An Introduction to Literature (MLA Update)
15th Edition
Published on 28. February 2008
Book
Paperback/Softback
1672 pages
978-0-205-66552-5 (ISBN)
Description
A market leader for more than 30 years, this paperback anthology continues to uphold the traditions that have made it a success- a rich blend of both classic and contemporary selections as well as Barnet's signature "how-to" apparatus that covers the elements of literature and the writing process.
The new edition features more student essays than any other anthology giving students a deep reservoir of writing models to learn from including argument papers and film reviews. In addition, a wealth of instructor favorites have been added including works by D.H. Lawrence, Ambrose Bierce, Cynthia Ozick, Liliana Heker, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Thomas Hardy, Linda Pastan, and David Ives.
The new edition features more student essays than any other anthology giving students a deep reservoir of writing models to learn from including argument papers and film reviews. In addition, a wealth of instructor favorites have been added including works by D.H. Lawrence, Ambrose Bierce, Cynthia Ozick, Liliana Heker, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Thomas Hardy, Linda Pastan, and David Ives.
More details
Edition
15th edition
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Publishing group
Pearson Education (US)
Target group
College/higher education
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 162 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-205-66552-5 (9780205665525)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Previous edition
Sylvan Barnet | William Burto | William E. Cain
An Introduction to Literature
Book
12/2005
14th Edition
Pearson
€39.60
Article exhausted; check for reprint
Content
Detailed Table of Contents
Preface
Letter to Students
Part I READING, THINKING, AND WRITING CRITICALLY ABOUT LITERATURE
1. Reading and Responding to Literature
What Is Literature?
Literature as Performance: Robert Frost, The Span of Life
Significance
Two Poems about Immigration:
Robert Frost,Immigrants
Robert Frost, Immigrants
Pat Mora,Immigrants
Two Contemporary Short Stories
Lydia Davis, Childcare
Lydia Davis, City People
Thinking About a Classic Story
Luke, The Parable of the Prodigal Son
Stories True and False:
Grace Paley, Samuel
What's Past Is Prologue
Jamaica Kincaid, Girl
Tobias Wolff, Powder
James Merrill, Christmas Tree
2. The Pleasures of Reading--and of Writing Arguments about Literature
The Open Secret of Good Writing
Emily Wu, The Lesson of the Master
Getting Ready to Write
A Student Writes: From Jottings to a Final Draft
Will Berger, Less Is More: Characterization in "The Lesson of the Master"
The Student's Analysis Analyzed
A Second Short Story, and a Student's Analysis
Tobias Wolff, Say Yes
A Sample Student Essay: Bob Williams, He's the Problem
The Analysis Briefly Analyzed
Three Poems
Diane Ackerman, Pumping Iron
Anonymous, Tweed to Till
William Blake, The Clod and the Pebble
Two Additional Stories
Katherine Mansfield, Miss Brill
Toni Cade Bambara, The Lesson
3. More about Writing About Literature: From Idea to Essay
Why Write Arguments about Literature?
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
Arguing at a Thesis.
Writing a Draft
Sample Draft of an Essay on Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour"
Lynn Crowe, Ironies in an Hour
Revising a Draft
Peer Review
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
Comparison and Contrast: A Way of Arguing
Review: How to Write an Effective Essay
Additional Reading
Kate Chopin, Ripe Figs
William Stafford, Traveling through the Dark
Lorna Dee Cervantes, Refugee Ship
Jose Armas, El Tonto del Barrio
Part II FICTION
4. Approaching Fiction: Responding in Writing.
Ernest Hemingway, Cat in the Rain
Responses: Annotations and Journal Entries.
A Sample Essay by a Student:
Bill Yanagi, Hemingway's American Wife
5. 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, Desiree's Baby
Alice Walker, Everyday Use
Margaret Atwood, Happy Endings
William Carlos Williams,The Use of Force
6. Narrative Point of View
Participant (or First-Person) Points of View
Non-participant (or Third-Person) Points of View
The Point of a Point of View
John Updike, A & P
Grace Paley, A Man Told Me the Story of His Life
Jean Rhys, I Used to Live Here Once
Anonymous, The Judgment of Solomon
Ambrose Bierce, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
Katherine Anne Porter, The Jilting of Granny Weatherall
7 Allegory and Symbol
A Note on Setting
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Young Goodman Brown
John Steinbeck, The Chrysanthemums
Eudora Welty, A Worn Path
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings: A Tale for Children
D. H. Lawrence, The Horse Dealer's Daughter
Shirley Jackson, The Lottery
8. Students Writing about Stories
Prompts for Writing about Plot, Character, Point of View, Setting, Symbolism, Style, and Theme
Fiction into Film
Asking Questions, Thinking Critically, Making Comparisons
Film as a Medium
Film Techniques
Theme
Comparing Filmed and Printed Stories
Getting Ready to write
Drafting an Essay
Checklist: Getting Ideas for Writing Arguments about Film
Your Turn: Thinking about Filming Fiction
Seven Students Write about Short Stories
Anne Geraghty Thinks about Character in Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado"
Notes.
