Literature: the Human Experience: Reading and Writing

Preface for Instructors INTRODUCTION Responding to Literature                     Emily Dickinson, There Is No Frigate Like A Book Why We Read Literature Reading Actively Reading and Thinking Critically Reading Fiction           The Methods of Fiction                     Tone                     Plot                     Characterization                     Setting                     Point of View                     Irony                     Theme           Exploring Fiction Reading Poetry                     Walt Whitman, When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer           Word Choice           Figurative Language           The Music of Poetry           Exploring Poetry Annotating While You Read                     William Shakespeare, Sonnet 29                     Edwin Arlington Robinson, How Annandale Went Out Reading Drama           Stages and Staging           The Elements of Drama                     Characters                     Dramatic Irony                     Plot and Conflict          Exploring Drama Reading Nonfiction           Types of Nonfiction                     Narrative Nonfiction                     Descriptive Nonfiction                     Expository Nonfiction                     Argumentative Nonfiction           Analyzing Nonfiction                     The Thesis                     Structure and Detail                     Style and Tone           Exploring Nonfiction  Writing About Literature Responding to Your Reading           Keeping a Journal            Exploring and Planning                       Good Questions                        Establishing a Working Thesis                       Gathering Information                       Organizing Information Revising the Essay           Editing Your Draft                       Selecting Strong Verbs                       Eliminating Unnecessary Modifiers                       Making Connections           Proofreading Your Draft Some Common Writing Assignments           Explication           Analysis           Comparison and Contrast The Research Paper           An Annotated Student Research Paper Some Matters of Form and Documentation           Titles           Quotations                       Brackets and Ellipses                       Quotation Marks and Other Punctuation           Documentation                       Documenting Internet Sources A Checklist for Writing about Literature  INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE Questions for Thinking and Writing Fiction Nathaniel Hawthorne, Young Goodman Brown (1804-1864) James Joyce, Araby (1882-1941) NEW Flannery O'Connor, A Good Man Is Hard to Find (1925-1964) Toni Cade Bambara, The Lesson (1939-1995) Jamaica Kincaid, Girl (b. 1949) Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street (b. 1954) NEW Aimee Bender, Tiger Mending (b. 1969)  Connecting Stories: Learning on the Job NEW John Updike, A & P (b. 1932) NEW Virgil Suarez, The Perfect Hotspot (b. 1962)  Poetry William Blake, The Chimney Sweeper (1757-1827) NEW William Blake, The Lamb (1757-1827) William Blake, The Tyger (1757-1827) William Blake, The Garden of Love (1757-1827) William Blake, London (1757-1827) John Keats, On First Looking into Chapman's Homer (1795-1821) Robert Browning, My Last Duchess (1812-1889) Emily Dickinson, I felt a Funeral, in my Brain (1830-1886) Thomas Hardy, The Ruined Maid (1840-1928) Gerard Manley Hopkins, Spring and Fall (1844-1889) A. E. Housman, When I Was One-and-Twenty (1859-1936) A. E. Housman, Terence, This Is Stupid Stuff (1859-1936) William Butler Yeats, Leda and the Swan (1865-1939) Robert Frost, Birches (1874-1963) Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken (1874-1963) NEW e.e. cummings, In Just— (1894-1962) Stevie Smith, To Carry the Child (1902-1971) Stevie Smith, Not Waving but Drowning (1902-1971) Countee Cullen, Incident (1903-1946) Dylan Thomas, Fern Hill (1914-1953) Ruth