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Course Concepts Handout
Course Concepts Handout
Concept: derives from the study of cognition and how people come to understand
the world.
For the purpose of this course, we will use the term in the context of how an idea is
formed through generalizing our experiences; thus, we form concepts to help us
organize our experiences into significant meaning.
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1. IDENTITY: Our goal for this concept is to attempt to understand what the author
is like, at least represented through the particular piece of work that we are
studying. How/what does the author think, feel, value, and believe—all of which we
come to understand through our interpretation of the work.
● How can the identity of an individual or group be revealed through
literature? The identity of an individual or group can be revealed through
their tone, mood, anf figurative language.
● How significant is an author’s identity in their creation—and our
interpretation—of a literary work? The authors identity is very significant
and ethinc change to your interpretation and literary work for the way it
makes you understand the author’s work.
● What role does the identity of a reader play in the act of appreciation and
interpretation? Different values and appreciation of the text.
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4. COMMUNICATION: This course concept deals directly with the previous ones of
identity and creativity, in that the author is attempting to communicate their
specific ideas, while using various elements of craft and technique to do so. Our goal
is to become equipped with the skills necessary to understand that message through
various means of analysis and interpretation. Think of a masterful piece of art as
being similar to a puzzle—and one of the great pleasures of studying literature is the
satisfaction we feel when we have accurately solved the puzzle of an author’s
strategy and, in doing so, have broadened our knowledge of the world.
● How and why do certain writers and readers connect? They both agree in a
certain point of view or opinion the author is trying to make through his
book.
● To what extent are authors the owners of meaning? They create
masterpieces that demonstrate their opinion about a certain subject in the
world.
● How and why do we disagree in our responses to texts? We disagree by not
finishing the book or writing an argumentative essay about it and we
disagree because it doesn't go with what the reader personally believes in.
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5. PERSPECTIVE: This next course concept also deals directly with the previous
concept of identity, in that one of our goals is to accurately interpret the true
perspective of the author, despite the fact that multiple different perspectives on
main issues might be present within the text through different characters or even
the narrator. Most of the time, the specific perspectives of characters will fail to align
with that of the actual author, which requires readers to be acutely aware of each
perspective and work to decipher which is the real one that will lead to a better
understanding of the main theme of the text.
You also must work to be aware of your own perspective, and how your time and place
and your personal knowledge influences what you are capable of understanding or
how your assumptions and expectations might shape your interpretation of any given
work.
● How do authors create and control voice and perspective? They use different
techniques of writing to express what they feel and think.
● How does perspective impact the emotional and intellectual proximity of
readers? It could change their opinion about one of the characters of the
novel.
● How are writers’ and readers’ perspectives influenced by their cultural and
historical context? They write what they see and readers think what they see
and the author is trying to make them see their perspective through books.
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