Become a better writer by writing about what interests you as Making Literature Matter clusters recent fiction, poetry, drama, and nonfiction around issues relevant to you today.
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Become a better writer by writing about what interests you as Making Literature Matter clusters recent fiction, poetry, drama, and nonfiction around issues relevant to you today.
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PART ONE: WORKING WITH LITERATURE
Chapter 1: What Is Literature? How and Why Does It Matter?
James Wright, Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota (poem)
How Have People Defined Literature?
What Makes Literature "Literature"?
Maxine Kumin, Woodchucks (poem)
*Ted Chiang, The Great Silence
Why Study Literature in a College Writing Course?
What Can You Do to Make Literature Matter to Others?
Summing Up
Chapter 2: How to Read Closely
Basic Strategies for Close Reading
Close Readings of a Poem
Sharon Olds, Summer Solstice, New York City (poem)
Applying the Strategies
Reading Closely by Annotating
X.J. Kennedy, Death of a Window Washer (poem)
Further Strategies for Close Reading
Identify Characters’ Emotions to Get Ideas
Edward Hirsch, Execution (poem)
Identify Speech Acts
Daniel Orozco, Orientation (story)
Use Topics of Literary Studies to Get Ideas
Lynda Hull, Night Waitress (poem)
T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (poem)
*Allison Alsup, Old Houses (story)
Summing Up
Chapter 3: How to Make Arguments about Literature
What Is Argument?
Jamaica Kincaid, Girl (story)
Strategies for Making Arguments about Literature
Identify an Issue
Make a Claim
Aim to Persuade
Consider Your Audience
Gather and Present Evidence
Explain Your Reasoning
Identify Your Assumptions
Make Use of Appeals
A Sample Student Argument about Literature
Ann Schumwalt, The Mother’s Mixed Messages in "Girl"
Looking at Literature as Argument
John Milton, When I Consider How My Light Is Spent (poem)
Robert Frost, Mending Wall (poem)
*W.H. Auden, Refugee Blues (poem)
Literature and Current Issues
*Rivka Galchen, Usl at the Stadium (story)
*Jon Ronson, from "How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life (argument)
*Jennifer Jacquet, from Is Shame Necessary? (argument)
Summing Up
Chapter 4: The Writing Process
William Wordsworth, The Solitary Reaper (poem)
Strategies for Exploring
Strategies for Planning
Choose a Text
Identify Your Audience
Identify Your Issue, Claim, and Evidence
Identify Your Assumptions
Determine Your Organization
Strategies for Composing
First Draft of a Student Paper
Abby Hazelton, The Passage of Time in "The Solitary Reaper"
Strategies for Revising
A Checklist for Revising
Revised Draft of a Student Paper
Abby Hazelton, The Passage of Time in "The Solitary Reaper"
Strategies for Writing a Comparative Paper
Don Paterson, Two Trees (poem)
Luisa A. Igloria, Regarding History (poem)
List Similarities and Differences
Consider "Weighting" Your Comparison
A Student Comparative Paper
Jeremy Cooper, Don Paterson's Criticism of Nature's Owners
Summing Up
Chapter 5: Writing about Literary Genres
Writing about Stories
Eudora Welty, A Visit of Charity
The Elements of Short Fiction
Final Draft of a Student Paper
Tanya Vincent, The Real Meaning of "Charity" in "A Visit of Charity"
Summing Up: Writing about Short Stories
Writing about Poems
Mary Oliver, Singapore
Yusef Komunyakaa, Blackberries
Edwin Arlington Robinson, The Mill
A Student’s Personal Responses to the Poems
First Draft of a Student Paper
Michaela Fiorucci, Boundaries in Robinson, Komunyakaa, and Oliver
The Elements of Poetry
Revised Draft of a Student Paper
Michaela Fiorucci, Negotiationg Boundaries
Summing Up: Writing about Poems
Writing about Plays
August Strindberg, The Stronger
A Student’s Personal Response to the Play
The Elements of Drama
Plot and Structure
Characters
Stage Directions and Setting
Imagery
Language
Theme
Final Draft of a Student Paper
Trish Carlisle, Which Is the Stronger Actress in August Strindberg's Play?
