Below is Jean-Francois Millet's painting, The Gleaners; oil on canvas, 32'' x 43''. This painting captures three women collecting scanty remains of the harvest after it has been reaped. How does this painting of dramatize our intellectual goal of becoming a critical thinker? How do we look through texts with this same patience to glean evidence for patterns? How can we cultivate this patient disposition for picking through a text to identify and trace a literary pattern? Can you see the man on the horse in the background, far right? What do you make of him?
Now, to sequence back to the litteral sense of gleaning, click here for a great story of a 21st century gleaner! http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/1102/p07s01-lign.html