are only
cursorily mentioned. This article describes a generalized present-day Standard English, the form of
speech found in types of public discourse including broadcasting, education, entertainment, government,
and news reporting. Standard English includes both formal and informal speech.
Contents
[hide]
1 Word classes and phrase classes
o
1.1 Nouns and determiners
o
1.2 Noun phrases
o
1.3 Verbs
o
1.4 Verb phrases
1.4.1 Forms
1.4.2 Tense
1.4.3 Aspect
1.4.4 Voice
1.4.5 Mood
o
1.5 Adjectives
o
1.6 Adjective phrases
o
1.7 Adverbs
o
1.8 Adverb phrases
o
1.9 Prepositions
o
1.10 Prepositional phrases
o
1.11 Conjunctions
2 Sentence and clause patterns
o
2.1 Verb complementation
o
2.2 Clause types
o
2.3 Clause combination
o
2.4 Adjuncts
o
2.5 Information packaging
3 History of English grammar writing
4 History of English grammar
5 See also
6 Notes and references
7 Bibliography
o
7.1 Grammar books
o
7.2 Monographs
8 External links
[edit]Word
classes and phrase classes
Seven major word classes are described here. These
are: noun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunction, and determiner. The first six are traditionally
referred to as "parts of speech." There are minor word classes, such as interjections, but these do not fit
into the clause and sentence structure of English.[1]
Open and closed classes
Open word classes allow new members; closed word classes seldom do.[1] Nouns such as "celebutante,"
(a celebrity who frequents the fashion circles)" and "mentee," (a person advised by a mentor) and
adverbs such as "24/7" ("I am working on it 24/7") are relatively new words; nouns and adverbs are
therefore open classes.[1] However, the pronoun, "their," as a gender-neutral singular replacement for the
"his or her" (as in: "Each new arrival should check in their luggage.") has not gained complete acceptance
during the more than 40 years of its life; pronouns, in consequence, form a closed class.[1]
Word classes and grammatical forms
A word can sometimes belong to several word classes. The class version of a word is called a
"lexeme."[2] For example, the word "run" is usually a verb, but it can also be a noun ("It is a ten mile run
to Tipperary."); these are two different lexemes.[2] Further, the same lexeme may have several
grammatical forms: for example, as a verb lexeme, "run" has several finite forms such as "runs," "ran,"
and "running."[2] Words in one class can sometimes be derived from those in another and new words be
created. The noun "aerobics," for example, has recently given rise to the adjective "aerobicized" ("the
aerobicized bodies of Beverly Hills celebutantes."[2])
Phrase classes
Words combine to form phrases which themselves can take on the attributes of a word class. These
classes are called phrase classes.[2] The phrase: "The ancient pulse of germ and birth" functions as a
noun in the sentence: "The ancient pulse of germ and birth was shrunken hard and dry." (Thomas
Hardy, The Darkling Thrush) It is therefore a noun phrase. Other phrase classes are: verb
phrases, adjective phrases, adverb phrases, prepositional phrases, and determiner phrases.[2]
[edit]Nouns
and determiners
Nouns form the largest word class. According to Carter and McCarthy, they denote "classes and
categories of things in the world, including people, animals, inanimate things, places, events, qualities
and states."[2]Consequently, the words, "Mandela," "jaguar," "mansion," "volcano," "Timbuktoo,"
"blockade," "mercy," and "liquid" are all nouns. Nouns are not commonly identified by their form; however,
some common suffixessuch as "-age" ("shrinkage"), "-hood" ("sisterhood"), "-ism" ("journalism"), "-ist"
("lyricist"), "-ment" ("adornment"), "-ship" ("companionship"), "-tude" ("latitude"), and so forth, are usually
identifiers of nouns.[2] There are exceptions, of course: "assuage" and "disparage" are verbs; "augment" is
a verb, "lament" can be a verb; and "worship" is a verb. Nouns can also be created by conversion of
verbs or adjectives. Examples include the nouns in: "a boring talk," "a five-week run," "the long caress,"
"the utter disdain," and so forth.
Number, gender, type, and syntactic features.
Nouns have singular and plural forms.[3] Many plural forms have -s or -es endings (dog/dogs,
referee/referees, bush/bushes), but by no means all (woman/women, axis/axes, medium/media). Unlike
some other languages, in English, nouns do not have grammatical gender, one that affects the form the
verb in a sentence.[3] However, many nouns can refer to masculine or feminine animate objects
(mother/father, tiger/tigress, alumnus/alumna, male/female).[3] Nouns can be classified semantically, i.e.
by their meanings: common nouns ("sugar," "maple," "syrup," "wood"), proper nouns ("Cyrus,"
"China"), concrete nouns ("book," "laptop"), and abstract nouns ("heat," "prejudice").[3] Alternatively, they
can distinguished grammatically: count nouns ("clock," "city," "color") and non-count nouns ("milk,"
"decor," "foliage").[4] Nouns have several syntacticfeatures that can aid in their identification.[4] Nouns
(example: common noun "cat") may be
1. modified by adjectives ("the beautiful Angora cat"),
2. preceded by determiners ("the beautiful Angora cat"), or
3. pre-modified by other nouns ("the beautiful Angora cat").[4]
[edit]Noun
phrases
Noun phrases are phrases that function grammatically as nouns within sentences. In addition, nouns
serve as "heads," or main words of noun phrases.
[4]
Examples (the heads are in boldface):
1. "The burnt-out ends of smoky days."[5]
2. "The real raw-knuckle boys who know what fighting means, ..."[6]
3. "The idle spear and shield ..."[7]
The head can have modifiers, a complement, or both. Modifiers can occur before the head ("The real rawknuckle boys ...," or "The burnt-out ends ..." and they are then called pre-modifiers; or, they can occur
after the head ("who know what fighting means ...") and are called post-modifiers.[4] Example: "The rough,
seamy-faced, raw-boned College Servitor ..."[8] The pre-modifying phrase, for example, is composed of
determiners ("The"), adjectives ("rough," "seamy-faced," ...) and other nouns ("College").
