PREFACE FOR INSTRUCTORS
INTRODUCTION
WHAT IS LITERATURE?
WHAT ARE THE GENRES OF LITERATURE?
WHY READ LITERATURE?
WHY STUDY LITERATURE?
Fiction
Fiction: Reading, Responding, Writing
ANONYMOUS, The Elephant in the Village of the Blind
READING AND RESPONDING TO FICTION
LINDA BREWER, 20/20
SAMPLE WRITING: Annotation and Notes on “20/20”
MARJANE SATRAPI, The Shabbat (from Persepolis)
WRITING ABOUT FICTION
RAYMOND CARVER, Cathedral
SAMPLE WRITING: WESLEY RUPTON, Notes on Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral”
SAMPLE WRITING: WESLEY RUPTON, Response Paper on Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral”
SAMPLE WRITING: BETHANY QUALLS, A Narrator’s Blindness in Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral”
Understanding the Text
1 PLOT
G. B. TRUDEAU, From Doonesbury
JACOB AND WILHELM GRIMM, The Shroud
GUY DE MAUPASSANT, The Jewelry
JAMES BALDWIN, Sonny’s Blues
2 NARRATION AND POINT OF VIEW
EDGAR ALLAN POE, The Cask of Amontillado
ERNEST HEMINGWAY, Hills Like White Elephants
JAMAICA KINCAID, Girl
3 CHARACTER
CHARLOTTE BRONTË, From Jane Eyre
TONI MORRISON, Recitatif
HA JIN, In Broad Daylight
4 SETTING
ITALO CALVINO, From Invisible Cities
MARGARET MITCHELL, From Gone with the Wind
ANTON CHEKHOV, The Lady with the Dog
KATHERINE ANNE PORTER, Flowering Judas
AMY TAN, A Pair of Tickets
SAMPLE WRITING: STEVEN MATVIEW, How Setting Reflects Emotions in Anton Chekhov’s “The Lady with the Dog”
5 SYMBOL AND FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, The Birth-Mark
EDWIDGE DANTICAT, A Wall of Fire Rising
6 THEME
AESOP, The Two Crabs
STEPHEN CRANE, The Open Boat
GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ, A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings
LOUISE ERDRICH, Love Medicine
Reading More Fiction
TONI CADE BAMBARA, Gorilla, My Love
AMBROSE BIERCE, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
KATE CHOPIN, The Story of an Hour
WILLIAM FAULKNER, A Rose for Emily
CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN, The Yellow Wallpaper
JAMES JOYCE, Araby
FRANZ KAFKA, A Hunger Artist
YASUNARI KAWABATA, The Grasshopper and the Bell Cricket
D. H. LAWRENCE, The Rocking-Horse Winner
BOBBIE ANN MASON, Shiloh
HERMAN MELVILLE, Bartleby, The Scrivener
FLANNERY O’CONNOR, A Good Man Is Hard to Find
JOHN UPDIKE, A&P
EUDORA WELTY, Why I Live at the P.O.
Biographical Sketches: Fiction Writers
Poetry
Poetry: Reading, Responding, Writing
READING POETRY
READING POEMS: FOUR EXAMPLES
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING, How Do I Love Thee?
