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?
Why Do We Study Literature? To learn more about us: human condition. The human condition is defined as “the characteristics, key events, and situations which compose the essentials of human existence, such as birth, growth, emotionality, aspiration, conflict, and mortality.” This is a very broad topic which has been and continues to be pondered and analyzed from many perspectives, including those […]
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Literary Periods & Movements Tracing the evolution of literature through time scholars often group works from a certain timeframe together and label it as a period or movement. The movements or periods listed here where not mutually exclusive in their timeframes, they overlap, liberally. In some cases a single author can even be claimed by more than one movement. Classifing […]
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English Literature Literature Cambridge IGCSE, OL, Edexcel & National OL English Literature students endowed with a definite literary bent and a sense of the language, are bound to view their studies in literature in broader perspective, once the following article is read a couple of times. Following article for the undergraduates in English is reproduced herein by the kind courtesy […]
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TUITION IN ENGLISH LITERATURE WITH bunpeiris Cambridge, National, Edexcel – OL & AL “Literature is the question minus the answer”, French literary theorist, philosopher, linguist, critic, and semiotician Roland Barthes. [See, you are free to come up with your own answers. nihil timendum est: fear nothing] “Teachers should aim to develop readers, not literary critics” R. E. Probast in the […]
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The Demonic Hatred of Shylock by bunpeiris If you prick us, do we not bleed? [MV Act iii, Sc.i] What’s the foremost of the reason for Shylock’s hatred toward Antonio? The main reason for Shylock’s hatred toward Antonio is money. It is not the lack of money, but surplus of money. That was the root cause of Shylock’s hatred towards […]
Read moreSEO [SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION] OF YOUR WEBSITE How do I check outbound web-links out of my website to some otherwebsites? While inbound links of same niche, same trade, same field as yours are of course, advantageous to your website, the unwarranted outbound links from your website to other website that’s not of your niche, its goes without saying, wouldn’t […]
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Of Mice and Men “Of Mice and Men” by John Steinback prescribed for Edexcel GCSE Literature, is one of those novels that reminds all of us, the humanity, that we all are same: from China to United States; from South Africa to Norway. The heartrending novel, set in the period of “Great Depression”, reminds us it is mainly the varying […]
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Lake Isle of Innisfree Lake Isle of Innisfree, of all the poems prescribed in Sri Lanka National OL Literature, is the of simplest and loveliest little poem for all of you budding poets & lovers of literature or rather humanity, to cut your teeth, i.e. to sharpen your sensibilities to literature. Lake Isle of innisfree is the ideal launch pad […]
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Figurative Language [2]: The crazy rain and hot legs by bunpeiris It was cut and & dried at Kurana, Negombo. Pretty cool, as my nieces at Moratuwa say. A half an hour ago when I left Kandana, it was wet, sticky & kinky to the extreme. A crazy rain crashed in out of nowhere , rattling on the windscreen like […]
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Becoming Krishna by bunpeiris Let noble thoughts come to us from every side. Rigveda 1-89-I [1] “There are more things in heaven and and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy”: Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Shakespeare “She had always wanted words, she loved them, grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape. Whereas I thought […]
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Bollywood Actresses Written by bunpeiris. The term Bollywood Movies that refer generally today to Hindi Cinema, and in a broader sense to the whole gamut of movies in Indian Cinema, could well be an inferior derivation of the term Hollywood Movies, but then the imitation rests solely on the term. The style and substance of Bollywood Movies, the song and […]
Read moreLiterary Festival 2015: High Culture and the Western Canon: has the fightback begun? Published on Mar 5, 2015 Speaker(s): Professor Sarah Churchwell, Jonty Claypole, Maya Jaggi, Frederic Raphael Chair: Professor Maurice Fraser Recorded on 27 February 2015. With the BBC having announced a remake of Kenneth Clark’s TV series Civilisation, and Melvyn Bragg’s intellectual cornucopia on Radio 4, In […]
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March 30, 2008 The Literary Canon Vs Barbaric ignorance by bunpeiris Written by B. UPUL N. PEIRIS, Sri Lanka In the beginning there was the word: the word that spreads as bush fire on this bloody day is not confined to a little known island in the east, but all around the world. A minority community, which has been unjustly […]
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Sinhalese Epigraphica Zeylanica The University of Cambridge, England has 274 volumes of ‘Epigraphica Zeylanica’ with over 3000 inscriptions from Ceylon (that is more inscriptions than the whole of mainland China has, even though Sri Lanka is only 1/2 the size of the state of New York), including one dating back to 6th century BC. Over 2000 of these have been […]
Read moreDear Dr. A. First & foremost, let me tell you Dr., you are in the minority as far as the Timothy McVeigh’s sentence is concerned. A recent Gallup-CNN poll found that the horror Mcveigh unleashed made him an exception even for some people who generally oppose the death penalty. Eighty percent said they thought McVeigh should die. Then to a […]
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