Complements occur after the head as well; however, they are essential for completing the meaning of the
noun phrase in a way that post-modifiers are not.[9] Examples (complements are italicized; heads are in
boldface):
1. "The burnt-out ends of smoky days."[10]
2. "The suggestion that Mr. Touchett should invite me appeared to have come from Miss
Stackpole."[11]
3. "The ancient pulse of germ and birth was shrunken hard and dry."[12]
Within a sentence, a noun phrase can be a part of the grammatical subject, the object, or the
complement. Examples (the noun phrase is italicized, and the head boldfaced): [9]
1. grammatical subject: "Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest."[13]
2. object: "Dr. Pavlov ... delivered many long propaganda harangues ..."[14])
3. complement: "'All they see is some frumpy, wrinkled-up person passing by in a carriage waving
at a crowd."[15]
[edit]Verbs
Verbs form the second largest word class after nouns. According to Carter and McCarthy, verbs denote
"actions, events, processes, and states."[16] Consequently, "smile," "stab," "climb," "confront," "liquefy,"
"wake," "reflect" are all verbs. Some endings, which while not dead giveaways, are often associated with
verbs. Examples are: "-ate" ("formulate"), "-iate" ("inebriate"), "-ify" ("electrify"), and "-ize"
("sermonize").[16]There are exceptions, of course: "chocolate" is a noun, "immediate" is an adjective,
"prize" can be a noun, and "maize" is a noun. Prefixes can also be used to create new verbs. Examples
are: "un-" ("unmask"), "out-" ("outlast"), "over-" ("overtake"), and "under-" ("undervalue").[16] Just as nouns
can be formed from verbs by conversion, the reverse is also possible:[16]
"so are the sons of men snared in an evil time"[17]
"[a national convention] nosed parliament in the very seat of its authority"[18]
Verbs can also be formed from adjectives:[16]
"To dry the old oak's sap, and cherish springs."[19]
"Time's glory is to calm contending kings"[20]
Regular and irregular verbs
A verb is said to be regular if its base form does not change when inflections are added to create new
forms.[21] An example is: base form: climb; present form: climb; -s form: climbs; -ing form: climbing; past
form: climbed; -ed participle: climbed.[21] Irregular verbs are ones in which the base form changes; the
endings corresponding to each form are not always unique.[21] Examples:
base form: catch; present form: catch; -s form: catches; -ing form: catching; past form: caught; ed participle: caught.
base form: choose; present form: choose; -s form: chooses; -ing form: choosing; past form:
chose; -ed participle: chosen.
The verb "be" is the only verb in English which has distinct inflectional forms for each of the categories of
grammatical forms: base form: be; present form: am, are; -s form: is; -ing form: being; past form: was,
were; -ed participle: been.[21]
Type and characteristics
Verbs come in three grammatical types: lexical, auxiliary, and modal.[22] Lexical verbs form an open class
which includes most verbs (state, action, processes, and events). For example, "dive," "soar," "swoon,"
"revive," "breathe," "choke," "lament," "celebrate," "consider," "ignore" are all lexical verbs.[22] Auxiliary
verbs form a closed class consisting of only three members: be, do, and have. [22] Although auxiliary verbs
are lexical verbs as well, their main function is to add information to other lexical verbs. This information
indicates (a) aspect (progressive, perfect), (b) passive voice, and (c) clause type (interrogative,
negative).[22] In the following examples, the auxiliary is in boldface and the lexical verb is italicized.
1. aspect (progressive): "'She is breathing Granny; we've got to make her keep it up, that's all—just
keep her breathing."[23]
2. aspect (perfect): "'Yes, I want a coach,' said Maurice, and bade the coachman draw up to the
stone where the poor man who had swooned was sitting."[24]
3. passive voice: "When she was admitted into the house Beautiful, care was taken to inquire into
the religious knowledge of her children."[25]
4. clause type (interrogative): (Old joke) Boy: "Excuse me sir, How do I get to Carnegie Hall?" Man
on street: "Practice, Practice, Practice."
5. clause type (negative): Wasn't she monstrously surprised?"[26]
Modal verbs also form a closed class which consists of the core modals ("can," "could," "shall," "should,"
"will," "would," "may," "might," "must"), semi-modals ("dare," "need," "ought to," "used to"), and modal
expressions ("be able to," "have to").[22] Modals add information to lexical verbs about degrees of certainty
and necessity.[22] Examples:
less certain: "Before the snow could melt for good, an ice storm covered the lowcountry and we
learned the deeper treachery of ice."[27]
more certain: "Eat your eggs in Lent and the snow will melt. That's what I say to our people when
they get noisy over their cups at San Gallo ..."[28]
expressing necessity: "But I should think there must be some stream somewhere about. The
snow must melt; besides, these great herds of deer must drink somewhere."[29]
Modal verbs do not inflect for person, number or tense.[22] Examples:
person: "I/you/she might consider it."
number: "I/We/She/They might consider it"
tense: "They might have considered/be considering/have been considering it."
Verbs too have features that aid in their recognition:
1. they follow the (grammatical) subject noun phrase (in italics): "The real raw-knuckle boys who
know what fighting means enter the arena without fanfare."
2. they agree with the subject noun phrase in number: "The real raw-knuckle boy/boys who
knows/know what fighting means enters/enter the arena without fanfare."
3. they agree with the subject noun phrase in person: "I/He, the real raw-knuckle boy who knows
what fighting means, enter/enters the arena without fanfare", and
4. with the exception of modal verbs, they can express tense:"The boys ... had been entering the
arena without fanfare."
[edit]Verb
phrases
[edit]Forms
Verb phrases are formed entirely of verbs. The verbs can be lexical, auxiliary, and modal. The head is the
first verb in the verb phrase.[30] Example:
"I didn't notice Rowen around tonight," remarked Don, as they began to prepare for bed. "Might
have been sulking in his tent," grinned Terry."[31] Here, the verb phrase "might have been sulking"
has the form "modal-auxiliary-auxiliary-lexical."
In a verb phrase, the modal comes first, then the auxiliary or several auxiliaries, and finally the lexical
(main) verb.[30] When a verb phrase has a combination of modal and auxiliaries, it is constituted usually in
the following order: modal verb >> perfect have >> progressive be >> passive be >> Lexical
verb.[30] Examples:
"He might have been being used by the CIA as part of their debriefing procedure, but he might
just as easily have been part of the Russians' plans to use Oswald in America."[32] Here, the verb
phrase is: might (modal) have (perfect) been (progressive) being (passive) used (lexical).
The modal expression "be able to" is an exception: "It is best to know that
she has (perfect) been (progressive) able to (modal expression) balance (lexical verb) these
qualities and quantities with a grace which has not fallen short of greatness ...." [33]
[edit]Tense
Verb phrases can vary with tense, in which case they are called "tensed verb phrases." [34] Example:
"They have accomplished a lot this year, but they had accomplished even more last year."
There are many non-tensed forms as well:
1. base form of a lexical verb used as an imperative. [34] Example: "Halt!"
