I. READING, THINKING, AND WRITING CRITICALLY ABOUT LITERATURE.
1. Reading and Responding to Literature. What Is Literature?
Looking at an Example: Robert Frost,
Immigrants.
Looking at a Second Example: Pat Mora,
Immigrants.
Thinking about a Story: Luke,
The Parable of the Prodigal Son.
Stories True and False: Grace Paley,
Samuel.
What's Past Is Prologue.
Elizabeth Bishop,
The Hanging of the Mouse.
A. E. Housman,
Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries.
Hugh MacDiarmid,
Another Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries.
James Merrill,
Christmas Tree.
W. F. Bolton,
Might We Too? 2. Writing about Literature: From Idea to Essay. Why Write?
Getting Ideas: Pre-Writing.
Annotating a Text.
Brainstorming for Ideas for Writing.
Kate Chopin,
The Story of an Hour.
Focused Free Writing.
Listing and Clustering.
Developing an Awareness of the Writer's Use of Language.
Asking Questions.
Keeping a Journal.
Arriving at a Thesis.
Writing a Draft.
Sample Draft of an Essay on Kate Chopin's
The Story of an Hour: Ironies in an Hour.
Revising a Draft.
Peer Review.
The Final Version (Sample Student Essay):
Ironies of Life in Kate Chopin's The Story an Hour.
A Brief Overview of the Final Version.
Explication.
A Sample Explication.
William Butler Yeats,
The Balloon of the Mind.
Comparison and Contrast.
Review: How to Write an Effective Essay.
Additional Readings.
Kate Chopin,
Ripe Figs.
Adrienne Rich,
For the Felling of an Elm in the Harvard Yard.
Mary Oliver,
The Black Walnut Tree.
Lorna Dee Cervantes,
Refugee Ship.
II. FICTION.
3. Approaching Fiction: Responding in Writing. Ernest Hemingway,
Cat in the Rain.
Responses, Annotations, and Journal Entries.
A Sample Essay by a Student:
Hemingway's American Wife.
4. Stories and Meanings: Plot, Character, Theme. Aesop,
The Vixen and the Lioness.
W. Somerset Maugham,
The Appointment in Samara.
Anonymous,
Muddy Road.
Anton Chekhov,
Misery.
Kate Chopin,
The Storm.
Kate Chopin,
Desiree's Baby.
5. Narrative Point of View. Participant (or First-Person) Points of View.
Nonparticipant (or Third-Person) Points of View.
The Point of a Point of View.
John Updike,
A & P.
Alice Elliot Dark,
In the Gloaming.
6. Allegory and Symbolism. A Note on Setting.
Eudora Welty: Two Stories.
Eudora Welty,
A Worn Path.
Eudora Welty,
Livvie.
7. In Brief: Writing about Fiction. Plot.
Character.
Point of View.
Setting.
Symbolism.
Style.
Theme.
A Story, Notes, and an Essay.
Edgar Allan Poe,
The Cask of Amontillado.
A Student's Written Response to a Story.
Notes.
Essay: Revenge, Noble, and Ignoble.
8. A Fiction Writer at Work: Raymond Carver. Raymond Carver,
Mine.
Raymond Carver,
Little Things.
Raymond Carver,
Talking about Stories.
9. Thinking Critically about a Short Story. A Casebook on Ralph Ellison's
Battle Royal.
Ralph Ellison,
Battle Royal.
Booker T. Washington,
Atlanta Exposition Address.
W. E. B. Du Bois,
Of Our Spiritual Strivings.
W. E. B. Du Bois,
Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others.
Gunnar Myrdal,
On Social Equality.
Ralph Ellison,
On Negro Folkore.
Ralph Ellison,
Life in Oklahoma City.
10. Three Fiction Writers in Depth: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Flannery O'Connor, and Alice Munro. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Three Stories and Remarks on Fiction. Roger Malvin's Burial.
Young Goodman Brown. The Minister's Black Veil. Selections from the
Notebooks.