Summing Up: Writing about Plays
Writing about Essays
June Jordan, Many Rivers to Cross
A Student’s Personal Response to the Essay
The Elements of Essays
Final Draft of a Student Paper
Isla Bravo, Resisting Women's Roles
Summing Up: Writing about Essays
Portfolio: Comparing Poems and Pictures
Analyzing Visual Art
Writing an Essay That Compares Literature and Art
A Sample Paper Comparing a Poem and a Picture
Karl Magnusson, Lack of Motion and Speech in Rolando Perez’s "Office at Night"
Edward Hopper, Office at Night (picture) / Rolando Perez, Office at Night (prose poem)
Edward Hopper, Conference at Night (picture) / Victoria Chang, Edward Hopper’s Conference at Night (poem)
Gustav Klimt, The Kiss (picture) / Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Short Story on a Painting of Gustav Klimt (poem)
Edvard Munch, The Scream (picture) / May Miller, The Scream (poem)
Frida Kahlo, Frida and Diego Rivera (picture) / David Dominguez, Wedding Portrait (poem)
Rembrandt van Rjin, Self-Portrait at the Age of 63 (painting) / Linda Pastan, Ethics (poem)
*Diane Arbus, Old Woman with Hands Raised in the Ocean, Coney Island, NY, 1960 (painting) /Stevie Smith, Not Waving But Drowning (poem)
*Jacob Lawrence, They Were Very Poor (painting)/Sandra Gilbert, Jacob Lawrence’s They Were Very Poor (poem)
Chapter 6: Writing Researched Arguments
*Begin Your Research by Giving It Direction
Search for Sources in the Library and Online
Evaluate the Sources
*Record Your Sources’ Key Details
Strategies for Integrating Sources
*Avoid Plagiarism
*Strategies for Documenting Sources (2016 MLA Format)
MLA In-Text Citation
MLA Works Cited
Five Annotated Student Researched Arguments
A Researched Argument that Uses a Literary Work to Examine Social Issues
Sarah Michaels, "The Yellow Wallpaper" as a Guide to Social Factors in Postpartum Depression
How Sarah Uses Her Sources
A Researched Argument that Deals with Existing Interpretations of a Literary Work
Katie Johnson, The Meaning of the Husband's Fainting in "The Yellow Wall-Paper"
How Katie Uses Her Sources
A Researched Argument that Analyzes a Literary Work through the Framework of a Particular Theorist
Jacob Grobowicz, Using Foucault to Understand Disciplinary Power in Gilman's "The Yellow Wall-Paper"
*How Jacob Uses His Sources
A Researched Argument that Places a Literary Work in Historical and Cultural Context
Brittany Thomas, The Relative Absence of teh Human Touch in "The Yellow Wall-Paper"
How Brittany Uses Her Sources
A Researched Argument that Places a Literary Work in a Multimedia Context
Kyra Blaylock, Different Kinds of Horrifying Images in "The Yellow Wallpaper" and "A Salem Witch"
*How Kyra Uses Her Sources
Making a Multimedia Presentation about a Literary WorkSumming Up
Cultural Contexts: Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s "The Yellow Wallpaper"
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper
Cultural Contexts
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Why I Wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper"
S. Weir Mitchell, From The Evolution of the Rest Treatment
John Harvey Kellogg, From The Ladies' Guide in Health and Disease
*Chapter 7: Writing with Critical Approaches to Literature
