Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing Book

** Indicates new selections

Fiction

Interview with Amy Tan

1. Reading a Story

The Art of Fiction

Types of Short Fiction

W. Somerset Maugham, The Appointment in Samarra

Aesop, The North Wind and the Sun

** Bidpai, The Tortoise and the Geese

Chuang Tzu, Independence

Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, Godfather Death

Plot

The Short Story

John Updike, A & P

Writing Effectively

Writers on Writing

John Updike, Why Write?

Thinking About Plot

Checklist: Writing About Plot

Writing Assignment on Plot

More Topics for Writing

Terms for Review

2. Point of View

Identifying Point of View

Types of Narrators

Stream of Consciousness

William Faulkner, A Rose for Emily

Edgar Allan Poe, The Tell-Tale Heart

** Virginia Woolf, A Haunted House

** Eudora Welty, Why I Live at the P. O.

James Baldwin, Sonny’s Blues

Writing Effectively

Writers on Writing

James Baldwin, Race and the African American Writer

Thinking About Point of View

Checklist: Writing About Point of View

Writing Assignment on Point of View

More Topics for Writing

Terms for Review

3. Character

Types of Characters

Katherine Anne Porter, The Jilting of Granny Weatherall

Katherine Mansfield, Miss Brill

** Naguib Mahfouz, The Lawsuit

Raymond Carver, Cathedral

Writing Effectively

Writers on Writing

Raymond Carver, Commonplace but Precise Language

Thinking About Character

Checklist: Writing About Character

Writing Assignment on Character

More Topics for Writing

Terms for Review

4. Setting

Elements of Setting

Historical Fiction

Regionalism

Naturalism

Kate Chopin, The Storm

Jack London, To Build a Fire

T. Coraghessan Boyle, Greasy Lake

Amy Tan, A Pair of Tickets

Writing Effectively

Writers on Writing

Amy Tan, Setting the Voice

Thinking About Setting

Checklist: Writing About Setting

Writing Assignment on Setting

More Topics for Writing

Terms for Review

5. Tone and Style

Tone

Style

Diction

Ernest Hemingway, A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

William Faulkner, Barn Burning

Irony

O. Henry, The Gift of the Magi

Ha Jin, Saboteur

Writing Effectively

Writers on Writing

Ernest Hemingway, The Direct Style

Thinking About Tone and Style

Checklist: Writing About Tone and Style

Writing Assignment on Tone and Style

More Topics for Writing

Terms for Review

6. Theme

Plot vs. Theme

Theme as Unifying Device

Finding the Theme

Stephen Crane, The Open Boat

Alice Munro, How I Met My Husband

Luke 15:11–32, The Parable of the Prodigal Son

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Harrison Bergeron

Writing Effectively

Writers on Writing

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., The Themes of Science Fiction

Thinking About Theme

Checklist: Writing about Theme

Writing Assignment on Theme

More Topics for Writing

Terms for Review

7. Symbol

Allegory

Symbols

Recognizing Symbols

John Steinbeck, The Chrysanthemums

** John Cheever, The Swimmer

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

Shirley Jackson, The Lottery

Writing Effectively

Writers on Writing

Shirley Jackson, Biography of a Story

Thinking About Symbols

Checklist: Writing About Symbols

Writing Assignment on Symbols

Student Paper, An Analysis of the Symbolism in Steinbeck’s “The Chrysanthemums”

More Topics for Writing

Terms for Review

8. Reading Long Stories and Novels

Origins of the Novel

Romance

Novels and Journalism

Short Novels and Novellas

The Future of the Novel

Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych

Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

Writing Effectively

Writers on Writing

Franz Kafka, Discussing The Metamorphosis

Thinking About Long Stories and Novels

Checklist: Writing About Ideas for a Research Paper

Writing Assignment for a Research Paper

Student Paper, Kafka’s Greatness

More Topics for Writing

Terms for Review

9. Latin American Fiction

Jorge Luis Borges, The Gospel According to Mark

Octavio Paz, My Life with the Wave

** Gabriel García Márquez, A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings

** Inés Arredondo, The Shunammite

Writing Effectively

Writers on Writing

Gabriel García Márquez, My Beginnings As A Writer

Topics for Writing on “The Gospel According to Mark”

Topics for Writing on “My Life with Wave”

