...I lay strewn across this elongated, thick branch of a oak tree. The rough, hard brown bark that slowly chips away with time shows how full and long of a life it has lived. It has stood strong against the many violent threatening storms and the use of animals living and having it provide shelter for years on end. Though the tree looked looked weathered from the days that had long passed on, its roots that fanned out in various twists and turns, held its place ever so firmly. Grounding it to the nutrient rich soil, this magnificent plant stands towering over with it’s striking yet graceful silhouette. Beautifully bright evergreen leaves elegantly swayed gently with the breeze brought during that sunset, each and every one dancing in such a way...
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...Literary Standards Universality Literature - appeals to everyone, regardless of culture, race, sex, and time which are all considered significant. Artistry Literature has an aesthetic appeal and thus possesses a sense of beauty. Intellectual Value It stimulate critical thinking that enriches mental processes of abstract and reasoning, making man realize the fundamental of truths of life and its nature. Suggestiveness It unravels man’s emotional power to define symbolism, nuances, implied meanings, images and messages, giving and evoking visions above and beyond the plane of ordinary life and experience. Spiritual Value Literature elevates the spirit and the soul and thus has the power to motivate and to inspire. Permanence Literature endures across time and draws out the time factor: Timeliness – occurring at a particular time. Timelessness – remaining invariable throughout time Importance of Literature • •Studying literature is like looking at the mirror of life where man’s experiences, his innermost feelings and thoughts are reflected. • Through literature, we learn the culture of people across time and space•We understand not only the past life of a nation but also its present. • Moreover, we become familiar not only with the culture of neighboring countries but also with that of others living very far from us Literary Approaches Literary Approaches Moral or Humanistic Approach • Literature is viewed to discuss man and its nature. • It presents...
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...Quick List of Common Literary Terms Abstract Language—Language describing ideas and qualities rather than observable or specific things, people, or places. The observable or "physical" is usually described in concrete language. Allegory—A narrative or description having a second meaning beneath the surface one. A story, fictional or nonfictional, in which characters, things, and events represent qualities or concepts. The interaction of these characters, things, events is meant to reveal an abstraction or a truth. These characters, etc. may be symbolic of the ideas referred to. Alliteration—The repetition at close intervals of initial identical consonant sounds. Allusion—An indirect reference to something (usually a literary text) with which the reader is expected to be familiar. Allusions are usually literary, historical, Biblical, or mythological. Ambiguity—An event or situation that may be interpreted in more than one way. Also, the manner of expression of such an event or situation may be ambiguous. Artful language may be ambiguous. Unintentional ambiguity is usually vagueness. Anachronism—Assignment of something to a time when it was not in existence, e.g., the watch Merlyn wore in The Once and Future King. Analogy—An analogy is a comparison to a directly parallel case. When a writer uses an analogy, he or she argues that a claim reasonable for one case is reasonable for the analogous case. Anecdote—A brief recounting of a relevant episode. Anecdotes are...
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...Santaland Diares is as essay wrote by David Sedaris. It is a humorous account of Sedaris stint working as a Christmas elf in Sanaland at Macy’s Department store. Sedaris reads the essay on a National Public Radio’s Morning on December 23, 1992. Christmas time can be a very stressful time of the year. David uses evidence, ethos, logos and pathos to argue that Christmas may not be as enjoyable as it appears. David uses evidence to support that Christmas may not be as enjoyable as it appears. He talks about how stressful and how it is a difficult time if the year. Sedaris said, “Today, I witnessed fistfights and vomiting and magnificent tantrums.”(Paragraph 7). This example shows how Christmas is not always fun. David states, “Tonight I saw a women slap and shake her crying child. She yelled: Rachel, get on the man’s lap and smile or I’ll give you something to cry about.”(Paragraph 22 ). This show support that Christmas may not always be filled with fun and excitement. The picture captured the smiling child on Santa lap with elves and it appeared like nothing was wrong. But in reality the child was just crying right before the picture was taken. All of these examples show that even though the pictures looked perfect and sweet doesn’t mean the child was an angle before or after the picture was taken. David Sedaris uses ethos in Santaland Diaries . David was born on December 26, 1956 in Binghamton, New York. Which is one day after the joyful holiday? David Raymond Sedaris is an American...