Contemporary Schools of Criticism
New Criticism; Feminist Criticism; Psychoanalytic Criticism;
Marxist Criticism; Deconstruction; Reader-Response Criticism; Postcolonial Criticism; New Historicism; Queer Theory; *Affect Theory; *Performance Theory; *Cognitive Theory; *Thing Theory
Working with the Critical Approaches
James Joyce, Counterparts (story)
Molly Frye, A Refugee at Home (student paper)
James Joyce, Eveline
PART TWO: LITERATURE AND ITS ISSUES
Chapter 8: FamiliesReconciling with Fathers: Poems
Lucille Clifton, forgiving my father
Robert Hayden, Those Winter Sundays
Theodore Roethke, My Papa's Waltz
Li-Young Lee, My Father, in Heaven, Is Reading Out Loud
Grandparents and Legacies: Poems
Nikki Giovanni, Legacies
Linda Hogan, Heritage
Gary Soto, Behind Grandma's House
Alberto Ríos, Mi Abuelo
Judith Ortiz Cofer, Claims
Gays and Lesbians in Families: Poems
Essex Hemphill, Commitments
Audre Lorde, Who Said It Was Simple
Minnie Bruce Pratt, Two Small-Sized Girls
Richard Blanco, Queer Theory: According to My Grandmother
Exorcising the Dead: Critical Commentaries on a Poem
Sylvia Plath, Daddy
Critical Commentaries:
Lynda K. Bundtzen, From Plath's Incarnations
Steven Gould Axelrod, From Sylvia Plath: The Wound and the Cure of Words
Tim Kendall, from Sylvia Plath: A Critical Study
Mothers and Daughters: Stories
Tillie Olsen, I Stand Here Ironing
Amy Tan, Two Kinds
Alice Walker, Everyday Use
Longing for a Father: Stories
John Cheever, Reunion
Dagoberto Gilb, Uncle Rock
A Troubled Freedom: Cultural Contexts for a Story
Ernest Hemingway, Soldier’s Home
Cultural Contexts:
James M. Hutchisson, From Ernest Hemingway: A New Life
Leicester Hemingway, From My Brother, Ernest Hemingway
*Caroline Alexander, The Shock of War
*Literature and Current Issues: Why Do Children Rebel Against Parental Expectations?
*Hanif Kureishi, My Son the Fanatic (story)
*Arguments on the Issue
*Roger Cohen, Why ISIS Trumps Freedom
*Abdelkader Benali, From Teenage Angst to Jiha
Food in Families: Essays
Ruth Reichl, The Queen of Mold
David Sedaris, Tasteless
*Geeta Kothari, If You Are What You Eat, Then What Am I?
Critical Decisions about Parenthood: Across Genres
Maxine Hong Kingston, No Name Woman (essay)
*David Foster Wallace, Good People (story)
Chapter 9: Love
True Love: Poems
William Shakespeare, Let me not to the marriage of true minds
John Keats, Bright Star
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, How Do I Love Thee?
e. e. cummings, somewhere i have never travelled
Passionate Love: Poems
Michael S. Harper, Discovery
Susan Minot, My Husband’s Back
*Derek Walcott, Love After Love
Melancholy Loves: Poems
Edna St. Vincent Millay, What My Lips Have Kissed, and Where, and Why
*W.H. Auden, Funeral Blues
Robin Becker, Morning Poem
Seductive Arguments: Poems
John Donne, The Flea
Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress
Love as a Haven: Cultural Contexts for a Poem
Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach
Cultural Contexts:
Charles Dickens, from Hard Times
Friedrich Engels, from The Condition of the Working Class in England
James Eli Adams, Narrating Nature: Darwin
* Literature and Current Issues: Are Millennials Narcissists?