JAROLD RAMSAY, The Tally Stick
LINDA PASTAN, love poem
LIZ ROSENBERG, Married Love
RESPONDING TO POETRY
RESPONDING TO POEMS: TWO EXAMPLES
BEN JONSON, On My First Son
HOWARD NEMEROV, The Vacuum
RESPONDING TO POEMS: AN EXERCISE
RITA DOVE, Fifth Grade Autobiography
ANNE SEXTON, The Fury of Overshoes
SEAMUS HEANEY, Mid-Term Break
RESPONDING TO POETRY: EIGHT CONCRETE STEPS AND AN EXAMPLE
APHRA BEHN, On Her Loving Two Equally
WRITING ABOUT POETRY
SAMPLE WRITING: STEPHEN BORDLAND, Response Paper on W. H. Auden’s “[Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone]”
SAMPLE WRITING: Multiplying by Dividing in Aphra Behn’s “On Her Loving Two Equally”
ROMANTIC LOVE: An Album
EZRA POUND, The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter
W. H. AUDEN, [Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone]
ANNE BRADSTREET, To My Dear and Loving Husband
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, [Let me not to the marriage of true minds]
JOHN DONNE, The Sun Rising
EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY, [Women have loved before as I love now]
Understanding the Text
7 THEME AND TONE
LISTENING TO TONE
MARGE PIERCY, Barbie Doll
W. D. SNODGRASS, Leaving the Motel
THOM GUNN, In Time of Plague
ETHERIDGE KNIGHT, Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane
SETTING AS THEME
WILLIAM BLAKE, London
COMPARING TWO OR MORE POEMS ON SIMILAR TOPICS
MAXINE KUMIN, Woodchucks
ADRIENNE RICH, Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers
FAMILY: An Album
GALWAY KINNELL, After Making Love We Hear Footsteps
ROBERT HAYDEN, Those Winter Sundays
JIMMY SANTIAGO BACA, Green Chile
KELLY CHERRY, Alzheimer’s
ANDREW HUDGINS, Begotten
8 SPEAKER: WHOSE VOICE DO WE HEAR?
THOMAS HARDY, The Ruined Maid
X. J. KENNEDY, In a Prominent Bar in Secaucus One Day
MARGARET ATWOOD, Death of a Young Son by Drowning
ROBERT BROWNING, Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister
DOROTHY PARKER, A Certain Lady
AUTHOR VERSUS SPEAKER
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways
ROBERT BURNS, To a Louse
GWENDOLYN BROOKS, We Real Cool
WALT WHITMAN, [I celebrate myself, and sing myself ]
9 SITUATION AND SETTING: WHAT HAPPENS? WHERE? WHEN?
SITUATIONS: CARING FOR CHILDREN
RITA DOVE, Daystar
LINDA PASTAN, To a Daughter Leaving Home
SETTINGS: HISTORICAL CONTEXTS
JOHN MILTON, On the Late Massacre in Piedmont
MATTHEW ARNOLD, Dover Beach
JOHN BETJEMAN, In Westminster Abbey
SITUATION AND SETTING: PREPARING A RESPONSE PAPER
JAMES DICKEY, Cherrylog Road
TWO CARPE DIEM POEMS
JOHN DONNE, The Flea
ANDREW MARVELL, To His Coy Mistress
POEMS OF VARIED SITUATIONS AND SETTINGS
EMILY BRONTË, The Night-Wind
SYLVIA PLATH, Point Shirley
JOSHUA CLOVER, The Nevada Glassworks
DEREK WALCOTT, Midsummer
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, [Full many a glorious morning have I seen]
JOHN DONNE, The Good-Morrow
SYLVIA PLATH, Morning Star
BILLY COLLINS, Morning
CULTURAL HOMELANDS: An Album
PHILLIS WHEATLEY, On Being Brought from Africa to America
MAYA ANGELOU, Africa
DEREK WALCOTT, A Far Cry from Africa
AGHA SHAHID ALI, Postcard from Kashmir
10 LANGUAGE
PRECISION AND AMBIGUITY, DENOTATION AND CONNOTATION
SARA CLEGHORN, [The golf links lie so near the mill]
ANNE FINCH, COUNTESS OF WINCHELSEA, There’s No To-morrow
CHARLES BERNSTEIN, Of Time and the Line
WALTER DE LA MARE, Slim Cunning Hands
THEODORE ROETHKE, My Papa’s Waltz
WORD ORDER AND WORD PLACEMENT
SHARON OLDS, Sex without Love
EMILY DICKINSON, [I dwell in Possibility—]
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS, The Red Wheelbarrow
This Is Just to Say
GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS, Pied Beauty
E. E. CUMMINGS, [in Just—]
LI- YOUNG LEE, Persimmons
PICTURING: THE LANGUAGES OF DESCRIPTION
OSCAR WILDE, Symphony in Yellow
RICHARD WILBUR, The Beautiful Changes
ANDREW MARVELL, On a Drop of Dew
META PHOR AND PERSONIFICATION
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, [That time of year thou mayest in me behold]
LINDA PASTAN, Marks
SIMILE AND ANALOGY
ROBERT BURNS, A Red, Red Rose
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, [Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?]