Topics for Writing on “a very old man with enormous wings”

Topics for Writing on “The Shunammite”

10. Critical Casebook: Flannery O’Connor

Flannery O’Connor, A Good Man Is Hard to Find

Flannery O’Connor, Revelation

Flannery O’Connor, Parker’s Back

Flannery O’Connor on Writing

From “On Her Own Work”

On Her Catholic Faith

From “The Grotesque in Southern Fiction”

Yearbook Cartoons

Critics on Flannery O’Connor

J. O. Tate, A Good Source Is Not So Hard to Find: The Real Life Misfit

Mary Jane Schenck, Deconstructing “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”

Louise S. Cowann The Character of Mrs. Turpin in “Revelation”

Kathleen Feeley, The Mystery of Divine Direction: “Parker’s Back”

Writing Effectively

Topics for Writing

11. Critical Casebook: Three Stories in Depth

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Young Goodman Brown

** Nathaniel Hawthorne on Writing

** Reflections on Truth and Clarity in Literature

** Criticizing His Own Work

Critics on Hawthorne

** Herman Melville, Excerpt from a Review of “Mosses from and Old Manse”

** Edgar Allan Poe, The Genius of Hawthorne's Short Stories

Critics on “Young Goodman Brown”

** Richard H. Fogle, Ambiguity in “Young Goodman Brown”

** Paul J. Hurley, Evil Wherever He Looks

** Nancy Bunge, Complacency and Community

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The Yellow Wallpaper

Charlotte Perkins Gilman on Writing

Why I Wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper”

Whatever Is

The Nervous Breakdown of Women

Critics on “The Yellow Wallpaper”

Juliann Fleenor, Gender and Pathology in “The Yellow Wallpaper”

Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, Imprisonment and Escape: The Psychology of Confinement

Elizabeth Ammons, Biographical Echoes in “The Yellow Wallpaper”

Alice Walker

Everyday Use

Alice Walker on Writing

The Black Woman Writer in America

Reflections on Writing and Women's Lives

Critics on “Everyday Use”

Barbara T. Christian, “Everyday Use” and the Black Power Movement

Houston A. Baker and Charlotte Pierce-Baker, Stylish vs. Sacred in “Everyday Use”

Elaine Showalter, Quilt as Metaphor in “Everyday Use”

Writing Effectively

Topics for Writing on “Young Goodman Brown”

Topics for Writing on “The Yellow Wallpaper”

Topics for Writing on “Everyday Use”

12. Stories for Further Reading

Chinua Achebe, Dead Men’s Path

** Sherman Alexie, This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona

Margaret Atwood, Happy Endings

Ambrose Bierce, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

Willa Cather, Paul’s Case

Anton Chekhov, The Lady with the Pet Dog

Kate Chopin, The Story of an Hour

Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street

Ralph Ellison, Battle Royal

Zora Neale Hurston, Sweat

James Joyce, Araby

** Franz Kafka, Before the Law

Jamaica Kincaid, Girl

Jhumpa Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies

D. H. Lawrence, The Rocking-Horse Winner

Bobbie Ann Mason, Shiloh

** Lorrie Moore, How To Become A Writer

Joyce Carol Oates, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried

Tillie Olsen, I Stand Here Ironing

Tobias Wolff, The Rich Brother

Poetry

Interview with Kay Ryan

13. Reading a Poem

Poetry or Verse

Reading a Poem

Paraphrase

William Butler Yeats, The Lake Isle of Innisfree

Lyric Poetry

Robert Hayden, Those Winter Sundays

Adrienne Rich, Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers

Narrative Poetry

Anonymous, Sir Patrick Spence

Robert Frost, “Out, Out—”

Dramatic Poetry

Robert Browning, My Last Duchess

Didactic Poetry

Writing Effectively

Writers on Writing

Adrienne Rich, Recalling “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers”

Thinking About Paraphrase

William Stafford, Ask Me

William Stafford, A Paraphrase of “Ask Me”