2. base form of the lexical verb occurring as a subjunctive.[34] Example: "'If he is a spy,' said Gorgik,
'I would rather he not know who I am."[35]
3. the infinitive with "to."[34] Examples:
1. "Did you see her, chief—did you get a glimpse of her pleasant countenance, or come
close enough to her ear, to sing in it the song she loves to hear?'"[36]
2. "She got so she could tell big stories herself from listening to the rest. Because she loved
to hear it, and the men loved to hear themselves, they would 'woof' and 'boogerboo'
around the games to the limit."[37]
4. the "-ing" form.[34] Examples:
1. "Biological diversity is plummeting, mainly due to habitat degradation and loss, pollution,
overexploitation, competition from alien species, disease, and changing climates."[38]
2. "Then it was swooping downward, and in the next second, a huge metal magpie, with
wings outstretched in full flight, was plummeting toward them."[39]
5. the "-ed" participle.[34] Examples:
1. "I also know that the painter has dined twice with the Prince Regent."[40]
2. "Which in all probability means that you had dined together," replied Monte Cristo,
laughing, "I am glad to see you are more sober than he was."[41]
The time frame of a non-tensed verb phrase is determined by examining that of the main clause
verb.[34] Examples:
"From the very beginning, Coltrane was an indefatigable worker at his saxophone spending hours
upon hours practicing every day."[42]
"By assuming a good position and by practicing every day he will in time acquire a feeling and
an appearance of ease before people."[43]
In the first case, the time frame (past) of "practicing" is determined by "was" in the main clause; in the
second, the time frame (present and future) of "practicing" is determined by "will in time," also in the main
clause.
[edit]Aspect
Verb phrases can also express two aspects: progressive and perfect. Aspect provides additional
information on the speaker's perception of time.
Progressive aspect
The progressive aspect consists of the auxiliary be form and the -ing form of the lexical
verb.[44] Examples:
"Landlord, chambermaid, waiter rush to the door; but just as some distinguished guests are
arriving, the curtains close, and the invisible theatrical manager cries out, 'Second syllable!' " [45]
"She made her curtsy, and was departing when the wretched young captain sprang up, looked
at her, and sank back on the sofa with another wild laugh."[46]
Properties:
Progressive aspect may be found in verb phrases containing modals.[44]
"Restless, exciting and witty, he cannot resist a fantastic theory ..., so that one might be
meeting Synge, Fielding, and Aldous Huxley, and on the same page."[47]
Non-tensed -ing forms, however, do not have the progressive aspect.[44]
"By working every day, he had learned the peculiarities, the weaknesses and strengths,
of opposing batters ..."[48] It cannot be changed to "By being working every day, ...."
Progressive aspect can be combined with "to"-infinitive forms in a verb phrase.[44]
"He loved to sit by the open window when the wind was east, and seemed to be
dreaming of faraway scenes."[49]
Perfect aspect
The perfect aspect is created by the auxiliary "have" and the "-ed" participle form of the lexical verb.[44] It
refers to a time period that includes the present moment.[44] Contrast "The flowers didn't bloom this
summer" with "The flowers haven't bloomed this summer." The latter sentence suggests that the summer
is not over yet.
Properties:
The perfect aspect can pair with modal verbs.[44]
"You might (modal) have invited (perfect) the Mad Hatter to the tea-party."
The perfect aspect can be combined with the -ing and the to-infinitive forms.[44]
"Having turned the TV on, he now mindlessly flicked through the channels."
"To have run the marathon, she would have needed to be in good shape."
Finally, the two aspects, progressive and perfect, can be combined in a verb phrase: "They've been
laughing so hard that their sides hurt."
[edit]Voice
The passive voice, which provides information about the roles of different participants in an event, is
formed with the auxiliary "be" and the "-ed" participle form of the lexical verb.[50] Examples:
(Sentence) "The older critics slammed the play with vituperation inexplicable unless one
attributes it to homophobia."[51]
(passive voice) "Ever notice how she was (past of "be") slammed (-ed participle) by the critics
until the actors started doing it themselves?"[52]
Properties:
Modal verbs can occur in passive voice.[50]
"And if they couldn't get a handle on it soon, cities and towns all up and down the Eastern
Seaboard could (modal) be slammed (passive) by the biggest storm of the year ...."[53]
Passive voice can be combined with non-tensed verbs forms such as "-ing" form and the "to-"
infinitive.[50]
"There he was—getting slammed by the critics—and still taking the high road."[54]
"We were about to be slammed by an 80-foot breaking wave."[55]
Passive voice can combine with both the progressive and the perfect aspects.[50]
(passive, progressive): "The wind had picked up. The boat was being slammed by the
swells, and floundering."[56]
(passive, perfect): "Although, alas, it's not such an exclusive club. I've sent them to
everyone who has been slammed by that dreadful woman."[57]
[edit]Mood
A verb phrase can also express mood, which refers to the "factual or non-factual status of
events."[50] There are three moods in English: indicative, imperative, and subjunctive. [50]
Indicative mood
The indicative is the most common mood in English.[50] It is a factual mood, and most constructions
involving the various choices of person, tense, number, aspect, modality are in the indicative
mood.[50] Examples:
"She will have a hangover tomorrow morning."
"The Prime Minister and his cabinet were discussing the matter on that fateful day in 1939."
Imperative mood
The imperative mood is a non-factual mood and is employed for issuing directives:[50]
"Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on"[58]
"'Your father's urn is on the backseat. Just leave the keys in the cup holder."[59]
Subjunctive mood
The subjunctive mood is also a non-factual mood which refers to demands, desires, etc.[50] It uses the
base form of the verb without inflections.[50] It is rare in English and is used after only a handful of words
such as "demand," "request," "suggest," "ask," "plead," "pray," "insist," and so forth. [50] Examples:
"I demanded that Sheriff Jeanfreau stay. I even wanted worthless and annoying Ugly Henderson
to stay."[60]
"'I suggest that you not exercise your temper overmuch,' Mayne said, and the French tinge in his
voice sounded truly dangerous now." [61]
Properties:
Subjunctives can be used after conditional subordinators. [50]
"I accepted on the condition that I not be given a starring role."[62]
Subjunctives can also be used after expressions of necessity.[50]
"Two nuns are asked to paint a room in the convent, and the last instruction of Mother
Superior is that they not get even a drop of paint on their habits."[63]
The subjunctive form of the verb "be" can occur as the base form "be".[50]
"Whenever a prisoner alleges physical abuse, it is imperative that the prisoner be
seen by an officer at the earliest possible opportunity."[64]
In its "were" form the subjunctive is used to express a hypothetical situation. [50]
"'Lin said, turning toward Pei, "I'm afraid she's excited at seeing me home again." Pei
smiled. "I would be too, if I were she."[65]
[edit]Adjectives
According to Carter and McCarthy, "Adjectives describe properties, qualities, and states attributed to a
noun or a pronoun."[66] As was the case with nouns and verbs, the class of adjectives cannot be identified
by the forms of its constituents.[66] However, adjectives are commonly formed by adding the some suffixes
to nouns.[66] Examples: "-al" ("habitual," "multidimensional," "visceral"), "-ful" ("blissful," "pitiful," "woeful"),
"-ic" ("atomic," "gigantic," "pedantic"), "-ish" ("impish," "peckish," "youngish"), "-ous" ("fabulous,"
"hazardous"). As with nouns and verbs, there are exceptions: "homosexual" can be a noun, "earful" is a
noun, "anesthetic" can be a noun, "brandish" is a verb. Adjectives can also be formed from other
adjectives through the addition of a suffix or more commonly a prefix: [66] weakish, implacable, disloyal,
irredeemable, unforeseen. A number of adjective are formed by adding "a" as a prefix to a verb: "adrift,"
"astride," "awry."