Flannery O'Connor: Two Stories and Observations on Literature. A Good Man Is Hard to Find. Revelation. On Fiction: Remarks from Essays and Letters.
On Interpreting
A Good Man Is Hard to Find. Alice Munro: Two Stories and an Interview. Boys and Girls. The Children Stay. A Conversation (Interview).
11. A Collection of Short Fiction. Leo Tolstoy,
The Death of Ivan Illych.
Guy de Maupassant,
Hautot and Son.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman,
The Yellow Wallpaper.
James Joyce,
Araby.
D.H. Lawrence,
The Horse Dealer's Daughter.
William Faulkner,
A Rose for Emily.
Jorge Luis Borges,
The Gospel According to Mark.
John Steinbeck,
The Chrysanthemums.
Langston Hughes,
One Friday Morning.
Isaac Bashevis Singer,
The Son from America.
Doris Lessing,
A Woman on a Roof.
Bernard Malamud,
The Mourners.
Contemporary Voices.
Chinua Achebe,
Civil Peace.
John Updike,
Separating.
A. S. Byatt,
Christ in the House of Martha and Mary.
Joyce Carol Oates,
Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? Toni Cade Bambara,
The Lesson.
Bobbie Ann Mason,
Shiloh.
Isabel Allende,
If You Touched My Heart.
Alice Walker,
Everyday Use.
Tobias Wolff,
Powder.
Tim O'Brien,
The Things They Carried.
Leslie Marmon Silko,
The Man to Send Rain Clouds.
Jamaica Kincaid,
Girl.
Gloria Naylor,
The Two.
Amy Tan,
Two Kinds.
Katherine Min,
Courting a Monk.
Lorrie Moore,
How To Become a Writer.
Louise Erdrich,
The Red Convertible.
David Leavitt,
Territory.
12. The Novel. Observations on the Novel.
Reading Kate Chopin's The Awakening.
Picture Portfolio: Kate Chopin and New Orleans.
Kate Chopin,
The Awakening.
II. POETRY.
13. Approaching Poetry: Responding in Writing. Langston Hughes,
Harlem.
Thinking about Harlem.
Some Journal Entries.
Final Draft.
Aphra Behn,
Song: Love Armed.
Journal Entries.
A Sample Essay by a Student: The Double Nature of Love.
14. Lyric Poetry. Anonymous,
Michael Row the Boat Ashore.
Anonymous,
Careless Love.
Anonymous,
The Colorado Trail.
Anonymous,
Sally Goodin..
Anonymous,
Western Wind.
W. H. Auden,
Stop All the Clocks, Cut Off the Telephone.
Emily Bronte,
Spellbound.
Thomas Hardy,
The Self-Unseeing.
Anonymous,
Deep River..
Anonymous,
Didn't My Lord Deliver Daniel..
Langston Hughes,
Evenin' Air Blues.
Li-Young Lee,
I Ask My Mother to Sing.
Edna St. Vincent Millay,
The Spring and the Fall.
Wilfred Owen,
Anthem for Doomed Youth.
Walt Whitman,
A Noiseless Patient Spider.
John Keats,
Ode on a Grecian Urn.
e.e. cummings,
anyone live in a pretty how town.
Paul Laurence Dunbar,
Sympathy.
Linda Pastan,
Jump Cabling.
15. The Speaking Tone of Voice. Emily Dickinson,
I'm Nobody! Who are you? Ben Jonson,
The Hour-Glass .
Gwendolyn Brooks,
We Real Cool.
The Reader as the Speaker.
Stevie Smith,
Not Waving but Drowning.
Frank O'Hara,
Homosexuality.
The Dramatic Monologue.
Robert Browning,
My Last Duchess.
Diction and Tone.
Robert Herrick,
To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time.
Thomas Hardy,
The Man He Killed.
Walter de la Mare,
An Epitaph.
Gerard Manley Hopkins,
Spring and Fall: To a Young Child.
Countee Cullen,
For a Lady I Know.
Lyn Lifshin,
My Mother and the Bed.
