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Index
About this Book
Cover Page
Resources for Reading and Writing about Literature
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
About the Author
Preface for Instructors
Brief Contents
Contents
Introduction: Reading Imaginative Literature
The Nature of Literature
Emily Dickinson • A narrow Fellow in the Grass
The Value of Literature
The Changing Literary Canon
Fiction
The Elements of Fiction
Chapter 1. Reading Fiction
Reading Fiction Responsively
Kate Chopin • The Story of an Hour
A Sample Close Reading: An Annotated Section of “The Story of an Hour”
A Sample Paper: Differences in Responses to Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour”
Explorations and Formulas
Grace Paley • Wants
Judith Ortiz Cofer • Volar
Chapter 2. Plot
T. C. Boyle • The Hit Man
Alice Walker • The Flowers
William Faulkner • A Rose for Emily
Perspective
William Faulkner • On “A Rose for Emily”
A Sample Close Reading: An Annotated Section of “A Rose for Emily”
A Sample Student Response: Conflict in the Plot of William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily”
Andre Dubus • Killings
Perspective
A. L. Bader • Nothing Happens in Modern Short Stories
Chapter 3. Character
Tobias Wolff • Powder
Jamaica Kincaid • Girl
Xu Xi • Famine
James Baldwin • Sonny’s Blues
Chapter 4. Setting
Ernest Hemingway • Soldier’s Home
Perspective
Ernest Hemingway • On What Every Writer Needs
Ursula K. Le Guin • The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
Charlotte Perkins Gilman • The Yellow Wallpaper
Chapter 5. Point of View
Third-Person Narrator (Nonparticipant)
First-Person Narrator (Participant)
John Updike • A & P
Manuel Muñoz • Zigzagger
Maggie Mitchell • It Would Be Different If
Chapter 6. Symbolism
Louise Erdrich • The Red Convertible
Ralph Ellison • King of the Bingo Game
Cynthia Ozick • The Shawl
A Sample Student Response: Layers of Symbol in Cynthia Ozick’s “The Shawl”
Ann Beattie • Janus
Chapter 7. Theme
Shirley Jackson • The Lottery
Katherine Mansfield • Miss Brill
Zora Neale Hurston • Sweat
Chapter 8. Style, Tone, and Irony
Style
Tone
Irony
Raymond Carver • Popular Mechanics
Perspective
John Barth • On Minimalist Fiction
A Sample Student Response: The Minimalist Style of Raymond Carver’s “Popular Mechanics”
Susan Minot • Lust
Jim Shepard • Reach for the Sky
Approaches to Fiction
Chapter 9. A Study of Nathaniel Hawthorne
A Brief Biography and Introduction
Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Minister’s Black Veil
Young Goodman Brown
The Birthmark
Perspectives on Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne • On Solitude
Nathaniel Hawthorne • On the Power of the Writer’s Imagination
Nathaniel Hawthorne • On His Short Stories
Herman Melville • On Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Tragic Vision
Gaylord Brewer • The Joys of Secret Sin
Chapter 10. A Study of Flannery O’Connor
A Brief Biography and Introduction
Flannery O’Connor
A Good Man Is Hard to Find
Good Country People
Revelation
Perspectives on O’Connor
Flannery O’Connor • On the Use of Exaggeration and Distortion
Josephine Hendin • On O’Connor’s Refusal to “Do Pretty”
Claire Katz • The Function of Violence in O’Connor’s Fiction
Edward Kessler • On O’Connor’s Use of History