Gradability
Adjectives come in two varieties: gradable and non-gradable.[67] In a gradable adjective, the properties or
qualities associated with it, exist along a scale.[67] In the case of the adjective "hot," for example, we can
speak of: not at all hot, ever so slightly hot, only just hot, quite hot, very hot, extremely hot, dangerously
hot, and so forth. Consequently, "hot" is a gradable adjective. Gradable adjectives usually have
antonyms: hot/cold, hard/soft, smart/dumb, light/heavy. [67] Some adjectives do not have room for
qualification or modification. These are the non-gradable adjectives, such as: pregnant, married,
incarcerated, condemned, adolescent (as adjective), dead, and so forth.
In figurative or literary language, a non-gradable adjective can sometimes be treated as gradable,
especially in order to emphasize some aspect:
"When a man's verses cannot be understood, nor a man's good wit seconded with a forward
child, understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room."[68]
A non-gradable adjective might have another connotation in which it is gradable. For example, "dead"
when applied to sounds can mean dull, or not vibrant. In this meaning, it has been used as a gradable
adjective:
"... the bell seemed to sound more dead than it did when just before it sounded in open air."[69]
Gradable adjectives can occur in comparative and superlative forms. [67] For many common adjectives,
these are formed by adding "-er" and "-est" to the base form:[67] cold, colder, coldest; hot, hotter, hottest;
dry, drier, driest, and so forth; however, for other adjectives, "more" and "most" are needed to provide the
necessary qualification: more apparent, most apparent; more iconic, most iconic; more hazardous, most
hazardous. Some gradable adjectives change forms atypically:[67] good, better, best; bad, worse, worst;
little, less, least; some/many, more, most.
[edit]Adjective
phrases
Forms
An adjective phrase may consist of just one adjective, or a single adjective which has been modified or
complemented.[70]
Adjectives are usually modified by adverb phrases (adverb in boldface; adjective in italics): [70]
"... placing himself in a dignified and truly imposing attitude, began to draw from his mouth yard
after yard of red tape ..."[71]
"Families did certainly come, beguiled by representations of impossibly cheap provisions,
though the place was in reality very expensive, for every tradesman was a monopolist at heart."[72]
"... of anger frequent but generally silent, ..."[73]
An adjective phrase can also consist of an adjective followed by a complement, usually a prepositional
phrase, or by a "that" clause.[70] Different adjectives require different patterns of complementation
(adjective in italics; complement in bold face):[70]
"... during that brief time I was proud of myself, and I grew to love the heave and roll of the Ghost
..."[74]
"... her bosom angry at his intrusion, ..."[75]
"Dr. Drew is especially keen on good congregational singing."[76]
Examples of "that" clause in the adjective phrase (adjective in italics; clause in boldface):
"Was sure that the shrill voice was that of a man—a Frenchman."[77]
"The longest day that ever was; so she raves, restless and impatient."[78]
An adjective phrase can combine pre-modification by an adverb phrase and post-modification by a
complement,[70] as in (adjective in italics; adverb phrase and complement in boldface):
"Few people were ever more proud of civic honours than the Thane of Fife."[79]
Attributive and predicative
An adjective phrase is attributive when it modifies a noun or a pronoun (adjective phrase in boldface;
noun in italics):[70]
"Truly selfish genes do arise, in the sense that they reproduce themselves at a cost to the other
genes in the genome."[80]
"Luisa Rosado: a woman proud of being a midwife"[81]
An adjective phrase is predicative when it occurs in the predicate of a sentence (adjective phrase in
boldface):[70]
"No, no, I didn't really think so," returned Dora; "but I am a little tired, and it made me silly for a
moment ..."[82]
"She was ill at ease, and looked more than usually stern and forbidding as she entered the
Hales' little drawing room."[83]
[edit]Adverbs
Adverbs, according to Carter and McCarthy, are a class of words "which perform a wide range of
functions. Adverbs are especially important for indicating time, manner, place, degree, and frequency of
an event, action, or process."[84] They typically modify verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs. Adjectives and
adverbs are often derived from the same word.[84] A majority of adverbs are formed by adding to "-ly"
ending to their corresponding adjective form.[84] Recall the adjectives, "habitual," "pitiful," "impish." We can
use them to form the adverbs:
"habitually": "... shining out of the New England reserve with which Holgrave habitually masked
whatever lay near his heart."[85]
"pitifully": "The lamb tottered along far behind, near exhaustion, bleating pitifully."[86]
"impishly": "Well, and he grinned impishly, "it was one doggone good party while it lasted!"[87]
Some suffixes that are commonly found in adverbs are "-ward(s)" and "-wise":[84]
"homeward": "The plougman homeward plods his weary way."[88]
"downward": "In tumbling turning, clustering loops, straight downward falling, ..."[89]
"lengthwise": "2 to 3 medium carrots, peeled, halved lengthwise, and cut into 1-inch pieces."[90]
Some adverbs have the same form as the adjectives:[84]
"outside":
Adverb: "'You'd best begin, or you'll be sorry—it's raining outside."[91]
Adjective: "It would be possible to winter the colonies in the barn if each colony is
provided with a separate outside entrance; ..."[92]
"straight"
Adverb: "Five cigars, very dry, smoked straight except where wrapper loosened, as it did
in two cases."[93]
Adjective: "Numbering among the ranks of the "young and evil" in this text are
... straight women who fall in love with gay men, ..."[94]
Some adverbs are not related to adjectives:[84]
"quite": "Mr. Bingley was obliged to be in town the following day, and ... Mrs. Bennet
was quite disconcerted."[95]
"too": "... like a child that, having devoured its plumcake too hastily, sits sucking its fingers, ...."[96]
"so": "... oh! ... would she heave one little sigh to see a bright young life so rudely blighted, ...?"[97]
