Understanding Literature

Understanding Literature PDF Author: Walter B. Kalaidjian
Publisher: Wadsworth Publishing Company
ISBN: 9780618475094
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Understanding Literature is an innovative anthology and technology package representing the next generation of literary pedagogy for introduction to literature and literature for composition courses. Built on a balanced foundation of canonical and nontraditional reading selections, this text includes discussions of the formal literary elements--and integrates relevant and accessible coverage of contemporary criticism. This unique, integrated coverage of contemporary critical approaches offers students a richer, more engaging introduction to reading critically and writing about literature.

Understanding Literature

Understanding Literature PDF Author: Walter B. Kalaidjian
Publisher: Wadsworth Publishing Company
ISBN: 9780618475094
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
Understanding Literature is an innovative anthology and technology package representing the next generation of literary pedagogy for introduction to literature and literature for composition courses. Built on a balanced foundation of canonical and nontraditional reading selections, this text includes discussions of the formal literary elements--and integrates relevant and accessible coverage of contemporary criticism. This unique, integrated coverage of contemporary critical approaches offers students a richer, more engaging introduction to reading critically and writing about literature.

Literature and Understanding

Literature and Understanding PDF Author: Jon Phelan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000201147
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 181

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Book Description
Literature and Understanding investigates the cognitive gain from literature by focussing on a reader’s close analysis of a literary text. It examines the meaning of ‘literature’, outlines the most prominent positions in the literary cognitivism debate, explores the practice of close reading from a philosophical perspective, provides a fresh account of what we mean by ‘understanding’ and in so doing opens up a new area of research in the philosophy of literature. This book provides a different reply to the challenge that we can’t learn anything worthwhile from reading literary fiction. It makes the innovative case that reading literary fiction as literature rather than as fiction stimulates five relevant senses of understanding. The book uses examples of irony, metaphor, play with perspective and ambiguity to illustrate this contention. Before arguing that these five senses of understanding bridge the gap between our understanding of a literary text and our understanding of the world beyond that text. The book will be of great interest for researchers, scholars and post-graduate students in the fields of aesthetics, literary theory, literature in education and pedagogy.

Philosophy, Literature and Understanding

Philosophy, Literature and Understanding PDF Author: Jukka Mikkonen
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
ISBN: 1350163961
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 191

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Book Description
Challenging existing methodological conceptions of the analytic approach to aesthetics, Jukka Mikkonen brings together philosophy, literary studies and cognitive psychology to offer a new theory on the cognitive value of reading fiction. Philosophy, Literature and Understanding defends the epistemic significance of narratives, arguing that it should be explained in terms of understanding rather than knowledge. Mikkonen formulates understanding as a cognitive process, which he connects to narrative imagining in order to assert that narrative is a central tool for communicating understanding. Demonstrating the effects that literary works have on their readers, he examines academic critical analysis, responses of the reading public and nonfictional writings that include autobiographical testimony to their writer's influences and attitudes to life. In doing so, he provides empirical evidence of the cognitive benefits of literature and of how readers demonstrate the growth of their understanding. By drawing on the written testimony of the reader, this book is an important intervention into debates on the value of literature that incorporates understanding in new and imaginative ways.

Understanding Children's Literature

Understanding Children's Literature PDF Author: Peter Hunt
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134186584
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
Edited by Peter Hunt, a leading figure in the field, this book introduces the study of children’s literature, addressing theoretical questions as well as the most relevant critical approaches to the discipline. The fourteen chapters draw on insights from academic disciplines ranging from cultural and literary studies to education and psychology, and include an essay on what writers for children think about their craft. The result is a fascinating array of perspectives on key topics in children’s literature as well as an introduction to such diverse concerns as literacy, ideology, stylistics, feminism, history, culture and bibliotherapy. An extensive general bibliography is complemented by lists of further reading for each chapter and a glossary defines critical and technical terms, making the book accessible for those coming to the field or to a particular approach for the first time. In this second edition there are four entirely new chapters; contributors have revisited and revised or rewritten seven of the chapters to reflect new thinking, while the remaining three are classic essays, widely acknowledged to be definitive. Understanding Children’s Literature will not only be an invaluable guide for students of literature or education, but it will also inform and enrich the practice of teachers and librarians.

