Preface. Professional Acknowledgments. Foreword to Students. WRITING ABOUT LITERATURE. I. Why Write about Literature? II. For Whom Do You Write? III. Two Basic Approaches.
1. Explication. 2. Analysis. IV. Choosing a Topic. 1. Papers That Focus on a Single Literary Work.
2. Papers of Comparison and Contrast. 3. Papers on a Number of Works by a Single Author. 4. Papers on a Number of Works with Some Feature Other than Authorship in Common. V. Proving Your Point.
VI. Writing the Paper. VII. Writing In-Class Essays or Essay Tests. VIII. Introducing Quotations. 1. Principles and Guidelines.
IX. Documentation. 1. Textual Documentation. 2. Parenthetical Documentation. 3. Documentation by Works Cited.
4. Documentation of Electronic Sources. X. Stance and Style. XI. Grammar, Punctuation, and Usage: Common Problems. 1. Grammar.
2. Punctuation. 3. Usage. XII. Writing Samples. 1. Fiction Explication.
2. Fiction Analysis. 3. Poetry Explication. 4. Poetry Analysis. 5. Drama Explication.
6. Drama Analysis. FICTION. The Elements of Fiction. 1. Reading the Story. Reviewing Chapter One. Richard Connell, "The Most Dangerous Game".
Tobias Wolff, "Hunters in the Snow". Understanding and Evaluating Fiction. Suggestions for Writing. 2. Plot and Structure. Reviewing Chapter Two. Graham Greene, "The Destructors". Alice Munro, "How I Met My Husband".
Kazuo Ishiguro, "A Family Supper". Suggestions for Writing. 3. Characterization. Reviewing Chapter Three. Alice Walker, "Everyday Use". Katherine Mansfield, "Miss Brill". James Baldwin, "Sonny''s Blues".
James Joyce, "Araby". Suggestions for Writing. 4. Theme. Reviewing Chapter Four. F. Scott Fitzgerald, "Babylon Revisited". Anton Chekhov, "The Darling".
Eudora Welty, "A Worn Path". Nadine Gordimer, "Once Upon a Time". Suggestions for Writing. 5. Point of View. Reviewing Chapter Five. Willa Cather, "Paul''s Case". Shirley Jackson, "The Lottery".
Katherine Anne Porter, "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall". Ernest Hemingway, "Hills Like White Elephants". Suggestions for Writing. 6. Symbol, Allegory, and Fantasy. Reviewing Chapter Six. D. H.
Lawrence, "The Rocking-Horse Winner". Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "The Yellow Wallpaper". Ray Bradbury, "There Will Come Soft Rains". Suggestions for Writing. 7. Humor and Irony. Reviewing Chapter Seven. Daniel Orozco, "Orientation".
Mark Twain, "Cannibalism in the Cars". Albert Camus, "The Guest". John Updike, "A&P". Suggestions for Writing. 8. Evaluating Fiction. Reviewing Chapter Eight. Guy de Maupassant, "The Necklace".
Edith Wharton, "Roman Fever". Suggestions for Writing. Three Featured Writers: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Flannery O''Connor, Joyce Carol Oates. Nathaniel Hawthorne, "Young Goodman Brown". "The Minister''s Black Veil". "The Birthmark". Flannery O''Connor, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find". "Good Country People".
"Revelation". Joyce Carol Oates, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" "Life After High School". "The Scarf". STORIES FOR FURTHER READING. Raymond Carver, "Neighbors". Kate Chopin, "The Story of an Hour". William Faulkner, "A Rose for Emily". Susan Glaspell, "A Jury of Her Peers".
Zora Neale Hurston, "Sweat". Henry James, "The Real Thing". Franz Kafka, "The Metamorphosis". Jhumpa Lahiri, "Interpreter of Maladies". Ursula K. Le Guin, "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas". Edgar Allan Poe, "The Fall of the House of Usher". Annie Proulx, "Job History".
Ron Rash, "The Ascent". POETRY. The Elements of Poetry. 1. What Is Poetry? Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "The Eagle". William Shakespeare, "Winter". Wilfred Owen, "Dulce et Decorum Est". Reviewing Chapter One.
Understanding and Evaluating Poetry. William Shakespeare, "Shall I compare thee to a summer''s day?" Sylvia Plath, "Black Rook in Rainy Weather". John Donne, "The Triple Fool". Gwendolyn Brooks, "The Bean Eaters". Louise Gluck, "Labor Day". William Carlos Williams, "The Red Wheelbarrow". Elizabeth Bishop, "Filling Station". Langston Hughes, "Suicide''s Note".
Edwin Arlington Robinson, "Richard Cory". Ben Jonson, "On My First Son". Billy Collins, "Introduction to Poetry". Suggestions for Writing. 2. Reading the Poem. Thomas Hardy, "The Man He Killed". Philip Larkin, "A Study of Reading Habits".
A.E. Housman, "Is my team plowing". Reviewing Chapter Two. John Donne, "Break of day". Emily Dickinson, "There''s been a Death, in the Opposite House". Ted Hughes, "Hawk Roosting". John Keats, "Ode on Melancholy".
Robert Herrick, "Upon Julia''s Clothes". Sylvia Plath, "Mirror". Natasha Trethewey, "Collection Day". Walt Whitman, "The Dalliance of the Eagles". Adrienne Rich, "Storm Warnings". Suggestions for Writing. 3. Denotation and Connotation.
Emily Dickinson, "There is no Frigate like a Book". William Shakespeare, "When my love swears that she is made of truth". Mary Oliver, "Spring in the Classroom". Exercises. Reviewing Chapter Three. Langston Hughes, "Cross". William Wordsworth, "The world is too much with us". Robert Frost, "Desert Places".