Some adverbs inflect for comparative and superlative forms:[84]
"soon"
"O error, soon conceived, Thou never comest unto a happy birth, ..."[98]
"Nerissa: 'superfluity comes sooner by white hairs, but competency lives longer."[99]
"'Least said, soonest mended!' "[100]
"well"
"Valrosa well deserved its name, for in that climate of perpetual summer roses
blossomed everywhere."[101]
"'I'm afraid your appearance in the Phycological Quarterly was better deserved,' said
Mrs. Arkwright, without removing her eyes from the microscope ..."[102]
"Who among the typical Victorians best deserved his hate?"[103]
[edit]Adverb
phrases
Forms
An adverb phrase is a phrase that collectively acts as an adverb within a sentence; in other words, it
modifies a verb (or verb phrase), an adjective (or adjective phrase), or another adverb. [104] The head of an
adverb phrase (roman boldface), which is an adverb, may be modified by another adverb (italics
boldface) or followed by a complement (italics boldface):[104]
"Yet all too suddenly Rosy popped back into the conversation, ...."[105]
"Oddly enough, that very shudder did the business."[106]
"The Stoics said, perhaps shockingly for us, that a father ceases to be a father when his child
dies."[107]
An adverb phrase can be part of the complement of the verb "be." It then usually indicates location
(adverbe phrase in boldface; form of "be" in italics):[104]
"'... it is underneath the pink slip that I wore on Wednesday with my Mechlin.'"[108]
"... north-by-northeast was Rich Mountain, ..."[109]
Adverb phrases are frequently modifiers of verbs:[104]
"They plow through a heavy fog, and Enrique sleeps soundly—too soundly."[110]
"Sleepily, very sleepily, you stagger to your feet and collapse into the nearest chair."[111]
Adverb phrases are also frequently modifiers of adjectives and other adverbs (modifier in boldface;
modified in italics):[104]
(adjectives) "Then to the swish of waters as the sailors sluice the decks all around and under you,
you fall into a really deep sleep."[112]
(adverbs) "'My grandma's kinda deaf and she sleeps like really heavily."[113]
Adverb phrases can also be modifiers of noun phrases (or pronoun phrases) and prepositional phrases
(adverb phrases in boldface; modified phrases in italics):[104]
(noun phrase): "She stayed out in the middle of the wild sea, and told them that was quite the
loveliest place, you could see for many miles all round you, ...."[114]
(pronoun phrase): "... the typical structure of glioma is that of spherical and cylindrical
lobules, almost each and everyone of which has a centrally located blood vessel."[115]
(prepositional phrase): "About halfway through the movie, I decided to ..."[116]
Adverb phrases also modify determiners (modifier in boldface; modified in italics):[104]
"The devil knows best what he said, but at least she became his tool and was in the habit of
seeing him nearly every evening."[117]
"Nearly if not quite all civilized peoples and ourselves above almost all others, are heavily
burdened with the interest upon their public debt."[118]
Functions
According to Carter and McCarthy, "As well as giving information on the time, place, manner and degree
of an action, event, or process, adverb phrases can also have a commenting function, indicating the
attitude and point of view of the speaker or writer towards a whole sentence or utterance." [119] Examples:
"Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."[120]
"Astonishingly, she'd shelled every nut, leaving me only the inner skin to remove."[121]
Adverb phrases also indicate the relation between two clauses in a sentence. [119] Such adverbs are
usually called "linking adverbs." Example:
"... they concluded from the similarities of their bodies, that mine must contain at least 1724 of
theirs, and consequently would require as much food as was necessary to support that number of
Lilliputians."[122]
[edit]Prepositions
Prepositions relate two events in time or two people or things in space.[119] They form a closed
class.[119] They also represent abstract relations between two entities:[119] Examples:
1. ("after":) "We came home from Mr. Boythorn's after six pleasant weeks."[123]
2. ("after":) "The body of a little wizened Gond lay with its feet in the ashes, and Bagheera looked
inquiringly at Mowgli. "That was done with a bamboo," said the boy, after one glance.[124]
3. ("to":) "I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life, ..."[125]
4. ("between" and "through":) "Between two golden tufts of summer grass, I see the
world through hot air as through glass, ..."[126]
5. ("during":) "During these years at Florence, Leonardo's history is the history of his art; he himself
is lost in the bright cloud of it."[127]
6. ("of":) "When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrances of things
past."[128]
Prepositions are accompanied by prepositional complements;[129] these are usually noun phrases.[129] In
the above examples, the prepositional complements are:
1. preposition: "after"; prepositional complement: "six pleasant weeks"
2. preposition: "after"; prepositional complement: "one glance"
3. preposition: "to"; prepositional complement: "the seas"; preposition: "to"; prepositional
complement: "the vagrant gypsy life";
4. preposition: "Between"; prepositional complement: "two golden tufts of summer grass,";
preposition: "through"; prepositional complement: "hot air"; preposition: "as through";
prepositional complement: "glass."
5. preposition: "during"; prepositional complement: "these years at Florence."
6. preposition: "of"; prepositional complement: "sweet silent thought"; preposition: "of"; prepositional
complement: "things past."
[edit]Prepositional
phrases
A prepositional phrase is formed when a preposition combines with its complement. [130]. In the above
examples, the prepositional phrases are:
1. prepositional phrase: "after six pleasant weeks"
2. prepositional phrase: "after one glance"
3. prepositional phrases: "to the seas" and "to the vagrant gypsy life"
4. prepositional phrases: "Between two golden tufts of summer grass," "through hot air" and "as
through glass."
5. prepositional phrase: "During these years at Florence."
6. prepositional phrases "of sweet silent thought" and "of things past."
