Writing About Literature, Brief Edition

by Roberts, Edgar V.

• ISBN13: 9780130978578
• ISBN10: 0130978574
• Edition: 10th
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-01-01
• Publisher: Pearson College Div

Summary

"Writing about Literature "serves as a hands-on guide for writing about literature, thus justifying the integration of literature and composition. The reading of literature encourages students to think, and the use of literary topics gives instructors a viable way to combine writing and literary study.

Table of Contents

1. Preliminary: The Process of Reading, Responding to, and Writing About Literature.
2. Writing About a Close-Reading: Analyzing Entire Short Poems or Selected Passages from Prose Fiction and Longer Poems.
3. Writing About Character: The People in Literature.
4. Writing About Point of View: The Position or Stance of the Work's Narrator or Speaker.
5. Writing About Plot and Structure: The Development and Organization of Narratives and Drama.
6. Writing About Setting: The Background of Place, Objects, and Culture in Literature.
7. Writing About an Idea or a Theme: The Meanings and the Messages in Literature.
8. Writing About Metaphors and Similes: A Source of Depth and Range in Literature.
9. Writing About Symbolism and Allusions: Windows to a Wide Expanse of Meaning.
10. Writing Essays of Comparison-Contrast and Extended Comparison-Contrast: Learning by Seeing Literary Works Together.
Appendix A: Critical Approaches Important in the Study of Literature.
Appendix B: Writing Examinations on Literature.
Appendix C: The Use of References and Tenses in Writing About Literature.
Appendix D: A Brief Anthology of Works Used for Demonstrative Essays and References.

Stories:

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, Ambrose Bierce. The Story of an Hour, Kate Chopin. The Three Strangers, Thomas Hardy. Young Goodman Brown, Nathaniel Hawthorne. The Necklace, (in Chapter 1), Guy de Maupassant. First Confession, Frank O'Connor. The Masque of the Red Death, Edgar Allan Poe.

Poems:

Dover Beach, Matthew Arnold. The Tyger, William Blake. Kubla Khan, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Desert Places, Robert Frost. Channel Firing, Thomas Hardy. The Man He Killed, Thomas Hardy. Negro, Langston Hughes. Bright Star, John Keats. On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer, (in Chapter 9), John Keats. Rhine Boat Trip, Irving Layton. Patterns, Amy Lowell. Anthem for Doomed Youth, Wilfred Owen. Ballad of Birmingham, Dudley Randall. Echo, Christina Rossetti. Sonnet 30, (in Chapter 9), William Shakespeare. Sonnet 73, William Shakespeare. The Second Coming, William Butler Yeats. The Boxes, Shelly Wagner. Lines Written in Early Spring, William Wordsworth.

Plays:

The Bear: A Joke in One Act, Anton Chekhov. Trifles, Susan Glaspell.
A Glossary of Important Literary Terms.
Index of Authors, Directors, First Lines of Poetry, Titles, and Topics.

Excerpts

To the InstructorIn this brief tenth edition ofWriting About Literature,I have kept and strengthened those features that so many of you have valued over the years. As in the past, I base my approach not on genres, with specific assignments to be determined, but rather on topics for full-length essays on texts in any genre. While the constant emphasis is on writing complete essays about literature, the chapters may also be used as starting points for classroom study and discussion, and thus may also be adapted for shorter writing assignments. In a one-semester course the book is extensive enough to offer selective if not complete choices for study and writing.The various chapter discussions may actually be considered as essay assignments, for that is how they were developed. Many years ago, when I was just starting out as a teacher of literature, and, inevitably, as a teacher of writing, I learned that there was a direct connection between the ways I made my assignments and the quality of student work. The more I explained to students what I wanted from them, the better their final essays turned out to be. Soon, however, I found myself taking up entire classroom periods in making assignments, and it was then that I began to write and hand out my directions, thus saving considerable classroom time. When I put these directions together,Writing Themes About Literature,nowWriting About Literature,was the result, first published in 1964. Every assignment was tried out in the classroom, and I was able to make changes and improvements based on the questions I was asked and also based on the written assignments my students turned in. OrganizationAs in each past brief edition ofWriting About Literature,each chapter consists 'of two parts. The first is a discussion of a literary approach, and the second consists of suggestions for writing, together with a demonstrative essay or essays showing how students might deal with the approach.A major characteristic preserved in this brief edition is that, after the preliminary discussion in Chapter 1, the chapters are arranged in a loose order of increasing difficulty Beginning with Chapter 2, the chapters contain topics relevant to all the genres. The comparison-contrast chapter (Chapter 10), for example, illustrates the ways in which the earlier techniques may be focused on any of the chapter-title topics in the book. The chapter also demonstrates how an extensive comparison-contrast technique may be applied simultaneously to fiction, poetry, and drama.Although you might assign the chapters in sequence throughout your course, you may also choose them according to your objectives and needs. One instructor, for example, might pass over the earlier chapters and go directly to the later ones. Another might choose the chapter on comparison-contrast for separate assignments such as comparative studies of symbolism, structure, character, and point of view. Still another might use just a few of the chapters, assigning them two or more times until students overcome initial difficulties. No matter how the chapters are used, the two parts--discussion and illustration--enable students to improve their skills as readers and writers.The illustrative parts of the chapters--the demonstrative essays--are presented in the belief that the wordimitationneed not be preceded by adjectives likeslavishandmere.These demonstrative essays represent suggestions and guidance for thematic development, and therefore represent a full treatment of each of the various topics. Nevertheless, they have been kept within the approximate lengths of most assignments in undergraduate courses. If students are writing outside of class, they can readily create full-length essays. And even though the demonstrative essays treat three or more aspects of particular topics, there is nothing to prevent assignin