Understanding Louise Erdrich

Understanding Louise Erdrich PDF Author: Seema Kurup
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 1611176247
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
In Understanding Louise Erdrich, Seema Kurup offers a comprehensive analysis of this critically acclaimed Native American novelist whose work stands as a testament to the struggle of the Ojibwe people to survive colonization and contemporary reservation life. Kurup traces in Erdrich's oeuvre the theme of colonization, both historical and cultural, and its lasting effects, starting with the various novels of the Love Medicine epic, the National Book Award-winning The Round House, The Birchbark House series of children's literature, the memoirs The Blue Jays Dance and Books and Island in Ojibwe Country, and selected poetry. Kurup elucidates Erdrich's historical context, thematic concerns, and literary strategies through close readings, offering an introductory approach to Erdrich and revealing several entry points for further investigation. Kurup asserts that Erdrich's writing has emerged not out of a postcolonial identity but from the ongoing condition of colonization faced by Native Americans in the United States, which is manifested in the very real and contemporary struggle for sovereignty and basic civil rights. Exploring the ways in which Erdrich moves effortlessly from trickster humor to searing pathos and from the personal to the political, Kurup takes up the complex issues of cultural identity, assimilation, and community in Erdrich's writing. Kurup shows that Erdrich offers readers poignant and complex portraits of Native American lives in vibrant, three-dimensional, and poetic prose while simultaneously bearing witness to the abiding strength and grace of the Ojibwe people and their presence and participation in the history of the United States.

Understanding Literature

Understanding Literature PDF Author: Robin Mayhead
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
An introduction to the appreciation and critical analysis of literature.

Using Key Passages to Understand Literature, Theory and Criticism

Using Key Passages to Understand Literature, Theory and Criticism PDF Author: Barry Laga
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351357476
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
Using Key Passages to Understand Literature, Theory and Criticism is a completely fresh and innovative approach to teaching and learning literary theory: using short passages of theory to make sense of literary and cultural texts. It focuses on the key concepts that help readers understand literature and cultural events in new and provocative ways. Covering a wide variety of iconic and contemporary theorists, the book offers a broad chronological and global overview, including thirty passages from theorists such as Viktor Shklovsky, Roland Barthes, Judith Butler, Diana Fuss, Jean Baudrillard, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Michel Foucault, Monique Wittig, and Eve Sedgwick. Built on the premise that scholars use theory pragmatically, Using Key Passages to Understand Literature, Theory and Criticism identifies problems, puzzles, and questions readers may encounter when they read a story, watch a film, or look at artwork. It explains, in detail, thirty concepts that help readers make sense of these works and invites students to apply the concepts to a range of writing and research projects. The textbook concludes by helping students read theory with an eye on finding productive passages and writing their own “theory chapter,” signaling a shift from student as critic to student as theorist. Used as a main text in introductory theory courses or as a supplement to any literature, film, theater, or art course, this book helps students read closely and think critically.

Theoretically Speaking about Literature

Theoretically Speaking about Literature PDF Author: David Owen
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527578062
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
Literary theory has become such a central part of the study of literature, particularly at university level, that a solid familiarity with its basic ideas is now essential. This book will appeal to students who may find the many theoretical approaches that they encounter to be complex, highly demanding, and difficult to incorporate into their own work, and will also be of interest to teachers who are trying to guide their students towards a clear and constructive understanding of this ambit. Through focus on a single study text, discussed from the perspective of eighteen distinct theories that are presented and explained in a consistent manner throughout, readers are given a practical and comprehensible insight into the ideas and beliefs that underpin critical interpretation.

Envisioning Literature

Envisioning Literature PDF Author: Judith A. Langer
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780807734643
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 171

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Book Description
Based on a series of studies of the ways in which literary imagination can be used to explore options, solve problems, and understand others, this book is about reading literature, thinking about it, and teaching it. The book, focusing on literature instruction, offers a way to rethink the contribution of literature to intelligent thinking as well as its role in schooling. Chapters in the book are: (1) Literary Thought and Literate Mind; (2) Building Envisionments; (3) The Nature of Literary Experience; (4) The Classroom as a Social Setting for Envisionment Building; (5) A Practical Pedagogy; (6) Strategies for Teaching; (7) Literature for Students the System Has Failed; (8) Learning Literary Concepts and Vocabulary; (9) Literature across the Curriculum; and (10) Closing Thoughts: Literature in School and Life. An afterword (Reflections of Teachers and Students) is attached. Contains 114 references. (RS)

Understanding Culture through Language and Literature

Understanding Culture through Language and Literature PDF Author: Erdem Erinç
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527523705
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
Within its wide boundaries, culture creates written and visual reflection areas for itself. As the reflection area expands through time, space and nature, it becomes richer, and, in doing so, it needs to be appreciated. The cultural reflection of historical accumulation leaves us in front of an immense mirror. In general terms, this book presents the reader with the intertwined relationships between culture and literature, culture and language, and culture and history or art history. More specifically, it investigates the joy of a birth, a funeral ritual, the merriness of a melody, and the taste of a meal as they are reflected within the texts that Asia has accumulated throughout its history. Its central concern is the investigation of issues related to culture and how it is reflected in literature, language, or history in a particular place.