The Final Version of the Essay: Anne Geraghty, Revenge, Noble and Ignoble
Gender Criticism: A Response to "The Judgment of Solomon"
A Sample Essay: Anne McCauley, How Wise Was Solomon
A Feminist Reading of James Thurber's "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty"
Working Toward a Thesis: Journal entries
Developing the Thesis: List Notes
Sample Draft: Susan Levy, "Walter Mitty Is No Joke"
A Note on Reading against the Grain
A Skeptical Look at the Parable of he Prodigal Son
Steve Scipione, "The Parable of the Shrewd Son"
Talking about Setting as Symbolic: Notes and an Essay on Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour"
Amy Jones, "Spring Comes to Mrs. Mallard"
Two Students Interpret Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery": Notes and Essays
Nat Komor, "We All Participate in the Lottery"
Anne Hearn "Is `The Lottery' Fair?"
Sample Essay with Documentation
Jean Lee, ""Do the Pink Ribbons in Hawthorne`s `Young Goodman Brown' Have a Meaning?"
9. A Fiction Writer in Depth: Flannery O'Connor
Flannery O'Connor: Three Stories and Observations on Literature
Flannery O'Connor, A Good Man Is Hard to Find
Flannery O'Connor, Good Country People
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"
10. A Collection of Short Fiction
Chris Adrian, Every Night for a Thousand Years
Margaret Atwood, Gertrude Talks Back
Jorge Luis Borges, The Gospel According to Mark
Raymond Carver, Cathedral
Oscar Casares, Yolanda
Diana Chang, The Oriental Contingent
Kate Chopin, The Storm
Alice Elliot Dark, In the Gloaming
Ralph Ellison, Battle Royal
Louise Erdrich, The Red Convertible
William Faulkner, A Rose for Emily
William Faulkner, Barn Burning
Jack Forbes, Only Appproved Indians Can Play: Made in USA
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper
Patricia Grace, Flies
Gish Jen, Who's Irish?
James Joyce,Araby
Franz Kafka, A Hunger Artist
Jack London, To Build a Fire
Bobbie Ann Mason, Shiloh
Guy de Maupassant, Mademoiselle
Guy de Maupassant, The Necklace
Katherine Min, Courting a Monk
Lorrie Moore, How to Become a Writer
Alice Munro Boys and Girls
Gloria Naylor, The Two
Joyce Carol Oates, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried
Cynthia Ozick, The Shawl
Edgar Allan Poe, The Tell-Tale Heart
Edgar Allan Poe, The Cask of Amontillado
Michele Serros, Senior Picture Day
Leslie Marmon Silko, The Man to Send Rain Clouds
Amy Tan, Two Kinds
Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Illych
John Updike, The Rumor
Part III. POETRY
11. Approaching Poetry: Responding in Writing
Langston Hughes, Harlem.
Thinking About "Harlem"
Some Journal Entries.
A Sample Essay by a Student: Michael Locke, Langston Hughes's `Harlem'
Aphra Behn, Song: Love Armed.
Journal Entries.
A Sample Essay by a Student: Geoffrey Sullivan "The Double Nature of Love."
12. Narrative Poetry
The Limerick, the Popular Ballad, and Other Narrative Poems
Anonymous, There was a young fellow from Riga
Anonymous British Ballad, Sir Patrick Spence
Anonymous British Ballad, The Demon Lover
John Keats, La Belle Dame sans Merci
Siegfried Sassoon, The General
Countee Cullen,Incident
Edward Arlington Robinson, Richard Cory
Emily Dickinson, Because I could not stop for Death
John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Eleanor Rigby
E. E. Cummings, anyone lived in a pretty how town
13. Lyric Poetry
Anonymous, Michael Row the Boat Ashore
Anonymous, Careless Love
Anonymous, The Colorado Trail
Anonymous, Western Wind
Julia Ward Howe, Battle Hymn of the Republic
William Shakespeare, Spring
William Shakespeare, Winter
W. H. Auden, Stop All the Clocks, Cut Off the Telephone
Emily Bronte, Spellbound
Spirituals, or Sorrow Songs
Anonymous African-American, Go Down, Moses
Anonymous African-American, Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
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
Joseph Addison, Ode
John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn
Paul Laurence Dunbar, Sympathy
Jack Forbes, Something Nice
Linda Pastan, Jump Cabling
Billy Collins, The Names
14. The Speaking Tone of Voice.
Emily Dickinson, I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Gwendolyn Brooks, We Real Cool.
Gwendolyn Brooks, The Mother
Linda Pastan, Marks
The Reader as the Speaker.
Stevie Smith, Not Waving but Drowning
Wislawa Szymborska, The Terrorist, He Watches
John Updike, Icarus
Aurora Levins Morales, Child of the Americas
Joseph Bruchac III, Ellis Island
The Dramatic Monologue.
Robert Browning, My Last Duchess
Paula Gunn Allen, Pocahontas to Her English Husband, John Rolfe
Diction and Tone.