[edit]Conjunctions
According to Carter and McCarthy, "Conjunctions express a variety of logical relations between phrases,
clauses and sentences."[131] There are two kinds of conjunctions: coordinating conjunctions and
subordinating conjunctions.[131]
Coordinating
Coordinating conjunctions link "elements of equal grammatical status."[131] The elements in questions may
vary from a prefix to an entire sentence.[131] Examples:
(prefixes): "The doctor must provide facilities for pre- and post test conselling and have his own
strict procedures for the storing of that confidential information."[132]
(words): "'No, I'll never love anybody but you, Tom, and I'll never marry anybody but you--and
you ain't to ever marry anybody but me, either."[133]
(phrases): "Can storied urn or animated bust back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?"[134]
(subordinate clauses): "Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that
station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.[135]
(independent clauses): "Well, I think you're here, plain enough, but I think you're a tangle-headed
old fool, Jim."[136]
(sentences): "He said we were neither of us much to look at and we were as sour as we
looked. But I don't feel as sour as I used to before I knew robin and Dickon."[137]
A correlative conjunction is a pair of constituent elements, each of which is associated with the
grammatical unit to be coordinated.[131] The common correlatives in English are:
"either ... or":
"The clergyman stayed to exchange a few sentences, either of admonition or reproof,
with his haughty parishioner ...."[138]
"...; for I could not divest myself of a misgiving that something might happen to London in
the meanwhile, and that, when I got there, it would be either greatly deteriorated or clean
gone."[139]
"neither ... nor":
"Buck made no effort. He lay quietly where he had fallen. The lash bit into him again and
again, but he neither whined nor struggled."[140]
"For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth, action, nor utterance, nor the power of
speech, to stir men's blood: I only speak right on; ..."[141]
"both ... and"
"There was no mistaking her sincerity—it breathed in every tone of her
voice. Both Marilla and Mrs. Lynde recognized its unmistakable ring."[142]
"There messages have both ethical and pragmatic overtones, urging women to
recognize that even if they do suffer from physical and social disadvantages, their lives are far
from being determined by their biology."[143]
"Not only ... but also"
"The director of A Doll's House, the brilliant Zhang Min, ..., was impressed with Lin not
only professionally but also personally."[144]
"... she attempted to persuade her husband to give up his affair. Not only did he
refuse, but he also told her he loved them both ...."[145]
Subordinating conjunctions
Subordinating conjunction relate only clauses to one another. They make the clause associated with them
into a subordinate clause.[146] Some common subordinating conjunctions in English are: (of time) after,
before, since, until, when, while; (cause and effect): because, since, now that, as, in order that, so;
(opposition): although, though, even though, whereas, while; (condition): if, unless, only if, whether or not,
whether or no, even if, in case (that), and so forth.[146] Examples:
(time: "before"): "Perhaps Homo erectus had already died out before Homo sapiens arrived.[147]
(cause and effect: "in order that"): "In order that feelings, representations, ideas and the like
should attain a certain degree of memorability, it is important that they should not remain isolated
..."[148]
(opposition: "although"): "Ultimately there were seven more sessions, in which, although she
remained talkative, she increasingly clearly conveyed a sense that she did not wish to come any
more."[149]
(condition: "even if"): "Even if Sethe could deal with the return of the spirit, Stamp didn't believe
her daughter could."[150]
[edit]Sentence
and clause patterns
[edit]Verb
complementation
[edit]Clause types
[edit]Clause combination
[edit]Adjuncts
[edit]Information packaging
[edit]History
of English grammar writing
The first English grammar, Pamphlet for Grammar by William Bullokar , written with the ostensible goal
of demonstrating that English was just as rule-bound as Latin , was published in 1586. Bullokar’s
grammar was faithfully modeled on William Lily ’s Latin grammar, Rudimenta Grammatices (1534), which
was being used in schools in England at that time, having been “prescribed” for them in 1542 by Henry
VIII . Although Bullokar wrote his grammar in English and used a “reformed spelling system” of his own
invention, many English grammars, for much of the century after Bullokar’s effort, were written in Latin,
especially by authors who were aiming to be scholarly. Christopher Cooper’s Grammatica Linguæ
Anglicanæ (1685) was the last English grammar written in Latin.
The yoke of Latin grammar writing bore down oppressively on much of the early history of English
grammars: any attempt by one author to assert an independent grammatical rule for English was quickly
followed by equal avowals by others of truth of the corresponding Latin-based equivalent. Even as late as
the early 19th century, Lindley Murray , the author of one of the most widely used grammars of the day,
was having to cite “grammatical authorities” to bolster the claim that grammatical cases in English are
different from those in Ancient Greek or Latin.
Good link to grammar http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/grammar_as_teacher.htm
Sentence types OWL for Grammar http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/573/02
A euphemism is a substitution of an agreeable or less offensive expression in place of one that may
offend or suggest something unpleasant to the receiver,[1] or to make it less troublesome for the speaker,
as in the case of doublespeak. The deployment of euphemisms is a central aspect within the public
application of political correctness.
It may also substitute a description of something or someone to avoid revealing secret, holy, or sacred
names to the uninitiated, or to obscure the identity of the subject of a conversation from potential
eavesdroppers. Some euphemisms are intended to amuse.
This article gives an overview of the etymology and history of euphemisms as well as an extensive list of
examples in common use.
Word Order: (Linguistics) the arrangement of words in a phrase, clause, or sentence. In many
languages, including English, word order plays an important part in determining meanings expressed in
other languages by inflections
Etymology is the study of the history of words and how their form and meaning have changed over time.
Cognates in linguistics are words that have a common etymological origin.
An example of cognates within the same language would be English shirt and skirt, the former from Old
English scyrte, the latter loaned from Old Norse skyrta, both from the same Common Germanic *skurtjōn. Words with this type of relationship within a single language are called doublets.
An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word. Affixes may be derivational,
like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed. They are bound
morphemes by definition; prefixes and suffixes may be separable affixes. Affixation is, thus, the linguistic
process speakers use to form new words (neologisms) by adding morphemes (affixes) at the beginning
(prefixation), the middle (infixation) or the end (suffixation) of words.
In linguistics, functional shift occurs when an existing word takes on a new syntactic function. For
example, the word like, formerly only used as a preposition in comparisons (as in "eats like a pig"), is now
also used in the same way as the subordinating conjunction as in many dialects of English (as in "sounds
like he means it")
a morpheme is the smallest linguistic unit that has semantic meaning. In spoken language, morphemes
are composed of phonemes (the smallest linguistically distinctive units of sound), and in written language
morphemes are composed of graphemes (the smallest units of written language).
The orthography of a language specifies the correct way of using a specific writing system to write the
language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example for Kurdish, there can
be more than one orthography. Orthography is derived from Greek ὀρθός orthós ("correct")
and γράφειν gráphein ("to write"). Orthography is distinct from typography.
While "orthography" colloquially is often used synonymously with spelling, spelling is only part of
orthography. Other elements of the field of orthography are hyphenation, capitalization, word
breaks and punctuation. Orthography describes or defines the set of symbols (graphemes and diacritics)
used, and the rules about how to write these symbols.
Strategies for building English proficiency for ELL students:
http://www.phoenix.edu/profiles/faculty/judith-frame-henderson/articles/english-language-learnermethodologies-building-effective-units-lesson-plans-to-meet-proficiency-standard
Sheltered English instruction is an instructional approach that engages ELLs above the
beginner level in developing grade-level content-area knowledge, academic skills, and
increased English proficiency. In sheltered English classes, teachers use clear, direct, simple
English and a wide range of scaffolding strategies to communicate meaningful input in the
content area to students. Learning activities that connect new content to students' prior
knowledge, that require collaboration among students, and that spiral through curriculum
material, offer ELLs the grade-level content instruction of their English-speaking peers, while
adapting lesson delivery to suit their English proficiency level.
