Literature: Reading Fiction, Poetry, and Drama Book

INTRODUCTION: READING (AND WRITING ABOUT) LITERATURE

Reading Literature

The Pleasures of Reading Literature

The Pleasures of Fiction

The Dog and the Shadow

Learning to Be Silent

*Reading the Parable in Context

The Pleasures of Poetry

Robert Frost, Dust of Snow

*Reading Frost's poem in Context

The Pleasures of Drama

Understanding Literature: Experience/ Interpretation/ Evaluation

Writing About Literature

Reasons for Writing about Literature

*Reading a play in Context

Ways of Writing about Literature

The Writing Process

Drafting

Revising

Editing

PART ONE: FICTION

CHAPTER 1: READING STORIES

Luke, The Prodigal Son

The Experience of Fiction

The Interpretation of Fiction

*Reading in Context

The Evaluation of Fiction

John Updike, A&P

The Act of Reading Fiction

Kate Chopin, The Story of an Hour

Chapter 2: TYPES OF SHORT FICTION

Early Forms: Parable, Fable, and Tale

Aesop, The Wolf and the Mastiff

Petronius, The Widow of Ephesus

The Short Story

The Nonrealistic Story

The Short Novel

Chapter 3: ELEMENTS OF FICTION

Plot and Structure

Frank O'Connor, Guests of the Nation

Character

Kay Boyle, Astronomer's Wife

Setting

Bobbie Ann Mason, Shiloh

Point of View

William Faulkner, A Rose for Emily

Language and Style

James Joyce, Araby

Theme

Eudora Welty, A Worn Path

Irony and Symbol

D. H. Lawrence, The Rocking-HorseWinner

Chapter 4: WRITING ABOUT FICTION

Reasons for Writing about Fiction

Informal Ways of Writing about Fiction

Katherine Anne Porter, Magic

Formal Ways of Writing about Fiction

Student Papers on Fiction

Questions for Writing about Fiction

Suggestions for Writing

Chapter 5: THREE FICTION WRITERS IN CONTEXT

Reading Edgar Allan Poe, Flannery O'Connor, and Sandra Cisneros in Depth

*Edgar Allan Poe in Context

*Poe and Journalism / Poe and The Horror Story / Poe and The Detective Story / The Dimension of Style/ Timeline

Edgar Allan Poe: Stories:

*The Black Cat

*The Cask of Amontillado

*The Fall of the House of Usher

*The Purloined Letter

*Edgar Allan Poe: Letters, Essays

*Critics on Poe

Flannery O'Connor in Context

*Southern Gothic / The Catholic Dimension / O'Connor's Irony/ Timeline

Flannery O'Connor: Stories:

Good Country People

A Good Man is Hard to Find

Everything That Rises Must Converge

*The Life You Save May Be Your Own

Flannery O'Connor: Letters, Essays

Critics on O'Connor

*Sandra Cisneros in Context

Culture and Identity / Literature of the American Southwest / The Feminist Dimension/ Timeline

*Sandra Cisneros: Stories:

*Barbie Q

*Eleven

*There was a Man, There was a Woman

*Woman Hollering Creek

*Sandra Cisneros on Herself

*Critics on Cisneros

Chapter 6: A COLLECTION OF SHORT FICTION

Classics

*Chinua Achebe, Marriage is a Private Affair

*James Baldwin, Sonny's Blues

Jorge Luis Borges, The Garden of Forking Paths

*Anton Chekhov, The Kiss translated by CONSTANCE GARNETT

Ralph Ellison, Battle Royal

*F. Scott Fitzgerald, Babylon Revisited

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings translated by GREGORY RABASSA

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper

Nathaniel Hawthorne, Young Goodman Brown

*Ernest Hemingway, Soldier's Home

*Zora Neale Hurston, Spunk

James Joyce, The Boarding House

James Joyce, The Dead

*Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis translated by ALEXIS WALKER

