Literary theory

In her book, “A Poetics of Postmodernism”, Linda Hutcheon identifies the term postmodernism, when used in fiction, to describe fiction that is at once metafictional and historical in the way it presents the texts and contexts of the past (Hutcheon, 40). This is what she calls historiographic metafiction. Most of the historiographic novels emphasize self-reflexivity and our paradoxical relations to past events. Historiographic metafiction somehow acknowledges the paradox of the past, that is to…

her literature, after the characters see something that changes their lives forever. “Victory over Japan”, by Gilchrist, incorporates all these topics that show above. This book was published in 1984 in the series, A Book of Short Stories. In my literary analysis of this book, I will give some…

The speeches in Thucydides are critical to the narrative of his History as they provide another perspective on the general context and reveal both the characters of the key protagonists and their intentions. The Sicilian books demonstrate their particular importance where they become a powerful influence on the outcome of the war, notably the two speeches of Alcibiades. Thucydides himself explains: ’of the various speeches made either when war was imminent or in the course of the war itself, it…

In “Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading”, Eve Sedgwick, attempts to evaluate the current modes of interpretation, not to criticize the methodologies, but instead illuminate the actualities of monopolistic forms of interpretation and its imposing effect on the utilization of an equally valid alternative. That form of interpretation is called paranoid reading. Eve Sedgwick begins the essay with a personal story of her casual experience with paranoid reading. Through that experience, Sedgwick…

To interpret a passage responsibly and reflectively, one must study the literary context around the passage. By literary context I mean how the context shapes the meaning of the text. If we know it or not, each time we come to a text, we are already implying our presuppositions about what we know. More than often, our presuppositions are incorrect because we receive them from our present day in age and not that of the day the text was written. We need to throw these out, and study the text…

The author in “Why Literature Matters” is saying that recently people have stopped literature. And the author states this in paragraph two. Also the author in order to backup her claim uses a lot of Ethos, Logos, and Pathos In the first half of “Why Literature Matters” the author uses logos to support her claim that people have stopped reading literature. Like when she says “According to the 2002 survey of public participation for the arts.” She got facts from them to help make her argument…

I would apply the reader response to analyze the critical approach of the short story “Matchimantio” Why generally because this story can be interpreted more than one way according to the text. In hindsight, with short story such as the Cathedral anything can be viewed from one’s opinion can evidently be seen to be true, based on the perception of the reader standpoint and viewpoint. In the short story Matchimantio, Louise Erdrich explores the interpretation of how life may have not always…

classes I had to take. I didn’t have a choice in most of them, so I didn’t do much research into what each lesson plan held. However, during our first day, I was pleasantly surprised by the goal of the class – learning about literary criticism and, more importantly, the theories that went along with it. I felt confident because I already had experience in these fields, and this class would just throw me into the deep end of a pool I had already waded into. The class essentially showed me why I…

1.1 A Postcolonial Aesthetic? This thesis seeks to contribute to the dialogue on the postcolonial aesthetic, by using concepts raised in Roland Barthes’ The Pleasure of the Text (1975) as a frame, through which to interrogate the ostensibly thorny issue of aesthetics in postcolonial writing. The idea behind this thesis stems from a reading of Elleke Boehmer’s essay “A Postcolonial Aesthetic” (2010), in which she questions the viability of approaching postcolonial fiction through its “aesthetic,…

Questions (1) Provide an explanaion of the literary style ‘magic(al) realism’. Then, demonstrate (using various examples from the novel), how Esquivel uses this style in the novel. Conclude with your evaluation of this style ( opinion - did you like it or not, why?). Magic realism or magical realism is a genre where magical elements are a natural part in an otherwise mundane, realistic environment. In the book “Like Water For Chocolate”, there are many magical factors you can find by…