Robert Herrick, To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time
Ezra Pound, The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter
Wilfred Owens, Dulce et Decorum Est
Thomas Hardy, The Man He Killed
Thomas Hardy, The Ruined Maid
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
Marge Piercy, Barbie Doll
Louise Erdrich, Dear John Wayne
Alexander Pope, Engraved on the Collar of a Dog
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
Alfred Lord Tennyson, The Eagle
Seamus Heaney, Digging
Dana Gioia, Money
Linda Pastan, Baseball
Craig Raine, A Martian Sends a Postcard Home
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 130
16. Imagery and Symbolism.
William Blake, The Sick Rose
Walt Whitman, I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan
Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The Kraken
Dan Chiasson, The Elephant
Claude McKay, The Tropics in New York
Adrienne Rich, Diving into the Wreck
Christina Rossetti, Uphill
Wallace Stevens, The Emperor of Ice Cream
Edgar Allan Poe, To Helen
Herman Melville,DuPont's Round Fight
Naomi Shihab Nye, The Traveling Onion
A Note on Haiku
Moritake, Fallen petals rise
Sokan, If only we could
Shiki, River in summer
Richard Wright, Four Haiku
Writing a Haiku.
Taigi, Look, O look, there go
Cyber-Haiku
17. Irony
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias
Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress
John Donne, Holy Sonnet XIV ("Batter my heart, three-personed God")
Langston Hughes, Dream Boogie
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
Sherman Alexie, Evolution
Henry Reed, Naming of Parts
Sarah N. Cleghorn, The Golf Links
18. Rhythm and Versification.
Ezra Pound, An Immorality
A. E. Housman, Eight O'Clock
William Carlos Williams, The Dance
Robert Francis, The Pitcher
Versification: A Glossary for Reference
Meter
Patterns of Sound
Galway Kinnell, Blackberry Eating
William Carlos Williams, The Artist
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Constantly Risking Absurdity
A Note about Poetic Forms
Stanzaic Patterns
Three Complex Forms: The Sonnet, The Villanelle, and the Sestina
The Sonnet
Six Sonnets.
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 73 ("That time of year thou mayst in me behold")
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 146 ("Poor soul, the center of my sinful earth")
John Milton, When I Consider How My Light Is Spent
John Crowe Ransom, Piazza Piece
X. J. Kennedy, Nothing in Heaven Functions as It Ought
Billy Collins, Sonnet
The Villanelle
Edward Arlington Robinson, The House on the Hill
Dylan Thomas, Do Not go Gentle into that Good Night
Elizabeth Bishop, One Art
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. Students Writing about Poems
First Response.
Speaker and Tone.
Audience.
Structure and Form.
Center of Interest and Theme.
Diction.
Sound Effects.
A Note on Explication.
Eight Essays by Students
Louise Glueck, Gretel in Darkness
Jennifer Anderson's Annotation's, Journal, and Final Draft
Jennifer Anderson, A Memory Poem: Louise Gluck's "Gretel in Darkness"
Adrienne Rich, Aunt Jennifer's Tigers
A Student's Annotations and Essay
Maria Fuentes, Aunt Jennifer's Screen and Adrienne Rich's Poem
A Student's Essay on a Theme in Several Poems by One Poet
Peter Gottsegen Religion and Religious Imagery in Emily Dickinson
An Essay on the Structure of a Poem
Robert Herrick, Upon Julia's Clothes
Annotations
David Thurston, Herrick's Julia, Julia's Herrick
An Essay on Metrics
Julia Jeffords, Sound and Sense in Housman's "Eight O'Clock"
A Brief Overview of the Essay
Three Essays, for Evaluation, on Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"
Darrel MacDonald's Annotations and Essay, "Stopping by Woods and Going On"
Sara Fong's Journal Entry and Essay, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" as a Short Story"
Peter Franken's Journal Entry and Essay, "The Meaning of "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"
20. Poets at Work
Walt Whitman, Enfans d'Adam, number 9
Cathy Song, Out of Our Hands
William Butler Yeats, Leda and the Swan (three versions)
William Butler Yeats, Annunciation
William Butler Yeats, Leda and the Swan (1924)
William Butler Yeats, Leda and the Swan (1933)
21. Variations on Themes: Poems and Paintings
Writing about Poems and Paintings
A Sample Student Essay
Tina Washington, 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
Sherman Alexie, At Navajo Monument Valley Tribal School.
John Updike, Before the Mirror
Greg Pape, American Flamingo
22. 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
This 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
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).
Letters to T.W. Higginson
Letter to T.W. Higginson
Robert Frost.
The Pasture
Mending Wall
The Wood-Pile
The Road Not Taken.
The Telephone.
The Oven Bird.
The Vanishing Red
The Aim Was Song
The Need of Being Versed in Country Things
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
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.
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
23. Poetry and Translation
A Poem Translated from Spanish, in an Essay by a Student
George Guzman, Garcia Lorca's "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
Translating Haiku
Basho, Old pond
Further Thoughts about Translating Poetry
Catullus, Odi et amo
Can Poetry Be Translated?