Katherine Mansfield, Bliss

Tillie Olsen, I Stand Here Ironing

Luigi Pirandello, War

Katherine Anne Porter, The Jilting of Granny Weatherall

Isaac Bashevis Singer, Gimpel the Fool translated by SAUL BELLOW

Jean Stafford, Bad Characters

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

Contemporaries

*Sherman Alexie, Indian Education

*Julia Alvarez, The Kiss

*Margaret Atwood, Happy Endings

Toni Cade Bambara, The Lesson

Raymond Carver, Cathedral

*Anita Desai, Diamond Dust

*Nathan Englander, The Tumblers

*Ursula Hegi, To the Gate

Mary Hood, How Far She Went

*Gish Jen, Who's Irish

Ha Jin, Taking a Husband

Jamaica Kincaid, Girl

*James Alan McPherson, Why I Like Country Music

*Bharati Mukherjee, The Tenant

*Alice Munro, An Ounce of Cure

*Edna O'Brien, Long Distance

Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

*Annie Proulx, The Bunchgrass Edge of the World

Leslie Silko, Yellow Woman

Amy Tan, Rules of the Game

Alice Walker, Everyday Use

*Louisa Valenzuela, I'm Your Horse in the Night

*John Edgar Wideman, Damballah

PART TWO: POETRY

Chapter 7: READING POEMS

The Experience of Poetry

Robert Hayden, Those Winter Sundays

*Reading in Context

The Interpretation of Poetry

Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

*Reading in Context

The Evaluation of Poetry

Adrienne Rich, Aunt Jennifer's Tigers

The Act of Reading Poetry

Theodore Roethke, My Papa's Waltz

Chapter 8: TYPES OF POETRY

Narrative Poetry

Lyric Poetry

Chapter 9: ELEMENTS OF POETRY

Voice: Speaker and Tone

Stephen Crane, War is Kind

Robert Browning, My Last Duchess

Muriel Stuart, In the Orchard

Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend"

Anonymous, Western Wind

Henry Reed, Naming of Parts

Jacques Prevert, Family Portrait

Diction

William Wordsworth, I wandered lonely as a cloud

Edwin Arlington Robinson, Miniver Cheevy

William Wordsworth, It is a beauteous evening

Robert Herrick, Delight in Disorder

Adrienne Rich, Rape

Imagery

Elizabeth Bishop, First Death in Nova Scotia

William Butler Yeats, The Lake Isle of Innisfree

Robert Browning, Meeting at Night

H.D., Heat

Thomas Hardy, Neutral Tones

Figures of Speech: Simile and Metaphor

William Shakespeare, That time of year thou may'st in me behold

John Donne, Hymn to God the Father

Robert Wallace, The Double-Play

Louis Simpson, The Battle

Judith Wright, Woman to Child

Symbolism and Allegory

Peter Meinke, Advice to My Son

Christina Rossetti, Up-Hill

William Blake, A Poison Tree

Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken

George Herbert, Virtue

Emily Dickinson, Because I could not stop for Death

Syntax

John Donne, The Sun Rising

Thomas Hardy, The Man He Killed

William Butler Yeats, An Irish Airman Foresees His Death

Robert Frost, The Silken Tent

e.e. cummings, "Me up at does"

Stevie Smith, Mother, Among the Dustbins

Sound: Rhyme, Alliteration, Assonance

Gerard Manley Hopkins, In the Valley of the Elwy

Thomas Hardy, During Wind and Rain

Alexander Pope, Sound and Sense

Bob McKenty, Adam's Song

May Swenson, The Universe

Helen Chasin, The Word Plum

Rhythm and Meter

Robert Frost, The Span of Life

George Gordon, Lord Byron, The Destruction of Sennacherib

Anne Sexton, Her Kind

William Carlos Williams, The Red Wheelbarrow

Structure: Closed Form and Open Form

John Keats, On First Looking into Chapman's Homer

Walt Whitman, When I heard the learn'd astronomer

e.e. cummings l(a

e.e. cummings, [Buffalo Bill's]

William Carlos Williams, The Dance

Denise Levertov, O Taste and See

Theodore Roethke, The Waking

*Christine Kane Molito, Reflections in Black & Blue

C.P. Cavafy, The City translated by EDMUND KEELEY AND PHILIP SHERRARD

Theme

Emily Dickinson, Crumbling is not an instant's Act

Chapter 10: TRANSFORMATIONS

Revisions

William Blake, London

William Butler Yeats, A Dream of Death

Emily Dickinson, The Wind begun to knead the Grass

D.H. Lawrence, Piano

*Langston Hughes, Ballad of Booker T.

