文學導讀: Approaches to Literature 2017/3/15(Week5)

John Gardner	John Gardner was an American novelist, essayist, literary critic and university professor. He is best known for his 1971 novel Grendel, a retelling of the Beowulf myth from the monster's point of view.
Richard Nixon	Richard Milhous Nixon was an American politician who served as the 37th President of the United States from 1969 until 1974, when he became the only U.S. president to resign from office. He had previously served as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower, and prior to that as a U.S. Representative and also Senator from California.
Edith Wharton	Edith Wharton was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and designer. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1927, 1928 and 1930.
malaria	Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease affecting humans and other animals caused by parasitic protozoans (a group of single-celled microorganisms) belonging to the *Plasmodium* type. Malaria causes symptoms that typically include fever, feeling tired, vomiting, and headaches. In severe cases it can cause yellow skin, seizures, coma, or death. Symptoms usually begin ten to fifteen days after being bitten. If not properly treated, people may have recurrences of the disease months later. This partial resistance disappears over months to years if the person has no continuing exposure to malaria.
Western Canon	The Western Canon is the body of books, music, and art that scholars generally accept as the most important and influential in shaping Western culture. It includes works of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama, music, art, sculpture, and architecture generally perceived as being of major artistic merit and representing the high culture of Europe and North America. University of California philosopher John Searle suggests that the Western canon can be roughly defined as "a certain Western intellectual tradition that goes from, say, Socrates to Wittgenstein in philosophy, and from Homer to James Joyce in literature".