Stone, Metaphors of the Tree (b. 1915) Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Constantly Risking Absurdity (b. 1919) Philip Larkin, This Be the Verse (1922-1985) Philip Larkin, A Study of Reading Habits (1922-1985) NEW Audre Lorde, Hanging Fire (1934-1992) NEW Stephen Dobyns, Do They Have a Reason? (b. 1941) NEW Louise Gluck, The School Children (b. 1943) Hanan Mikha’il Ashrawi, From the Diary of an Almost Four-Year Old (b.1946) Katherine McAlpine, Plus C'est la Même Chose (b. 1948) Rita Dove, Lamentations (b. 1952) Sandra Cisneros, My Wicked Wicked Ways (b. 1954) John Brehm, At the Poetry Reading (b. 1955) Evelyn Lau, Solipsism (b. 1971)  Connecting Poems: Revisiting Fairy Tales Bruce Bennett, The True Story of Snow White (1906-2007) Anne Sexton, Cinderella (1928-1974) NEW Marilyn Hacker, Conte (b. 1942) Katharyn Howd Machan, Hazel Tells Laverne (b. 1952)  Connecting Poems: Voices of Experience NEW Langston Hughes, Mother to Son (1902-1967) Peter Meinke, Advice to My Son (b. 1932) Robert Mezey, My Mother (b. 1935) Molly Peacock, Our Room (b. 1947) NEW Gary Soto, Behind Grandmother’s House (b. 1952)  Drama  Case Study: Critical Responses to Oedipus Rex Sophocles, Oedipus Rex (496?-406 B.C.) Aristotle, from the Poetics (384-322 B.C.) NEW Sigmund Freud, On the Oedipus Complex (1856-1939) NEW Francis Fergusson, Oedipus, Myth and Play – charters (1904-1986) D.W. Lucas, The Drama of Oedipus (1905-1985) Arthur Miller, Tragedy and the Common Man (1915-2005) NEW David Wiles, Oedipus and Politics (b. 1951) NEW Suzan-Lori Parks, Father Comes Home from the Wars (b. 1963)  Nonfiction  Langston Hughes, Salvation (1902-1967) Joan Didion, On Morality (b. 1934) NEW Brian Doyle, Pop Art – seeing & writing (b. 1935) Judith Ortiz Cofer, American History (b. 1952)  Connecting Essays: Advice to Graduates NEW Louis Menand, The Graduates (b. 1952) NEW David Foster Wallace, Commencement Speech, Kenyon College (1962-2008)  Further Questions for Thinking and Writing  CONFORMITY AND REBELLION Questions for Thinking and Writing Fiction Herman Melville, Bartleby the Scrivener (1819-1891) Franz Kafka, A Hunger Artist (1883-1924) NEW Ralph Ellison, Battle Royal (1914-1994) Shirley Jackson, The Lottery (1919-1965) Ursula K. LeGuin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas (b. 1929) Amy Tan, Two Kinds (b. 1952) NEW Hari Kunzru, Raj, Bohemian (b. 1969)  Connecting Stories: Superantiheroes Harlan Ellison, "Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman (b. 1934) NEW Jonathan Lethem, Super Goat Man (b. 1964)  Poetry NEW George Herbert, The Collar (1593-1633) Phyllis Wheatley, On Being Brought from Africa to America (1753-1784) William Wordsworth, The World Is Too Much with Us (1770-1850) Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Ulysses (1809-1892) Emily Dickinson, Much Madness is divinest Sense (1830-1886) Emily Dickinson, She rose to His Requirement (1830-1886) William Butler Yeats, Easter 1916 (1865-1939) William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming (1865-1939) Edwin Arlington Robinson, Miniver Cheevy (1869-1935) Wallace Stevens, Sunday Morning (1879-1955) Claude McKay, If We Must Die (1890-1948) Langston Hughes, Harlem (1902-1967) W. H. Auden, The Unknown Citizen (1907-1973) Muriel Rukeyser, Myth (1913-1980) Henry Reed, Naming of Parts (1914-1986) NEW Anna Akhmatova, from Requiem (1889-1966) Dudley Randall, Ballad of Birmingham (b. 1914) NEW Gwendolyn Brooks, We Real Cool (1917-2000) Jenny Joseph, Warning (b. 1932) Tawfiq Zayyad, Here I Shall Stay (1932-1994) Marge Piercy, The Market Economy (b. 1936) NEW Richard Garcia, Why I Left the Church (b. 1941) Carolyn Forché, The Colonel (b. 1950)  Connecting Poems: Revolutionary Thinking William Butler Yeats, The Great Day (1865-1939) Robert Frost, A Semi-Revolution (1874-1963) Oscar Williams, A Total Revolution (1900-1964) Nikki Giovanni, Dreams (b. 1943)  Connecting Poems: Questioning Work NEW Philip Levine, What Work Is (b. 1928) NEW Marge Piercy, The Secretary Chant (b. 1936) NEW Jimmy Santiago Baca, Tire Shop (b. 1952)  Connecting Poems: Soldiers’ Protests NEW Thomas Hardy, The Man He Killed (1840-1928) Wilfred Owen, Dulce et Decorum Est (1893-1918) Hanan Mikha’l Ashwari, Night Patrol (b. 1946) Steve Earle, Rich Man’s War (b. 1955)  Drama Sophocles, Antigonê (496?