Time Magazine, on A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories
Chapter 11. A Cultural Case Study: James Joyce’s “Eveline”
A Brief Biography and Introduction
James Joyce • Eveline
Documents
The Alliance Temperance Almanack • On the Resources of Ireland
Bridget Burke • A Letter Home from an Irish Emigrant
A Plot Synopsis of The Bohemian Girl
Chapter 12. A Study of Dagoberto Gilb: The Author Reflects on Three Stories
Introduction
A Brief Biography
Dagoberto Gilb • How Books Bounce (Essay)
Dagoberto Gilb • Love in L.A. (Story)
Dagoberto Gilb • On Writing “Love in L.A.” (Essay)
Dagoberto Gilb • Shout (Story)
Dagoberto Gilb • On Writing “Shout” (Essay)
Dagoberto Gilb • Uncle Rock (Story)
Dagoberto Gilb • On Writing “Uncle Rock” (Essay)
Perspectives
Dagoberto Gilb • On Physical Labor
Dagoberto Gilb • On Distortions of Mexican American Culture
Dagoberto Gilb • Michael Meyer Interviews Dagoberto Gilb
Dagoberto Gilb • Two Draft Manuscript Pages (FACSIMILES)
Chapter 13. A Thematic Case Study: War and Its Aftermath
Tim O’Brien • How to Tell a True War Story
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. • Happy Birthday, 1951
Edwidge Danticat • The Missing Peace
Chapter 14. A Thematic Case Study: Humor and Satire
Annie Proulx • 55 Miles to the Gas Pump
George Saunders • I Can Speak™
Ron Hansen • My Kid’s Dog
Mark Twain • The Story of the Good Little Boy
Chapter 15. A Thematic Case Study: Privacy
Oscar Wilde • The Sphinx without a Secret: An Etching
David Long • Morphine
ZZ Packer • Drinking Coffee Elsewhere
John Cheever • The Enormous Radio
Chapter 16. Stories for Further Reading
Washington Irving • Rip Van Winkle
Jhumpa Lahiri • Sexy
Alecia McKenzie • Private School
Joyce Carol Oates • Tick
Edgar Allan Poe • The Cask of Amontillado
Carol Shields • Mrs. Turner Cutting the Grass
John Edgar Wideman • All Stories Are True
Poetry
The Elements of Poetry
Chapter 17. Reading Poetry
Reading Poetry Responsively
Lisa Parker • Snapping Beans
Robert Hayden • Those Winter Sundays
John Updike • Dog’s Death
The Pleasure of Words
Gregory Corso • I am 25
A Sample Close Reading: An Annotated Version of “I am 25”
Robert Francis • Catch
A Sample Student Analysis: Tossing Metaphors in Robert Francis’s “Catch”
Philip Larkin • A Study of Reading Habits
Robert Morgan • Mountain Graveyard
E. E. Cummings • l(a
Anonymous • Western Wind
Regina Barreca • Nighttime Fires
Poetic Definitions of Poetry
Marianne Moore • Poetry
Billy Collins • Introduction to Poetry
Ruth Forman • Poetry Should Ride the Bus
Charles Bukowski • a poem is a city
Recurrent Poetic Figures: Five Ways of Looking at Roses
Robert Burns • A Red, Red Rose
Edmund Waller • Go, Lovely Rose
William Blake • The Sick Rose
Dorothy Parker • One Perfect Rose
H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) • Sea Rose
Poems for Further Study
Mary Oliver • The Poet with His Face in His Hands
Jim Tilley • The Big Questions
Alberto Ríos • Seniors
Alfred, Lord Tennyson • The Eagle
Edgar Allan Poe • Sonnet — To Science
Cornelius Eady • The Supremes
Poetry and the Visual Arts
Questions for Responsive Reading and Writing
Grant Wood • American Gothic (Painting)
John Stone • American Gothic (Poem)
Cathy Song • Girl Powdering Her Neck (Poem)
Kitagawa Utamaro • Girl Powdering Her Neck (Woodblock Print)
