Listen to a discussion by a group of students taking a course in American literature. I'm so glad we've been getting together each week to discuss this American literature class. So am I it makes it so much easier to comprehend everything when we discuss it together. Yes and it's going to make the final exam in this course so much easier for us. Because we've been meeting regularly since the beginning of the quarter will be so prepared at the end of the course when that exam comes around. Now let's see. Where are we in this course. I've got my syllabus right here. Let's look over what's going on this week. Today's Thursday of the seventh week of the quarter and this is the week on Edgar Allan Poe and here's a picture of Poe. It's on page two thirty four of the tax. This is the man who wrote everything were reading this week. Now where are we on the syllabus. So far we covered pose literary criticism in class on Monday and one of Poe's short stories. Fall of the house of usher yesterday. We'll be dealing with pose famous poem the raven in tomorrow's class. Let's review Monday's class first. In that class we discussed how is a literary critic. Right. Poe's most famous piece of literary criticism was his review of a book of short stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne the one we read for Monday's class. I think the main point of pose literary review of Hawthorne's book was his emphasis on the need for unity and short stories. Did how compare the short story to the novel in this review of Hawthorne well he emphasized that the novel in the short story are different. A successful novel can have a variety of different elements but a successful short story can't. A successful short story needs to be unified to have everything lead to one unified whole okay. I think we've got the main point of pose literary criticism. Now let's move on to Wednesday's class. I liked Wednesday's class allot more than Mondays. I didn't enjoy reading the literary criticism for Monday but I really liked the short story on Wednesday well posed especially famous phrase short stories and the fall of the house of usher is certainly one of his best known. And for good reason. It really creates a terrifying mood and pulls the reader into the story. I couldn't put it down until I finished it. I even went back and read it a second time to try and understand more of the details. Host certainly followed his own advice. The advice he gave in this literary criticism. Every detail contributed to the unity of the story. I think that's the point the professor wanted us to get. Now for tomorrow we're supposed to read poems famous poem the raven I hope it won't take too long to read. I've already finished it and I'm sure you'll like it. If you like the short story then you'll really like the poem. That's it for today. Sorry that's it for me I have to be at my job in the library in about fifteen minutes and I don't want to be late. I have to run I'll see you two in class tomorrow NCO week from today for our next discussion. See.