*Tony Hoagland, What Narcissism Means to Me
*Arguments on the Issue
*Brooke Lea Foster, The Persistent Myth of the Narcissistic Millennial
*Emily Esfahani Smith and Jennifer Aaker, Millennial Searchers
*Colson Whitehead, How ‘You do You’ Perfectly Captures Our Narcissistic Culture
*Kelley/Parker "Dustin’ Cartoon
Romantic Dreams: Stories
James Joyce, Araby
John Updike, A & P
Leslie Marmon Silko, Yellow Woman
Is This Love? Stories
William Faulkner, A Rose for Emily
Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
Jealous Love: Critical Commentaries on a Play
William Shakespeare, Othello
Critical Commentaries:
A.C. Bradley, The Noble Othello
Millicent Bell, Othello's Jealousy
Jeffrie G. Murphy, Jealousy, Shame, and the Rival
Arguments about Love: Essays
Laura Kipnis, Against Love
Meghan O'Rourke, The Marriage Trap
*Impossible Love: Across Genres
Seamus Heaney, Punishment (poem)
*Karen Russell, Bog Girl (story)
Chapter 10: Freedom and Confinement
Struggling against Stereotypes: Poems
Chrystos, Today Was a Bad Day Like TB
Dwight Okita, In Response to Executive Order 9066
Pat Mora, Legal Alien
Toi Derricotte, Black Boys Play the Classics
Naomi Shihab Nye, Blood
*David Hernandez, "Words without Thoughts Never to Heaven Go"
Remembering the Death Camps: Poems
Martin Niemoller, First They Came for the Jews
Nelly Sachs, Chorus of the Rescued
Marianne Cohn, I Shall Betray Tomorrow
Karen Gershon, Race
Anne Sexton, After Auschwitz
A Creative Confinement: A Collection of Poems by Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson, Wild Nights--Wild Nights!
Emily Dickinson, Tell all the Truth but tell it slant--
*Emily Dickinson, Success is counted sweetest
*Emily Dickinson, My Life had stood—a Loaded Gun*
Where Tradition Is a Trap: Stories
Shirly Jackson, The Lottery
*Alexander Weinstein, Rocket Night*
Dreams of Escape: Stories
Kate chopin, The Story of an Hour
*Kirstin Valdez Quade, The Manzanos
*Escaping Confinement: Critical Commentaries on a Story
*Vladimir Nabokov, "Signs and Symbols"
Critical Commentaries:
*Wayne Goodman, from "Forum: High Pressure: Psychosis, Performance, Schizophrenia, Literature"
*Brian Boyd, from Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years
*Michael Wood, from "Consulting the Oracle"
*Literature and Current Issues: Does Our Happiness Depend on Others’ Misery?
Ursula LeGuin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
*Arguments on the Issue
*David Brooks, The Child in the Basement
*John R. Ehrenfeld, The Error of Trying to Measure Good and Bad
A Door to Freedom: Cultural Contexts for a Play
Henrik Ibsen, A Doll's House
Cultural Contexts:
August Strindberg, On A Doll’s House
Emma Goldman, Review of A Doll’s House
Joan Templeton, The Doll House Backlash: Criticism, Feminism, and Ibsen
Susanna Rustin, Why A Doll’s House Is More Relevant than Ever
*Confining Surveillance: Essays
*Michel Foucault, Panopticon
*Jeffrey Toobin, Edward Snowden’s Real Impact
*Peter Ludlow, The Banality of Systemic Evil
*Surrendering Freedom on Principle: Across Genres
Sophocles, Antigone (play)
*T.C. Boyle, Balto (story)
Chapter 11: Crime and Justice
Justice for Animals: Poems
D. H. Lawrence, Snake
Elizabeth Bishop, The Fish
William Stafford, Traveling through the Dark
*Christopher Gilbert, On the Way Back Home
Justice for Workers: Poems
William Blake, The Chimney Sweeper
Philip Levine, What Work Is
*Deborah Garrison, Worked Late on a Tuesday Night
Injustice for Communities: Poems
Philip Shultz, Gree
*Chad Abushnab, Dead Town
Maurice Manning, The Hill People
He Said/She Said: Poems
Robert Browning, My Last Duchess
Gabriel Spera, My Ex-Husband
Racial Injustice: Poems
Countee Cullen, Incident
Natasha Trethewey, Incident
A Dream of Justice: Poems
*Langston Hughes, Open Letter to the South
Langston Hughes, Theme for English B
Langston Hughes, Harlem
*Literature and Current Issues: How Just Is Capital Punishment?