Yusef Komunyakaa • Facing It (Poem)
Maya Lin • The Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial Wall (Sculpture)
Wisława Szymborska • Bruegel’s Two Monkeys (Poem)
Pieter Bruegel the Elder • Two Monkeys (Painting)
Edward Hirsch • Edward Hopper and the House by the Railroad (1925) (Poem)
Edward Hopper • House by the Railroad (Painting)
Wisława Szymborska • Vermeer (Poem)
Vermeer • The Milkmaid (Painting)
Encountering Poetry: Images of Poetry in Popular Culture
Dorothy Parker • Unfortunate Coincidence (Poster)
Carl Sandburg • Window (Photo)
Roz Chast • The Love Song of J. Alfred Crew (Cartoon)
Tim Taylor • I Shake the Delicate Apparatus (Photo)
Eric Dunn and Mike Wigton • National Poetry Slam (Poster)
Kevin Fleming • National Poetry Slam (Photo)
Ted Kooser • American Life in Poetry (Web Screen)
Michael McFee • Spitwads (Poem in Newspaper)
Chapter 18. Word Choice, Word Order, and Tone
Word Choice
Diction
Denotations and Connotations
Randall Jarrell • The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
Word Order
Tone
Marilyn Nelson • How I Discovered Poetry
Katharyn Howd Machan • Hazel Tells LaVerne
A Sample Student Response: Tone in Katharyn Howd Machan’s “Hazel Tells LaVerne”
Martín Espada • Latin Night at the Pawnshop
Jonathan Swift • The Character of Sir Robert Walpole
Diction and Tone in Three Love Poems
Robert Herrick • To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time
Andrew Marvell • To His Coy Mistress
Ann Lauinger • Marvell Noir
Poems for Further Study
Walt Whitman • The Dalliance of the Eagles
Kwame Dawes • History Lesson at Eight a.m.
Cathy Song • The Youngest Daughter
John Keats • Ode on a Grecian Urn
Alice Jones • The Lungs
Louis Simpson • In the Suburbs
A Note on Reading Translations
Three Translations of a Poem by Sappho
Sappho • Immortal Aphrodite of the broidered throne (trans. Henry T. Wharton)
Sappho • Beautiful-throned, immortal Aphrodite (trans. Thomas Wentworth Higginson)
Sappho • Prayer to my lady of Paphos (trans. Mary Barnard)
Chapter 19. Images
Poetry’s Appeal to the Senses
William Carlos Williams • Poem
Walt Whitman • Cavalry Crossing a Ford
David Solway • Windsurfing
Matthew Arnold • Dover Beach
Poems for Further Study
Adelaide Crapsey • November Night
Ruth Fainlight • Crocuses
Mary Robinson • London’s Summer Morning
William Blake • London
A Sample Student Response: Imagery in William Blake’s “London” and Mary Robinson’s “London’s Summer Morning”
Kwame Dawes • The Habits of Love
Charles Simic • Fork
Sally Croft • Home-Baked Bread
John Keats • To Autumn
Perspective
T. E. Hulme • On the Differences between Poetry and Prose
Chapter 20. Figures of Speech
William Shakespeare • From Macbeth
Simile and Metaphor
Langston Hughes • Harlem
Jane Kenyon • The Socks
Anne Bradstreet • The Author to Her Book
Other Figures
Edmund Conti • Pragmatist
Dylan Thomas • The Hand That Signed the Paper
Janice Townley Moore • To a Wasp
Tajana Kovics • Text Message
Poems for Further Study
William Carlos Williams • To Waken an Old Lady
Ernest Slyman • Lightning Bugs
Martín Espada • The Mexican Cabdriver’s Poem for His Wife, Who Has Left Him
Judy Page Heitzman • The Schoolroom on the Second Floor of the Knitting Mill
Robert Pinsky • Icicles
Jim Stevens • Schizophrenia
Kay Ryan • Learning
Ronald Wallace • Building an Outhouse