The Voice of the Satirist.
e.e cummings,
next to of course god america I.
Marge Piercy,
Barbie Doll.
Louise Erdrich,
Dear John Wayne.
16. Figurative Language: Simile, Metaphor, Personification, Apostrophe. Robert Burns,
A Red, Red Rose.
Sylvia Plath,
Metaphors.
Simile.
Richard Wilbur,
A Simile for Her Smile.
Metaphor.
John Keats,
On First Looking into Chapman's Homer.
Marge Piercy,
A Work of Artifice.
Personification.
Apostrophe.
Edmund Waller,
Song.
William Carlos Williams,
The Red Wheelbarrow.
Alfred Lord Tennyson,
The Eagle.
Samuel Johnson,
On the Death of Mr. Robert Levet.
Seamus Heaney,
Digging.
Mary Oliver,
Hawk.
17. Imagery and Symbolism. William Blake,
The Sick Rose.
Walt Whitman,
I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing John Haines,
The Whale in the Blue Washing Machine.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
Kubla Khan.
Frederick Morgan,
The Master.
Claude McKay,
The Tropics in New York.
Adrienne Rich,
Diving into the Wreck.
Denise Levertov,
Salvator Mundi: Via Crucis.
Wallace Stevens,
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.
A Note on Haiku.
Moritake,
Fallen petals rise.
Sokan,
If only we could.
Shiki,
River in summer.
Richard Wright,
Four Haiku.
Gary Snyder,
After weeks of watching the roof leak.
Writing a Haiku.
Taigi,
Look, O look, there go.
Can Poetry Be Translated?
Looking at Translations of a Poem by Charles Baudelaire.
Charles Baudelaire,
L'Albatros.
Gabriela Mistral,
El Pensador de Rodin.
18. Irony. Sharon Olds,
Rites of Passage.
Daniel Halpern,
How to Eat Alone.
Percy Bysshe Shelley,
Ozymandias.
Andrew Marvell,
To His Coy Mistress.
John Donne,
Holy Sonnet XIV (Batter my heart, three-personed God).
Langston Hughes,
Dream Bogie.
Martin Espada,
Tony Went to the Bodega but He Didn't Buy Anything.
Edna St. Vincent Millay,
Love Is Not All: It Is Not Meat nor Drink.
19. Rhythm and Versification. Ezra Pound,
An Immorality.
A. E. Housman,
Eight O'Clock.
William Carlos Williams,
The Dance.
Dylan Thomas,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Robert Francis,
The Pitcher.
Roger McGough,
The Boyhood of Raleigh.
Versification: A Glossary for Reference.
Meter.
Patterns of Sound.
Galway Kinnell,
Blackberry Eating.
Stanzaic Patterns.
X. J. Kennedy,
Nothing in Heaven Functions as It Ought.
Blank verse and Free Verse.
Walt Whitman,
When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer.
20. In Brief: Writing about Poetry. First Response.
Speaker and Tone.
Audience.
Structure and Form.
Center of Interest and Theme.
Diction.
Sound Effects.
A Note on Explication.
A Student's Written Response to a Poem.
Louise Gluck,
Bretal in Darkness.
Student Essay: A Memory Poem: Louise Gluck's
Gretal In Darkness.
21. Poets at Work. William Butler Yeats, Three Versions of
Leda and the Swan. Cathy Song, Two Versions of
Out of Our Hands.
Walt Whitman, Two Versions of
Enfans d'Adam, number 9.
Carl Phillips, Two Versions of
Gesture, Possibly Archaic.
Philip Levine, Two Versions of
Mercy and On Writing
Mercy.
22. Modern and Contemporary Perspectives on Multicultural America. Paula Gunn Allen,
Pocahontas to Her English Husband, John Rolfe.
Robert Frost,
The Vanishing Red.
Aurora Levins Morales,
Child of the Americas.
Joseph Bruchac III,
Ellis Island.
Mitsuye Yamada,
To the Lady.
Gloria Anzaldua,
To live in the Borderlands means you.