Checklist: Writing a Paraphrase

Writing Assignment on Paraphrasing

More Topics for Writing

Terms for Review

14. Listening to a Voice

Tone

Theodore Roethke, My Papa’s Waltz

Countee Cullen, For a Lady I Know

Anne Bradstreet, The Author to Her Book

Walt Whitman, To a Locomotive in Winter

Emily Dickinson, I like to see it lap the Miles

** Kevin Young, Doo Wop

Weldon Kees, For My Daughter

The Person in the Poem

Natasha Trethewey, White Lies

Edwin Arlington Robinson, Luke Havergal

Ted Hughes, Hawk Roosting

Suji Kwock Kim, Monologue for an Onion

William Wordsworth, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

Dorothy Wordsworth, Journal Entry

James Stephens, A Glass of Beer

Anne Sexton, Her Kind

William Carlos Williams, The Red Wheelbarrow

Irony

Robert Creeley, Oh No

W. H. Auden, The Unknown Citizen

Sharon Olds, Rites of Passage

** Rod Taylor, Dakota: October, 1822: Hunkpapa Warrior

Sarah N. Cleghorn, The Golf Links

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Second Fig

** Dorothy Parker, Comment

** Bob Hicok, Making It In Poetry

Thomas Hardy, The Workbox

For Review and Further Study

William Blake, The Chimney Sweeper

** Erich Fried, The Measures Taken

William Stafford, At the Un-National Monument Along the Canadian Border

Richard Lovelace, To Lucasta

Wilfred Owen, Dulce et Decorum Est

Writing Effectively

Writers on Writing

Wilfred Owen, War Poetry

Thinking About Tone

Checklist: Writing about Tone

Writing Assignment on Tone

Student Paper, Word Choice, Tone, and Point of View in Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz”

More Topics for Writing

Terms for Review

15. Words

Literal Meaning: What a Poem Says First

William Carlos Williams, This Is Just to Say

Diction

Marianne Moore, Silence

Robert Graves, Down, Wanton, Down!

John Donne, Batter my heart, three-personed God, for You

The Value of a Dictionary

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Aftermath

** Kay Ryan, Chemise

J. V. Cunningham, Friend, on this scaffold Thomas More lies dead

Carl Sandburg, Grass

** Dan Anderson, Dog Haiku

Word Choice and Word Order

Robert Herrick, Upon Julia’s Clothes

** Robert Burns, Auld Lang Syne

Kay Ryan, Blandeur

Thomas Hardy, The Ruined Maid

Richard Eberhart, The Fury of Aerial Bombardment

Wendy Cope, Lonely Hearts

For Review and Further Study

E. E. Cummings, anyone lived in a pretty how town

Billy Collins, The Names

** Charles Bukowski, Dostoevsky

Anonymous, Carnation Milk

Gina Valdés, English con Salsa

Lewis Carroll, Jabberwocky

Writing Effectively

Writers on Writing

Lewis Carroll, Humpty Dumpty Explicates “Jabberwocky”

Thinking About Diction

Checklist: Writing About diction

Writing Assignment on Word Choice

More Topics for Writing

Terms for Review

16. Saying and Suggesting

Denotation and Connotation

John Masefield, Cargoes

William Blake, London

Wallace Stevens, Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock

Gwendolyn Brooks, Southeast Corner

Timothy Steele, Epitaph

E. E. Cummings, next to of course god america i

Robert Frost, Fire and Ice

** Diane Thiel, The Minefield

** Ron Rash, The Day the Gates Closed

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Tears, Idle Tears

Richard Wilbur, Love Calls Us to the Things of This World

Writing Effectively

Writers on Writing

Richard Wilbur, Concerning “Love Calls Us to the Things of This World”