Looking at Translations of a Poem by Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire, L'Albatros
24. A Collection of Poems.
A Note on Folk Ballads
Anonymous British Ballad, The Three Ravens
Anonymous British Ballad, The Twa Corbies
Anonymous British Ballad,Edward
Anonymous, John Henry
Sherman Alexie, On the Amtrak from Boston to New York City
Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach
W. H. Auden, The Unknown Citizen
Jimmy Santiago Baca, So Mexicans Are Taking Jobs from Americans
Amiri Baraka, A Poem for Black Hearts
Elizabeth Bishop, The Fish
William Blake, Infant Joy
William Blake, Infant Sorrow
William Blake, The Lamb
William Blake, The Tyger
William Blake, London
Robert Bly, Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter
Gwendolyn Brooks, Martin Luther King Jr.
Gwendolyn Brooks, The Bean Eaters
Robert Browning, Porphyria's Lover
George Gordon, Lord Byron, She Walks in Beauty
Lucille Clifton, in the inner city
Judith Ortiz Cofer, My Father in the Navy: A Childhood Memory
John Donne, A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
John Donne, The Flea
John Donne, Death Be Not Proud
Rita Dove, Daystar
Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A-Changin'
T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Hymn
Martin Espada, Bully
Allen Ginsberg, A Supermarket in California
Nikki Giovanni, Master Charge Blues
Louise Glueck, The School Children
H.D., Helen
Thomas Hardy, Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave
Joy Harjo, Vision
Robert Hayden, Those Winter Sundays
Anthony Hecht, The Dover Bitch
Robert Herrick, Delight in Disorder
Gerard Manley Hopkins, God's Grandeur
Gerard Manly Hopkins, Pied Beauty
A. E. Housman, To an Athlete Dying Young
A. E. Housman, When I Was One-and-Twenty
A. E. Housman, Loveliest of Trees
James Weldon Johnson, To America
Ben Jonson, On My First Son.
Ben Jonson, Still to be Neat
John Keats, To Autumn
X. J. Kennedy, For Allen Ginsberg
Yusef Komunyakaa, Facing It
Archibald MacLeish, Ars Poetica
Claude McKay, America
Herman Melville, Misgivings
HermanMelville, The Tuft of Kelp
Pat Mora, Illegal Alien
Pat Mora, Legal Alien
Carol Muske, Chivalry
Sharon Olds, Rites of Passage
Linda Pastan, Love Poem
Marge Piercy, To be of use
Sylvia Plath,Daddy
Ezra Pound, In a Station of the Metro
Wyatt Prunty, Learning the Bicycle
Dudley Randall, The Melting Pot
Adrienne Rich, For the Felling of an Elm in the Harvard Yard
Adrienne Rich, Living in Sin
Anne Sexton, Her Kind
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 29 (When, in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes)
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116 (Let me not to the marriage of true minds)
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Ulysses
Kitty Tsui, A Chinese Banquet
John Updike, Ex-Basketball Player
Derek Walcott, A Far Cry from Africa
Phillis Wheatley, On Being Brought from Africa to America
Walt Whitman, Reconciliation
Walt Whitman, A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Grim
Walt Whitman, The Dalliance of Eagles
William Carlos Williams, Spring and All
William Wordsworth, The World Is Too Much with Us
William Wordsworth, I Wondered Lonely as a Cloud
William Wordsworth, The Solitary Reaper
James Wright, Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota
William Butler Yeats, Sailing to Byzantium
Part IV DRAMA
25. How to Read a Play
Thinking About the Language of Drama.
Plot and Character.
Susan Glaspell, Trifles
Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie
A Context for The Glass Menagerie
Tennessee Williams, Production Notes
26. Tragedy
A Note on Greek Theater
Two Plays by Sophocles
Sophocles, Oedipus the King
Sophocles, Antigone
A Play by Shakespeare
A Note on the Elizabethan Theater
Hamlet
A Note on the Text of Hamlet
Portfolio: Hamlet on the Stage
William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
27. Comedy
William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream
28. Two Plays about Marriage
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
Clare Boothe Luce, Slam the Door Softly
29. Students Writing About Plays
Plot and Conflict.
Character.
Tragedy.
Comedy.
Nonverbal Language.
The Play in Performance
Writing about a Filmed Version of a Play
Checklist: Writing about a Filmed Play
Five Essays by Students
An Essay on Plot: Joel Shapiro, "The Solid Structure of The Glass Menagerie"
An Essay on Setting: Margaret Hammer, "What the Kitchen in Trifles Tells Us"
An Essay on Character and Theme: Carlos Alonso, "Fairy Mischief and Morality in A Midsummer's Night's Dream"
An Essay on a Film: Will Saretta, "Branagh's Film of Hamlet"
A Sample Student Essay Using Sources: Ruth Katz, "The Women in Death of a Salesman"
30. A Collection of Plays
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
Jane Martin, Rodeo
August Wilson, Fences
A Context for Fences
August Wilson, Talking About Fences
David Ives, Sure Thing
Terrence McNally, Andre's Mother
31 Critical Approaches: The Nature of Criticism
Formalist (or New) Criticism
Deconstruction
Reader Response Criticism
Archetypal (or Myth) Criticism
Historical Scholarship
Marxist Criticism
The New Historicism
Biographical Criticism
Psychological (or Psychoanalytic) Criticism
Gender (Feminist, and Lesbian and Gay) Criticism
Suggestions for Further Reading
Appendix A
Basic Manuscript Form
Corrections in Final Copy
Quotations and Quotation Marks
Documentation: Footnotes, Internal Parenthetical Citations, and a List of Works Cited (MLA format)
Citing Sources on the World Wide Web
Appendix B: Writing Essay Examinations
Why Do Instructors give Essay Examinations
Getting Ready
Writing Essay Answers
Appendix C Glossary of Literary Terms
Preface
Letter to Students
Part I READING, THINKING, AND WRITING CRITICALLY ABOUT LITERATURE
1. Reading and Responding to Literature
What Is Literature?
