• Review:
• http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/713/1/
• Tip: http://www.stlawu.edu/wordstudio/pdfhandout
s/writingprocess/arguments.pdf
Assignment
• Choose a short story, play or poem. Relying upon your own analysis and literary critics you find, draw upon those earlier examples of literary criticism , to aid you to identify possible bias.
Demonstrate how the author reveals this bias or ideological predisposition.
• Then explore literary criticism that either supports or refutes the view that bias does in fact, exist, or suggests another inherent meaning. Provide a cogent, logically reasoned argument you can support with evidence through an informed discussion.
Literature Criticism
• The history of literary criticism dates back to Plato and Aristotle.
• Both philosophers expressed ground breaking opinions about literature, specifically on the issues of literary mimesis (imitation and representation) and didacticism (emphasizes the instructional and informative qualities in literature and other types of art).
• Literary mimesis asks the question, “Does literature imitate life, or does life imitate literature?”
• Didacticism in literature asks the question, “How does the text lend itself as an instructional or moral guide to life?