-406 B.C.) Henrik Ibsen, A Doll's House (1828-1906)  Nonfiction Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal (1667-1745) NEW E.J. Levy, Mastering the Art of French Cooking (b. ?)  Connecting Essays: Weighing Belief E. L. Doctorow, Why We Are Infidels (b. 1931) Salman Rushdie, "Imagine There's No Heaven" (b. 1947)  Case Study: "Letter from Birmingham Jail" in Historical Context Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail (1929-1968) From the U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 2 From Dred Scott v. Sandford Jim Crow Laws A Call for Unity from Alabama Clergymen The Birmingham Truce Agreement  Further Questions for Thinking and Writing  CULTURE AND IDENTITY Questions for Thinking and Writing Fiction Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper (1860-1935) James Baldwin, Sonny's Blues (1924-1987) Chinua Achebe, Marriage Is a Private Affair (b. 1930) Alice Walker, Everyday Use (b. 1944) Sherman Alexie, This is what it means to say Phoenix, Arizona (b. 1966) NEW Jhumpa Lahiri, Hell-Heaven (b. 1967)  Connecting Stories: Insiders and Outcasts William Faulkner, A Rose for Emily (1897-1962) NEW Ha Jin, The Bridegroom (b. 1956) Poetry NEW Emily Dickinson, I’m Nobody! Who Are You? (1830-1886) Paul Laurence Dunbar, We Wear the Mask (1872-1906) T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1888-1965) E.E. Cummings, The Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls (1894-1962) M. Carl Holman, Mr. Z (1919-1988) Etheridge Knight, Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane (19311991) Wole Soyinka, The Telephone Conversation (b. 1934) NEW Kay Ryan, All Shall Be Restored (b. 1945) NEW Juan Felipe Herrera, 187 Reasons Why Mexicanos Can’t Cross the Border (b. 1948) NEW Mark Halliday, Seventh Avenue (b. 1949) Judith Ortiz Cofer, Latin Women Pray (b. 1952) Rita Dove, Daystar (b. 1952) NEW Mark Doty, Esta Noche (b. 1953) NEW Louise Erdrich, Dear John Wayne (b. 1954) Cathy Song, Stamp Collecting (b. 1955) NEW Joshua Clover, The Nevada Glassworks (b. 1962) NEW Kevin Young, Negative (b. 1970)  Connecting Poems: Self Declarations NEW Walt Whitman, from Song of Myself (1819-1892) NEW Langston Hughes, I, Too (1902-1967) Yevgeny Yevtushenko, I Would Like (b. 1933) NEW Marilyn Chin, How I Got That Name (b. 1955) NEW Linda Hogan, Heritage (b. 1947) NEW Tomaz Saluman, History (b. 1941)  Connecting Poems: Fashionable Identities Emily Dickinson, What Soft-Cherubic Creatures- (1830-1886) June Jordan, Memo (1936-2002) NEW Marge Piercy, Barbie Doll (b. 1936) Taslima Nasrin, Things Cheaply Had (b. 1962)  Connecting Poems: Working Mothers NEW Tess Gallagher, I Stop Writing the Poem (b. 1943) NEW Julia Alvarez, Woman’s Work (b. 1950) NEW Rita Dove, My Mother Enters the Work Force (b. 1953) NEW Deborah Garrison, Sestina for the Working Mother (b. 1965) Drama Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun (1930-1965) NEW David Henry Hwang, Trying to Find Chinatown (b. 1957)  Nonfiction Virginia Woolf, What If Shakespeare Had Had a Sister? (1882-1941) Zora Neale Hurston, How It Feels to Be Colored Me (1891-1960) George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant (1903-1950)  Connecting Essays: Immigrant Experiences NEW Bharati Mukherjee, Two Ways to Belong in America (b. 1940) NEW Gary Shteyngart, Sixty-Nine Cents (b. 1972)  Further Questions for Thinking and Writing  LOVE AND HATE Questions for Thinking and Writing Fiction Kate Chopin, The Storm (1851-1904) NEW Ernest Hemingway, Hills Like White Elephants (1899-1961) NEW Katherine Min, Courting a Monk (b. 1959) NEW David Means, The Secret Goldfish (b. 1961) NEW