Literature as Performance: Robert Frost, The Span of Life
Significance
Two Poems about Immigration:
Robert Frost,Immigrants
Robert Frost, Immigrants
Pat Mora,Immigrants
Two Contemporary Short Stories
Lydia Davis, Childcare
Lydia Davis, City People
Thinking About a Classic Story
Luke, The Parable of the Prodigal Son
Stories True and False:
Grace Paley, Samuel
What's Past Is Prologue
Jamaica Kincaid, Girl
Tobias Wolff, Powder
James Merrill, Christmas Tree
2. The Pleasures of Reading--and of Writing Arguments about Literature
The Open Secret of Good Writing
Emily Wu, The Lesson of the Master
Getting Ready to Write
A Student Writes: From Jottings to a Final Draft
Will Berger, Less Is More: Characterization in "The Lesson of the Master"
The Student's Analysis Analyzed
A Second Short Story, and a Student's Analysis
Tobias Wolff, Say Yes
A Sample Student Essay: Bob Williams, He's the Problem
The Analysis Briefly Analyzed
Three Poems
Diane Ackerman, Pumping Iron
Anonymous, Tweed to Till
William Blake, The Clod and the Pebble
Two Additional Stories
Katherine Mansfield, Miss Brill
Toni Cade Bambara, The Lesson
3. More about Writing About Literature: From Idea to Essay
Why Write Arguments about Literature?
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
Arguing at a Thesis.
Writing a Draft
Sample Draft of an Essay on Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour"
Lynn Crowe, Ironies in an Hour
Revising a Draft
Peer Review
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
Comparison and Contrast: A Way of Arguing
Review: How to Write an Effective Essay
Additional Reading
Kate Chopin, Ripe Figs
William Stafford, Traveling through the Dark
Lorna Dee Cervantes, Refugee Ship
Jose Armas, El Tonto del Barrio
Part II FICTION
4. Approaching Fiction: Responding in Writing.
Ernest Hemingway, Cat in the Rain
Responses: Annotations and Journal Entries.
A Sample Essay by a Student:
Bill Yanagi, Hemingway's American Wife
5. 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, Desiree's Baby
Alice Walker, Everyday Use
Margaret Atwood, Happy Endings
William Carlos Williams,The Use of Force
6. Narrative Point of View
Participant (or First-Person) Points of View
Non-participant (or Third-Person) Points of View
The Point of a Point of View
John Updike, A & P
Grace Paley, A Man Told Me the Story of His Life
Jean Rhys, I Used to Live Here Once
Anonymous, The Judgment of Solomon
Ambrose Bierce, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
Katherine Anne Porter, The Jilting of Granny Weatherall
7 Allegory and Symbol
A Note on Setting
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Young Goodman Brown
John Steinbeck, The Chrysanthemums
Eudora Welty, A Worn Path
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings: A Tale for Children
D. H. Lawrence, The Horse Dealer's Daughter
Shirley Jackson, The Lottery
8. Students Writing about Stories
Prompts for Writing about Plot, Character, Point of View, Setting, Symbolism, Style, and Theme
Fiction into Film
Asking Questions, Thinking Critically, Making Comparisons
Film as a Medium
Film Techniques
Theme
Comparing Filmed and Printed Stories
Getting Ready to write
Drafting an Essay
Checklist: Getting Ideas for Writing Arguments about Film
Your Turn: Thinking about Filming Fiction
Seven Students Write about Short Stories
Anne Geraghty Thinks about Character in Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado"
Notes.
The Final Version of the Essay: Anne Geraghty, Revenge, Noble and Ignoble
Gender Criticism: A Response to "The Judgment of Solomon"
A Sample Essay: Anne McCauley, How Wise Was Solomon
A Feminist Reading of James Thurber's "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty"
Working Toward a Thesis: Journal entries
Developing the Thesis: List Notes
Sample Draft: Susan Levy, "Walter Mitty Is No Joke"
A Note on Reading against the Grain
A Skeptical Look at the Parable of he Prodigal Son
Steve Scipione, "The Parable of the Shrewd Son"
Talking about Setting as Symbolic: Notes and an Essay on Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour"
Amy Jones, "Spring Comes to Mrs. Mallard"
Two Students Interpret Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery": Notes and Essays
Nat Komor, "We All Participate in the Lottery"
Anne Hearn "Is `The Lottery' Fair?"