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...The Power of Words “To This Day” is an animated poem released on YouTube in February of 2013 written and spoken by Shane Koyczan. The purpose of the poem is to bitterly contradict the statement: “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.” Because of the overwhelming popular response, and hauntingly beautiful message: Koyczan was chosen to read the poem and show the film at the 2013 March TED conference in California. Koyczan’s purpose is to inform individuals of the countless hurdles bullying and simple words can create for an individual in their present and future. He uses Pathos to create a dramatic and heartfelt tone in order to convey to his audience the lasting effect words can have. Koyczan opens his poem by exhibiting the claim that role models actively push children to make decisions about their future,...
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...entertain is to have the audience relax, smile and enjoy the occasion. The speech should have a central theme or a focus. A series of jokes will NOT work well for this type of speech. Good speeches to entertain typically mix humor with more serious morals, lessons learned, or experiences. In other words, they have a real point to make… they are not just silly, slapstick humor. You can tell a lighthearted, personal story that reveals a life lesson you’ve learned or examine a familiar subject from a different and unexpected viewpoint or take a lighthearted look at a particular issue. Example: Summer jobs: “Summer jobs for high schoolers: The daily diary of the American Nightmare.” Additional suggestions for the composition and delivery of after dinner speeches are as follows: 1. Carefully select an interesting, timely, and appropriate topic. Having something familiar in the talk that the audience can relate to will enhance listener interest. 2. Build your speech around a central theme, moral, or idea. 3. Support your main point or central theme with colorful stories, narrative and examples. 4. Be imaginative and creative when delivering your talk. Few speeches demand more imagination and creativity than the speech to entertain. 5. Be positive and good-natured when delivering your talk—irony and sarcasm are acceptable but not bitterness. 6. Be optimistic and modest when speaking and create an appropriate mood for your listeners. 7. Humor is a key ingredient...
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...Name: Tutor: Course: Date: Men or Children? The gangster is a fictional story written by Colson Whitehead in 2008. It is a short story about African- American teenagers and its setting is in Sag Harbor, in 1985. The story begins with a question, “When did you get out?” The opening question emphasizes the title of the story on a particular notion to the reader. In the fictional story, the gangster, Benji and Reggie are twin brothers of ten months apart. They grew up together inseparably in every aspect. It was common for them to be seen together and when they were not, people always question them on where the other is. High school and puberty brought the difference between them physically. They would be seen away from each other severally, and they even looked different physically with Benji being skinny while Reggie looked chubby. Benji and Reggie are brought up in an upper middle class family, and their parents own a beach house in Sag harbor where they go to during the summers. In the summer of 1985, Benji was 15 years old, and Reggie was 14 years old. During the summer when the whole family left for their beach house, the boys would be left alone for some time when their parents went back to the city to work during the weekdays. Benji and Reggie are described, in the story, as Siamese twins when they were young, describing their inseparable nature. This is clearly brought out by the language used as quoted “Where is the surgeon, who is gifted enough to...
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...Writing Assignment #1: Autobiographical Essay Writing assignment #1 will be an essay in which you describe an event or person you have encountered in your past work experiences or experiences in your community. This essay is informed in part by an article from Mark Gellis, “Autobiographical Writing in the Technical Writing Class.” That article is in the ereserves section of this class. A Brief Introduction to the Strategies for this Essay: In his essay, “Autobiographical Writing in the Technical Writing Class,” Gillis writes that “An essay...is written not only to explain, but often to record and reveal the author’s personal interaction with the subject” (p. 326). You will accomplish these steps in your essay. You will record and reveal your interaction with the topic about which you are writing. Gellis notes on page 327 that writing a story or narrative of one’s past can help one’s professional growth. A goal of this essay is to help you understand your goals in pursuing the degree you are pursuing at UMUC by describing and analyzing a work or community experience you have had in the past. Examples of previous students who have written this type of analysis are given below. Overall, if you read the following article by Gellis in our ereserves section of the class, you will have a good understanding of how to approach this assignment. The article is “Autobiographical Writing in the Technical Writing Course.” Organization: In this essay, you will have the following:...