Elaine Magarrell • The Joy of Cooking
Perspective
John R. Searle • Figuring Out Metaphors
Chapter 21. Symbol, Allegory, and Irony
Symbol
Robert Frost • Acquainted with the Night
Allegory
James Baldwin • Guilt, Desire and Love
Irony
Edwin Arlington Robinson • Richard Cory
A Sample Student Response: Irony in Edwin Arlington Robinson’s “Richard Cory”
Kenneth Fearing • AD
E. E. Cummings • next to of course god america i
Stephen Crane • A Man Said to the Universe
Poems for Further Study
Christina Rossetti • Goblin Market
Jane Kenyon • The Thimble
Kevin Pierce • Proof of Origin
Carl Sandburg • A Fence
Julio Marzán • Ethnic Poetry
Mark Halliday • Graded Paper
Robert Browning • My Last Duchess
William Blake • A Poison Tree
Perspective
Ezra Pound • On Symbols
Chapter 22. Sounds
Listening to Poetry
Anonymous • Scarborough Fair
John Updike • Player Piano
Emily Dickinson • A Bird came down the Walk —
A Sample Student Response: Sound in Emily Dickinson’s “A Bird came down the Walk —”
Rhyme
Richard Armour • Going to Extremes
Robert Southey • From “The Cataract of Lodore”
Perspective
David Lenson • On the Contemporary Use of Rhyme
Sound and Meaning
Gerard Manley Hopkins • God’s Grandeur
Poems for Further Study
Lewis Carroll • Jabberwocky
William Heyen • The Trains
Alfred, Lord Tennyson • Break, Break, Break
John Donne • Song
Kay Ryan • Dew
Andrew Hudgins • The Ice-Cream Truck
Robert Francis • The Pitcher
Helen Chasin • The Word Plum
Richard Wakefield • The Bell Rope
Jean Toomer • Unsuspecting
John Keats • Ode to a Nightingale
Howard Nemerov • Because You Asked about the Line between Prose and Poetry
Major Jackson • Autumn Landscape
Chapter 23. Patterns of Rhythm
Some Principles of Meter
Walt Whitman • From “Song of the Open Road”
William Wordsworth • My Heart Leaps Up
Suggestions for Scanning a Poem
Timothy Steele • Waiting for the Storm
A Sample Student Response: The Rhythm of Anticipation in Timothy Steele’s “Waiting for the Storm”
William Butler Yeats • That the Night Come
Poems for Further Study
Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Mnemonic
John Maloney • Good!
Alice Jones • The Foot
A. E. Housman • When I was one-and-twenty
Robert Herrick • Delight in Disorder
Ben Jonson • Still to Be Neat
E. E. Cummings • O sweet spontaneous
William Blake • The Lamb
William Blake • The Tyger
Carl Sandburg • Chicago
Gwendolyn Brooks • We Real Cool
Perspective
Louise Bogan • On Formal Poetry
Chapter 24. Poetic Forms
Some Common Poetic Forms
A. E. Housman • Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Robert Herrick • Upon Julia’s Clothes
Sonnet
John Keats • On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer
William Wordsworth • The World Is Too Much with Us
William Shakespeare • Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
William Shakespeare • My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun
Edna St. Vincent Millay • I will put Chaos into fourteen lines
Mark Jarman • Unholy Sonnet
R. S. Gwynn • Shakespearean Sonnet
Villanelle
Dylan Thomas • Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night
Edwin Arlington Robinson • The House on the Hill
Sestina
Algernon Charles Swinburne • Sestina
Florence Cassen Mayers • All-American Sestina
Julia Alvarez • Bilingual Sestina
Epigram
Samuel Taylor Coleridge • What Is an Epigram?
