#11 in History & criticism books
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Reddit mentions of How Literature Works: 50 Key Concepts

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Reddit mentions: 2

We found 2 Reddit mentions of How Literature Works: 50 Key Concepts. Here are the top ones.

How Literature Works: 50 Key Concepts
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Found 2 comments on How Literature Works: 50 Key Concepts:

u/firstroundko108 · 11 pointsr/ELATeachers

If I could go back in time as a senior in high school, above all, I would just do more reading, and I would read widely. I did not start on the path to English teaching until I was 26, and although I did great in college and I feel that I am a successful teacher now, my weakness is my reading background. I would suggest using an app like Goodreads so that you can track your progress as you chip away at the literary canon, work by work. The texts that are going to help you the most and serve you for the rest of your career are the ones that most authors allude to, so, I would suggest that at some point you familiarize yourself with these from a literary standpoint:

  • The Bible
  • Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey
  • Virgil's Aenid
  • Ovid's Metamorphoses
  • As many Shakespeare plays as you can read (and I just want to mention that the Cambridge School editions are the best for teaching)

    As far as resources that will give you a head start, I suggest:

  • Shmoop (but only after you've exhausted your own abilities with a text)
  • How to Read Literature Like a Professor
  • How Literature Works
  • Any Introductory Textbook to Critical Theory

    Considering pedagogy resources, by the time you are in an education program, there will be new research and new buzzwords, so I won't waste my time here, but these are my favorite resources when it comes to inspiring my teaching:

  • Rick Wormeli (Seriously, this guy is amazing)
  • Teach Like a Pirate
  • Reading in the Wild

    Lastly, if you go into an English education program with a near-perfect understanding of grammar, your life will be so much easier. I suggest these three resources for brushing up:

  • No Red Ink
  • Teaching Grammar Through Writing
  • Language Exploration and Awareness

    Good luck, and let me know if you have questions! If you do anything on this list, just read!
u/EventListener · 4 pointsr/AskLiteraryStudies

Umberto Eco's Six Walks in the Fictional Woods is a very accessible introduction to thinking about literature in a way that blends narratology and semiotics. It generally sticks pretty closely to talking about the stories he has in mind, so I wished while reading it that I'd had a copy of Gérard de Nerval's Sylvie on hand, among others.

David Lodge's The Art of Fiction used to be popular as a supplementary textbook in creative writing classes because it just uses nice examples to provide a basic language for talking about literature.

John Sutherland has a number of books intended for a general audience that either introduce basic concepts of literary criticism or that just make careful reading fun, e.g. How Literature Works, A Little History of Literature, and The Literary Detective: 100 Puzzles in Classic Fiction (an omnibus edition of the books he's probably most well known for).

Gaston Bachelard comes to mind as someone who, like Gass, is just a delight to read: The Poetics of Space, Air and Dreams, etc. I'd put some other writers writing about their personal relationships to reading in a similar category: Nicholson Baker, U and I; Virginia Woolf, A Writer's Diary; and even Alison Bechdel, Fun Home.