Studying the short-story / Sixteen short-story classics with introductions, notes and a new laboratory study method for individual reading and use in colleges and schools.

by Unknown

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS FOR STUDY

1. Does it add to the interest of a story, for you, when you are baffled by its mystery up to the very end?

2. What author’s detective stories do you consider the best? Why?

3. If possible, secure a copy of Voltaire’s “Zadig,” and write a short paper on Zadig’s reasoning.

4. Does the introduction of an element of the supernatural increase or lessen the interest of a story, for you?

5. Write about two-hundred words comparing (a) the work of Poe’s Dupin with Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes; (b) with that of any other fictional detective—Chesterton’s Father Brown, for example.

6. Explain what is meant by inductive reasoning.

7. Select from some magazine (a) a good detective story, and (b) a good story of the unexplained, or supernatural. (c) Discuss the relative merits of each.

8. Do you prefer Jacobs as a writer of humorous stories of sea-faring folk or as a writer of the weird?

9. Which of Poe’s stories do you like best, and why?