What is the difference between story and plot? What is the difference between plot summary and plot interpretation? How do you analyze the relationship between the main plot and a subplot? What are the purposes of literary elements and literary techniques? What are the writer’s literary devices and reader’s literary devices? How do you recognize and appreciate ways in which writer use language, structure and style to achieve his intended effects on the reader? How do you shift from mere appreciation of a literary text to critical literary appreciation? How do you engage in literary analysis & what is the purpose? What is the difference between topic and theme and how do you arrive at the theme? How do you compare the theme and the moral message? How do you develop an interpretation of a work of literature (drama, poetry and prose) and what is the purpose? How do you present critical appreciations or your individual responses to literary texts composed in different forms and in different periods and cultures? How do you know your individual response is valid? What are the differences between Critical Literary Appreciation, Literary Criticism, and Literary Theory? Why should there be a Literary theory at all?
Awake at Work by Michael Carroll In ancient China around 500 BCE, thousands of burdensome social rituals dominated people’s lives. When to bow, what brocade to wear, how to address a government official, what ceremony to conduct, even what ornament to rest by the fireplace, and much, much more were all dictated by a rigid social code called li. Through […]
Read moreAll imaginative writing in India has had its origin in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, ten-thousand-year old epics of India. An author picked up an incident or a character out of one of or the other and created a new wok with it, similar to Shakespeare’s transmutation of Holinshed’s Chronicle or Plutarch’s Lives. Kalidasa (1)’s Shakuntala (fifth century AD), one […]
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The Enchantress of Florence: Salman Rushdie The First minister and greatest wit of the age greeted him at the Hiran Minar, the tower of elephants’ teeth. The emperor’s sense of mischief was aroused. ‘Birbal,” Akbar said, dismounting from his horse, “will you answer us one question? We have been waiting a long time to ask it.” The first minister of […]
Read moreJESUS OF TIBET: MYSTERY YEARS REVEALED The Gospels record Jesus age twelve in the temple. Then about age thirty at the river Jordan. That leaves approximately seventeen years unaccounted for. During those so called lost years, the child ‘increased in wisdom and stature,’ Luke wrote. But was it in the carpenter shop at Nazareth? Nicolas Notovitch’s Accident Near Himis Paintings © […]
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Karla and Shantaram at Goa is a gleaning from Gregory David Roberts’s Shantaram ‘I love you , Karla,’ I said when we were alone again. ‘I loved you the first second I saw you. I think I’ve loved you for so long as there’s been love in the world. I love your voice. I love your face. I love your […]
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Cold turkey off Heroin Following is a gleaning from Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts ISBN 0-349-11754-3We all cope with anxiety and stress, to one degree or another, with the help of a cocktail of chemicals produced in the body and released in the brain. Chief among them is the endorphin group. The endorphins are peptide neurotransmitters that have pain-relieving properties. […]
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Poppy fields, Opium, Taliban, Mujahadeen, Russians and Americans Following is an extraction from Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie The Russians were in Afghanistan and consuqently many Afghans had fled to Pakistan, and were even to be found at forward camp number 22 in the “free”-Azad-sector of Kashmir. In spite of the enormous numbers of refugees occupying huge, town-sized camps […]
Read moreOpium: Bombay (Mumbai) to Canton (Guangzhou)Following text is a gleaning from River of Smoke by Amitav GhoshLater there would be much discussion on whether the Anahita was struck by the same storm that had hit the Ibis. Such information as was available then made it impossible to come to any reliable determination on this: what was certain was that the […]
Read moreOpium addictionJi, Sethji, said Neel. He ran his eye over the lines and said: It seems that these are excerpts from a memorandum written by a high-ranking Chinese official and sent to the Emperor.Yes, said Baharam. Go on. What does he say?Opium is a poisonous drug, brought from foreign countries. To the question, what are its virtues, the answer is: […]
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CHINA’S ELDER BROTHER: INDIA Marginal Comments by bunpeiris are followed up with gleanings Once upon a time India was a great land that made timeless contributions to the Heritage of the World that no other land, since then has ever matched up, far from exceeding: India was the birth place, cradle and home of sages, philosophers and scholars since time […]
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BUDDHA’S LIGHT TEA On this Vesākha (Pali; Sanskrit: Vaiśākha, Sinhala: Wesak or Vesak) day (another anniversary of birth, enlightenment and the final extinction of Gautama Buddha, it brings me, living in Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, a Theravada Buddhist (though not a good one at it), immense joy to present you all guys and dolls with one of those accessible and appealing […]
Read moreHow the British Exploited Sri Lanka By J.B. Müller The Sri Lankan Diaspora overseas (mainly in Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the USA) eagerly and indiscriminately absorbs everything appearing about their Motherland in the international print and electronic media. All what is done is done in the naïve belief that there isn’t a spin on the news and that it […]
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