Literature: A World of Writing Poems, Stories, Plays, and Essays Book

PART I. A Reader’s Guide to the World of Writing

1. A World of Meaning: Reading and Thinking about Literature

Meaningless Words and the World of Meaning

Literary Form and Assumptions about Meaning

The Point of Literary Meaning

Forming Literary Meaning

Making Sense

Making Meaning out of Misunderstanding

Roberto Fernández, Wrong Channel

Deciphering Meaning: The Riddle Game

The Riddle as a Literary Device

Sylvia Plath, Metaphors

Making and Breaking the Rules

Carol Shields, Absence

Reading for What Does Not Make Sense

Writer at Work: The Reading Process

Sharon Olds, The Possessive

STUDENT WRITING: Justin Schiel reads and annotates The Possessive

Clarity and Ambiguity of Language

Working with Ambiguity in Literary Writing

Reading versus Writing

Working with Clarity in Nonliterary Writing: The Summary

STUDENT WRITING: Four Summaries of The Possessive

Clarity and Ambiguity in Storytelling

Franz Kafka, Before the Law

STUDENT WRITING: Two Summaries of Before the Law

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wife’s Story

Clarity and Ambiguity of Argument: Summarizing an Essay

Rosa Ehrenreich Brooks, I Hate Trees

STUDENT WRITING: Melissa Kim, A Summary of Rosa Ehrenreich Brooks’s I Hate Trees

Clarity and Ambiguity in Visual Culture

Visual Assumptions

Writing a Summary of an Image

Cornelis Gijsbrechts, Letter Rack with Christian V’s Proclamation

STUDENT WRITING: Alan Green, A Summary of Letter Rack with Christian V’s Proclamation

Looking Back: A World of Meaning

2. Writing in the World: Argument, Critical Thinking, and the Process of Writing

Crafting an Argument

May Sarton, The Rewards of Living a Solitary Life

Analyzing an Argumentative Essay

Making Your Own Argument

Argument versus Thesis

From Idea to Thesis

Chinua Achebe, Dead Men’s Path

Critical Thinking: Reading, Questioning, Writing

Writer at Work: Critical Thinking from First Impressions to Finished Paper

Mary Oliver, August

Student Writer Katherine Randall, sample writing drafts

to final paper.

Reading

Questioning

Writing

Critical Thinking in a Comparison Paper

Ellen Hunnicutt, Blackberries

Leslie Norris, Blackberries

STUDENT WRITING: Cynthia Wilson, Leave the Picking to the Boys

Thinking Critically about Visual Culture

Thinking Critically about Signs

Looking Back: Writing in the World

3. Investigating the World: Planning, Writing, and Revising a Research Paper

Finding a Topic

Finding, Evaluating, and Summarizing Your Sources in the Annotated Bibliography

Primary Sources and Secondary Sources

The MLA Works-Cited List

Plagiarism and How to Avoid It

The Annotated Bibliography

STUDENT WRITING: Lorraine Betesh, Annotated Bibliography–Source #1

From the Annotated Bibliography to the First Draft

Making an Outline

STUDENT WRITING: Lorraine Betesh, The Brooklyn Bridge in Illustrations and Photographs–An Outline

Writing a First Draft

MLA In-Text Citations

Writer at Work: Revising

Revising the initial draft

A STUDENT RESEARCH PAPER USING VISUAL MEDIA: Lorraine Betesh, The Brooklyn Bridge in Illustrations and Photographs

A STUDENT RESEARCH LITERARY ANALYSIS PAPER: Rob Lanney, Hamlet’s Denmark

Looking Back: Investigating the World

4. Organizing the World of Literature: Genre

Plot Conventions and Expectations

Margaret Atwood, Happy Endings

Comparing Genres

N. Scott Momaday, from The Way to Rainy Mountain

What Is Poetry?

Prosody: An Introduction

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Metrical Feet — Lesson for a Boy

Poetic Diction

Poetic Forms

What Is Fiction?

Fiction and History

Types of Fiction

The Craft of Fiction

Padgett Powell, A Gentleman’s C

The Materials of Fiction

The Tools of Fiction

What Is a Play?