David McCord • Epitaph on a Waiter
Paul Laurence Dunbar • Theology
Limerick
Arthur Henry Reginald Buller • There was a young lady named Bright
Laurence Perrine • The limerick’s never averse
Haiku
Matsuo Bashō • Under cherry trees
Carolyn Kizer • After Bashō
Amy Lowell • Last night it rained
Gary Snyder • A Dent in a Bucket
Ghazal
Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib • Ghazal 4
Patricia Smith • Hip-Hop Ghazal
Elegy
Ben Jonson • On My First Son
Thomas Gray • Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
Kate Hanson Foster • Elegy of Color
Ode
Alexander Pope • Ode on Solitude
Parody
Blanche Farley • The Lover Not Taken
Joan Murray • We Old Dudes
Picture Poem
Michael McFee • In Medias Res
Perspective
Elaine Mitchell • Form
Chapter 25. Open Form
Walt Whitman • From “I Sing the Body Electric”
Perspective
Walt Whitman • On Rhyme and Meter
A Sample Student Response: The Power of Walt Whitman’s Open Form Poem “I Sing the Body Electric”
David Shumate • Shooting the Horse
Reginald Shepherd • Self-Portrait Surviving Spring
Major Jackson • The Chase
Michael Ryan • I
E. E. Cummings • old age sticks
Natasha Trethewey • On Captivity
Julio Marzán • The Translator at the Reception for Latin American Writers
Charles Harper Webb • Descent
Kevin Young • Eddie Priest’s Barbershop & Notary
Anonymous • The Frog
David Hernandez • All-American
Found Poem
Donald Justice • Order in the Streets
Approaches to Poetry
Chapter 26. A Study of Emily Dickinson
A Brief Biography
An Introduction to Her Work
If I can stop one Heart from breaking
If I shouldn’t be alive
The Thought beneath so slight a film —
To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee
Success is counted sweetest
Water, is taught by thirst
Papa above!
Safe in their Alabaster Chambers — (1859 version)
Safe in their Alabaster Chambers — (1861 version)
Portraits are to daily faces
Some keep the Sabbath going to Church —
I taste a liquor never brewed —
“Heaven” — is what I cannot reach!
I like a look of Agony
Wild Nights — Wild Nights!
The Soul selects her own Society —
Much Madness is divinest Sense —
I dwell in Possibility —
I heard a Fly buzz — when I died —
Because I could not stop for Death —
The Bustle in a House
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant —
Oh Sumptuous moment
A Route of Evanescence
From all the Jails the Boys and Girls
Perspectives on Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson • A Description of Herself
Thomas Wentworth Higginson • On Meeting Dickinson for the First Time
Mabel Loomis Todd • The Character of Amherst
Richard Wilbur • On Dickinson’s Sense of Privation
Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar • On Dickinson’s White Dress
Paula Bennett • On “I heard a Fly buzz — when I died —”
Martha Nell Smith • On “Because I could not stop for Death —”
Questions for Writing about an Author in Depth
A Sample In-Depth Study
“Faith” is a fine invention
I know that He exists
I never saw a Moor —
Apparently with no surprise
A Sample Student Paper: Religious Faith in Four Poems by Emily Dickinson
Suggested Topics for Longer Papers
Chapter 27. A Study of Robert Frost
A Brief Biography
An Introduction to His Work
The Road Not Taken
The Pasture
Mowing
Mending Wall
Birches
“Out, Out —”
Fire and Ice
Dust of Snow
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
The Need of Being Versed in Country Things
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Once by the Pacific
Neither Out Far nor In Deep
Design
Desert Places
The Gift Outright
Perspectives on Robert Frost