Thinking About Denotation and Connotation

Checklist: writing about What a Poem SAYS AND Suggests

Writing Assignment on Denotation and Connotation

More Topics for Writing

Terms for Review

17. Imagery

Ezra Pound, In a Station of the Metro

Taniguchi Buson, The Piercing Chill I Feel

Imagery

T. S. Eliot, The Winter Evening Settles Down

Theodore Roethke, Root Cellar

Elizabeth Bishop, The Fish

** Rainer Maria Rilke, The Panther

Charles Simic, Fork

Emily Dickinson, A Route of Evanescence

Jean Toomer, Reapers

Gerard Manley Hopkins, Pied Beauty

About Haiku

Arakida Moritake, The falling flower

Matsuo Basho, Heat-lightning streak

Matsuo Basho, In the old stone pool

Taniguchi Buson, On the one-ton temple bell

** Taniguchi Buson, Moonrise on mudflats

Kobayashi Issa, Only One Guy

Kobayashi Issa, Cricket

Haiku from Japanese Internment Camps

** Suiko Matsushita, Cosmos in Bloom

** Neiji Ozawa, The War—This Year

Hakuro Wada, Even the Croaking of Frogs

Contemporary Haiku

Etheridge Knightn Making jazz swing in

Lee Gurga, Visitor’s Room

Penny Harter, broken bowl

Jennifer Brutschy, Born Again

John Ridland, The Lazy Man’s Haiku

Garry Gay, Hole in the Ozone

For Review and Further Study

John Keats, Bright star! Would I Were Steadfast as Thou Art

Walt Whitman, The Runner

T. E. Hulme, Image

William Carlos Williams, El Hombre

Robert Bly, Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter

** Paul Goodman, Birthday Cake

Louise Glück, Mock Orange

Billy Collins, Embrace

** Kevin Prufer, Pause, Pause

Stevie Smith, Not Waving but Drowning

Writing Effectively

Writers on Writing

Ezra Pound, The Image

Thinking About Imagery

Checklist: Writing about Imagery

Writing Assignment on Imagery

Student Paper, FADED BEAUTY: Elizabeth Bishop’s Use of Imagery in “The Fish”

More Topics for Writing

Terms for Review

18. Figures of Speech

Why Speak Figuratively?

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The Eagle

William Shakespeare, Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Howard Moss, Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?

Metaphor and Simile

Emily Dickinson, My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Flower in the Crannied Wall

William Blake, To see a world in a grain of sand

Sylvia Plath, Metaphors

N. Scott Momaday, Simile

Emily Dickinson, It dropped so low – in my Regard

** Jill Alexander Essbaum, The Heart

Craig Raine, A Martian Sends a Postcard Home

Other Figures of Speech

James Stephens, The Wind

Margaret Atwood, You fit into me

George Herbert, The Pulley

Dana Gioia, Money

Charles Simic, My Shoes

** Carl Sandburg, Fog

For Review and Further Study

Robert Frost, The Silken Tent

Jane Kenyon, The Suitor

Robert Frost, The Secret Sits

A. R. Ammons, Coward

Kay Ryan, Turtle

** Anne Stevenson, The Demolition

Robinson Jeffers, Hands

Robert Burns, Oh, my love is like a red, red rose

Writing Effectively

Writers on Writing

Robert Frost, The Importance of Poetic Metaphor

Thinking About Metaphors

Checklist: Writing About Metaphors

Writing Assignment on Figures of Speech

More Topics for Writing

Terms for Review

19. Song

Singing and Saying

Ben Jonson, To Celia

** James Weldon Johnson, Since You Went Away

William Shakespeare, O mistress mine

Edwin Arlington Robinson, Richard Cory

Paul Simon, Richard Cory

Ballads

Anonymous, Bonny Barbara Allan

Dudley Randall, Ballad of Birmingham

Blues

Bessie Smith with Clarence Williams, Jailhouse Blues

W. H. Auden, Funeral Blues

** Kevin Young, Late Blues

Rap

Run D.M.C., from Peter Piper

For Review and Further Study

John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Eleanor Rigby

Bob Dylan, The Times They Are a-Changin’

Aimee Mann, Deathly

Writing Effectively

Writers on Writing

Paul McCartney, Creating “Eleanor Rigby”

Thinking About Poetry and Song

Checklist: Writing About Song Lyrics

Writing Assignment on Song Lyrics

More Topics for Writing

Terms for Review

20. Sound

Sound as Meaning

Alexander Pope, True Ease in Writing comes from Art, not Chance

William Butler Yeats, Who Goes with Fergus?