Parodies

William Carlos Williams, This is Just to Say

Kenneth Koch, Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams

Gerard Manley Hopkins, Carrion Comfort

Gary Layne Hatch, Terrier Torment; or, Mr. Hopkins and his Dog

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

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

Robert Frost, Dust of Snow

Bob McKenty, Snow on Frost

Translations

*Horace, Eheu fugaces, Postume, Postume translated by DAVID FERRY AND BY HELEN ROWE HENZ

*Francesco Petrarca, S'amor non e, che dunque e quel ch'io siento translated by ROBERT M. DURLING AND BY MARK MUSA

Rainer Maria Rilke, Der Panther translated by STEPHEN MITCHELL AND BY C.F. MCINTYRE

Guillaume Apollinaire, Le Pont Mirabeau translated by RICHARD WILBUR AND BY W.S. MERWIN

Juan Ramon Jimenez, Nocturno Sonado translated by ELEANOR L. TURNBULL AND BY THOMAS MCGREEVY

Responses

Christopher Marlowe: The Passionate Shepherd to His Love

Sir Walter Raleigh, The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd

William Shakespeare, Not marble, nor the gilded monuments

Archibald MacLeish, Not marble Nor the Gilded Monuments

*William Blake, Nurse's Song (Innocence); Nurse's Song (Experience)

Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach

Anthony Hecht, The Dover Bitch: A Criticism of Lfe

William Carlos Williams, Queen-Ann's-Lace

Anne C. Coon, Queen Anne's Lace

*Ovid, Siesta time in sultry summer

*Jay Parini, Amores (After Ovid)

Poetry and Song

Ecclesiastes, To Everything There is a Season

Pete Seeger, Turn, Turn, Turn!

Edwin Arlington Robinson, Richard Cory

Paul Simon, Richard Cory

Langston Hughes Dream Deferred

Langston Hughes, Same in Blues

*Woody Guthrie, This Land Is Your Land

*Sonya Sanchez, Blues

Lonnelle Johnson, No Mo' Blues

*Bessie Smith, Lost Your Head Blues

*John Newton, Amazing Grace

Don Maclean, Vincent

Poetry and Painting

Vincent Van Gogh, Starry Night

Anne Secton, The Starry Night

Robert Fagles, The Starry night

Francesco de Goya, The Third of May, 1808

David Gewanter, Goya's The Third of May, 1808

Pieter Breughel the Elder, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

W.H. Auden, Musee des Beaux Arts

William Carlos Williams, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

William Blake, The Sick Rose (painting)

William Blake, The Sick Rose (poem)

Henri Matisse, The Dance

Natalie Safir, Matisse's Dance

*Michelangelo Buonarotti, A goiter it seems I got from this backward craning translated by John Frederick Nims

*Michelangelo Buonarotti, Sistine Chapel Ceiling (Detail)

*Rembrandt van Rijn, The Return of the Prodigal Son

*Elizabeth Bishop, The Prodigal

Kitagawa Utamaro, Girl Powdering Her Neck

*Cathy Song, Girl Powdering Her Neck

*Gustave Klimt, The Kiss

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Short Story on a Painting of Gustav Klimt

*Romare Bearden, At Five in the Afternoon

*Federico Garcia Lorca, Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías (pt. 2)

Chapter 11: WRITING ABOUT POETRY

Reasons for Writing about Poetry

Informal Ways of Writing about Poetry

Robert Graves, Symptoms of Love

Formal Ways of Writing about Poetry

Sylvia Plath, Mirror

Student Papers on Poetry

Questions for Writing about Poetry

Suggestions for Writing

Chapter 12: THREE POETS IN CONTEXT

Reading Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, and Langston Hughes in Depth

*Emily Dickinson in Context

*The 19th-Century New England Literary Scene

Dickinson and Modern Poetry / Dickinson and Christianity / Dickinson's Style/ Timeline

