Why Study Literature

Presented by Prof. Qian Qing

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Why study literature

What do some people think?

What do you think?

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Why study literature

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Expand our vocabulary of everyday English and enable us to speak and write better and more idiomatically.

Why study literature (1)

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Examples: 1

1. Bellow was in a turtleneck.

2. The writer E.M.Forster lived on the fifth floor of a walk-up.

3. I had a job I’d held on and off.

4. He walks into a living room with a large …circular rug, some slip-covered easy chairs, a worn sofa, a long wall of books…

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Examples: 2

5. There is a phone call for the writer and his wife says softly to him, “For you.”

6. After the meal, the main character helps the writer to clear up.

7. When he is arguing with his father, the father says, “Calm down, I’ll walk you to the bus and wait with you.”

8. The he jumps onto a bus and the pneumatic door swings shut behind him.

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Why study literature

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Improve our comprehension.

Why study literature (2)

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Examples: 1

Spring

1. The spring was cold that year. 2. We drink the water from that spring. 3. One of the springs in the mattress is broken. 4. He made a spring at the car door but he wasn’t quick enough.

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Examples: 2

Turn out

1. Turn out the light. 2. No-one turned out for exercises that morning. 3. It turned out that they had all gone to bed very late. 4. Our university turns out good interpreters.

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Examples: 3

Undo

1. Your button is undone. He undid the parcel. 2. What’s done cannot be undone. 3. We have left undone the things we ought to have done. 4. What shall I do? My secret is out. I am undone.

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Why study literature

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Deepen our understanding of humor and irony.

Why study literature (3)

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Examples: 1

Mr Bennett to his wife Mrs Bennett “ You and the girls may go, or you may send

them by themselves, which perhaps will be still better, for as you are as handsome as any of them, Mr Bingley might like you the best of the party”.

---Pride and Prejudice

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Mr Bennett to his daughter Elizabeth “ I admire all my three sons-in-law highly.

Wickham is perhaps my favorite; but I think I shall like your husband quite as well as Jane’s”.

---Pride and Prejudice

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Why study literature

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Expand our cultural horizons and broaden our range of general knowledge.

Why study literature (4)

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Examples: 1

History and Society1. The Scarlet Letter—Nathaniel Hawthorne2. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—Mark Twain3. The Age of Innocence—Edith Wharton4. O Pioneers! and My Antonia ---Willa Cather5. Sister Carrie---Theodore Dreiser6. The Great Gatsby—F. Scott Fitzgerald7. The Grapes of Wrath—John Steinbeck

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Customs and Habits (culture)

1. Daisy Miller the wretched fate of Daisy 2. The Portrait of a Lady How Isabel Archer notices the relation

between the lady and her husband

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Why study literature

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Deepen our understanding of human nature.

Why study literature (5)

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Examples: 1

1. Daisy Miller by Henry James Daisy

2. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James Isabel Archer’s husband

3. Middlemarch by George Eliot Dorothea Brooke

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Learning is acquired by reading books but the much more necessary learning, the knowledge of the world, is only to be acquired through reading man, and studying all the various editions of men.

---A letter from Lord Chesterfield to his son

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Why study literature

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Help us to stay human.

Why study literature (6)

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Examples:

John Stuart Mill a 19th-century philosopher and reformer

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Why study literature

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Contains the distillation of the life experience and mature views of the people who came before us.

Why study literature (7)

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Examples: 1

Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.

--Of Studies by Francis Bacon

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Examples: 2

Studies serve for delight, for ornament and for ability. Their chief use for delight is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment and disposition of business.

--Of Studies by Francis Bacon

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Examples: 3

Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider.

--Of Studies by Francis Bacon

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Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them, for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them and above them, won by observation.

--Of Studies by Francis Bacon

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Why study literature (Review)

Expand vocabulary.

Improve comprehension.

Understand humor and irony.

Broaden knowledge.

Understand human nature.

Stay human.

Learn from predecessors.

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Thank you!Questions are welcome!

Why study literature