John Updike, Recital

William Wordsworth, A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal

Emanuel di Pasquale, Rain

Aphra Behn, When maidens are young

Alliteration and Assonance

A. E. Housman, Eight O’Clock

James Joyce, All day I hear

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The Splendor Falls on Castle Walls

Rime

William Cole, On my boat on Lake Cayuga

Hilaire Belloc, The Hippopotamus

Ogden Nash, The Panther

William Butler Yeats, Leda and the Swan

Gerard Manley Hopkins, God’s Grandeur

** William Jay Smith, A Note on the Vanity Dresser

Robert Frost, Desert Places

Reading and Hearing Poems Aloud

Michael Stillman, In Memoriam John Coltrane

William Shakespeare, Full fathom five thy father lies

T. S. Eliot, Virginia

Writing Effectively

Writers on Writing

T. S. Eliot, The Music of Poetry

Thinking About a Poem's Sound

Checklist: Writing About a Poem’s Sound

Writing Assignment on Sound

More Topics for Writing

Terms for Review

21. Rhythm

Stresses and Pauses

Gwendolyn Brooks, We Real Cool

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Break, Break, Break

Ben Jonson, Slow, Slow, Fresh Fount, Keep Time With My Salt Tears

Dorothy Parker, Résumé

Meter

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Counting-out Rhyme

Jacqueline Osherow, Song for the Music in the Warsaw Ghetto

A. E. Housman, When I was one-and-twenty

William Carlos Williams, Smell!

Walt Whitman, Beat! Beat! Drums!

David Mason, Song of the Powers

Langston Hughes, Dream Boogie

Writing Effectively

Writers on Writing

Gwendolyn Brooks, Hearing “We Real Cool”

Thinking About Rhythm

Checklist: Scanning a Poem

Writing Assignment on Rhythm

More Topics for Writing

Terms for Review

22. Closed Form

Formal Patterns

John Keats, This living hand, now warm and capable

Robert Graves, Counting the Beats

John Donne, Song (“Go and Catch a Falling Star”)

Phillis Levin, Brief Bio

The Sonnet

William Shakespeare, Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds

Michael Drayton, Since There's No Help, Come Let Us Kiss and Part

Edna St. Vincent Millay, What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why

Robert Frost, Acquainted with the Night

** William Meredith, The Illiterate

Kim Addonizio, First Poem for You

** Mark Jarman, Unholy Sonnet: After the Praying

A. E. Stallings, Sine Qua Non

R. S. Gwynn, Shakespearean Sonnet

The Epigram

Alexander Pope, Epigram Engraved on the Collar of a Dog

Sir John Harrington, Of Treason

Robert Herrick, Moderation

William Blake, Her Whole Life Is An Epigram

E. E. Cummings, a politician

Langston Hughes, Prayer

J. V. Cunningham, This Humanist

John Frederick Nims, Contemplation

Brad Leithauser, A Venus Flytrap

Dick Davis, Fatherhood

Anonymous, Epitaph of a Dentist

Hilaire Belloc, Fatigue

Wendy Cope, Variation on Belloc’s “Fatigue”

Other Forms

Dylan Thomas, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Robert Bridges, Triolet

Elizabeth Bishop, Sestina

Writing Effectively

Writers on Writing

A. E. Stallings, On Form and Artifice

Thinking About a Sonnet

Checklist: Writing About a Sonnet

Writing Assignment on a Sonnet

More Topics for Writing

Terms for Review

23. Open Form

Denise Levertov, Ancient Stairway

E. E. Cummings, Buffalo Bill ’s

W. S. Merwin, For the Anniversary of My Death

William Carlos Williams, The Dance

Stephen Crane, The Heart

Walt Whitman, Cavalry Crossing a Ford

Ezra Pound, Salutation

Wallace Stevens, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

Prose Poetry

Carolyn Forché, The Colonel

Charles Simic, The Magic Study of Happiness

Visual Poetry

George Herbert, Easter Wings

John Hollander, Swan and Shadow

** Richard Kostelanetz, Simultaneous Translations

Dorthi Charles, Concrete Cat

Seeing the Logic of Open Form Verse

E. E. Cummings, in Just-

** A. E. Stallings, First Love: A Quiz

** David Lehman, Radio

Carole Satyamurti, I Shall Paint My Nails Red

** Alice Fulton, What I Like

Writing Effectively

Writers on Writing

Walt Whitman, The Poetry of the Future

Thinking About Free Verse

Checklist: Writing about free verse

Writing Assignment on Open Form

More Topics for Writing

Terms for Review

24. Symbol

T. S. Eliot, The Boston Evening Transcript

Emily Dickinson, The Lightning is a yellow Fork

Thomas Hardy, Neutral Tones

Matthew 13:24-30, The Parable of the Good Seed

George Herbert, The World

Edwin Markham, Outwitted

Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken