Preface
Letter to Students
I READING, THINKING, AND WRITING CRITICALLY ABOUT LITERATURE
1 Writing Arguments about Literature: A Crash Course in Critical Thinking and Writing
Getting Ideas for Writing: Asking Questions and Annotating a Text
William Shakespeare, Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more
Literature as Performance
A Second Poem and Two Interpretations
Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
What Characterizes a Sound Interpretation?
Student Essay: Peter Franken, The Meaning of Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Thinking Critically about Responses to Literature: Arguing with Yourself
Student Essay: Sara Fong, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening as a Short Story
Four Very Short Stories
Emily Wu, The Lesson of the Master
Tobias Wolff, Powder
Mitsuye Yamada, The Question of Loyalty
Gwendolyn Brooks, We Real Cool
Why We Write Arguments about Literature
The Writing Process
Checklist: Basic Strategies
Reading for Pleasure
2 Writing About Literature: From Idea to Essay
More about Writing Arguments about Literature
Getting Ideas: Pre-Writing
Annotating a Text
Pat Mora, Immigrants
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 to Argue
Writing a Draft
Sample Draft of an Essay on Kate Chopin's The Story of an Hour
Revising a Draft
Checklist: Revising Paragraphs
Peer Review.
Checklist: Thinking Critically about a Draft
The Final Version
A Brief Overview of the Final Version.
Explication
A Sample Explication
William Butler Yeats, The Balloon of the Mind
Explication as Argument
Checklist: Drafting an Explication
Comparison and Contrast: A Way of Arguing
Checklist: Revising a Comparison
Additional Readings for Pleasure and for Argumentative Writing
Luke, The Parable of the Prodigal Son
Grace Paley, Samuel
Katherine Mansfield, Miss Brill
James Merrill, Christmas Tree
II The Pleasures of Fiction
3 Approaching Fiction: Responding in Writing
Ernest Hemingway, Cat in the Rain
Responses, Annotations and Journal Entries
A Sample Essay by a Student
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
Alice Walker, Everyday Use
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
Katherine Anne Porter, The Jilting of Granny Weatherall
6 Allegory and Symbolism
A Note on Setting
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Young Goodman Brown
John Steinbeck, The Chrysanthemums
Eudora Welty, A Worn Path
7 In Brief: Writing Arguments 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.
A Sample Response Essay
8 A Fiction Writer in Depth: Flannery O'Connor
Flannery O'Connor, A Good Man Is Hard to Find
Flannery O'Connor,Revelation
On Fiction: Remarks from Essays and Letters.
From The Fiction Writer and His Country
From Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction
From The Nature and Aim of Fiction
From Writing Short Stories
A Reasonable Use of the Unreasonable
On Interpreting A Good Man Is Hard to Find
9 American Voices: Fiction for a Diverse Nation
Leslie Marmon Silko, The Man to Send Rain Clouds
Jack Forbes, Only Approved Indians Can Play: Made in USA
Gloria Naylor, The Two
Diana Chang, The Oriental Contingent
Gish Jen, Who's Irish?
Toni Cade Bambara, The Lesson
Michele Serros, Senior Picture Day
10 A Collection of Short Fiction
Guy de Maupassant, The Necklace
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper
James Joyce,Araby
William Faulkner, A Rose for Emily
Langston Hughes, One Friday Morning
Ralph Ellison, Battle Royal
Joyce Carol Oates, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
Bobbie Ann Mason, Shiloh
Jamaica Kincaid, Girl
Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried
Amy Tan, Two Kinds
Elizabeth Tallent, No One's a Mystery
Louise Erdrich, The Red Convertible
III. THE PLEASURES OF POETRY.
11 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
12 Narrative Poetry
Anonymous, There was a young fellow from Riga
Thomas Hardy, The Convergence of the Twain
Siegfried Sassoon, The General
Countee Cullen,Incident
Edward Arlington Robinson, Richard Cory
Emily Dickinson, Because I could not stop for Death
13 Lyric Poetry
Anonymous, Michael Row the Boat Ashore
Anonymous, Careless Love
Anonymous, The Colorado Trail
Anonymous, Western Wind
Julia Ward Howe, BattleHymn of the Republic
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
Paul Laurence Dunbar, Sympathy
Linda Pastan, Jump Cabling
14 The Speaking Tone of Voice.
Emily Dickinson, I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Gwendolyn Brooks, The Mother
The Reader as the Speaker
Stevie Smith, Not Waving but Drowning
Wislawa Szymborska, The Terrorist, He Watches
John Updike, Icarus
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
Countee Cullen, For a Lady I Know
The Voice of the Satirist.
E.E. Cummings, next to of course god America i
Marge Piercy, Barbie Doll
15 Figurative Language: Simile, Metaphor, Personification, and Apostrophe.
Robert Burns, A Red, Red Rose.
Sylvia Plath, Metaphor
Simile
Richard Wilbur, A Simile for Her Smile
Metaphor
John Keats, On First Looking into Chapman's Homer
Personification
Michael Drayton, Since There's No Help
Apostrophe
Edmund Waller, Song
William Carlos Williams, The Red Wheelbarrow
Dana Gioia, Money
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 130
Lorna Dee Cervantes, Refugee Ship
16 Imagery and Symbolism
William Blake, The Sick Rose
Walt Whitman, I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan
Claude McKay, The Tropics in New York
Adrienne Rich, Diving into the Wreck
Christina Rossetti, Uphill
17 Irony
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias
Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress
John Donne, Holy Sonnet XIV (Batter my heart, three-personed God)
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
Henry Reed, Naming of Parts
18 Rhythm and Versification
Ezra Pound, An Immorality
William Carlos Williams, The Dance
Robert Francis, The Pitcher
Versification: A Glossary for Reference.
