subject
Literature
Close reading of poems, novels, and plays, with attention to how the work makes meaning rather than to summary alone.
7 lessons in literature
First Person and Close Third: Two Modes of Interiority
A woman walks into a kitchen and sees that the bread is gone. Two sentences can carry that moment, and the difference between them is the difference between two of the most common modes in modern fict…
4 min · comparison
How Iambic Pentameter Shapes Meaning in English Verse
Say the phrase "to be or not to be" out loud, slowly, and listen for the pulse underneath it.
4 min · foundation
How Unreliable Narrators Force the Reader to Read Twice
Near the end of Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, the butler Stevens, who has spent three hundred pages defending his life of dignified service, sits on a pier and weeps.
4 min · deepening
What Free Indirect Discourse Lets a Narrator Do
Emma Woodhouse, in the opening pages of Jane Austen's novel, is described as "handsome, clever, and rich." A few lines later we read: "The real evils, indeed, of Emma's situation were the power of hav…
4 min · foundation
What Shakespeare's Soliloquies Are Doing Dramatically
Hamlet stands alone on the platform and asks whether to be or not to be.
4 min · deepening
Why 'Show, Don't Tell' Is Half-Right
Open almost any guide to fiction writing and you will find the same commandment, usually in italics: show, don't tell.
4 min · foundation
Why the Modernist Novel Broke from Plot
Open Mrs Dalloway at random and try to summarize what happens.
4 min · synthesis