Susan Glaspell, Trifles

Dramatic Structure

Characters

Staging

Form and Genre

Tragedy

Comedy

What Is Nonfiction?

The Essay

Virginia Woolf, The Death of the Moth

Annie Dillard, The Death of a Moth

Analyzing an Essays

Writer at Work: Reading and Writing Essays

STUDENT WRITING: Scott Nathanson, The Meaning of Death

Types of Essays

What Are Visual Media?

Still Images

Sequential Images

Moving Images

Interactive Images

Looking Back: Organizing the World of Literature

Part II. The Writer’s World: Genres and the Craft of Literature

5. Imaging the World: Exploring the Forms of Literature

Imagining the World: Working with Poetry

Writer at Work: Three Poems about Social Relations

William Blake, London

Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Mary Oliver, Singapore

STUDENT WRITING: Summaries of London, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, and Singapore

STUDENT WRITING: A Comparison of London, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, and Singapore

Describing the World: Working with Stories

Writer at Work: The Power of Description

Julia Alvarez, Snow

STUDENT WRITING: A Descriptive Essay

Staging the World: Working with Plays

Writer at Work: Viewing and Writing about a Performance of Krapp’s Last Tape

Samuel Beckett, Krapp’s Last Tape

Notes on Krapp’s Last Tape, directed by Atom Egoyan, by Joshua Cohen

Response Paper on Krapp’s Last Tape, directed by Atom Egoyan, by

Joshua Cohen

Explaining the World: Working with Essays

Writer at Work: Arguing with an Essay

George Packer, How Susie Bayer’s T-Shirt Ended Up on Yusuf Mama’s Back

STUDENT WRITING: An Argumentative Essay on How Susie Bayer’s T- Shirt Ended Up on Yusuf Mama’s Back

Writer at Work: Topics for essays

6.

Writing the World: Working with Literary Devices

Literary Devices

Patterns of Repetition

Patterns of Inversion

Patterns of Contradiction

Ambiguity and Double Meaning

Imagery

Referring to Other Texts

Word Pictures

John Keats, Drawing of the Sosibios Vase

John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn

Hiram Power, Greek Slave

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, On Hiram Powers’ Greek Slave

Peter Brueghel the Elder, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

William Carlos Williams, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

W. H. Auden, Musée des Beaux Arts

Michael Hamburger, Lines on Brueghel’s Icarus”

Akira Kurosawa, movie still from The Seven Samurai

Robert Hass, Heroic Simile

Writing the World: Topics for Essays

7.

Translating the World: Reading and Writing between Languages

I Hate and Love: A Casebook on Translation

Catullus: Poem 85 with interlinear and literal translation

Richard Lovelace, I hate and love

Walter Landor, I love and hate

Ezra Pound, I hate and love

Peter Whigham, I hate and I love

Charles Martin, I hate & love

Frank Bidart, Catullus: Odi et Amo, Catullus: Excrucior

Miriam Sagan, Translating Catullus

Translation and Bilingualism

Mary TallMountain, There Is No Word for Goodbye [Native American]

Wilfrid Owen, Dulce et decorum est

Michael Martone, The Mayor of the Sister City Speaks to the Chamber of Commerce in Klamath Falls, Oregon, on a Night in December in 1976

Amy Tan, from Mother Tongue

Translating the World: Topics for Essays

PART III. The Reader’s World: Exploring the Themes of Literature

8. The World Closest to Us: Me and You

Families

Fiction

Julio Cortázar, Unusual Occupations

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

James Baldwin, Sonny’s Blues

Jonathan Safran Foer, Primer for the Punctuation of Heart Disease

Alice Walker, Everyday Use

Poetry

Robert Hayden, Those Winter Sundays

Lucille Clifton, wishes for sons

Kitty Tsui, A Chinese Banquet

PLAY

William Shakespeare, Hamlet

Nonfiction

Scott Russell Sanders, Buckeye

Families: Topics for essays

Children and Adolescents

Fiction

Jamaica Kincaid, Girl

Lorrie Moore, The Kid’s Guide to Divorce

James Joyce, Araby

John Updike, A&P

Poetry

Elizabeth Bishop, In the Waiting Room

Anne Sexton, Little Red Riding Hood

Agha Shahid Ali, The Wolf’s Postscript to Little Red Riding Hood

Gary Soto, Behind Grandma’s House

NonFiction

Langston Hughes, Salvation

Children and Adolescents: Topics for essays

Lovers

Fiction

Dorothy Parker, The Waltz

John Steinbeck, The Chrysanthemums

Amanda Holzer, ove and Other Catastrophes: A Mix Tape

Poetry

Uruttiran, What She Said to Her Girl Friend

Ono no Komachi, selected tanka

Sara Teasdale, The Look

William Shakespeare,

Let me not to the marriage of true minds (Sonnet 116)