ANONYMOUS, The Twenty-third Psalm
JOHN DONNE, [Batter my heart, three-personed God]
The Canonization
DAVID FERRY, At the Hospital
RANDALL JARRELL, The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
WILFRED OWEN, Dulce et Decorum Est
SYMBOL
JAMES DICKEY, The Leap
EDMUND WALLER, Song
D. H. LAWRENCE, I Am Like a Rose
DOROTHY PARKER, One Perfect Rose
WILLIAM BLAKE, The Sick Rose
ROBERT FROST, Fireflies in the Garden
ADRIENNE RICH, Diving into the Wreck
ROO BORSON, After a Death
11 THE SOUNDS OF POETRY
SOUND POEMS: SOME EXAMPLES
HELEN CHASIN, The Word Plum
KENNETH FEARING, Dirge
ALEXANDER POPE, Sound and Sense
POETIC METER
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, Metrical Feet
PRACTICING SCANSION (READING METER)
ANONYMOUS, [There was a young girl from St. Paul]
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON, From The Charge of the Light Brigade
SIR JOHN SUCKLING, Song
JOHN DRYDEN, To the Memory of Mr. Oldham
SCANNING METER: A SELECTION OF POEMS
EDGAR ALLAN POE, The Raven
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, [Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore]
GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS, Spring and Fall
EMILY DICKINSON, [A narrow Fellow in the Grass]
WORDS AND MUSIC: An Album
THOMAS CAMPION, When to Her Lute Corinna Sings
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Spring
ROBERT HAYDEN, Homage to the Empress of the Blues
MICHAEL HARPER, Dear John, Dear Coltrane
BOB DYLAN, Mr. Tambourine Man
12 INTERNAL STRUCTURE
NARRATIVE POEMS
EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON, Mr. Flood’s Party
DRAMATIC POEMS
HOWARD NEMEROV, The Goose Fish
OTHER TYPES OF POETIC STRUCTURE
PAT MORA, Sonrisas
SHIFTS OF TONE AND SUBJECT
SHARON OLDS, The Victims
ANONYMOUS, Sir Patrick Spens
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS, The Dance
EMILY DICKINSON, [The Wind begun to knead the Grass—]
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, [Th’expense of spirit in a waste of shame]
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, Ode to the West Wind
13 EXTERNAL FORM
RHYME
STANZAS
STANZAS AND RHYME SCHEMES: SOME EXAMPLES
DYLAN THOMAS, Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night
MARIANNE MOORE, Poetry
ELIZABETH BISHOP, Sestina
ARCHIBALD MACLEISH, Ars Poetica
DUDLEY RANDALL, Ballad of Birmingham
THE SONNET
HENRY CONSTABLE, [My lady’s presence makes the roses red]
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, Nuns Fret Not
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI, A Sonnet Is a Moment’s Monument
JOHN KEATS, On the Sonnet
On the Grasshopper and the Cricket
On Seeing the Elgin Marbles
GWENDOLYN BROOKS, First Fight. Then Fiddle.
