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?
QUESTION [Undergraduate level, B.A. in English] “Examine how international writers writing in English attempt to portray the social, cultural and political issues unique to their countries of origin, through the medium of poetry. Discuss with reference “Prayer Before Birth” by Louis Macneice, “A worker Reads History” by Bertolt Brecht and “Slave’s Dream” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. ANSWERBy bunPeirisInternationally renowned poets […]
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Feminism in South Asia Written by Bun Peiris of Moratuwa Q. “Third wave feminists or rather post-feminists believe that women in the modern society have already achieved gender equality, and feminism is no longer relevant to today’s society.” Do you agree? Substantiate your answer with examples drawn from South-Asian literary works. “Most evident from the televised Judiciary Committee hearings was […]
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In “Book the First-Sowing” of Hard Times, Dickens explores the effect of a system of education which values the factual knowledge over creativity and imagination. Comment. Following is an undergraduate level essay written using the paragraph writing technique PEEL [Point, Evidence, Explanation and Link] . As such, those who study for Cambridge OL literature may ignore/delete information from secondary sources […]
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The Caucasian Chalk Circle by Bertolt Brecht is apparently about and child whose ownership claimed by two mothers. But it touches social, political and emotional aspects broadly. Discuss. Written in PEEL [Point, Evidence, Explanation and Link] format by BunPeiris ______________________________________________________________________ Transformation Of Grusha And Azdak In The Backdrop of Political and Social Upheavels in Grushnia Such is the anarchy […]
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Q. Though written with Russian Revolution in mind, Animal Farm is a novel with universal appeal. Discuss. Written in PEEL [Point, Evidence, Explanation and Link] format by BunPeiris The Universality of Animal Farm Goes Unchallenged Animal Farm (1946) written by George Orwell is a satirical fable. It reveals the ironical passage of a oppressive regime that yokes the human frailties […]
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Jane Eyre and Charlotte Bronte : women ahead of their times Written by BunPeiris In what ways might the knowledge of the social and political context in which Jane Eyre was written and first published contribute to an understanding of the novel? “I resisted all the way; a new thing for me…,” [10 year old Jane, while being dragged by […]
Read moreFortitude and Attitudes of Robinson Crusoe Written by bunpeiris Robinson Crusoe is a fiction not only of the perseverance and fortitude of a man in trouble, but also of the attitudes of the “white man” towards the “black man.” Discuss The question is answered using the paragraph writing technique “PEEL”: Point; Evidence; Explanation; Link. You may follow this technique in […]
Read moreTHE MASTER WITH AN EARRING By bunpeiris “Will stands out not only as the greatest literary light ever, but also the supreme intellect, with the exception of Buddha & Maha Rishi Vyasa, the author of Mahabharata. “Dilshan the cricketing swashbuckler, the only batsman to have a cricketing stroke [Dilscoop] named after him, got it all:will, dash and dare. And he got a diamond in his left […]
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ISABEL ALLENDE Uncle Marcos House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende It had been two years since Clara had last seen her Uncle Marcos, but she remembered him very well. His was the only perfectly clear image she retained from her whole childhood, and in order to describe him she did not need to consult the daguerreotype [*1] in the […]
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George Herzog and Harold Courlander Talk Once, not far from the city of Acera on the Gulf of Guinea, a country man went out to his garden to dig up some yams to take to market. While he was digging one of the yams said to him: “Well, at last you’re here. You never weeded me, but now you come […]
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Gary soto The talk My best friend and I knew that we were going to grow up to be ugly. On a backyard lawn—the summer light failing west of the mulberry tree where the house of the most beautiful girl on our street stood—we talked about what we could do: shake the second-base dirt from our hair, wash our hands […]
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Amy Tan Rules of The Game I was six when my mother taught me the art of invisible strength. It was a strategy for winning arguments, respect from others, and eventually, though neither of us knew it at the time, chess games. “Bite back your tongue,” scolded my mother when I cried loudly, yanking her hand toward the store that […]
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Leslie Marmon Silko The Man to Send Rain Clouds They found him under a big cottonwood tree. His Levi jacket and pants were faded light-blue so that he had been easy to find. The big cottonwood tree stood apart from a small grove of winterbare cottonwoods which grew in the wide, sandy, arroyo. He had been dead for a day […]
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Guy de Maupassant The Necklace The girl was one of those pretty and charming young creatures who sometimes are born, as if by a slip of fate, into a family of clerks. She had no dowry, no expectations, no way of being known, understood, loved, married by any rich and distinguished man; so she let herself be married to a […]
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The Golden Kite, the Silver Wind “The Golden Kite, the Silver Wind” was written during the Cold War, a period of intense rivalry between the United States and the former Soviet Union that shaped the politics in the second half of the twentieth century. During this time, each action by one country-the creation of a weapon, the launching of a […]
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