1. Guidelines for Evaluating and Discussing Literature
Nine Yardsticks of Value
Guidelines for Evaluating and Discussing Literature
Critical Literacy: Multiple Approaches to Text and Media
Anna J. Small Roseboro
National Board Certified Teacher

2. What’s Good to YOU?
Why may OTHERS disagree?

3. Structure of Presentation
Why?
What?
How?
Advantages and disadvantages
Sample Assignment – Rating 1-5

4. To become college and career ready, students must grapple with works of exceptional craft and thought whose range extends across genres, cultures, and centuries. Such works offer profound insights into the human condition and serve as models for students’ own thinking and writing.

5. Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse formats and media, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words.

6. Nine Yardsticks of Value
Vocabulary for talking about texts.

7. Purpose of YARDSTICKS Move from quantitative qualitative
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Purpose of YARDSTICKS
Move from quantitative
qualitative
Learn to articulate defensible response
Use a common set of yardsticks
Nine yardsticks adapted from BETTER LITERATURE, textbook edited by Walter Blair and John Gerber, 1959.
Time to move from quantitative to qualitative look at literature.
Important to be able to articulate why you respond to literature in certain ways.
Important to have a common set of yardsticks for discussion.
Nine yardsticks based on textbook edited by Walter Blair and John Gerber, 1959.

8. A MONTH in an MOMENT

9. 1. CLARITY UNDERSTANDING Careful reading 4/13/2017
A very simple standard of measuring according to which everything that resists reasonably careful reading is considered poor writing.
Careful reading

10. 2. ESCAPE Forget self circumstances 4/13/2017
The literary work that causes you to forget yourself and the circumstances of your own life is by that fact good.

11. 3. Reflection of Real Life
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3. Reflection of Real Life
Actuality = GOOD
The work that reports actuality in a flawless manner is good; the one that distorts the facts as we know them is bad.
Distortion = BAD
Character Motivation?
Setting?
Dialogue?
Tough Decisions?

12. Yardsticks 1-3
CLARITY
ESCAPE
REFLECTION OF REAL LIFE

13. “Pleasure compensates
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4. Artistry in Details
language
pattern
calls to mind
“…LIGHTENING SPIDERWEBBED THE SKY.”
By the standard of pleasure in artistic details a work is good if it provides enough pleasurable moments through effectively handled details to compensate for the time spent on it.
“Pleasure compensates
for TIME spent”

14. Artistry measures Number of pleasurable moments
Duration of pleasurable moments.

15. 5. Internal Consistency Parts ORGANIC WHOLE 4/13/2017
The competent work is one in which the parts are so consistent and harmonious that the work as a totality is an organism in which no part can be changed without detriment to the whole work.
Parts
ORGANIC WHOLE

16. What books comes to mind?

17. 6. Tone Attitude and personality of author 4/13/2017
A fundamentally significant aspect of a literary work is the personal quality given the material as it passes through the mind and emotions of the author
Attitude and personality of author

18. Avoid confusion with “mood”.
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Avoid confusion with “mood”.
Tone = expressed by author through words, grammar, structure
It’s not necessary to “be” sincere, just “seem” sincere.
Avoid confusion with “mood”.
Tone = expressed by author through words, grammar, structure
Mood = experienced by reader as a result of setting or atmosphere of work.
Mood = experienced by reader as a result of setting or atmosphere of work

19. Yardsticks 4-6
Artistry in Details
Internal Consistency
Tone

20. 7. Emotional Impact Emotional impact on READER! 4/13/2017
The basic premise of this yardstick is that the most important aspect of a literary work is its effect upon the reader
Emotional impact on READER!

21. 7. Emotional Impact Type and intensity Components Duration
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7. Emotional Impact
Type and intensity .
Components
The basic premise of this yardstick is that the most important aspect of a literary work is its effect upon the reader
Duration
Universality

22. 8. Personal Beliefs
Ideas congenial to the reader. .

