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?
ASOKAMALA OF LANKA Isurumuniya Rock temple, Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka In the loveliest part of old Anuradhapura, in a group of black granite boulders, there nestles the Isurumuniya Rock temple. The temple built in the 3rd century B.C., was the first repository of the Sacred Tooth Relic of the Buddha. The […]
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Reading & Enjoying Shakespeare, the supreme center of the Western Canon Compiled by bunpeiris Of all the images of Shakespeare, I like this most: the image with a ring in the ear. Of course, Shakespeare had no pretensions. An interesting idea by some punk [eh!] painter. I love that ring, a glorious diamond in the ear like that of […]
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The very ordinary getting cloaked in Radicalism “First, we destroyed the small statue. It was a woman. Then we blew up her husband.” Taliban Leader Mullah Mohammad Omar during a press conference March 2001. The radicals blasted a treasure of their ancient heritage; the moderates defended the radicals. The Taliban were assisted by Saudi/Pakistani engineers in the destruction of the […]
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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 […]
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The Sinhalese of Sri Lanka, the People Of the Lion Sinhalese, the endangered nation of Sri Lanka has been under threat of being swept off the planet earth for its 2559 years glorious history: since the ancient times of recurrent invasions by the marauding Dravidian forces hell bent on plunder and pillage, slaughter and sack, ruin and rampage, murder and mayhem; […]
Read moreAwake 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 […]
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 […]
Read moreFriends of opposite gender Everything is possible is human condition: supreme eminence to ultimate debasement; selfless love to demonic barbarism not to forget sexual love to platonic love. Platonic love between the friends of opposite gender and open declaration of same hasn’t been uncommon in his story of the humankind, even in the Muslim countries. Following is an excerpt from the […]
Read moreBreath your voice to those nightingales Breath your voice to those nightingales, so they may sing sweeter Offer your cheeks to the pink lotus overwhelming the pond, so they look still more rosier Let the jewels hold the sparkle of your eyes tight, so those may shine brighter share your vermilion lips with the tender leaf of Ironweed, so those […]
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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 © […]
Read moreCIA [Central Intelligence Agency] of U.S. A. part 1 AN ACCIDENTAL SPY by Phillip Knightley Who assassinated President John F. Kennedy? Twenty years later I was in Washington working on a documentary film about the exploits of the notorious British traitor Kim Philby, the British Secret Intelligence Service officer who was, all along, an agent of the KGB. The film crew […]
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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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