ROBERT FROST, Range-Finding
Design
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, London, 1802
JOHN MILTON, [When I consider how my light is spent]
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING, [When our two souls stand up]
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI, In an Artist’s Studio
EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY, [What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why]
GWEN HARWOOD, In the Park
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, [My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun]
BILLY COLLINS, Sonnet
Reading More Poetry
W. H. AUDEN, Musée des Beaux Arts
In Memory of W. B. Yeats
WILLIAM BLAKE, The Lamb
The Tiger
The Chimney Sweeper (from Songs of Innocence)
The Chimney Sweeper (from Songs of Experience)
ROBERT BROWNING, My Last Duchess
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, Kubla Khan
COUNTEE CULLEN, Yet Do I Marvel
EMILY DICKINSON, [Because I could not stop for Death—]
[I stepped from Plank to Plank]
[We do not play on Graves—]
[The Brain—is wider than the Sky—]
[She dealt her pretty words like Blades—]
[Wild Nights—Wild Nights!]
[My Life had stood—a Loaded Gun—]
[After great pain, a formal feeling comes—]
JOHN DONNE, [Death, be not proud]
Song
A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR, Sympathy
We Wear the Mask
T. S. ELIOT, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
ROBERT FROST, The Road Not Taken
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Home Burial
THOMAS GRAY, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
ANGELINA GRIMKÉ, Tenebris
ROBERT HAYDEN, The Whipping
Frederick Douglass
SEAMUS HEANEY, Digging
Punishment
GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS, God’s Grandeur
The Windhover
LANGSTON HUGHES, Harlem
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
BEN JONSON, [Come, my Celia, let us prove]
JOHN KEATS, Ode to a Nightingale
Ode on a Grecian Urn
GALWAY KINNELL, Blackberry Eating
ROBERT LOWELL, Skunk Hour
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
ANDREW MARVELL, The Garden
CLAUDE MCKAY, The Harlem Dancer
The White House
PAT MORA, Elena
Gentle Communion
SYLVIA PLATH, Daddy
Lady Lazarus
EZRA POUND, In a Station of the Metro
A Virginal
SIR WALTER RALEIGH, The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd
JOHN CROWE RANSOM, Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter
ADRIENNE RICH, Storm Warnings
History
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, [Not marble, nor the gilded monuments]
WALLACE STEVENS, The Emperor of Ice-Cream
Anecdote of the Jar
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON, Tears, Idle Tears
Ulysses
DYLAN THOMAS, Fern Hill
WALT WHITMAN, Facing West from California’s Shores
I Hear America Singing
A Noiseless Patient Spider
RICHARD WILBUR, Love Calls Us to the Things of This World
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour, July 13, 1798
W. B. YEATS, The Lake Isle of Innisfree
The Second Coming
Leda and the Swan
Sailing to Byzantium
Biographical Sketches: Poets
Drama
Drama: Reading, Responding, Writing
READING DRAMA
SUSAN GLASPELL, Trifles
TOM STOPPARD, The Real Inspector Hound
RESPONDING TO DRAMA
SAMPLE WRITING: Annotating a play
SAMPLE WRITING: Reading notes on Trifles
WRITING ABOUT DRAMA
SAMPLE WRITING: LINDA DURAI, Reading a “Whodunnit?”: Stage Directions and Repetition in The Real Inspector Hound
Understanding the Text
14 ELEMENTS OF DRAMA
CHARACTER
PLOT AND STRUCTURE
STAGES, SETS, AND SETTING
TONE, LANGUAGE, AND SYMBOL
THEME
HENRIK IBSEN, A Doll House
AUGUST WILSON, The Piano Lesson
Reading More Drama
LORRAINE HANSBERRY, A Raisin in the Sun
ARTHUR MILLER, Death of a Salesman
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Hamlet
SOPHOCLES, Antigone
Biographical Sketches: Playwrights
Writing about Literature
15 PARAPHRASE, SUMMARY, DESCRIPTION
16 THE ELEMENTS OF THE ESSAY
17 THE WRITING PROCESS
18 THE RESEARCH ESSAY
19 QUOTATION, CITATION, AND DOCUMENTATION
20 SAMPLE RESEARCH PAPER: RICHARD GIBSON, Keeping the Sabbath Separately: Emily Dickinson’s Rebellious Faith
Critical Approaches
Glossary
Permissions Acknowledgments
Index of Authors
Index of Titles and First Lines
Index of Literary Terms