Sample Essay with Documentation
Jean Lee, ""Do the Pink Ribbons in Hawthorne`s `Young Goodman Brown' Have a Meaning?"
9. A Fiction Writer in Depth: Flannery O'Connor
Flannery O'Connor: Three Stories and Observations on Literature
Flannery O'Connor, A Good Man Is Hard to Find
Flannery O'Connor, Good Country People
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"
10. A Collection of Short Fiction
Chris Adrian, Every Night for a Thousand Years
Margaret Atwood, Gertrude Talks Back
Jorge Luis Borges, The Gospel According to Mark
Raymond Carver, Cathedral
Oscar Casares, Yolanda
Diana Chang, The Oriental Contingent
Kate Chopin, The Storm
Alice Elliot Dark, In the Gloaming
Ralph Ellison, Battle Royal
Louise Erdrich, The Red Convertible
William Faulkner, A Rose for Emily
William Faulkner, Barn Burning
Jack Forbes, Only Appproved Indians Can Play: Made in USA
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper
Patricia Grace, Flies
Gish Jen, Who's Irish?
James Joyce,Araby
Franz Kafka, A Hunger Artist
Jack London, To Build a Fire
Bobbie Ann Mason, Shiloh
Guy de Maupassant, Mademoiselle
Guy de Maupassant, The Necklace
Katherine Min, Courting a Monk
Lorrie Moore, How to Become a Writer
Alice Munro Boys and Girls
Gloria Naylor, The Two
Joyce Carol Oates, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried
Cynthia Ozick, The Shawl
Edgar Allan Poe, The Tell-Tale Heart
Edgar Allan Poe, The Cask of Amontillado
Michele Serros, Senior Picture Day
Leslie Marmon Silko, The Man to Send Rain Clouds
Amy Tan, Two Kinds
Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Illych
John Updike, The Rumor
Part III. POETRY
11. Approaching Poetry: Responding in Writing
Langston Hughes, Harlem.
Thinking About "Harlem"
Some Journal Entries.
A Sample Essay by a Student: Michael Locke, Langston Hughes's `Harlem'
Aphra Behn, Song: Love Armed.
Journal Entries.
A Sample Essay by a Student: Geoffrey Sullivan "The Double Nature of Love."
12. Narrative Poetry
The Limerick, the Popular Ballad, and Other Narrative Poems
Anonymous, There was a young fellow from Riga
Anonymous British Ballad, Sir Patrick Spence
Anonymous British Ballad, The Demon Lover
John Keats, La Belle Dame sans Merci
Siegfried Sassoon, The General
Countee Cullen,Incident
Edward Arlington Robinson, Richard Cory
Emily Dickinson, Because I could not stop for Death
John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Eleanor Rigby
E. E. Cummings, anyone lived in a pretty how town
13. Lyric Poetry
Anonymous, Michael Row the Boat Ashore
Anonymous, Careless Love
Anonymous, The Colorado Trail
Anonymous, Western Wind
Julia Ward Howe, Battle Hymn of the Republic
William Shakespeare, Spring
William Shakespeare, Winter
W. H. Auden, Stop All the Clocks, Cut Off the Telephone
Emily Bronte, Spellbound
Spirituals, or Sorrow Songs
Anonymous African-American, Go Down, Moses
Anonymous African-American, Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
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
Joseph Addison, Ode
John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn
Paul Laurence Dunbar, Sympathy
Jack Forbes, Something Nice
Linda Pastan, Jump Cabling
Billy Collins, The Names
14. The Speaking Tone of Voice.
Emily Dickinson, I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Gwendolyn Brooks, We Real Cool.
Gwendolyn Brooks, The Mother
Linda Pastan, Marks
The Reader as the Speaker.
Stevie Smith, Not Waving but Drowning
Wislawa Szymborska, The Terrorist, He Watches
John Updike, Icarus
Aurora Levins Morales, Child of the Americas
Joseph Bruchac III, Ellis Island
The Dramatic Monologue.
Robert Browning, My Last Duchess
Paula Gunn Allen, Pocahontas to Her English Husband, John Rolfe
Diction and Tone.
Robert Herrick, To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time
Ezra Pound, The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter
Wilfred Owens, Dulce et Decorum Est
Thomas Hardy, The Man He Killed
Thomas Hardy, The Ruined Maid
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
Marge Piercy, Barbie Doll
Louise Erdrich, Dear John Wayne
Alexander Pope, Engraved on the Collar of a Dog
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
Alfred Lord Tennyson, The Eagle
Seamus Heaney, Digging
Dana Gioia, Money
Linda Pastan, Baseball
Craig Raine, A Martian Sends a Postcard Home
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 130
16. Imagery and Symbolism.
William Blake, The Sick Rose
Walt Whitman, I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan
Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The Kraken
Dan Chiasson, The Elephant
Claude McKay, The Tropics in New York
Adrienne Rich, Diving into the Wreck
Christina Rossetti, Uphill
Wallace Stevens, The Emperor of Ice Cream
Edgar Allan Poe, To Helen
Herman Melville,DuPont's Round Fight
Naomi Shihab Nye, The Traveling Onion
A Note on Haiku
Moritake, Fallen petals rise
Sokan, If only we could
Shiki, River in summer
Richard Wright, Four Haiku
Writing a Haiku.