Meter.
Patterns of Sound.
A Note about Poetic Forms
Stanzaic Patterns
Three Complex Forms: The Sonnet, The Villanelle, and the Sestina
The Sonnet
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 73 (That time of year thou mayst in me behold)
John Crowe Ransom, Piazza Piece
Billy Collins, Sonnet
The Villanelle
Dylan Thomas, Do Not go Gentle into that Good Night
Wendy Cope, Reading Scheme
The Sestina
Elizabeth Bishop, Sestina
Shaped Poetry or Pattern Poetry
George Herbert, Easter Wings
Lillian Morrison, The Sidewalk Racer
Blank Verse and Free Verse.
Walt Whitman, When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer
The Prose Poem
Carolyn Forche, The Colonel
19 In Brief: Writing Arguments 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, Gretel in Darkness
Student Essay
20 American Voices: Poems for a Diverse Nation
Aurora Levins Morales, Child of the Americas
Mitsuye Yamada, To the Lady
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
Sherman Alexie, On the Amtrak from Boston to New York City
Laureen Mar, My Mother, Who Came from China, Where She Never Saw Snow
Robert Frost, The Vanishing Red
Nila northSun, Moving Camp Too Far
21 Two Poets in Depth: Robert Frost, and Langston Hughes.
On Reading Authors Represented in Depth.
Robert Frost.
The Pasture
Mending Wall
The Road Not Taken
The Aim Was Song
The Need of Being Versed in Country Things
Acquainted with the Night
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
Too Blue
Harlem[1].
Theme for English B
Langston Hughes on Poetry
The Negro and the Racial Mountain
On the Cultural Achievement of African-Americans
22 Poetry and Translation
A Poem Translated from Spanish, in an Essay by a Student
Federico Garcia Lorca, Despedida
A Note on Using the First-Person Singular Pronoun in Essays
Translating a Poem of your Choice, and Commenting on the Translation
Last-Minute Help: Three Spanish Poems
Anonymous, Ya se van los pastores
Anonymous, Una gallina con pollos
Gabriela Mistral, El Pensador de Rodin
23 A Collection of Poems.
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116
John Donne, A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
John Donne, The Flea .
Ben Jonson, Still to be Neat
Robert Herrick, Delight in Disorder
William Blake, The Lamb
William Blake, The Tyger
William Blake, London
William Wordsworth, I Wondered Lonely as a Cloud
Phillis Wheatley, On Being Brought from Africa to America
Matthew Arnold, DoverBeach: A Criticism of Life
Emily Dickinson, Papa above!
Emily Dickinson, Wild Nights--Wild Nights!
Emily Dickinson, I heard a fly buzz--when I died,
Gerard Manley Hopkins, God's Grandeur
Gerard Manly Hopkins, Pied Beauty
William Butler Yeats,Sailing to Byzantium
James Weldon Johnson, To America
Edna St. Vincent Millay, Sonnet xli
e.e. cummings, anyone lived in a pretty how town
T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Archibald MacLeish, Ars Poetica
W. H. Auden, The Unknown Citizen
Robert Hayden, Those Winter Sundays
Gwendolyn Brooks, The Bean Eaters
Gwendolyn Brooks, Martin Luther King Jr
Anthony Hecht, The Dover Bitch
Robert Bly, Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter
Allen Ginsberg, A Supermarket in California 1956
James Wright, Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota
Anne Sexton, Her Kind
Adrienne Rich, For the Felling of an Elm in the Harvard Yard
Sylvia Plath,Daddy
John Updike, Ex-Basketball Player
Pat Mora, Illegal Alien
Pat Mora, Legal Alien'
Sharon Olds, Rites of Passage
Nikki Giovanni, Master Charge Blues
Louise Gluck, School Children
Carol Muske, Chivalry
Wendy Rose, Three Thousand Dollar Death Song
Judith Ortiz Cofer, My Father in the Navy: A Childhood Memory
Rita Dove, Daystar
Kitty Tsui,A Chinese Banquet
IV THE PLEASURES OF DRAMA
24 How to Read a Play
Thinking About the Language of Drama
Plot and Character
A Note on Tragedy
A Note on Comedy
Susan Glaspell, Trifles
Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie
25 In Brief: Writing Arguments About Drama
Plot and Conflict.
Character.
Nonverbal Language
The Play in Performance
A Sample Student Essay, Using Sources
26 American Voice s: Plays for a Diverse Nation
Jane Martin, Rodeo
Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman
Arthur Miller, A Note on Death of a Salesman
David Henry Hwang, Trying to Find Chinatown
Luis Valdez, Los Vendidos
August Wilson, Fences
Terrence McNally, Andre's Mother
27 A Play about Marriage
Henrik Ibsen, A Doll's House
28 Two Classic Tragedies
A Note on the Greek Theater
Sophocles, Oedipus the King
A Note on the Elizabethan Theater
William Shakespeare, Othello, The Moor of Venice
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
What Does Your Own Institution Offer?
Checklist: Evaluating Sources on the World Wide Web
Taking Notes
Two Mechanical Aids: The Photocopier and the Word Processor
A Guide to Note-taking
Drafting the Paper
Keeping a Sense of Proportion
Focus on Primary Sources
Checklist: Reviewing a Revised Draft
Documentation
What to Document: Avoiding Plagiarism
Checklist: Avoiding Plagiarism
How to Document: Footnotes, Internal Parenthetic Citations, and a List of Works Cited (MLA Format)
Citing Sources on the World wide Web
Checklist: Citing Sources on the World Wide Web
Appendix C: Writing Essay Examinations
Appendix D: The Pleasures of Re-Reading
Credits
Index