23. Personal Beliefs morality religion politics and economics
Ideas oppose reader’s judgements
morality
religion
politics and economics
role of government
literary criticism

24. repository of best thought and said
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9. Significant Insight
literature should be the repository of the best that has been thought and said.
It provides us with a standard against which we can measure our own thoughts and actions
Literature
repository of best thought and said

25. 9. Significant Insight mirror window 4/13/2017
literature should be the repository of the best that has been thought and said.
It provides us with a standard against which we can measure our own thoughts and actions

26. Psychological Insight
New and profound psychological perceptions
More than reflection of life as reader knows it
mirror
window

27. * Sociological Insight
4/13/2017
* Sociological Insight
How humans operate under given circumstances
Beyond general problems of individual
Shows how humans operate under given circumstances.
Goes beyond general problems of individual.
Considers impact of environment, economic system, political system.
Considers folkways and mores

28. Sociological, con’t This yardstick discriminates
wise selection and interpretation from hit and miss reporting
thoughtful analysis from flippancy
sympathetic understanding from sensationalism

29. * Ethical Insight Literature has dual role:
It must be pleasurable
It must be instructive (ennobling)
Effective blending = profound literature
Weakness = narrowing of interests, dogmatism, intellectual absolutism

30. * Metaphysical Insight
the nature of being
the fundamental causes or processes of things
relationship of humans to
nature
cosmos
God

31. * Metaphysical Insight
Why am I here?
What is life?
* Metaphysical Insight
What is His nature?
Is there a God?
Is there purpose to our universe?
What is man’s eventual destiny?

32. What books comes to mind?

33. OTHERS?? Books Taught for Years Oedipus Hamlet Catcher in the Rye
Julius Caesar
Catcher in the Rye
To Kill a Mockingbird
Animal Farm

34. Yardsticks 7-9 7. Emotional Impact 8. Personal Beliefs
9. Significant Insight

35. No WRONG answers, just unsubstantiated claims!
Putting Them Together
Significant Insight
Personal Beliefs
Clarity
Escape
Emotional Impact
Reflection Real Life
Tone
Artistry in Details
Internal Consistency
No WRONG answers, just unsubstantiated claims!

36. Use same yardsticks to ANALYZE literary criticism
or personal response to texts.

37. Response to Reading Yardstick 1 2 3 4 5 Clarity Escape Reflection
Artistry
Internal Consistency
Tone
Emotional
Personal
Significance

38. How would Jake rate others?
What is dominant value?
Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz
From Jake Morrissey - National Review {Mahfouz} has been called 'the Dickens of the Cairo cafes.' Sadly, Palace Walk lacks the verve and structure that made Dickens so readable Mahfouz seems fascinated by the details of his characters' lives, at the expense of all else His vision is clear, his characters fully realized, his images lingering. What's lacking is a solid plot
Clarity
Escape
Real Life
Artistic
Details
Internal Consistency
Tone
Emotion
Personal Beliefs
Significant
Insight
How would Jake rate others?

39. Please check out my books.
Published by Rowman and Littlefield

41. It’s YOUR TURN
to MEASURE the Review

42. What is dominant value?
Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz
From Publisher's Weekly This first volume in the 1988 Nobel Prize winner's Cairo Trilogy describes the disintegrating family life of a tyrannical, prosperous merchant, his timid wife and their rebellious children in post-WW I Egypt. ``Mahfouz is a master at building up dramatic scenes and at portraying complex characters in depth,'' lauded PW. (Jan.)
Clarity
Escape
Real Life
Artistic
Details
Internal Consistency
Tone
Emotion
Personal Beliefs
Significant
Insight

43. Using Nine YARDSTICKS of Value1 2 3 4 5
Clarity
Escape
Reflection
Artistry
Internal Consistency
Tone
Emotional
Personal
Significance

44. Nobel Laureates Project to apply the Nine Yardsticks of Value
Imre Kertész, NL for Lit 2002

45. Choose an Author

46. Biography

47. Critical Analysis

48. Oral Presentation