Brilliant Minds

December Classes on Close Reading

Brush up on your close reading skills between Thanksgiving and the Holidays!

Two Classes: December 9th & 16th. Register here (classes limited to 7 participants each).

Learn: The key to The Tempest in one line. The key to "Stopping By Woods" in one word.

Close reading allows you to discover the meaning of a text through precise attention to its structure and patterns. It is a method of reading that stimulates interest and knowledge in interpreting literature. We introduced the literary art of close reading over the Summer as part of the Literature as a Life Practice class. In these classes we will apply this method to these literary classics by Shakespeare and Frost.

Carver Selections

For our upcoming session on Raymond Carver's stories, you may concentrate your reading on the following stories, especially those followed by an asterisk: Bicylces, Muscles, Cigarettes; They're Not Your Husband; What Do You Do In San Francisco?*; What We Talk About When We Talk About Love*; The Third Thing That Killed My Father Off; Where I'm Calling From*; Fever; and Cathedral*.

Be sure to visit the carversite for rich material and links on his life and works.

Biographical documentary on Carver at YouTube.

The text of Beginners without the Lish edits from The New Yorker.

Hardy and Naturalism

For more background on Hardy and our discussion of Literary Naturalism, consider these links:

Literature at the Turn of the Century (1890 - 1918)
Realism and Naturalism
Definitions of Realism & Naturalism (downloads pdf)
The Thomas Hardy Society
Wikipedia entry for Hardy

Moby Dick Session 2

For our second class on Moby Dick, be sure to include these chapters in your reading:
47. The Mat-Maker
48. The First Lowering
68. The Blanket
82. The Honor & Glory of Whaling
83. Jonah Historically Regarded
94. A Squeeze of the Hand
106. Ahab' Leg
108. The Cabin - Ahab and Satrbuck
110. Queequeg in his Coffin
117. The Whale-Watch
129. The Cabin - Ahab and Pip
133. The Chase - First Day
134. The Chase - Second Day
135. The Chase - Third Day
Epilogue