Taigi, Look, O look, there go
Cyber-Haiku
17. Irony
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias
Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress
John Donne, Holy Sonnet XIV ("Batter my heart, three-personed God")
Langston Hughes, Dream Boogie
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
Sherman Alexie, Evolution
Henry Reed, Naming of Parts
Sarah N. Cleghorn, The Golf Links
18. Rhythm and Versification.
Ezra Pound, An Immorality
A. E. Housman, Eight O'Clock
William Carlos Williams, The Dance
Robert Francis, The Pitcher
Versification: A Glossary for Reference
Meter
Patterns of Sound
Galway Kinnell, Blackberry Eating
William Carlos Williams, The Artist
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Constantly Risking Absurdity
A Note about Poetic Forms
Stanzaic Patterns
Three Complex Forms: The Sonnet, The Villanelle, and the Sestina
The Sonnet
Six Sonnets.
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 73 ("That time of year thou mayst in me behold")
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 146 ("Poor soul, the center of my sinful earth")
John Milton, When I Consider How My Light Is Spent
John Crowe Ransom, Piazza Piece
X. J. Kennedy, Nothing in Heaven Functions as It Ought
Billy Collins, Sonnet
The Villanelle
Edward Arlington Robinson, The House on the Hill
Dylan Thomas, Do Not go Gentle into that Good Night
Elizabeth Bishop, One Art
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. Students Writing about Poems
First Response.
Speaker and Tone.
Audience.
Structure and Form.
Center of Interest and Theme.
Diction.
Sound Effects.
A Note on Explication.
Eight Essays by Students
Louise Glueck, Gretel in Darkness
Jennifer Anderson's Annotation's, Journal, and Final Draft
Jennifer Anderson, A Memory Poem: Louise Gluck's "Gretel in Darkness"
Adrienne Rich, Aunt Jennifer's Tigers
A Student's Annotations and Essay
Maria Fuentes, Aunt Jennifer's Screen and Adrienne Rich's Poem
A Student's Essay on a Theme in Several Poems by One Poet
Peter Gottsegen Religion and Religious Imagery in Emily Dickinson
An Essay on the Structure of a Poem
Robert Herrick, Upon Julia's Clothes
Annotations
David Thurston, Herrick's Julia, Julia's Herrick
An Essay on Metrics
Julia Jeffords, Sound and Sense in Housman's "Eight O'Clock"
A Brief Overview of the Essay
Three Essays, for Evaluation, on Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"
Darrel MacDonald's Annotations and Essay, "Stopping by Woods and Going On"
Sara Fong's Journal Entry and Essay, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" as a Short Story"
Peter Franken's Journal Entry and Essay, "The Meaning of "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"
20. Poets at Work
Walt Whitman, Enfans d'Adam, number 9
Cathy Song, Out of Our Hands
William Butler Yeats, Leda and the Swan (three versions)
William Butler Yeats, Annunciation
William Butler Yeats, Leda and the Swan (1924)
William Butler Yeats, Leda and the Swan (1933)
21. Variations on Themes: Poems and Paintings
Writing about Poems and Paintings
A Sample Student Essay
Tina Washington, 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
Sherman Alexie, At Navajo Monument Valley Tribal School.
John Updike, Before the Mirror
Greg Pape, American Flamingo
22. 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
This 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
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).
Letters to T.W. Higginson
Letter to T.W. Higginson
Robert Frost.
The Pasture
Mending Wall
The Wood-Pile
The Road Not Taken.
The Telephone.
The Oven Bird.
The Vanishing Red
The Aim Was Song
The Need of Being Versed in Country Things
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
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.
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
23. Poetry and Translation
A Poem Translated from Spanish, in an Essay by a Student
George Guzman, Garcia Lorca's "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
Translating Haiku
Basho, Old pond
Further Thoughts about Translating Poetry
Catullus, Odi et amo
Can Poetry Be Translated?
Looking at Translations of a Poem by Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire, L'Albatros
24. A Collection of Poems.
A Note on Folk Ballads
Anonymous British Ballad, The Three Ravens
Anonymous British Ballad, The Twa Corbies
Anonymous British Ballad,Edward
Anonymous, John Henry
Sherman Alexie, On the Amtrak from Boston to New York City
Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach
W. H. Auden, The Unknown Citizen
Jimmy Santiago Baca, So Mexicans Are Taking Jobs from Americans
Amiri Baraka, A Poem for Black Hearts
Elizabeth Bishop, The Fish
William Blake, Infant Joy
William Blake, Infant Sorrow
William Blake, The Lamb
William Blake, The Tyger
William Blake, London
Robert Bly, Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter
Gwendolyn Brooks, Martin Luther King Jr.