Z.Z. Packer, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere (b. 1973)  Connecting Stories: Dangerous Seducers Joyce Carol Oates, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? (b. 1938) NEW Kate Braverman, Tall Tales from the Mekong Delta (b. 1950)  Case Study: Raymond Carver: A Writer Revising NEW Raymond Carver, Mine (1938-1988) NEW Raymond Carver, Little Things [a.k.a. Popular Mechanics] (1938-1988) NEW Raymond Carver, Beginners (1938-1988) Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1938-1988)  Poetry Sappho, With His Venom (ca. 610-ca. 510 B.C.) Po Chu-I, Golden Bells (772-846) Po Chu-I, Remembering Golden Bells (772-846) Anonymous, Bonny Barbara Allan Ben Jonson, Song, To Celia (1572-1637) NEW Lady Mary Wroth, Am I thus conquered? (1587–1651/3) Robert Herrick, To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time (1591-1674) William Shakespeare, Sonnet 18 "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" (1564-1616) William Shakespeare, Sonnet 29 "When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes" (1564-1616) NEW William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116, Let me not to the marriage of true minds (1564-1616)William Shakespeare, Sonnet 130 "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun" (1564-1616) John Donne, The Flea (1572-1631) John Donne, Song (1572-1631) John Donne, A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning (1572-1631) NEW Anne Bradstreet, To My Dear and Loving Husband (c. 1612-1672) NEW Aphra Behn, On Her Loving Two Equally (1640-1689) Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Song (1689-1762) William Blake, A Poison Tree (1757-1827) Robert Burns, A Red, Red Rose (1759-1796) Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach (1822-1888) Gerard Manley Hopkins, Pied Beauty (1844-1889) Robert Frost, Fire and Ice (1874-1963) Dorothy Parker, One Perfect Rose (1893-1962) NEW e. e. cummings, she being Brand (1894-1962) Theodore Roethke, I Knew a Woman (1908-1963) Elizabeth Bishop, One Art (1911-1979) NEW John Frederick Nims, Love Poem (1913-1999) NEW Wislawa Szymborska, A Happy Love (b. 1923) NEW Denise Levertov, The Ache of Marriage (1923-1997) Lisel Mueller, Happy and Unhappy Families (b. 1924) Carolyn Kizer, Bitch (b. 1925) Adrienne Rich, Living in Sin (b. 1929) Sylvia Plath, Daddy (1932-1963) Audre Lorde, Power (1934-1992) Lucille Clifton, There Is a Girl Inside (b. 1936) Seamus Heaney, Valediction (b. 1939) Billy Collins, Sonnet (b. 1941) Sharon Olds, Sex without Love (b. 1942) Deborah Pope, Getting Through (b. ?) Wyatt Prunty, Learning the Bicycle (b. 1947) Gary Soto, Oranges (b. 1952) Tony Hoagland, The Dog Years (b. 1953) NEW Scott Cairns, Possible Answers to Prayer (b. 1954)  Connecting Poems: Remembering Fathers Theodore Roethke, My Papa’s Waltz (1908-1963) Robert Hayden, Those Winter Sundays (1913-1980) Molly Peacock, Say You Love Me (b. 1947) NEW Li-Young Lee, Eating Alone (b. 1957)  Connecting Poems: Proposals and Replies Sir Walter Raleigh, The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd (c. 1552–1618) Christopher Marlowe, The Passionate Shepherd to his Love (1564-1593) Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress (1621-1678) NEW Annie Finch, Coy Mistress (b. 1956)  Connecting Poems: Lover’s Discoveries NEW Galway Kinnell, After Making Love We Hear Footsteps (b. 1927) NEW Michael S. Harper, Discovery (b. 1938) NEW Susan Minot, My Husband’s Back (b. 1956) Jane Kenyon, Surprise (1947-1995)  Drama William Shakespeare, Othello (1564-1616) Susan Glaspell, Trifles (1882-1948)  Nonfiction Paul, 1 Corinthians 13 (d. ca. C.E. 64) Maxine Hong Kingston, No Name Woman (b. 1940) NEW Stuart Lishan, Winter Count, 1964 (b. ?) NEW Grace Talusan, My Father’s Noose (b. 1972)  Connecting Essays: Demystifying Love NEW Helen Fischer, Dumped (b. 1945) NEW Laura Kipnis, Against Love (b. 1956)  Further Questions for Thinking and Writing  THE PRESENCE OF DEATH Questions for Thinking and Writing