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9. Literature for College

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9. Literature for College Summer Reading Assignment Literature for College Mrs. Herman You will be expected to complete two (2) books in advance of the beginning of this course. The first is Thomas Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor, a book for which the complete text can be downloaded from the internet. Follow this link to download the text (do NOT read it electronically as you are expected to fully annotate the text): http://www.sparkascreen.com/files/APFiles/HowToReadLiteratureLikeAProfessor.pdf OR you may buy a copy at any bookstore. (If the link does not work, Google “How to Read Literature Like a Professor PDF” and you should be able to find it easily.) The on-line text is 154 pages, so you will want to duplex your copy and make sure you have plenty of ink. Questions for each chapter follow in this handout to guide your thinking for each chapter. Reading this book before your novel will help you to interpret your novel more effectively. Secondly, you must read a novel (fiction) by a British author from the 20th or the 21st century. While you may generally choose whatever you like, there are a few authors and works I prefer you do not read. Do not read J. K. Rowling, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkein, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, 1984 by George Orwell, or The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. We will be reading the last three in class and the other authors, while I know them to be favorites of many students, are ones many of you have already read. Please endeavor to branch out. Some of the following are possibilities: Ian Fleming (James Bond series) Neil Gaiman (American Gods, Anansi Boys) Nick Hornby (High Fidelity, About a Boy, A Long Way Down, How to Be Good, Slam) Mark Haddon (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime) Ian McEwan (Atonement, On Chesnil Beach, Enduring Love, Saturday) David Nicholls (One Day) Kazuo Ishiguro (Never Let Me Go, The Remains of the Day, When We Were Orphans, A Pale View of Hills) A. S. Byatt (Possession, The Children’s Book) Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society) Alan Bradley (The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, other Flavia de Luce mysteries) Angela Carter (The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories—her take on fairy tales; not for the faint of heart) Diane Setterfield (The Thirteenth Tale) Susanna Clarke (Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell) S. J. Watson (Before I Go to Sleep) Jasper Fforde (The Eyre Affair, other Thursday Next series) William Boyd (Any Human Heart) Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl) Scott Westerfield (Uglies, others in the series) Ken Follett (Pillars of the Earth, World Without End) The above are only suggestions, a place to start. You can Google “modern British novels/authors” for other suggestions and you may check Amazon for reviews of the above listed books. Caution: The above titles are nearly all adult (vs. young adult) titles which require a level of reading skill and comprehension (which should not be a problem with a college-bound senior) and they also may require a level of maturity and sophistication in the handling of their stories. If you have any doubts, please run your choices by your parents; this should be a joint decision. You will be expected to annotate your text. What I will be looking for will be your awareness of symbolism, plot development, character development, and conflict. I also want you to mark sections of text that you 1 particularly enjoy, whether for the use of language, the beauty of the imagery, the evolution of character, or simply because it moves you. In addition to your reading, you must be prepared to share a brief biography of your author and any cultural influences. For instance, if you choose to read a historical fiction novel, be prepared to give us some background of what was going on in England at the time the novel is set. ANNOTATION GUIDELINES for HTRLLAP: This is a non-fiction text that is instructive and that we will refer to over and over during the semester. Make sure you mark items that refer to information that will affect your reading of other texts. While his discussion of other texts shines a great deal of light on his procedures and ways of thinking, you need not mark those portions of the text. I will be looking for annotations, NOT highlighting. Your notes will reveal your thinking and comprehension of the information. If you have questions, PLEASE see me. Questions to Consider for Each Chapter of HTRLLAP Use the following to guide your annotations and your thinking. You do not need to answer each question separately, but when I grade your copy of the book, I should be able to see that you have made comment on each of the questions at the appropriate place in the text. Ch. 1 “Every Trip is a Quest (Except When It’s Not)” 1. What are the five characteristics of the quest? 2. Choose a book you have read or a movie you have seen that contains a quest and identify the characteristics and explain. Be prepared to write about it or discuss it as required. Ch. 2 “Nice to Eat With You: Acts of Communion” 3. Complete this sentence about communion “... breaking bread together is an act_____________________” 4. Why does Foster assert that a meal scene in literature is almost always symbolic? 5. List the things, according to Foster, that eating in literature can represent. 6. Think of an example of a positive “communion” scene in a book you have read or a movie you have seen. Describe the scene and explain its symbolic meaning. Be prepared to write about it or discuss it as required. 7. Think of an example of a negative “communion” scene in a book you have read or a movie you have seen. Be prepared to write about or discuss as required. Ch. 3 “Nice to Eat You: Acts of Vampires” 8. What are the essentials of the vampire story? 9. What are some things besides vampirism that vampires and ghosts represent in literature? Ch. 4 “If It’s Square, It’s a Sonnet” 10. Explain the title of this chapter- what does Foster mean “if it’s square, it’s a sonnet”? 11. What are some of the ways in which a poet works his magic on you? 12. Be able to define/ describe a Petrarchan sonnet. 13. Research Petrarchan sonnets and write down the title an author of one here and attach a copy of the poem to this packet. 14. Be able to define/describe a Shakespearean sonnet. 15. Research Shakespearean sonnets and write down the title of one here and attach a copy of the poem to this packet. (You may not use any that are mentioned in Foster’s book.) 16. Why, according to Foster, is it more difficult to write a short poem than a long one? Ch.5 “Now, Where Have I Seen Her Before?” 17. What is the “big secret” Foster reveals in this chapter? 18. How does recognition of these allusions in literature change the reading experience for a reader? 19. What is “intertextuality”? 20. How does Foster say a literature professor can help a beginning reader? Ch. 6 “When in Doubt, It’s from Shakespeare...” 21. Why do so many writers use and quote Shakespeare? 22. “____________________ features prominently in the use not only of Shakespeare but of any prior writer.” Ch. 7 “...Or the Bible” 23. What do Biblical allusions do for a piece of literature? 2 Ch.8 “Hanseldee and Greteldum” 24. What is the literary canon? 25. What does Foster suggest as the reason so many writers choose to allude to fairy tales in their works? 26. For what purpose do writers often use “readerly knowledge of source texts”? 27. Think of a book you have read or a movie you have seen that draws parallels to a familiar fairy tale. Be prepared to briefly describe the plot and how the fairy tale allusion plays out. To what effect? (Irony? To mess around with the story? To make what point?) Be prepared to explain. Ch. 9 “It’s Greek To Me” 28. How does Foster define “myth”? 29. What are the four great struggles of the human being? Ch. 10 “It’s More Than Just Rain or Snow” 30. Foster says, “weather is never just weather”. What can rain represent in literature? 31. What does a rainbow represent in literature? 32. What does fog represent in literature? 33. What does snow represent in literature? Interlude “Does He Mean That?” 34. Be prepared to summarize Foster’s argument in this chapter. Ch. 11 “...More Than It’s Gonna Hurt You: Concerning Violence” 35. What are the implications of violence in literature? 36. What are the two categories of violence in literature? Describe and define each. 37. What are the four reasons that authors kill off characters in literature? 38. What questions should readers ask themselves when they encounter an act of violence or a death in a piece of literature? 39. Choose an act of violence or a death from a piece of literature you have read and using the information in this chapter, identify is literary purpose. Be sure to include specific details to make your answer clear and complete and be prepared to discuss. Ch.12 “Is That a Symbol?” 40. What is the difference between symbolism and allegory? 41. What are the tools we must use to figure out what a symbol might mean? 42.
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