Hero-Quester Myth

MLA Style Guide

Practice with Grammar (and Diction)

Grammar Bytes - the best site for grammar and English language exercises that I have seen so far!

Comma Chameleon is a great game for understanding punctuation in English. If you are having trouble with run-ons (or any punctuation issues), I may assign you this activity.

Diagramming Sentences is a great interactive tool for understanding English syntax (word-order) and subject/verb agreement.

Diagram It! also teaches you how to diagram a sentence (understand English word-order).

Editing

Critical Thinking and Analysis

What is critical thinking?
List of literary rhetorical devices: http://literary.edublogs.org
The Critical Thinking Community
Genius.com - source for annotated primary texts (very useful for the final paper)
Literary Theory and Schools of Criticism

Visual Thinking and Analysis

Other Resources for formal analysis:

"Understanding Formal Analysis" The Ghetty
Educational Art Websites (DIA): http://www.dia.org/learn/resources.aspx
MET Timelines of Art: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/
Web Art Academy

Online Writing Techniques

Online Posting

Wordpress - set of a free blog
Weebly - free website
PBWorks - create a free wiki
Screencast-O-Matic - free site for creating Youtube presentation videos (to post online)

Online tools (for online writing)

Survey Monkey - this is a free survey tool that can be embedded or used separately in online presentations/sites.

Children's Literature Resources:

The British Library Albums - includes scans of open-source children's literature.
Appalachia in Children's Literature - website by Carol Hurst
Knox County Public Library exhibit on Appalachian Children's Literature

Articles about race and children's literature:

Popular:

"Where Are the People of Color in Children's Books?" The New York Times.
"Children's Books that Tackle Race and Ethnicity" The New York Times
"The Answer to Implicit Racism Might Be in Children's Literature"

Scholarly:

MultiracialExperiencesinLiteratureforChildren.pdf
"Race, Gender, and Disability in Today's Children's Literature" by Kira Isak Pirofski, San Jose State University.

Smarthinking Student Handbook

Smarthinking_Student_Handbook (2).pdf

As the semester begins I wanted to inform you of our FREE online tutoring services. This service is available to you 24/7. I have included a Smarthinking Student Handbook andSmarthinking Video Tutorial Links for you in case you have any questions about navigating the site. You can easily access this service by logging in your MyBC account and following the directions below:

1. Login into your MyBC Account

2. On the left hand side of the screen under “Quick Links” click on “ACE”

3. On the left hand side of the screen click “FREE Online Tutoring”

4. Under “Smarthinking” click on “Click here to connect to Smarthinking”

5. A system check message may appear but you can scroll down and click on “Click here to continue”

If you have any questions about navigating the system, please refer to the attached Smarthinking Student Handbook. This is also located on your MyBC account under “FREE Online Tutoring”.

Tutoring

Bluefield College provides online tutoring in different subject areas for our online students through Smarthinking. Smarthinking is an online tutoring service designed for students who are taking core academic courses. A detailed list of subjects and topics covered can be found at Smarthinking.com under Services and Subjects/Subjects.

Writing Center –

Students can submit essays, across the curriculum, and receive a thorough critique from a Smarthinking tutor, usually within 24 hours. Students retrieve their returned essays from their Archives within their Smarthinking account.

Drop-In Tutoring

Students can work live with a Smarthinking tutor simply by selecting their subject. The schedule of live tutoring is on our website. Math subjects are available for live tutoring 24/7.

Scheduled Tutoring

Students can also make appointments to meet with a tutor. Sessions with audio can be scheduled within this area.

Offline Questions

Instead of working with a tutor live, students can submit questions offline and receive a response from a tutor usually within 24 hours.

Academic Resources

Within this area of student accounts, Smarthinking provides access to 1500 mathematics tutorials, other math resources, an accounting study guide, and a Writer’s Handbook.

Elements of Visual Thinking

Other online resources for visual media:

Web Art Academy

Online resources for visual artifacts:

The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Online Collections)

The MET has a good international collection of artifacts.

The Victoria and Albert Museum

The V&A is good for anyone interested in material culture and textiles (fashion...).

