I. Answer the questions on the information given above. Discuss the problems of text interpretation in class.

1. What are the main aspects of text analysis? Enumerate them.

On narrative method:

2. What narrative types do you know? What kind of narrators can one come across in different stories? To which narrative type does the omniscient author correspond?

3. What are the advantages of a third-person narration and the omniscient author? Think of an English/American or Russian literary work where one can observe this type of narrators.

4. Does the observer-author technique make a story look like a play a bit? Think of an English/American or Russian literary work where one can find this type of narrators.

5. What are the advantages of a first-person narration? Which of the narrators is more reliable – the main character or one of the minor ones? Think of an English/American or Russian literary work where one can observe this type of narrators.

6. Think of a popular plot and try to invent its versions using different types of narrators.

On setting and plot structure:

7. What is the setting? How can the reader understand when and where the events of a story are set? Have you ever come across a highly unusual setting in fiction?

8. What are the traditional components of plot structure?

9. What can the reader learn from the exposition?

10. In which component of plot structure can one discover motives for complications?

11. Does the climax contain the tensest moment of the plot?

12. Are the events in a story always arranged chronologically?

13. Do writers often interrupt their narration with digressions and flashbacks?

On means of characterization:

14. A complex character is supposed to undergo some changes in the course of narration while a simple one is not. Is Hamlet a complex character then? What about Puss in boots? Give more examples of complex characters.

15. Do you think the terms hero and heroine are more suitable for stories or for novels?

16. Who is a villain? Is it a popular type of characters in fiction? What famous fictitious villains do you know?

17. What is the difference between direct and indirect characterization?

18. What kind of feelings can a character arouse in a reader? Can you recollect any fictitious character that aroused really profound feelings in you personally?

On atmosphere and language:

19. The first thing the reader defines easily is the atmosphere of the story. What kind of atmosphere must be there in a story to amuse the reader/ to get him astonished and frightened/ to get him feel bored?

20. Make a list of stylistic devices and expressive means that you know. Which of them can help to create a humorous tone / an excited tone / a mysterious atmosphere?

21. What can you say about the language of your favourite authors?

On theme, message and title:

22. What is the difference between the theme and the message?

23. Today there is a tendency to speak mostly about problems raised in books rather than messages. Why? What problems can you name?

24. Which problems do you think are of current interest in modern fiction? Do you think they have changed since, for example, the nineteenth century?

25. Use the ready-made sentences from the vocabulary and say something about each of the following titles. Who are these novels written by?

Gone with the Wind,

Jane Eyre,

Under the Net,

Vanity Fair,

Ivanhoe,

Crime and Punishment,

Farewell to Arms,

A Man of Property.