Yusef Komunyakaa,
Facing It.
Claude McKay,
America.
Dudley Randall,
The Melting Pot.
Martin Espada,
Bully.
Jimmy Santiago Baca,
So Mexicans Are Taking Jobs from Americans.
Nila northSun,
Moving Camp Too Far.
Sherman Alexie,
On the Amtrak from Boston to New York City.
Laureen Mar,
My Mother, Who Came from China, Where She Never Saw Snow.
23. Variations on Themes: Poems and Paintings. Writing about Poems and Paintings.
A Sample Student Essay:
Two Ways of Looking at a Starry Night.
Jane Flanders,
Van Gogh's Bed.
Adrienne Rich,
Mourning Picture.
Cathy Song,
Beauty and Sadness.
Carl Phillips,
Luncheon on the Grass.
Anne Sexton,
The Starry Night.
W. H. Auden,
Musee des Beaux Arts.
X. J. Kennedy,
Nude Descending a Staircase.
Greg Pape,
American Flamingo.
John Updike,
Before the Mirror.
Edwin Markham,
The Man with the Hoe.
24. Three Poets in Depth: Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, and Langston Hughes. On Reading Authors Represented in Depth.
Emily Dickinson. These are the days when Birds come back.
Papa above? Wild Nights-Wild Nights! There's a certain Slant of light.
I got so I could hear his name-.
The Soul Selects her own Society.
There was a Poet-It is That.
I heard a Fly Buzz-when I died.
The World is not Conclusion.
I like to see it Lap the Miles.
Because I could not stop for Death.
A narrow Fellow in the Grass.
Further in Summer than the Birds.
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant.
A Route of Evanesence.
Those-dying, then.
Apparently with no Surprise.
I felt a funeral, in my Brain.
I felt a Cleaving in my Mind.
The Dust behind I strove to join.
Letters about Poetry.
Letter to Susan Gilbert (Dickinson) (1852).
Letters to T.W. Higginson (1862).
Letter to T.W. Higginson (1876).
Robert Frost. The Pasture.
Mending Wall.
The Wood-Pile.
The Road Not Taken.
The Telephone.
The Oven Bird.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.
The Aim Was Song.
The Need of Being Versed in Country Things.
Acquainted with the Night.
Desert Places.
Design.
The Silken Tent.
Come In.
The Most of It.
Robert Frost on Poetry.
The Figure a Poem Makes.
From the Constant Symbol.
Langston Hughes. The Negro Speaks of Rivers.
Mother to Son.
The Weary Blues.
The South.
Ruby Brown.
Let America Be America Again.
Poet to Patron.
Ballad of the Landlord.
Too Blue.
Harlem [1].
Theme for English B.
Poet to Bigot.
Langston Hughes on Poetry.
The Negro and the Racial Mountain.
On the Cultural Achievement of African-Americans.
25. A Collection of Poems. A Note on Folk Ballads.
Anonymous,
Sir Patrick Spence.
Anonymous,
The Three Ravens.
Anonymous,
The Twa Corbies.
Anonymous,
Edward.
Anonymous,
The Demon Lover.
Anonymous,
John Henry.
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 29 (
When, in disgrace with Fortune and mens' eyes).
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 73 (
That time of year thou mayst in me behold).
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116 (
Let me not to the marriage of true minds).
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 146 (
Poor soul, the center of my sinful earth).
John Donne,
A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning.
Ben Jonson,
On His First Son.
John Milton,
When I consider how my light is spent.
William Blake,
Infant Joy.
William Blake,
The Lamb.
William Blake,
Infant Sorrow.
William Blake,
The Tyger.
William Blake,
London.
William Wordsworth,
The World Is Too Much with Us.
William Wordsworth,
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.
Phillis Wheatley,
On Being Brought from Africa to America.
Lydia Howard Huntley Sigourney,
The Indian's Welcome to the Pilgrim Fathers.
John Keats,
To Autumn.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson,
Ulysses.
Herman Melville,
The March into Virginia.
Matthew Arnold,
Dover Beach.