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...Compare and Contrast American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis and The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro focussing on the topic of the unreliable narrator The unreliable narrator is a technique used by authors where a scenario is created in which the reader cannot trust the narration of the book usually done in the first person. In American psycho, Ellis explores the sinister nature of Wall Street yuppie culture by examining the sanity of the narrating protagonist Patrick Bateman using the unreliable narrator. Ishiguro also uses this, exploring ideas of regret and also self-justification in the character of Mr Stevens in The Remains of the Day. Unlike Ellis who examines Bateman during his early working years, in his mid-twenties and presenting a snapshot of his life, Ishiguro uses his take on the unreliable narrator to look at Stevens towards the end of his life using a series of flashbacks narrated unreliably, by Stevens. Both novels are comparable in the sense they examine the topic of failure using unreliable narrators that will do anything to escape the idea that they are failures. A popular debate regarding American Psycho is whether Patrick Bateman is a murderer or not, certainly Bateman describes in detail of murders he commits and why he commits them, however, certain factors bring Bateman’s reliability of narration into question. Bruno Zerweck argues that due to the lack of ‘detective framework’ and ‘unintentional self-incrimination’ the narration of the novel is...
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...Monday, February 28, 2011 Wuthering Heights - Feminist Criticism The feminist criticism is perhaps the perspective that best applies to Wuthering Heights. For one, any personal possessions of a woman goes straight to the husband once she marries. It’s like the woman doesn’t even exist because she has to live under the husband’s name, who now owns her belongings. Thrushcross Grange would have been Isabella’s had she not married Heathcliff but, since she did marry him, Heathcliff automatically becomes the owner. In addition, the wives of men in the novel are treated at times like they’re below the “man of the house.” One example of this inferior treatment in Wuthering Heights is, again, with Isabella. When Heathcliff beats Isabella, there isn’t much she can do within the law to stop Heathcliff because, in order to make Heathcliff stop physically abusing her, she would have to prove (in a court probably partial towards men) that her life was in danger as a result of the abuse. The law back in Brontë’s day really favored men over women and put women at a great disadvantage. I think the topic that will garner even more attention from contemporary feminist critics will be “the role of film and other popular media in the construction of the feminine gender” (Brontë 451). I remember the very first article our class blogged on about how people are reading less. With more people now turning to other forms of entertainment like watching movies, the creators of movies add their opinions...
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...English Overseas English zwwx@overseaen.com 2011 8 http://www.overseaen.com Tel:+86-551-5690811 5690812 Narrative Patterns Research in O Henry's Novels · ， （ ， 332000 ） Abstract：O· Henry is living in the time when novelists are in the great pursuit of narrative pattern research. Hence his works is inevitably Henry's novels in my opinion is also marvelous for his outinfluenced. Beside his humorous language, surprising ends and expressions, O· standing narrative patterns arrangement. In this article, a research will be conducted onto his narrative pattern in the aspects of narrative perspectives, narrative space and narrative time. By this research, more information and references is intended to obtain for the further study on this area. Key words: Narrative Pattern; Narrative Perspective; Narrative Space; Narrative Time ： I02 ：A ：1009-5039(2011)08-0350-03 1 Introduction · O Henry (1862-1910), as one of the most famous writers of short story in American literature history, or even around the whole world. Plus his contribution in narrative patterns research, he is also honored as the one of the founders of American short story history. Great praises, as well as critics are raised from the world onto his short novels which are well known for the humor, vivid spots description, surprising endings. However, in this article we will pay attention to the narrative patterns in O· Henry's novels, the area of which seldom calls focus and research from the American literature...