[TOP]
Strategies for building reading proficiency in ELL ESL students
Culturally sensitive schema-readings that relate to that student’s
culture/culturally relevant readings
Reciprocal teaching-discussion before readings
Monitoring strategies, predicting questioning
Composition and Rhetoric
Stages of the Writing Process
Gardner and Johnson (1997) describe the stages of the writing process:
"Writing is a fluid process created by writers as they work. Accomplished
writers move back and forth between the stages of the process, both
consciously and unconsciously. Young writers, however, benefit from the
structure and security of following the writing process in their writing.
o
Prewriting. Students generate ideas for writing: brainstorming; reading
literature; creating life maps, webs, and story charts; developing word
banks; deciding on form, audience, voice, and purpose as well as through
teacher motivation.
o
Rough Draft. Students get their ideas on paper. They write without
concern for conventions. Written work does not have to be neat; it is a
'sloppy copy.'
o
Reread. Students proof their own work by reading aloud and reading for
sensibility.
o
Share with a Peer Revisor. Students share and make suggestions for
improvement: asking who, what, when, where, why, and how questions
about parts of the story the peer does not understand; looking for better
words; and talking about how to make the work better.
o
Revise. Improve what the narrative says and how it says it: write
additions, imagery, and details. Take out unnecessary work. Use peer
suggestions to improve. Clarify.
o
Editing. Work together on editing for mechanics and spelling. Make
sure the work is 'goof proof.'
o
Final Draft. Students produce their final copy to discuss with the
teacher and write a final draft.
o
Publishing. Students publish their written pieces: sending their work to
publishers; reading their finished story aloud, making books. This is a
time to celebrate!
In actuality, the writing process is not a highly organized linear process, but
rather a continual movement between the different steps of the writing model."
How can I teach writing skills to students with disabilities?
Teachers in inclusive classrooms regularly face the difficult task of having to modify the
curriculum to reach all of their students, many of whom have special needs. Students
with disabilities, whether physical, emotional, or cognitive in nature, respond to the
curriculum differently from other students. For example, depending on the disability itself
and other factors affecting their ability to succeed academically, students may need
modifications such as advance and graphic organizers, instructional scaffolding,
additional practice and time to complete assignments, and/or alternative media (e.g.,
large-print materials, audiotapes, or electronic materials). Without specific modifications,
the standard curricular materials can be inadequate for these students, and too
frequently they can find themselves blocked from access to essential aspects of the
curriculum. Teachers must adjust the materials or their presentation to break down the
barriers and assist these students in learning.
Content: Memorize a Story Grammar Checklist (Reid & Lienemann, 2006). Students write lengthier
stories that include greater detail when they use a memorized strategy to judge their writing-inprogress. These young writers are taught a simple mnemonic device with 7 elements: ‘WWW,
What=2, How = 2’. This mnemonic translates into a story grammar checklist: WHO the main
character is; WHERE the story takes place; WHEN the story occurs; WHAT the main character(s)
do or plan to do; WHAT happens next; HOW the story concludes; and HOW the character(s) feel
about their experiences. Students are taught this strategy through teacher demonstration,
discussion, teacher modeling; and student use of the strategy with gradually fading teacher
support. When students use the ‘WWW, What=2, How = 2’ tactic independently, they may still
need occasional prompting to use it in their writing. NOTE: Teachers can apply this intervention
idea to any genre of writing (e.g., persuasive essay), distilling its essential elements into a similar
short, easily memorized checklist to teach to students.
Fluency: Have Students Write Every Day (Graham, Harris & Larsen, 2001). Short daily writing
assignments can build student writing fluency and make writing a more motivating activity. For
struggling writers, formal writing can feel much like a foreign language, with its own set of obscure
grammatical rules and intimidating vocabulary. Just as people learn another language more
quickly and gain confidence when they use it frequently, however, poor writers gradually develop
into better writers when they are prompted to write daily--and receive rapid feedback and
encouragement about that writing. The teacher can encourage daily writing by giving short writing
assignments, allowing time for students to journal about their learning activities, requiring that
they correspond daily with pen pals via email, or even posting a question on the board as a bellringer activity that students can respond to in writing for extra credit. Short daily writing tasks have
the potential to lower students’ aversion to writing and boost their confidence in using the written
word.
Fluency: Self-Monitor and Graph Results to Increase Writing Fluency (Rathvon, 1999). Students
gain motivation to write through daily monitoring and charting of their own and classwide rates of
writing fluency. At least several times per week, assign your students timed periods of ‘freewriting’
when they write in their personal journals. Freewriting periods all the same amount of time each
day. After each freewriting period, direct each student to count up the number of words he or she
has written in the daily journal entry (whether spelled correctly or not). Next, tell students to
record their personal writing-fluency score in their journal and also chart the score on their own
time-series graph for visual feedback. Then collect the day’s writing-fluency scores of all students
in the class, sum those scores, and chart the results on a large time-series graph posted at the
front of the room. At the start of each week, calculate that week’s goal of increasing total class
words written by taking last week’s score and increasing by five percent. At the end of each week,
review the class score and praise students if they have shown good effort.
Instruction: Essentials of Good Teaching Benefit Struggling Writers (Gersten, Baker, &
Edwards,1999). Teachers are most successful in reaching students with writing delays when their
instruction emphasizes the full writing process, provides strategy sheets, offers lots of models of
good writing, and gives students timely editorial feedback. Good instructors build their written
expression lessons around the 3 stages of writing –planning, writing, and revision— and make
those stages clear and explicit. Skilled instructors also provide students with ‘think sheets’ that
outline step-by-step strategies for tackle the different phases of a writing assignment (e.g., taking
concise notes from research material; building an outline; proofreading a draft). Students become
stronger writers when exposed to different kinds of expressive text, such as persuasive, narrative,
and expository writing. Teachers can make students more confident and self-sufficient as writers
when they give them access to plentiful examples of good prose models that the student can
review when completing a writing assignment. Finally, strong writing teachers provide supportive
and timely feedback to students about their writing. When teachers or classmates offer writing
feedback to the student, they are honest but also maintain an encouraging tone.
Motivation: Stimulate Interest With an Autobiography Assignment (Bos & Vaughn,
2002). Assigning the class to write their own autobiographies can motivate hard-to-reach students
who seem uninterested in most writing assignments. Have students read a series of
autobiographies of people who interest them. Discuss these biographies with the class. Then
assign students to write their own autobiographies. (With the class, create a short questionnaire
that students can use to interview their parents and other family members to collect information
about their past.) Allow students to read their finished autobiographies for the class.