Thomas Hardy,
The Convergence of the Twain.
Gerard Manley Hopkins,
God's Grandeur.
A.E. Housman,
Shropshire Lad #19 (To an Athlete Dying Young).
William Butler Yeats,
Sailing to Byzantium.
Edwin Arlington Robinson,
Richard Cory.
James Weldon Johnson,
To America.
William Carlos Williams,
Spring and All.
Ezra Pound,
The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter.
Ezra Pound,
In a Station of the Metro.
H.D.,
Helen.
T.S. Eliot,
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.
Countee Cullen,
Incident.
Archibald MacLeish,
Ars Poetica.
e.e. cummings,
in Just-.
W. H. Auden,
The Unknown Citizen.
Elizabeth Bishop,
The Fish.
Elizabeth Bishop,
Poem.
Robert Hayden,
Those Winter Sundays.
Muriel Rukeyser,
Myth.
Contemporary Voices.
Gwendolyn Brooks,
Martin Luther King Jr. Anthony Hecht,
The Dover Bitch.
Allen Ginsberg,
A Supermarket in California.
James Wright,
Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota.
John Hollander,
Disagreements.
Adrienne Rich,
Living in Sin.
Adrienne Rich,
Rape.
X. J. Kennedy,
For Allen Ginsberg.
Derek Walcott,
A Far Cry from Africa.
Sylvia Plath,
Daddy.
Amiri Baraka,
A Poem for Black Hearts.
Lucille Clifton,
in the inner city.
Joseph Brodsky,
Love Song.
Bob Dylan,
The Time They Are-A-Changin'.
Pat Mora,
Sonrisas.
Don L. Lee,
But He Was Cool or: he even stopped for green lights.
Louise Gluck,
The School Children.
Tess Gallagher,
The Hug.
Nikki Giovanni,
Master Charge Blues.
Ellen Bryant Voight,
Quarrel.
Carol Muske,
Chivalry.
Wendy Rose,
Three Thousand Dollar Death Song.
Joy Harjo,
Vision.
Rita Dove,
Daystar.
Judith Ortiz Cofer,
My Father in the Navy: A Childhood Memory.
IV. DRAMA.
26. Some Elements of Drama. Thinking about the Language of Drama.
Plot and Character.
Susan Glaspell,
Trifles.
27. Tragedy. A Note on Greek Theater.
Sophocles,
Oedipus Rex.
Sophocles,
Antigone.
A Casebook on Hamlet. A Note on the Elizabethan Theater.
A Note on the text of
Hamlet.
William Shakespeare,
Hamlet.
Hamlet on the Stage.
William Shakespeare,
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.
Ernest Jones,
Hamlet and the Oedipus Complex.
Stanley Wells,
On the First Soliloquy.
Elaine Showalter,
Representing Ophelia.
Claire Bloom,
Playing Gertrude on Television.
Emily Sandy,
Praised Be Rashness: Hamlet's Chance Encounter with the Pirates (student essay).
Bernice W. Kliman,
The BBC Hamlet: A Television Production.
Will Saretta,
Branagh's Film of Hamlet (student essay).
28. Comedy. Wendy Wasserstein,
The Man in a Case.
William Shakespeare,
A Midsummer Night's Dream.
29. In Brief: Writing about Drama. Plot and Conflict.
Character.
Tragedy.
Comedy.
Nonverbal Language.
The Play in Performance.
A Sample Student Essay, Using Sources.
Ruth Katz,
The Women in Death of a Salesman (student essay).
30. A Playwright at Work: Joyce Carol Oates. Joyce Carol Oates,
Tone Clusters.
Joyce Carol Oates,
On Writing Drama.
Joyce Carol Oates,
Further Thoughts on Tone Clusters.
31. A Collection of Plays in Contexts. Henrik Ibsen,
A Doll's House.
Contexts for
A Doll's House.
Henrik Ibsen,
Notes for the Tragedy of Modern Times.
