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Taking Advantage of Novel Alternatives

nk0825's picture

While I love to read classic novels that are normally studied in English classes I believe that our Literary Kinds class is special. This class has provided me with an opportunity to re-evaluate what a "genre" can be, and to be honest I think this will be one of the few English classes that doesn't mandate reading actual books. I think that we should take advantage of the opporunity to study different variations of text because we may never get a chance to do so again. 

At first I was not intrigued by studying graphic novels, however after researching it a bit I have come to realize that it may in fact be a great idea! It could be the best of both worlds--allowing us to physically read a book with a new twist--pictures to go along with the text. For me this is something completely new and different (I realize it may not be to others), and I think that taking a few weeks to study an alternative text would generate great classroom discussions. Maybe we could take a more artistic approach to analyzing the texts--instead of discussing word choices and syntactical issues we could talk about why the author chose specific images or means of artistic expression and how this may reflect author's intent or anticipated audience. I think it would be interesting to deal with similar issues that we tackled with blogs and alter them in order to apply such issues to the graphic novel genre. 

Following the development of the graphic novel maybe we could segue into a study of films based on graphic novels and how the motion pictures have been adapted and shaped into a sub category of graphic novels? I think this would be an interesting and alternative way in understanding how things grow and move in accordance to the changing technology and audience preferences.

Comments

spleenfiend's picture

I agree too; there are tons

I agree too; there are tons of English classes where you can read classical literature in the form of physical books, but our class is probably one of the few that will give us the opportunity to study something other than novels or poetry.

I REALLY like the suggestion of moving from graphic novels to movies/cartoons based on them.  It makes logical sense to me and would allow us to explore another medium.

Herbie's picture

I agree entirely!  I would

I agree entirely!  I would love to take advantage of the opportunity not to read books.  It's not often you can take an English class without having to crack open a physical book.  More practically, I don't want to have to buy the books, but that's a separate issue and a personal problem.

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