While reading The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis, I encountered a few questions concerning his view on Ethical Innovation and the dilemma conditioners face. It was a difficult book with many ideas that didn’t come completely clear to me at times.…
Literature can be expressive. It can be expressed in many different ways. Some use writing, some use pictures and print, or even dramatic and musical works of art. In this essay I will be using the Reader-Response Approach to analyze a piece of literature. I have chosen the short play I’m Going! A Comedy in One Act, by dramatist Tristan Bernard. I will include why the literary work captured my interest, how it made me feel, and how it has formed or change my connection with literature.…
While most people think reading comments from critics will contaminate the article because students may read with prejudice and not be able to think about article itself. In his article “Disliking Books”, Gerald Graff argues that reading critics will help shape their mind to a literary sensibility. In Graff’s personal experience, critics didn’t ruin the excitement of literature. Instead, critics inspired him to think more deeply about the book and relate it to modern life. In college, he fought for his degree and read some books. Deep-down he felt these books were boring and tasteless. Gerald Graff had no interest in serious books before he got to college. But everything changed. When he read “The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain and the critics’ debate about the end of the novel, his interest was awakened, he reread this novel with surprise and passion. One of the critics implied Twain was cheating at the end of book. Graff thought cheating was a thing that usually happened to students; he never thought a famous author would make a mistake that even undergraduate students could demonstrate. Through this experience, he found the critics’ debate at the end novel was quite interesting. He became one of the critics, attended…
A reader response criticism complies with my beliefs of Literature, in that everyone who reads a book comes from a figuratively different place than any other reader. Since everyone is a unique individual, the impressions, and meanings of passages are to be interpreted by these readers in their own unique and individual…
The novel, that most accessible, democratic of literary forms, must establish its contract with its reader. It may be helped or hindered by all sorts of extraneous influences, cover design,…
The entire semester defining what Literature is has being the course’s quest. Literature is always changing; its definition has developed and changed from time to time. To find an exact definition of what is literature, it is like looking for a needle in a haystack. There have been several attempts to decipher this puzzle, in “What Is an Author” written by Michael Foucault, he emphasizes on the idea that an author exists only as a function of a written work. The author's name holds considerable power and serves as an anchor for interpreting a text. And “On the Sublime” written by Longinus, the writer states that the sublime implies that man can, in emotions and in language, transcend the limits of the human condition. This research paper consists in identifying the elements of literature by comparing two major pieces of work. In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley warns that with the advent of science, natural questioning is not only futile, but dangerous. In attempting to discover the mysteries of life, Frankenstein assumes that he can act as God. He disrupts the natural order, and chaos ensues. In “Young Goodman Brown”, Hawthorne explores the nature of imagination and reality in this mysterious story by allowing the reader to actively question the reality of the night's events. He combines a multitude of elements into it creating a sense of mystery. The short story follows Goodman Brown’s journey resulting in his loss of faith. Literature allows the reader to feel, experience, and inhabit a character or place. It goes beyond the scope of everyday fiction, reaches new insights and allows the writer to reason with the audience.…
The reader response-response approach to critical literature “asks you to “connect” with literature, to find a personal link or imaginative entry into a story, poem, or play.” (Clugston, P. 413) Normally for any reader, this is one of the main characteristics the reader is performing. The reader by default is looking for some form of connection to the literary work he/she may be reading. Therefore, when the reader begins to make these connections, they are already utilizing the reader-response perspective.…
Many people say there is a book for everyone, the one book that will transcend what some might think of as the paper barrier and influence the person’s life because of its appeal. Critics eagerly manage to head dive into writing in order to analyze the details within the intricate messages authors intend to convey with their writings, which engulfs the beauty that absorbs readers as they grow through the journey that is reading a book. However, it tends to be complicated for less avid readers to be able to recognize that authors leave a part of themselves within the writings, and that these “horcruxes” reveal much about intimate concepts authors embrace or their beliefs. This concepts can be multiple from the broad spectrum of topics, including the reflection of cultural influences and concern for contemporary issues…
“The true measure of a texts value lies in its ability to provoke the reader into awareness of its language and construction, not just its content”.…
Second the readers’ ability to discern characters flaws and complexity, in the literary fiction while staying with the stereotypical boundaries of the commercial fiction. Third is the ability of readers’ to recognize that the overall theme of the literary fiction challenges the norm of our society in the literary fiction whilst the overall theme of the commercial fiction revolves around escapism. Lastly, the conclusion of literary fiction gives the readers an unsettling and unsatisfactory ending. Conversely is true for the rewarding, satisfying, and a happy ending for the commercial fiction. Thus it is important for the readers to be educated to be able to differentiate between the literary and commercial…
Kirsznerand and Mandell, Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing. Earl McPeek. USA: Harcout, Inc., 2001, 1997,1994,1991. 388-395…
In Nabokov’s 1948 “Good Readers and Good Writers,” the reader has the opportunity to view the possibilities of a beautiful collision of a major reader and a major writer. This piece discusses reading and writing: skills that have become standardized and slightly devalued as education has advanced. Literacy has become so expected that little thought is put into what defines a good reader or writer; Nabokov tackles this idea head on. Nabokov’s intention of this piece is to passionately display a relationship that is formed between a good reader and a good writer, and the essential need for an open mind. He stresses the vitality of understanding instead of immediately identifying when reading; however he tests this ability in his audience by using bold and opinionated language that can distract from his intent. Nabokov both instructs and tests his audience as he defines major readers and writers and their use of understanding, all the while knowing the true meaning will be reached only by those who open their mind to his world.…
Before I started my reader-response paper, I read an article by Steven Lynn to help me know the right approach to a reader-response. There is two ways that I can approach this “by describing how readers should respond to the text or by giving the critics’ own personal response or by giving the critic’s own personal response.” I found this to really help me understand the concept of a reader-response paper. I decided to mostly give my own personal response but react on how some other readers might react.…
The study of literature "is the place—there is no other in most schools—the place wherein the chief matters of concern are particulars of humanness—individual human feeling, human response, and human time, as these can be known through the written expression (at many literary levels) of men living and dead, and as they can be discovered by student writers seeking through words to name and compose and grasp their own experience. English [that is, literature] in sum is about my distinctness and the distinctness of other human beings. Its function, like that of some books called 'great,' is to strive at once to know the world through art, to know what if anything he uniquely is, and what some brothers uniquely are. The instruments employed are the imagination, the intellect, and texts or events that rouse the former to life . . . . [T]he goal . . . is to expand the areas of the human world—areas that would not exist but for art—with which individual man can feel solidarity and coextensiveness." [Benjamin DeMott, Supergrow: Essays and Reports on Imagination in America 143 (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1969)]…
William Lyon Phelps was a brilliant writer and teacher who treasured books and understood the significance of how the printed word can affect a person. Phelps co-taught at Harvard, and then moved to Yale to teach an English class full time. He was given countless awards for his strong intellect such as Life magazine doing an overview of his whole life, founding the Elizabeth club and more. Phelps had given the speech “The Pleasure of Books” on a radio broadcast in 1933. This speech discusses the importance of books and what role they play in human existence. Phelps uses metaphors and repetition to convince the public that books are a fundamental and essential part of human functions and daily life.…