Robert Frost • “In White”: An Early Version of “Design”
Robert Frost • On the Living Part of a Poem
Amy Lowell • On Frost’s Realistic Technique
Robert Frost • On the Figure a Poem Makes
Herbert R. Coursen Jr. • A Parodic Interpretation of “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”
Suggested Topics for Longer Papers
Chapter 28. A Study of Billy Collins: The Author Reflects on Five Poems
A Brief Biography and an Introduction to His Work
Billy Collins • “How Do Poems Travel?” (Introduction)
Billy Collins • Osso Buco (Poem)
Billy Collins • On Writing “Osso Buco” (Essay)
Billy Collins • Nostalgia (Poem)
Billy Collins • On Writing “Nostalgia” (Essay)
Billy Collins • Questions About Angels (Poem)
Billy Collins • On Writing “Questions About Angels” (Essay)
Billy Collins • Litany (Poem)
Billy Collins • On Writing “Litany” (Essay)
Billy Collins • Building With Its Face Blown Off (Poem)
Perspective
Billy Collins • On “Building with Its Face Blown Off”: Michael Meyer Interviews Billy Collins
Draft Poems
Billy Collins • Three Draft Manuscript Pages (Facsimiles)
Suggested Topics for Longer Papers
Chapter 29. A Study of Julia Alvarez: The Author Reflects on Five Poems
A Brief Biography
An Introduction to Her Work
Julia Alvarez • Queens, 1963 (Poem)
Julia Alvarez • On Writing “Queens, 1963” (Essay)
Queens Civil Rights Demonstration (Photo)
Perspective
Marny Requa • From an Interview with Julia Alvarez
Julia Alvarez • Housekeeping Cages (Essay)
Julia Alvarez • On Writing “Housekeeping Cages” and Her Housekeeping Poems (Essay)
Julia Alvarez • Dusting (Poem)
Julia Alvarez • On Writing “Dusting” (Essay)
Julia Alvarez • Ironing Their Clothes (Poem)
Julia Alvarez • On Writing “Ironing Their Clothes” (Essay)
Julia Alvarez • Sometimes the Words Are So Close (Poem)
Julia Alvarez • Drafts of “Sometimes the Words Are So Close:” A Poet’s Writing Process (Facsimiles)
Julia Alvarez • On Writing “Sometimes the Words Are So Close” (Essay)
Julia Alvarez • First Muse (Poem)
Julia Alvarez • On Writing “First Muse” (Essay)
Perspective
Kelli Lyon Johnson • Mapping an Identity
Chapter 30. A Cultural Case Study: Harlem Renaissance Poets Claude McKay, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Langston Hughes, and Countee Cullen
Claude McKay
The Harlem Dancer
If We Must Die
The Tropics in New York
The Lynching
America
The White City
The Barrier
Georgia Douglas Johnson
Youth
Foredoom
Calling Dreams
Lost Illusions
Fusion
Prejudice
Langston Hughes
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
Jazzonia
The Weary Blues
Lenox Avenue: Midnight
Ballad of the Landlord
Countee Cullen
Yet Do I Marvel
Incident
Heritage
Perspectives
Karen Jackson Ford • Hughes’s Aesthetics of Simplicity
David Chinitz • The Romanticization of Africa in the 1920s
Alain Locke • Review of Georgia Douglas Johnson’s Bronze: A Book of Verse
Countee Cullen • On Racial Poetry
Onwuchekwa Jemie • On Universal Poetry
Suggested Topics for Longer Papers
Chapter 31. Song Lyrics as Poetry
Anonymous • Lord Randal
Frederic Weatherly • Danny Boy
W. C. Handy • Beale Street Blues
Woody Guthrie • Gypsy Davy
Hank Williams • I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry
Bob Dylan • A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall
Bob Dylan • It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)
John Lennon and Paul McCartney • I Am the Walrus
Van Morrison • Astral Weeks
Joni Mitchell • Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire
Bruce Springsteen • You’re Missing
Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan • Alice