Fiction Edgar Allan Poe, The Cask of Amontillado (1809-1849) Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Iván Ilych (1828-1910) NEW Zora Neal Hurston, Spunk (1891-1960) Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried (b. 1946) Leslie Marmon Silko, The Man to Send Rain Clouds Connecting Stories (b. 1948)  Connecting Stories: Companions to the End Katherine Anne Porter, The Jilting of Granny Weatherall (1890-1980) NEW Helena Maria Viramontes, The Moths (b. 1954)  Poetry Anonymous, Edward William Shakespeare, Sonnet 73 "That time of year thou mayst in me behold" (1564-1616) William Shakespeare, Fear No More the Heat o' the Sun (1564-1616) John Donne, Death, Be Not Proud (1572-1631) Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias (1792-1822) John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn (1795-1821) Emily Dickinson, After great pain, a formal feeling comes (1840-1886) Emily Dickinson, I heard a Fly buzz -- when I died (1840-1886) Emily Dickinson, Apparently with no surprise (1840-1886) NEW Emily Dickinson, Because I could not stop for Death (1840-1886) A. E. Housman, To an Athlete Dying Young (1859-1936) William Butler Yeats, Sailing to Byzantium (1865-1939) Edwin Arlington Robinson, Richard Cory (1869-1935) Robert Frost, After Apple-Picking (1874-1963) Robert Frost, Nothing Gold Can Stay (1874-1963) Robert Frost, ‘Out, Out--' (1874-1963) Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (1874-1963) Robert Frost, Design (1874-1963) Pablo Neruda, The Dead Woman (1904-1973) Thedore Roethke, Elegy for Jane (1908-1963) Mary Oliver, When Death Comes (b. 1935) Seamus Heaney, Mid-term Break (b. 1939) Janice Mirikitani, Suicide Note (b. 1942) NEW Jane Kenyon, Let Evening Come (1947-1995) Victor Hernandez Cruz, Problems with Hurricanes (b. 1949) NEW Mary Ruefle, Stopwatch (b. 1952) Jane Hirshfield, Salt Heart (b. 1953) NEW Dean Young, Elegy on a Toy Piano (b. 1955)  Connecting Poems: Night Thoughts Dylan Thomas, Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night (1914-1953) Philip Larkin, Aubade (1922-1985) Catherine Davis, After a Time (1924-2002)  Connecting Poems: Memorials NEW Robert Lowell, For the Union Dead (1917-1977) NEW Lucille Clifton, at the cemetery, walnut grove plantation, south carolina, 1989 (b. 1936) NEW Yusef Komunyakaa, Facing It (b. 1947) NEW Kevin Young, For the Confederate Dead (b. 1970)  Connecting Poems: Animal Fates NEW Elizabeth Bishop, The Fish (1911-1979) NEW William Stafford, Traveling through the Dark (1914-1993) Maxine Kumin, Woodchucks (b. 1925)  Case Study: Poems about Paintings W. H. Auden, Musee des Beaux Arts (1907-1973) Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (c. 1525-1569) Lawrence Ferlinghetti, In Goya's Greatest Scenes (b. 1919) Francisco de Goya, The Third of May, 1808, Madrid (1746-1828) Anne Sexton, The Starry Night (1928-1974) Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night (1853-1890) Donald Finkel, The Great Wave: Hokusai (1929-2008) Katsushika Hokusai, The Great Wave Off Kanagawa (1760-1849)  Drama Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman (1915-2005) Woody Allen, Death Knocks (b. 1935)  Nonfiction John Donne, Meditation XIV ("For whom this bell tolls") (1572-1631) NEW Toi Derricotte, Beginning Dialogues (b. 1941) NEW Maureen Stanton, Water (b. 1960) NEW Jill Christman, The Sloth (b. 1969)  Connecting Essays: Victims of Nostalgia NEW E. B. White, Once More to the Lake (1895-1985) NEW David Sedaris, This Old House (b. 1956)  Further Questions for Thinking and Writing  Appendices Glossary of Critical Approaches           Introduction           Deconstruction           Ethical Criticism           Feminist Criticism                     Formalist Criticism           Marxist Criticism           Historical Criticism           Psychoanalytic Criticism           Postcolonial Criticism           Reader-Response Criticism Biographical Notes on the Authors Glossary of Literary Terms Index of Authors and Titles