Literature

Thomas C. Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor provides a lively introduction to the subject matter of literature and insight into the mind of an English professor. Being an English professor at the University of Michigan-Flint, Foster has gained valuable experience in reading literature; experience that he shares with the reader in his book. Put simply, this book is a general guideline for what to look for when reading literature. An essential characteristic of Foster’s writing is…

Anthropomorphism in Children’s Literature: From Wily Wolves to Erudite Pigs Animals have dominated stories that people pass from one generation to another, especially those that are intended for children literature. They are, however, to the biologists’ dismay, being treated anthropomorphically which implies giving human emotions to animals. Biologists contend that giving the animals human traits misguides the children as they learn to associate humans traits with animals that cannot have them.…

author’s purpose of writing was to explain that all literature can follow similar plots. This talks about how all quest plots have similar structure since they all feature 5 characteristics, which are a questers, a place to go, a stated reason to go to the place, challenges along the way, and a real reason to go to the place. Readers can benefit from Thomas Foster’s helpful perspective by having a more thorough understanding of quest literature, due to the author showing readers how quest plots…

Literary theory consists of various principles, beliefs and underlying ideas that are used to understand and analyze different pieces of texts in literature. An interesting way to view literary theory is by considering theories as tools. Critics take these tool and apply it to a text in an attempt to look at it from a different perspective. It grants them the ability to examine a particular aspect of a text, which they regard of significant importance. When these theories are passed onto readers…

through a contemporary piece of southern gothic literature. Stown revives southern gothic literature in a more modern piece. Most of elements fit into the literal definitions of southern gothic literature but with a more modern twist. Stown is a contemporary piece of southern gothic literature because it has a southern setting, decay, and violence. A main characteristic of southern gothic literature is its southern settings. Southern gothic literature defines a southern setting being in a small…

read literature, we attempt to understand another perspective. Just as one understands the words of a book, one “attends to [the] suffering” (Schweizer) of the author, starting “an endless act of comprehension”. We can use literature as a device to understand another life. Literature helps readers gain perspective and understanding. However, Harold Schweizer questions the readers’ intents when he states “suffering can become the occasion of an endless act of comprehension”. Reading literature…

There are multiple works of literature that discuss the Spice Trade and it’s influence on the world and culture. Even though the Oil Encounter has few pieces of work written about the topic, it can be held in comparison due to it’s economic and strategic value along with the encounters it has cultivated with politics, culture, and military. There is almost nothing of intellectual merit written about the Oil Encounter in English, nothing of the sort that has been written in Portuguese. Oil holds…

Authors of the Roaring 20’s In a time when a home library was a great investment and being well read was valued, literature was a major game changer in society. When television was still considered science fiction, people only had access to printed material for current events and entertainment. Literature from the 1920’s serves us today as a way of understanding what it was like to live a life during the prohibition, the Great Depression and so forth. Writers such as Edith Wharton and Ernest…

Ken Follett is a bestselling Welsh author of popular fiction novels who has sold over 130 million copies of his novels and has had a major influence on the world of literature during his career. Ken Follett’s influence on literature mainly consists of his enhancement of the writing style prevalent in the world of modern popular fiction and the thriller genre specifically, which he manages to make while still maintaining the objective of entertaining his readers. Follett’s childhood love of…

Misinterpretation Of Children’s Literature Originally our culture was raised to believe fairytale’s had a based audience of children, but are we really teaching our children the right things by reading them these stories? Although a fairytale is a children 's story about magical and imaginary beings and lands, fairytales in some ways might be exposing younger children to more violent, sexual, harmful situations that they are not fully ready to understand. The debate is if the actions in which…