Janelle Monáe • Americans
Chapter 32. A Thematic Case Study: The Natural World
J. Estanislao Lopez • Meditation on Beauty
Jane Hirshfield • Optimism
Wendell Berry • The Peace of Wild Things
Gail White • Dead Armadillos
Dave Lucas • November
Walt McDonald • Coming Across It
Edna St. Vincent Millay • Spring
Alden Nowlan • The Bull Moose
Kay Ryan • Turtle
Allen Ginsberg • Sunflower Sutra
Mary Oliver • Wild Geese
Sylvia Plath • Pheasant
Suggested Topics for Longer Papers
Chapter 33. A Thematic Case Study: The World of Work
Jan Beatty • My Father Teaches Me to Dream
Michael Chitwood • Men Throwing Bricks
Walt Whitman • I Hear America Singing
Langston Hughes • I, Too
Pedro Pietri • Puerto Rican Obituary
Theodore Roethke • Dolor
Marge Piercy • To be of use
Seamus Heaney • Digging
Rita Dove • Daystar
Suggested Topics for Longer Papers
An Anthology of Poems
Chapter 34. An Anthology of Poems
Margaret Atwood • Owl Song
W. H. Auden • The Unknown Citizen
Charles Baudelaire • A Carrion
Aphra Behn • Song: Love Armed
William Blake • Infant Sorrow
William Blake • The Mental Traveller
Anne Bradstreet • Before the Birth of One of Her Children
Emily Brontë • Stars
Elizabeth Barrett Browning • How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways
Michelle Cliff • The Land of Look Behind
Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Kubla Khan: or, a Vision in a Dream
Gregory Corso • Marriage
Bei Dao • Notes from the City of the Sun
John Donne • Batter My Heart
John Donne • The Flea
Paul Laurence Dunbar • Sympathy
T. S. Eliot • The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
T. S. Eliot • The Hollow Men
Lawrence Ferlinghetti • Constantly Risking Absurdity
Louisa Glück • Celestial Music
Seamus Heaney • Personal Helicon
Gerard Manley Hopkins • Pied Beauty
Brionne Janae • Alternative Facts
Ben Jonson • To Celia
John Keats • When I have fears that I may cease to be
John Keats • Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art —
Philip Larkin • Sad Steps
Emma Lazarus • The New Colossus
Luise Lopez • Junior Year Abroad
Audre Lorde • Learning to Write
Robert Lowell • Skunk Hour
John Milton • When I consider how my light is spent
Naomi Shihab Nye • To Manage
Edgar Allan Poe • Annabel Lee
Adelia Prado • Denouement
Edwin Arlington Robinson • Miniver Cheevy
William Shakespeare • Let me not to the marriage of true minds
William Shakespeare • When, in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes
Percy Bysshe Shelley • Ozymandias
Stevie Smith • Not Waving but Drowning
Tracy K. Smith • Self-Portrait as the Letter Y
Wallace Stevens • Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
Jonathan Swift • A Description of the Morning
Alfred, Lord Tennyson • Ulysses
Natasha Trethewey • Incident
Phillis Wheatley • To S. M. a young African Painter, on seeing his Works
Walt Whitman • When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer
William Wordsworth • I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
William Wordsworth • The Solitary Reaper
William Butler Yeats • Leda and the Swan
William Butler Yeats • The Lake Isle of Innisfree
Drama
The Study of Drama
Chapter 35. Reading Drama
Reading Drama Responsively
Susan Glaspell • Trifles
A Sample Close Reading: An Annotated Section of Trifles
Perspective
Susan Glaspell • From the Short Story Version of Trifles
Plays in Performance
Oedipus the King
Othello
Fences
Proof
The Birthday Party
How I Learned to Drive
The Importance of Being Earnest
A Doll’s House
Elements of Drama
Lynn Nottage • POOF!