Natasha Trethewey, "Accounting". Sharon Olds, "35/10". J. D. McClatchy, "The Ledger". Julia Alvarez, "Dusting". Elizabeth Bishop, "In the Waiting Room". Wallace Stevens, "Disillusionment of Ten O''Clock".
Suggestions for Writing. 4. Imagery. Robert Browning, "Meeting at Night". Robert Browning, "Parting at Morning". Exercises. Reviewing Chapter Four. Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Spring".
William Carlos Williams, "The Widow''s Lament in Springtime". Emily Dickinson, "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain". Adrienne Rich, "Living in Sin". Seamus Heaney, "The Forge". Robert Frost, "After Apple-Picking". Robert Hayden, "Those Winter Sundays". Walt Whitman, "I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing". Wallace Stevens, "The Snow Man".
John Keats, "To Autumn". Suggestions for Writing. 5. Figurative Language 1: Simile, Metaphor, Personification, Apostrophe, Metonymy. Langston Hughes, "Harlem". Emily Dickinson, "It sifts from Leaden Sieves". Anne Bradstreet, "The Author to Her Book". John Keats, "Bright Star".
Exercise. Reviewing Chapter Five. Sylvia Plath, "Metaphors". Emily Dickinson, "I taste a liquor never brewed". Philip Larkin, "Toads". Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Snowstorm". Rachel Hadas, "Ghost Yogurt". Billy Collins, "Divorce".
John Donne, "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning". Andrew Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress". Suggestions for Writing. 6. Figurative Language 2: Symbol, Allegory. Robert Frost, "The Road Not Taken". Walt Whitman, "A Noiseless Patient Spider". William Blake, "The Sick Rose".
Seamus Heaney, "Digging". Robert Herrick, "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time". George Herbert, "Redemption". Exercises. Reviewing Chapter Six. Louise Gluck, "Purple Bathing Suit". Clive James, "Whitman and the Moth". Archibald MacLeish, "You, Andrew Marvell".
Robert Frost, "Fire and Ice". Emily Dickinson, "Because I could not stop for Death". John Donne, "Hymn to God My God, in My Sickness". Sylvia Plath, "Spinster". Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Ulysses". Suggestions for Writing. 7. Figurative Language 3: Paradox, Overstatement, Understatement, Irony.
Emily Dickinson, "Much Madness is divinest Sense". John Donne, "The Sun Rising". Marge Piercy, "Barbie Doll". William Blake, "The Chimney Sweeper". Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Ozymandias". Exercise. Reviewing Chapter Seven. William Wordsworth, "A slumber did my spirit seal".
John Donne, "Batter my heart, three-personed God". Seamus Heaney, "Mid-Term Break". W. H. Auden, "The Unknown Citizen". Lucille Clifton, "In the inner city". Emily Dickinson, "What Soft--Cherubic Creatures". Theodore Roethke, "My Papa''s Waltz".
Sylvia Plath, "The Colossus". Robert Browning, "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister". Suggestions for Writing. 8. Allusion. Robert Frost, "Out, Out--". William Shakespeare from Macbeth ("She should have died hereafter"). Sylvia Plath, "Wuthering Heights".
Reviewing Chapter Eight. Louise Gluck, Eurydice. e. e. cummings, "in Just-". John Milton, "On His Blindness". Edwin Arlington Robinson, "Miniver Cheevy". Sharon Olds, "My Son the Man".
T. S. Eliot, "Journey of the Magi". Billy Collins, "Genesis". William Butler Yeats, "Leda and the Swan". Emily Dickinson, "A little East of Jordan". Rita Dove, "Persephone, Falling". Suggestions for Writing.
9. Meaning and Idea. A. E. Housman, "Loveliest of Trees". Robert Frost, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening". Reviewing Chapter Nine. Emily Dickinson, "Four Trees--upon a solitary Acre".
Robert Frost, "Design." e. e. cummings, "O sweet spontaneous". Walt Whitman, "When I Heard the Learn''d Astronomer". John Keats, "On the Sonnet". Billy Collins, "Sonnet". Natasha Trethewey, "Southern History".
Rita Dove, "Kentucky, 1833". William Blake, "The Lamb". William Blake, "The Tiger". Suggestions for Writing. 10. Tone. Denise Levertov, "To the Snake". Emily Dickinson, "A narrow Fellow in the Grass".
Michael Drayton, "Since there''s no help". Louise Gluck, "Lost Love". Reviewing Chapter Ten. William Shakespeare, "My mistress'' eyes". Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Crossing the Bar". Thomas Hardy, "The Oxen". John Donne, "The Flea". Sharon Olds, "Bop after Hip Op".
William Butler Yeats, "Among School Children". Natasha Trethewey, "History Lesson". Matthew Arnold, "Dover Beach". Philip Larkin, "Church Going". Alexander Pope, "Engraved on the Collar of a Dog Which I Gave to His Royal Highness". Suggestions for Writing. 11. Musical Devices.
W. H. Auden, "The night when joy began". Theodore Roethke, "The Waking". Gerard Manley Hopkins, "God''s Grandeur". Exercise. Reviewing Chapter Eleven. William Shakespeare, "Blow, blow, thou winter wind".
Gwendolyn Brooks, "We Real Cool". Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Counting-Out Rhyme". Edgar Allan Poe, "The Bells". Sylvia Plath, "Morning Song". Sharon Olds, "Rite of Passage". Mary Oliver, "Music Lessons". William Stafford, "Traveling through the dark".
Robert Frost, "Nothing Gold Can Stay". Suggestions for Writing. 12. Rhythm and Meter. George Herbert, "Virtue". Exercises. Reviewing Chapter Twelve. William Blake, "Introduction to Songs of Innocence".
Walt Whitman, "Had I the Choice". Geo.