Emily Dickinson, I cannot dance upon my Toes (326)

Emily Dickinson, The soul selects her own Society (303)

Emily Dickinson: Poems

*67 Success is counted sweetest

*108 Surgeons must be very careful

*185 "Faith" is a fine invention

199 I'm "wife"--I've finished that

214 I taste a liquor never brewed

241 I like a look of Agony

249 Wild Nights--Wild Nights!

*252 I can wade Grief

258 There's a certain Slant of light

280 I felt a Funeral, in my Brain

324 Some keep the Sabbath going to Church

*328 A Bird came down the walk

341 After great pain, a formal feeling comes

348 I dreaded that first Robin, so

*365 Dare you see a Soul at the White heat?

419 We grow accustomed to the Dark

435 Much Madness is divinest Sense

*448 This was a Poet--It is that

449 I died for Beauty--but was scarce

465 I head a Fly buzz--when I died

*480 "Why do I love" You, Sir?

*501 This World is not Conclusion.

*508 I'm ceded--I've stopped being Theirs--

*512 The Soul has Bandaged moments--

536 The heart asks Pleasure--first

*547 I've seen a Dying eye

*569 I reckon--when I count at all--

585 I like to see it lap the Miles

599 There is a pain--so utter

*632 The Brain--is wider than the Sky

650 Pain--has an element of Blank

*657 I dwell in Possibility--

*668 "Nature" is what we see

*709 Publication--is the Auction

744 Remorse--is Memory--awake

754 My Life had stood--a Loaded Gun

986 A narrow Fellow in the Grass

1068 Further in Summer than the Birds

1078 The Bustle in a House

1100 The last Night that She lived

1129 Tell all the Truth but tell it slant

*1138 A spider sewed at night

*1142 The Props assist the House

1463 A Route of Evanescence

1624 Apparently with no surprise

*1705 Volcanoes be in Sicily

1732 My life closed twice before its close

Questions for Reflection

Three Poems with Altered Punctuation

Poems Inspired by Dickinson

*Jane Hirshfield, Three Times My Life has Opened

*Jane Kenyon, Notes from The Other Side

*Billy Collins, Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes

*Linda Pastan, Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson: Letters / Critics on Dickinson

*Robert Frost in Context

*The Popularity of Frost / Frost and Nature / Frost and the Sonnet / Frost's Voices/ Timeline

Robert Frost: Poems

Mowing

The Tuft of Flowers

Mending Wall

Birches

*After Apple-Picking

Home Burial

*The Oven Bird

Hyla Brook

*"Out, Out--"

Putting in the Seed

Fire and Ice

For Once, Then Something

*The Need of Being Versed in Country Things

Two Look at Two

Once by the Pacific

Acquainted with the Night

Tree at My Window

Departmental

Design

Desert Places

Provide, Provide

The Most of It

*Never Again Would Birds' Song Be the Same

Questions for Reflection

Frost: Letters and Essays / Critics on Frost

*Langston Hughes in Context

*The Harlem Renaissance / Hughes and Music / Hughes's Influences / Hughes's Style

Langston Hughes: Poems

*The Negro Speaks of Rivers

*Mother to Son

*I, Too

*My People

*The Weary Blues

*Young Gal's Blues

*Morning After

Trumpet Player

*Dream Boogie

*Ballad of the Landlord

*Madam and the Rent Man

*When Sue Wears Red

*Listen Here Blues

*Consider me

*Theme for English B

*Aunt Sue's Stories

*Madrid--1937

*Let America Be America Again

*I'm Still Here

*Questions for Reflection

*Hughes: Essays / Critics on Hughes

Chapter 13: A COLLECTION OF POEMS

Classics

Anonymous, Barbara Allan

Anonymous, Edward, Edward

William Blake, The Clod and the Pebble

William Blake, The Lamb

William Blake, The Tyger

William Blake, The Garden of Love

Anne Bradstreet, To My Dear and Loving Husband

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, How do I love thee

Robert Burns, A Red, Red Rose

*Thomas Campion, There is a Garden in Her Face

Lewis Carroll, Jabberwocky

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan

John Donne, Song: Go and catch a falling star

John Donne, The Canonization