Chapter 36. A Study of Sophocles
Theatrical Conventions of Greek Drama
Tragedy
Sophocles • Oedipus the King (trans. by David Grene)
Perspectives on Sophocles
Aristotle • On Tragic Character
Sigmund Freud • On the Oedipus Complex
Muriel Rukeyser • On Oedipus the King
David Wiles • On Oedipus the King as a Political Play
Chapter 37. A Study of William Shakespeare
Shakespeare’s Theater
The Range of Shakespeare’s Drama: History, Comedy, and Tragedy
A Note on Reading Shakespeare
William Shakespeare • Othello, the Moor of Venice
Perspectives on Shakespeare
The Mayor of London • Objections to the Elizabethan Theater
Lisa Jardine • On Boy Actors in Female Roles
Samuel Johnson • On Shakespeare’s Characters
Jane Adamson • On Desdemona’s Role in Othello
David Bevington • On Othello’s Heroic Struggle
James Kincaid • On the Value of Comedy in the Face of Tragedy
Suggested Topics for Longer Papers
Chapter 38. Modern Drama
Realism
Naturalism
Theatrical Conventions of Modern Drama
Oscar Wilde • The Importance of Being Earnest
Chapter 39. A Critical Case Study: Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House
Henrik Ibsen • A Doll’s House (trans. R. Farquharson Sharp)
Perspectives
Henrik Ibsen • Notes for A Doll House
A Nineteenth-Century Husband’s Letter to His Wife
Barry Witham and John Lutterbie • A Marxist Approach to A Doll House
Carol Strongin Tufts • A Psychoanalytic Reading of Nora
Joan Templeton • Is A Doll House a Feminist Text?
Questions for Writing
A Sample Student Paper: On the Other Side of the Slammed Door in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House
Chapter 40. Contemporary Drama
David Auburn • Proof
Beyond Realism
Musical Theater
Drama in Popular Forms
A Collection of Contemporary Plays
Chapter 41. Plays for Further Reading
Harold Pinter • The Birthday Party
Paula Vogel • How I Learned to Drive
August Wilson • Fences
Perspective
David Savran • An Interview with August Wilson
Strategies for Reading and Writing
Chapter 42. Critical Strategies for Reading
Critical Thinking
Formalist Strategies
Biographical Strategies
Psychological Strategies
Historical Strategies
Marxist Criticism
New Historicist Criticism
Cultural Criticism
Gender Strategies
Feminist Criticism
LGBTQ+ Criticism
Mythological Strategies
Reader-Response Strategies
Deconstructionist Strategies
Chapter 43. Writing about Literature
Why Am I Being Asked to Do This?
From Reading and Discussion to Writing
Reading the Work Closely
Prewriting
Annotating the Text and Journal Note Taking
Choosing a Topic
More Focused Prewriting
Arguing about Literature
Writing
Writing a First Draft
Textual Evidence: Using Quotations, Summarizing, and Paraphrasing
Writing the Introduction and Conclusion
Revising and Editing
Questions for Writing: A Revision Checklist
Types of Writing Assignments
Explication
A Sample Student Explication: A Reading of Emily Dickinson’s “There’s a certain Slant of light”
Analysis
A Sample Student Analysis: Memory in Elizabeth Bishop’s “Manners”
Comparison and Contrast
A Sample Student Comparison: The Struggle for Women’s Self-Definition in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and James Joyce’s “Eveline”
Writing about Fiction, Poetry, and Drama
Writing about Fiction
Questions for Responsive Reading and Writing About Fiction
A Sample Student Essay: John Updike’s “A & P” as a State of Mind
Writing about Poetry
Questions for Responsive Reading and Writing About Poetry
The Elements Together
John Donne • Death Be Not Proud
A Sample Close Reading: An Annotated Version of “Death Be Not Proud”
A Sample First Response
Organizing Your Thoughts
A Sample Informal Outline
The Elements and Theme
A Sample Explication: The Use of Conventional Metaphors for Death in John Donne’s “Death Be Not Proud”
Writing about Drama
Questions for Responsive Reading and Writing About Drama
A Sample Student Paper: The Feminist Evidence in Susan Glaspell’s Trifles
Chapter 44. The Literary Research Paper
Choosing a Topic
Finding Sources
Evaluating Sources and Taking Notes
Developing a Draft, Integrating Sources, and Organizing the Paper
Documenting Sources and Avoiding Plagiarism
The List of Works Cited
Parenthetical References
A Sample Student Research Paper: How William Faulkner’s Narrator Cultivates a Rose for Emily
Glossary of Literary Terms
Index of First Lines
Index of Authors and Titles
Index of Terms
Inside Back Cover
Back Cover
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