Gwendolyn Brooks, The Bean Eaters
Robert Browning, Porphyria's Lover
George Gordon, Lord Byron, She Walks in Beauty
Lucille Clifton, in the inner city
Judith Ortiz Cofer, My Father in the Navy: A Childhood Memory
John Donne, A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
John Donne, The Flea
John Donne, Death Be Not Proud
Rita Dove, Daystar
Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A-Changin'
T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Hymn
Martin Espada, Bully
Allen Ginsberg, A Supermarket in California
Nikki Giovanni, Master Charge Blues
Louise Glueck, The School Children
H.D., Helen
Thomas Hardy, Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave
Joy Harjo, Vision
Robert Hayden, Those Winter Sundays
Anthony Hecht, The Dover Bitch
Robert Herrick, Delight in Disorder
Gerard Manley Hopkins, God's Grandeur
Gerard Manly Hopkins, Pied Beauty
A. E. Housman, To an Athlete Dying Young
A. E. Housman, When I Was One-and-Twenty
A. E. Housman, Loveliest of Trees
James Weldon Johnson, To America
Ben Jonson, On My First Son.
Ben Jonson, Still to be Neat
John Keats, To Autumn
X. J. Kennedy, For Allen Ginsberg
Yusef Komunyakaa, Facing It
Archibald MacLeish, Ars Poetica
Claude McKay, America
Herman Melville, Misgivings
HermanMelville, The Tuft of Kelp
Pat Mora, Illegal Alien
Pat Mora, Legal Alien
Carol Muske, Chivalry
Sharon Olds, Rites of Passage
Linda Pastan, Love Poem
Marge Piercy, To be of use
Sylvia Plath,Daddy
Ezra Pound, In a Station of the Metro
Wyatt Prunty, Learning the Bicycle
Dudley Randall, The Melting Pot
Adrienne Rich, For the Felling of an Elm in the Harvard Yard
Adrienne Rich, Living in Sin
Anne Sexton, Her Kind
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 29 (When, in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes)
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116 (Let me not to the marriage of true minds)
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Ulysses
Kitty Tsui, A Chinese Banquet
John Updike, Ex-Basketball Player
Derek Walcott, A Far Cry from Africa
Phillis Wheatley, On Being Brought from Africa to America
Walt Whitman, Reconciliation
Walt Whitman, A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Grim
Walt Whitman, The Dalliance of Eagles
William Carlos Williams, Spring and All
William Wordsworth, The World Is Too Much with Us
William Wordsworth, I Wondered Lonely as a Cloud
William Wordsworth, The Solitary Reaper
James Wright, Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota
William Butler Yeats, Sailing to Byzantium
Part IV DRAMA
25. How to Read a Play
Thinking About the Language of Drama.
Plot and Character.
Susan Glaspell, Trifles
Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie
A Context for The Glass Menagerie
Tennessee Williams, Production Notes
26. Tragedy
A Note on Greek Theater
Two Plays by Sophocles
Sophocles, Oedipus the King
Sophocles, Antigone
A Play by Shakespeare
A Note on the Elizabethan Theater
Hamlet
A Note on the Text of Hamlet
Portfolio: Hamlet on the Stage
William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
27. Comedy
William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream
28. Two Plays about Marriage
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
Clare Boothe Luce, Slam the Door Softly
29. Students Writing About Plays
Plot and Conflict.
Character.
Tragedy.
Comedy.
Nonverbal Language.
The Play in Performance
Writing about a Filmed Version of a Play
Checklist: Writing about a Filmed Play
Five Essays by Students
An Essay on Plot: Joel Shapiro, "The Solid Structure of The Glass Menagerie"
An Essay on Setting: Margaret Hammer, "What the Kitchen in Trifles Tells Us"
An Essay on Character and Theme: Carlos Alonso, "Fairy Mischief and Morality in A Midsummer's Night's Dream"
An Essay on a Film: Will Saretta, "Branagh's Film of Hamlet"
A Sample Student Essay Using Sources: Ruth Katz, "The Women in Death of a Salesman"
30. A Collection of Plays
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
Jane Martin, Rodeo
August Wilson, Fences
A Context for Fences
August Wilson, Talking About Fences
David Ives, Sure Thing
Terrence McNally, Andre's Mother
31 Critical Approaches: The Nature of Criticism
Formalist (or New) Criticism
Deconstruction
Reader Response Criticism
Archetypal (or Myth) Criticism
Historical Scholarship
Marxist Criticism
The New Historicism
Biographical Criticism
Psychological (or Psychoanalytic) Criticism
Gender (Feminist, and Lesbian and Gay) Criticism
Suggestions for Further Reading
Appendix A
Basic Manuscript Form
Corrections in Final Copy
Quotations and Quotation Marks
Documentation: Footnotes, Internal Parenthetical Citations, and a List of Works Cited (MLA format)
Citing Sources on the World Wide Web
Appendix B: Writing Essay Examinations
Why Do Instructors give Essay Examinations
Getting Ready
Writing Essay Answers
Appendix C Glossary of Literary Terms