Organization: Build an Outline by Talking Through the Topic (The Writing Center, University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill, n.d./ 23 December 2006). Students who struggle to organize their notes into a
coherent outline can tell others what they know about the topic—and then capture the informal
logical structure of that conversation to create a working outline. The student studies notes from
the topic and describes what he or she knows about the topic and its significance to a listener.
(The student may want to audio-record this conversation for later playback.) After the
conversation, the student jots down an outline from memory to capture the structure and main
ideas of the discussion. This outline ‘kernel’ can then be expanded and refined into the framework
for a paper.
Organization: ‘Reverse Outline’ the Draft (The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, n.d./
23 December 2006). Students can improve the internal flow of their compositions through ‘reverse
outlining’. The student writes a draft of the composition. Next, the student reads through the draft,
jotting notes in the margins that signify the main idea of each paragraph or section. Then the
student organizes the margin notes into an outline to reveal the organizational structure of the
paper. This ‘reverse outline’ allows the student to note whether sections of the draft are
repetitious, are out of order, or do not logically connect with one another.
Planning: Brainstorm to Break the ‘Idea’ Logjam (The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill, n.d./ 28 December 2006). Brainstorming is a time-tested method that can help students to generate
motivating topics for writing assignments and uncover new ideas to expand and improve their
compositions. Here are four brainstorming strategies to teach to students: FREEWRITING: The
student sets a time limit (e.g., 15 minutes) or length limit (e.g., one hand-written page) and
spontaneously writes until the limit is reached. The writer does not judge the writing but simply
writes as rapidly as possible, capturing any thought that comes to mind on the topic. Later, the
student reviews the freewriting to pick out any ideas, terms, or phrasing that might be
incorporated into the writing assignment. LISTING: The student selects a topic based on an idea
or key term related to the writing assignment. The writer then rapidly brainstorms a list of any
items that might possibly relate to the topic. Finally, the writer reviews the list to select items that
might be useful in the assigned composition or trigger additional writing ideas. SIMILES: The
student selects a series of key terms or concepts linked to the writing assignment. The student
brainstorms, using the framework of a simile: ” _1_ is like _2_.” The student plugs a key term into
the first blank and then generates as many similes as possible (e.g., “A SHIP is like a CITY ON
THE SEA.”). REFERENCES: The student jots down key ideas or terms from the writing
assignment. He or she then browses through various reference works (dictionaries,
encyclopedias, specialized reference works on specific subjects) looking randomly for entries that
trigger useful ideas. (Writers might try a variation of this strategy by typing assignment-related
search terms into GOOGLE or another online search engine.)
Proofreading: Teach A Memory Strategy (Bos & Vaughn, 2002). When students regularly use a
simple, portable, easily memorized plan for proofreading, the quality of their writing can improve
significantly. Create a poster to be put up in the classroom summarizing the SCOPE proofreading
elements: (1) SPELLING: Are my words spelled correctly; (2) CAPITALIZATION: Have I
capitalized all appropriate words, including first words of sentences, proper nouns, and proper
names?; (3) ORDER of words: Is my word order (syntax) correct?; (4) PUNCTUATION: Did I use
end punctuation and other punctuation marks appropriately? (5) EXPRESSION of complete
thoughts: Do all of my sentences contain a noun and verb to convey a complete thought? Review
the SCOPE proofreading steps by copying a first-draft writing sample onto an overhead and
evaluating the sample with the class using each item from the SCOPE poster. Then direct
students to pair off and together evaluate their own writing samples using SCOPE. When
students appear to understand the use of the SCOPE plan, require that they use this strategy to
proofread all written assignments before turning them in.
Proofreading: Use Selective Proofreading With Highlighting of Errors (Frus, n.d./18 November
2006). To prevent struggling writers from becoming overwhelmed by teacher proofreading
corrections, focus on only 1 or 2 proofreading areas when correcting a writing assignment. Create
a student ‘writing skills checklist’ that inventories key writing competencies (e.g., grammar/syntax,
spelling, vocabulary, etc.). For each writing assignment, announce to students that you will grade
the assignment for overall content but will make proofreading corrections on only 1-2 areas
chosen from the writing skills checklist. (Select different proofreading targets for each assignment
matched to common writing weaknesses in your classroom.) Also, to prevent cluttering the
student’s paper with potentially discouraging teacher comments and editing marks, underline
problems in the student’ text with a highlighter and number the highlighted errors sequentially at
the left margin of the student paper. Then (if necessary) write teacher comments on a separate
feedback sheet to explain the writing errors. (Identify each comment with the matching errornumber from the left margin of the student’s worksheet.) With fewer proofreading comments, the
student can better attend to the teacher feedback. Also, even a heavily edited student assignment
looks neat and tidy when teachers use the highlighting/numbering technique—preventing
students from becoming disheartened at the site of an assignment scribbled over with corrective
comments.
Spelling: Leverage the Power of Memory Through Cover-Copy-Compare (Murphy, Hern, Williams,
& McLaughlin, 1990). Students increase their spelling knowledge by copying a spelling word from a
correct model and then recopying the same word from memory. Give students a list of 10-20
spelling words, an index card, and a blank sheet of paper. For each word on the spelling list, the
student (1) copies the spelling list item onto a sheet of paper, (2) covers the newly copied word
with the index card, (3) writes the spelling word again on the sheet (spelling it from memory), and
(4) uncovers the copied word and checks to ensure that the word copied from memory is spelled
correctly. If that word is spelled incorrectly, the student repeats the sequence above until the word
copied from memory is spelled correctly--then moves to the next word on the spelling list.
Essay structures
Chronological order:
Paragraphs separate the process or series of events into major stages. ( See
also chronology within paragraphs.)
Classification:
Paragraphs divide the material into major categories and distinguish between
them.
Increasing importance:
Paragraphs are arranged so that the most important point comes last, thus
building the essay's strength.
Cause and effect
Indicates causal relationships between things and events. Be careful, however,
not to mistake coincidence with causality, nor to disregard other possible
causes. See the various pages that deal with logic.
Comparison and contrast
Involves lining up related ideas for a detailed account of similarities and
differences. In this kind of essay it is important to decide whether you will be
concentrating on similarities or differences. In general, the more similar things
are, the more you concentrate on the differences, and vice versa. If you are
comparing two works by the same author, or two love poems, for example,
what will most interest you will be the differences between them; if you are
comparing an Anglo-Saxon riddle with a science fiction novel the differences
will be obvious enough that you will want to focus on the similarities.
Although one pattern should serve as the overall organizing framework, your
argument can benefit from a combination of these strategies. For example, while the
paragraphs may be arranged in ascending order of importance, within the paragraphs
it is likely that you will incorporate comparisons, causes, classification or chronology.
These principles apply to both the greater structure of the essay and each individual
idea.
