March 4, 2015 (Week 2)
Q1. Which of the following discribes a flat character?
Answer: a character who behaves and speaks in predictable, repitive ways
*flat character (貶義): one-dimensional characters that behave and speak in predictable or repitive (if sometimes odd) ways are called flat (p. 182-3)
Q2. The voice that tells an audience a fictional story is referred to as
Answer: the narrator
*When we read fiction, our sense of who is telling us the story is as important as what happens. Unlike drama, in which events are acted out in front of an audience, fiction is always mediated or represented to us by someone else, a narrator. (p. 160)
Q3. Why did the short story first become a popular genre during the nineteenth century?
Answer: The rise of periodicals like newspapers and magazines meant that more space was available for publication of short stories.
*
Q4. How is an antihero distinguished from a conventional protagonist?
Answer: An antihero is a protagonist who does not act in typically heroic ways.
*Controversial in a different way is a particular type of protagonist known as an antihero. Found mainly in fiction written since around 1850, an antihero, as the name implies, possesses traits that make him or her the opposite of a traditional hero. An antihero may be difficult to like or admire. One early and influential example of an antihero is the narrator-protagonist of Fyodor Dostoevsky's 1864 Russian-language novella Notes from the Underground—a man utterly paralyzed by his own hypersensitivity. More familiar and recent examples are Homer and Bart Simpson. (p. 182)
Q5. The setting of a story is
Answer: the time and place in which the story is set
*If plot and action are the way fictional works answer the question What happened? and characters are the who, setting is the where and when. All action in fiction, as in the real world, takes place in a context or setting—a time and place and a social environment or milieu. (p. 245)
Q6. Which of the following most appropriately defines a story's theme?
Answer: a story's central idea or message
*At some point, a responsive reader of any story or novel will inevitably ask, Why does it all matter? What does it all mean? What's the point? When we ask what a text means, we are inquiring, at least in part, about its theme—a general idea or insight conveyed by the work in its entirety. (p. 334)
Q7. How is the plot of a story different from its action?
Answer: The action is merely the events in a story, whereas the plot involves the way the author recounts the events to shape readers' responses.
Q8. From what other genres did the novel originate?
Answer: prose romances and travel writing
留言列表