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...I’ve “power of his body” and not he” (223), she is claiming power over an object is proclaiming that until her husband dies, she will have possession over his body. Also makes sure to point out, she has the control, not him. Which also gives a sense of the power struggles between sexes. Her arrogance is so strong that she admits she didn’t value her husband’s love. Then again, why would she? She is only interested in sharing the techniques that have made her a “lifelong expert”. In the following statement, when she begins to speak of her fourth husband, she seems to be either talking to herself or maybe just a thought running through her mind: And I recall my youth and gaiety; it warms the very cockles of my heart. And to this day it does my spirit good to think that in my time I’ve had my fling, But age,...
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...In the contemporary century where the world is metamorphosed to a global village, the concept of national culture and national literature is certainly belied. The World literature, today, simultaneously represents an important multicultural perspective within individual national literatures as well as more global perspective taking in the phenomena of transculturalism and diaspora confluence. Centripetal and centrifugal forces can be discerned as both antagonistic and complementary forces in cultural development. Raymond Williams develops a theory of relation between culture at large and cultural products like literature. Culture is manifested in human artifacts and activities such as music, literature, life-style, food, painting, sculpture, theatre and film. It can be said that arts and the world of science with their moral systems come to form culture. These are constantly in a spatio-temporal flux that renders an inexhaustible range of meanings and a catalogue of the elements. In this process of evolution a particular aspect dominates or fades off at some space-time coordinate. The pattern of human activity and the symbolic structures give such activities significance and importance. Rushdie, like other postcolonial writers not only reflects upon the political aspects of history but also deconstructs the interrelationships between history and individual to delve into the moral and psychological tensions of the native homeland. His novels are the fine example where ethics of...
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...Specimen Days Olu Jenzen Early conceptions of trauma are intimately linked not only with modernity but specifically with the height of industrialisation (Micale and Lerner 2001). This is converged in the opening of Specimen Days particularly in the image of an industrial accident at the ironworks where a young man is killed by the stamping machine. His young brother, replacing him at the machine after the funeral, then experiences an apparition of the dead brother still trapped inside the machine, which leads him to believe that all machines house entrapped ghosts of the dead. Writing on the Victorians’ anxieties about internal disruption caused by the advent of the railway, Jill Matus (2001, 415) has pointed out that, Freud himself remarked in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), [that] there is ‘a condition [which] has long been known and described [and] which occurs after severe mechanical concussions, railway disasters and other accidents involving a risk to life; it has been given the name of traumatic neurosis’ (12). Freud’s remark brings to the fore the traumas of the industrial age as both individually and publicly experienced and negotiated. This condition of trauma as private and public, individual yet also societal is held in tension throughout Cunningham’s novel. Reflecting on the otherness of trauma and its vexed relationship to representation, this article will consider some aspects of the writing of trauma in Michael Cunningham’s 2005 novel Specimen Days; a text...
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...Literary Devices and Terms Literary devices are specific language techniques which writers use to create text that is clear, interesting, and memorable. Alliteration - repeated consonant sound at the beginning of words or within words; used to establish mood and rhythm in a story; true alliteration has three words beginning with the same sound (two words beginning with the same sound would be called alliterative) Examples: bucking bronco; miserable morning; Bed, Bath, and Beyond Allusion - a reference in one story to a well-known character or event from another story, history, or place Examples: the rise of the baseball team from last place to first was a real Cinderella story; at times teachers need the wisdom of Solomon to make decisions Ambiguity - when a single event or expression can mean two different things to two different people Example: When it is announced that another baby is on the way, Father remarks, “That could create some problems.” He means problems with money, but his young son thinks, “You’re right, dad! I don’t want to share my room and toys with anybody!” Analogy - comparing one thing to another very different thing in order to explain it better Examples: a school is like a garden, where children are lovingly raised and cared for; the rabbit shot from its hole like a rocket; the confetti fell like snow in a blizzard as the parade passed through the city streets (these three analogies are all written as similes) Aphorism - a brief...
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