CUNY Academic Commons

In “A Raisin In The Sun”, Lorraine Hansberry sets the stage in a way for us to expect our characters to be in a spot of hardship, feeling stuck, and left wanting more. The description of the Younger’s apartment […]

Benito Cereno turns out to be a marvelous mystery novella. It also happens to shed a negative light on the practice of slavery. Whether it was intended to do so or not, I believe showed how slavery could bring […]

In Chapter 6 “Narrative”, Culler mentions the two quintessential parts to any story; plot and discourse.  A plot, according to Aristotle, is to have a beginning, middle, and end. It requires a transformation of […]

I paid particular attention to Culler’s mention of rhetorics being seen as the element that most readers, myself included, write off as pretty, but ultimately pointless wordplay. Quote, “When poetry has been […]

What caught my attention the most was actually the correlation Culler made between language and thought. Specifically, the “extreme view” that comes from the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, that states what we think is […]

I found Culler defining “literature” from the angle of it being an intertextual or a self-reflexive construct to be the most interesting. “Recent theorists have argued that works are made out of other works: made […]

1.After reading Jonathan Culler’s “What is literature and does it matter?”, I’m tempted to say that the main aspect of it all is that context is indeed key. He informs us that unlike science that has a definitive […]

Hello everyone!

My name is Hector Ramos. I’m currently a PTA candidate here at LaGuardia Community College. This is my third attempt at college and my first attempt at pursuing a career that I find worth my […]