The Library of Congress
More online resources for digital media are available on:

Collision Course Introduction (includes international museum links and artistic movement links)
Visualizing Cultural Collisions (includes specific artifacts and links for more information)
Visual Thinking (includes general material about visual thinking)

This page contains all the miscellaneous materials you may need to navigate this Introduction to Fiction.

Genre Information:

MLA Style Guide: Purdue OWL

Epic: a genre of fiction (from the Greek adjective ἐπικός (epikos'pi), from ἔπος (epos) "word, story, poem"^[1]). An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation.
Novel: a long work of prose fiction defined by a complex plot with causation, conflict, response, opposition, and interaction.
Short Story: a compact, concentrated work of narrative fiction that ideally creates a single impression, mood, or idea - often focuses on a single character or single action.
Drama: a play; fiction written for performance on stage by actors.
Poetry: literary genre characterized by rhythmical quality of language and compressed treatment of language.

Literary Terms:

Plot: connected plan or pattern of causation in a narrative (what happens in a text).
Setting: where the plot takes place.
Characters: the personalities who act in a narrative (the who in a text).
Freytag Pyramid: graphic illustration of conventional plot progression

Literary Devices (how literature works)

Tone: the techniques and modes of presentation that reveal or create attitude.
Narrative Voice: how a story is conveyed (the narrator).

Omniscient Narrator: all-knowing voice that articulates a story.

The role of the omniscient narrator is to chronicle the events of a story in an impartial way. He or she has full access to the events and dialogue occuring in the narrative, rendering his or her account the most complete and accurate. This all-knowing, all-seeing narrator type jumps from scene to scene, following characters throughout a story and assessing the progress of the narrative. Retrieved from http://narrative.georgetown.edu/wiki/index.php/Omniscient_narrator.

Unreliable Narrator: story-telling voice that lacks credibility.

The opposite of a reliable narrator, an unreliable narrator typically displays characteristics or tendencies that indicate a lack of credibility or understanding of the story. Whether due to age, mental disability or personal involvement, an unreliable narrator provides the reader with either incomplete or inaccurate information as a result of these conditions. Lack of alignment with the "tastes, judgements, [and] moral sense" (Prince 103) of the implied author is a determining factor in a narrator's unreliability. Most notably done by William Faulkner in his novels, the use of a main character with a mental disability or a skewed perspective is indicative of unreliability as well as the under-developedperspective of a child narrator.

Polyphony: multiple voices (with equal weight).

Diction: the words used in a narrative (diction may be specific and concrete or general and abstract).
Syntax: word order and sentence structure.
Denotation:what a word means (actual definition).
Connotation: the meanings surrounding or associated with a word (what a word implies, especially in context).
Metaphorical Language: figure of speech used to enhance understanding or give insight.

Metaphor: (implied) comparison between two things.
Simile: comparison of two things with the terms "like" or "as".
Symbolism: a specific word, idea, or object that represents another idea, value, person, or something else.

Theme: the central idea of a work.
Imagery: use of images or word pictures in a narrative.
Irony: indirection; language that states the opposite of what is intended.
Humor: capacity to cause laughter.
Motivation: impulse propelling characters in a fictional text.
Donnee: literally "given" in French; a set of assumptions on which a work of literature is based.
Double Entendre: literally "double meaning"; deliberately ambiguous language or statement, often sexual and usually humorous.

Style:

Verisimilitude: life-like, true, or plausible style.
Hyperbole: exaggeration.
Monologue: long speech spoken by a character and directed to self, audience, or an offstage character.
Satire: an attack on human follies or vices, usually humorous.
Fantasy (the Fantastic): the creation of events that are dreamlike or fantastic

These definitions are primarily derived from the text Literature.

RESEARCH

American Literature and History Resources:

American History: USHISTORY.ORG

Author Information:

Other Miscellaneous Information:

Quest Resources

Vladimir Propp's Morphology of the Folktale

Theory and History of Folklore

Literary Fiction.docx - A psychology essay about why reading and writing matter.
American Experience - Summary of (stereotypical) life in the 1950s (in the US).
"Primary vs. Secondary Sources"
Mars Hill Audio - audio journal that offers a Christian perspective on the humanities. This is a great resource for anyone who has trouble reading text articles and could be used for one of the secondary resources for the final paper.

Online Resources

Genius.com