Select from among the following prompts to produce an annotated list of about six items, each of which should have an annotation of about 25-75 words relating that experience in brief. If possible, use a quotation from that literary work in question. Title each entry and put in brackets, following the title, the type of literary moment (that is, which of the following prompts you used). See the examples at the bottom.
You are only half done once you've posted. Be sure that you read and respond to at least three of your peers' posts. Tell them which of their moments you'd like to hear more about, or the ones that relate to your own. Help each other get excited about possibilities for writing more.
Types of "Literary Moments":
- Reading Literature Privately
Have you had an epiphany while reading a literary text by yourself? Something that's truly remained with you, shaped you, effected some sort of change in you? - Discussing Literature
Either in a classroom setting, or in a private conversation, has discussion of literature led you to profound reflection, an epiphany, a new way of thought or belief? - Creatively Composing
Have you experienced an authentic moment of achieving expression while doing creative / literary writing of your own? - Memorization of Literature
Have you committed to memory a poem, an eloquent quotations, or some literary passage that has sunk in, perhaps becoming words you live by? - Religious Literary Experience
Have you had a devotional or spiritual experience of real meaning that was brought about through a story or some kind of fictional or literary text (outside of scripture)? Have you experienced worship through creative writing? Has the beautiful form of scriptural language (not just the religious ideas within it) shaped your religious response to scripture? - Sublime Literary Experience
The "sublime" refers to the overwhelming and can have to do with being put into awe or even terrified. Has literary experience ever been "sublime" for you in this sense? Has a setting, or a passage, or some epic scope of a narrative blown your mind or freaked you out? Have you had to put a book down because it got too intense -- not because of bad content, but because the ideas were just too much to handle? - Foreign Literary Experience
Has reading something in another tongue given you a profoundly different view of some dimension of reality, something that wouldn't have had the same effect if in your mother tongue? Have you been able to understand concepts, words, or literary expression from a foreign language that sticks with you because of that form? - Literary within Musical Experience
Of course music can affect us powerfully due to its aesthetic qualities. But has music ever been something that carries you to literary expression that remains memorable apart from that music? Have lyrics lingered in your mind? - Cinematic Literary Experience
Has the movie adaptation of a literary work led to you reading that work, or rereading it, or elevating your appreciation of the literature as literature? (This is not asking whether you enjoyed an adaptation, but whether that adaptation led to your deepened appreciation of the literature.) - Literary Coping
Have you had an experience in which literature has come into play as a way of coping with life's difficulties. Has it served as "equipment for living" for you in a forceful way? Such literary coping could be not just reading or pondering a text, but composing one. - Literary Letters
Have you received a meaningful letter whose meaning had to do not just with the content, or your appreciation of the sender, but because it was well written? Have you yourself written / sent a letter in which you'd felt as though the way in which you expressed what you did (its style) had a strong effect (laughter, tears, admiration, love)? - Theatrical Experience
Have you attended a live production of a play that cast a spell on you and carried you away, combining the quality of the lines and the performance of the actor(s)? Have you yourself acted in a play and had a meaningful connection to the characters, the story, the larger meaning? - Literary Envy
Have you had an experience in which you heard an author, or a fellow student, or a mentor, read their own work, and it was bittersweet to you because you both loved how they expressed themselves and were jealous at the same time? - Literary Travel
Have you ever made a pilgrimage to a location where a given literary work was either composed or set? Has this connected you to the literature in some way? - Literature Performed
Excluding drama, have you seen / heard literature performed? An audiobook, a poetry video, a public reading of an essay? And did that performance make the literary writing come alive to you?
EXAMPLES
- My literary pilgrimage to Concord, Mass. [Literary Travel] I own a copy of Walden that I bought when I was 21 and visiting Walden Pond with my parents. I dragged them there because years before a teacher convinced me not to be one of those mass of men Thoreau describes who live "quiet lives of desperation."
- One of my colleagues died in his 40s suddenly. It helped me come to terms with his passing by writing a sonnet about him, which his widow put on the funeral program. It seemed to comfort many people. My son and his wife lost their first child. It was heartbreaking. Part of my healing/grieving process was to compose a sonnet describing that day and how my son and his wife dealt with that sadness.My grieving sonnets [Literary Coping]
- Entranced by the marvelous narrator Katherine Kellgren [Literature Performed] The Welsh and other accents performed by Katherine Kellgren when I listened to the audiobook version of Jo Walton's Among Others were so entrancing that I began to obtain and listen to other books -- about which I knew little or nothing -- just so I could hear more of this wonderful woman's voice. Every word she spoke lit up like fire.
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