Sherman Alexie, Capital Punishment (poem)
Arguments on the Issue
*George Will, "Capital Punishment's Slow Death"
*Bill Otis, George Will's Limp Case Against the Death Penalty
*Charles J. Ogletree, "Condemned to Die Because He's Black"
Discovering Injustice: Stories
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Young Goodman Brown
Toni Cade Bambara, The Lesson
*Ha Jin, Saboteur
Secret Crimes: Stories
*Edgar Allan Poe, The Tell-Tale Herat
Andre Dubus, Killings
Edward J. Delaney, Clean
Misfit Justice: Critical Commentaries on a Story
Flannery O'Connor, A Good Man Is Hard to Find
Critical Commentaries:
Flannery O’Connor, from Mystery and Manners
Martha Stephens, from The Question of Flannery O’Connor
Stephen Bandy, from "‘One of My Babies’: The Misfit and the Grandmother"
John Desmond, from "Flannery O’Connor’s Misfit and the Mystery of Evil"
A Menacing Stalker: Cultural Contexts for a Story
Joyce Carol Oates, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been
Cultural Contexts
Don Moser, The Pied Piper of Tucson
Joyce Carol Oates, Smooth Talk: Short Story into Film
*Meghan Daum, Jaycee Dugard and the Feel-Good Imperative
Trials of Marriage: Plays
Susan Glaspell, Trifles
Lynn Nottage, POOF!
Recalling a Violent Crime: Essays
Bruce Shapiro, One Violent Crive
Emily Bernard, Scar Tissue
New Across Genres: Eyewitness Testimony
*Ida Fink, The Table (play)
*Ry?nosuke Akutagawa, In a Bamboo Grove (short story)
Chapter 12: Journeys
Roads Taken: A Collection of Poems by Robert Frost
Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost, Acquainted with the Night
*Robert Frost, Birches
Visionary Journeys: Poems
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan
Percy Bysshe Shelly, Ozymandias
William Butler Yeats, Sailing to Byzantium
Mythic Journeys: Poems
Alfred Lord Tennyson, Ulysses
Adrienne Rich, Divisng into the WreckA
Journey to Death: Poems
Mary Oliver, When Death Comes
John Donne, Death Be Not Proud
Dylan Thomas, Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night
Emily Dickinson, Because I could not stop for Death
*Literature and Current Issues: Do Immigrants Take Jobs from Native-Born Workers?
Jimmy Santiago Baca, So Mexicans Are Taking Jobs from Americans (poem)
Arguments on the Issue
*Steven Camarota, Unskilled Workers Lose Out to Immigrants
*Maria E. Enchautegui, Immigrants Are Replacing, Not Displacing, Workers
*Ted Widmer, The Immigration Dividend
Wartime Journeys: Stories
*Ambrose Bierce, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried
Journeys to the Future: Stories
Arthur C. Clarke, The Nine Billion Names of God
Kurt Vonnegut, Harrison Bergeron
*Joanna Russ, When It Changed
*Octavia Butler, Human Evolution
Fairy Tale Journeys: Re-Visions of a Story
Charles Perrault, Little Red Riding Hood
Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, Little Red Cap
Angela Carter, The Company of Wolves
Keep This Boy Running: Cultural Contexts for a Story
Ralph Ellison, Battle Royal
Cultural Contexts:
Booker T. Washington, Atlanta Exposition Address (The Atlanta Compromise)
W.E. B. DuBois, Of Mr. Booker T. Washington
Gunnar Myrdal, Social Equality
From City to Country: Critical Commentaries on a Play
Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
Critical Commentaries:
Sol Eltis, from Revising Wilde: Society and Subversion in the Plays of Oscar Wilde
Tirthankar Bose, from "Oscar Wilde’s Game of Being Earnest"
Patricia Flanagan Behrendt, from Oscar Wilde: Eros and Aesthetics
Crossing Boundaries: Essays
Richard Rodriguez, Aria
Jose Antonio Vargas, My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant
Traumatic Journeys: Across Genres
Wilfred Owen, Dulce et Decorum Est (poem)
Michael Herr, Scream a Lot (essay)
*Thomas Lux, The People of Other Village (poem)
Index of Authors, Titles, and First Lines
Index of Key Terms
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