2 Lit Crit Examples

Example 1:

I found a section about a Kurt Vonnegut story and I couldn't pass that up. I read slaughterhouse five in high school and it's still one of my favorites. Anyways, bias aside, this section is interesting because it has pictures of unrelated paintings and other pieces of art which reflect moods of the story. At one spot it says, "Have students describe the mood conveyed by the colors in the this painting. Have them think of movement. What other aspects of the painting reflect the meaning of Vonnegut's story?" I believe this might be an example of Poststructuralist reader response due to the heavy handed nature of the artwork almost forcing the student to feel what the author wants them to feel; steering their mood in a way. I would actually add another step to this lesson and first have them read the story without the illustrations and artwork and then go back and look at certain scenes with the pictures and compare their reading experiences. This would allow them to compare two types of art and at the same time view how they can work together to create a certain feeling.

Example 2:

"Thinking Through the Literature" asks students to read a poem by Gwendolyn Brooks about a woman confiding in her mother about her lover who has gone to war. and then asks a series of questions such as,

-"What can you conclude about the speaker and her attitude toward war?
-"The speaker describes death as a rival, calling it coquettish and beautiful. What do you think she means?
-"What kind of answer do you think the mother might give to the question, "Where is happiness?"

I like this example because in my opinion this is the best way to teach poetry. I would definitely teach my students close reading skills before going into something like this, but asking open ended questions about such a short piece of writing can most times open up limitless discussion possibilities. This an example of individualized reader response because there are no right or wrong interpretations in these questions and in some ways helps the students to relate to character in the poem.

Learning to Read

When I checked out The Language of Literature from the library, I really wasn't thinking about anything too deep. It might have been the 8 hour shift I just finished, or it might have been the head splitting hangover. That's neither here nor there. Anyways, once I sat down and started scrolling through this book I realized how much material is actually in these books. I imagine being given that much material to work with and only being able to choose certain areas to focus on could be quite the challenge when making a curriculum. The decision of what to emphasize and what to skim over is a rather large one and it got me thinking about the areas I would put at the highest importance.

When trying to figure out material that I would teach I always think back to the lessons which helped me the most. That's when I came across an exercise on page 26 of the 10th grade edition about analytical reading. Something that I was taught by one of my old English teachers was that in order to write about literature you need to know how to read literature. Thinking analytically about the text is the first step in writing really good essays. This particular exercise had to do with determining themes in literature which I myself hold to be very important. Once the themes of a story are known everything else makes more sense.

Anyways, this is just one guy's opinion and it worked out alright for me. See you tomorrow.