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 […]
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WRITERS Vs. HUMANITY Being compiled by bunpeiris I am just a chronicler. My passion is to discover and to write about it. Tom Wolfe, Time 13th February 1989 Ah, what an age it is! When to speak of trees is almost crime For it is a kind of silence against injustice To Posterity: Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) “To Posterity” about Germany under the […]
Read moreNew Vistas On the Early History of Sri Lanka by Wijaya DissanayakeAccording to the prevailing myths and legends, as recorded in the chronicles of ancient Sri Lanka and India, Sri Lanka was not an abode where human beings lived before the arrival of North Indian settlers around 500 BCE [1], represented by their leader Vijaya. The indigenous inhabitants of the […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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