Henrik Ibsen,
Adaptations of A Doll's House
for a German Production. Henrik Ibsen,
Speech at the Banquet of the Norwegian League for Women's Rights.
Tennessee Williams,
The Glass Menagerie.
A Context for
The Glass Menagerie.
Tennessee Williams,
Production Notes.
Contemporary Voices.
Arthur Miller,
Death of a Salesman.
A Context for Death of a Salesman.
Arthur Miller,
Tragedy and the Common Man.
Luis Valdez,
Los Vendidos.
A Context for
Los Vendidos. Luis Valdez,
The Actos.
Harvey Fierstein,
On Tidy Endings.
August Wilson,
Fences.
A Context for
Fences. August Wilson,
Talking about Fences.
David Mamet,
Oleanna.
A Context for
Oleanna.
David Mamet,
Talking about Drama.
V. CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES.
32. Critical Approaches: The Nature of Criticism. Formalist (or New) Criticism; Deconstruction; Reader-Response.
Criticism; Archetypal (or Myth) Criticism; The New Historicism, and Biographical Criticism, Psychological (or Psychoanalytic) Criticism; Gender (Feminist, and Lesbian and Gay Criticism).
33. Critical Perspectives on Joseph Conrad. Heart of Darkness: A Casebook.
Joseph Conrad,
Heart of Darkness.
Joseph Conrad,
Remarks on Fiction.
Chinua Achebe,
An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness.
Elaine Showalter,
The Double Worlds of Men and Women.
Ian Watt,
The Symbolism of the Two Knitters.
Edward Said,
The Imperial Attitude.
Gerald Graff,
Teaching the Politics of Heart of Darkness.
Appendix A: Remarks about Manuscript Form. Basic Manuscript Form.
Corrections in the Final Copy.
Quotations and Quotation Marks.
Quotation Marks or Underlining?
A Note on the Possessive.
Appendix B: Writing a Research Paper. What Research Is Not, and What Research Is.
Primary and Secondary Materials.
Locating materials: First Steps.
Other Bibliographic Aids.
Taking Notes.
Two Mechanical Aids: The Photocopier and the Word Processor.
A Guide to Note-taking.
Drafting the Paper: Organizing the Material, and Leading into Quotations.
A Sense of Proportion.
Documentation.
What to Document: Avoiding Plagiarism.
How to Document: Footnotes, Internal Parenthetical Citations, and a List of Works Cited (MLA Format).
Appendix C: New Approaches to the Research Paper: Literature, History, and the World Wide Web. Case study on Literature and History: The Internment of Japanese Americans.
Literary Texts.
Mitsuye Yamada,
The Question of Loyalty.
David Mura,
An Argument: On 1942.
Historical Sources.
Basic Reference Books (Short Paper).
Getting Deeper (Medium-Length Paper).
Other Reference Sources (Long Paper).
Too Much Information?
Using the On-Line Catalog.
Electronic Sources.
Encyclopedias: Print and Electronic Versions.
The Internet/World Wide Web.
Evaluating Sources on the World Wide Web.
Documentation: Citing a WWW Source.
Additional Print and Electronic Sources.
Print Directories.
Print Articles on Literature, History, and the WWW.
Online Writing Centers and Labs.
English Departments, Curricula, and Courses Online.
Appendix D: Literary Research: Print and Electronic Sources. Literature-Print Reference Sources.
Other Reference Resources.
Bibliographies.
Literary Theory and Criticism.
Literature-Electronic Sources.
Other Useful Sites on Authors.
Other Valuable Sites for Research.
History-Reference and Bibliography Sources.
WWW Sites for History.
Periodicals: Print and Electronic Sources.
For General Bibliography in the Humanities.
For Evaluating the Point of View, the Content, and the Intended Audience of Sources.
Other Resources.
What Does Your Own Institution Offer?
Summing Up: Basic Tools for Writing and Research.
Books.
Electronic Sources.
An Important Reminder.
Appendix E: Glossary of Literary Terms. Acknowledgments. Index of Terms. Index of Authors, Titles, and First Lines of Poems. 