When, in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes (Sonnet 29)

How oft when thou, my music, music play'st (Sonnet 128)

John Donne, The Flea

Jimmy Santiago Baca, Spliced Wire

Edgar Allan Poe, Annabel Lee

T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Nonfiction

Sei Shonagon, from The Pillow Book

Lovers: Topics for essays

Working further with the World Closest to Us

Reading Globally, Writing Locally I: Orhan Pamuk and the Literature of Europe

Nonfiction

Orhan Pamuk, My Father’s Suitcase

Fiction

Orhan Pamuk, To Look Out The Window

Julio Cortázar, Axolotl

Poetry

Eleni Fourtouni, Child’s Memory

CzesBaw MiBosz, My Faithful Mother Tongue

Working further with the literature of Europe

9. The Worlds around Us: Beliefs and Ethics

Beliefs: Creation and Beginnings

Sacred Text

Genesis, chapters 1-3

Secular Texts

Voltaire, Plato’s Dream

Salman Rushdie, Imagine There’s No Heaven

K. C. Cole, Murmurs

Creation and Beginnings: Topics for essays

Ethics: Destruction and Endings

Fiction

Nathaniel Hawthorne, Young Goodman Brown

Kate Chopin, The Story of an Hour

Ernest Hemingway, Hills Like White Elephants

Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried

Poetry

William Carlos Williams, Complete Destruction

Robert Frost, Fire and Ice

John Donne, Death, Be Not Proud

Dylan Thomas, Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night

Emily Dickinson, I like a look of Agony

Because I could not stop for Death ;

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain ;

I heard a Fly buzz–when I died–

It was not Death, for I stood up

A toad can die of light!

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant

WisBawa Szymborska, Lot’s Wife

Carolyn Forché, The Colonel

PLAY

Sophocles, Antigone

Destruction and Endings: Topics for essays

Working further with the Worlds around Us

Reading Globally, Writing Locally II: Naguib Mahfouz and the Literature of Africa

Fiction

Naguib Mahfouz, Half a Day (translated by Davies Denys Johnson)

Naguib Mahfouz, Zaabalawi (translated by Davies Denys Johnson)

Nonfiction

Binyavanga Wainaina, How to Write about Africa

Poetry

Jeremy Cronin, To learn how to speak …

Chenjerai Hove, You Will Forget

Working further with the literature of Africa

10. The World We Live in: Spaces and Places

In-Between Spaces

Fiction

Eudora Welty, A Worn Path

Raymond Carver, Cathedral

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

Poetry

Robert Frost, Mending Wall

James Wright, Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota

Henry Taylor, Landscape with Tractor

Louise Erdrich, Dear John Wayne

Yusuf Komunyakaa, Facing It

Nonfiction

Rachel Carson, The Marginal World

In-between spaces: Topics for essays

Confined Spaces

Fiction

Edgar Allan Poe, The Cask of Amontillado

William Faulkner, A Rose for Emily

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper

Poetry

Paul Laurence Dunbar, Sympathy

Stevie Smith, Not Waving but Drowning

Robert Browning, My Last Duchess

Play

Henrik Ibsen, A Doll’s House

Nonfiction

Mikhael Metzel, The accused awaiting trial in the Butyrskaya prison in Moscow

Malcolm X, from The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Confined Spaces: Topics for essays

Working further with the World We Live In

Reading Globally, Writing Locally III: Jhumpa Lahiri and The Literature of Asia

Nonfiction

Jhumpa Lahiri, My Two Lives

Fiction

Jhumpa Lahiri, When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine

Kazuo Ishiguro, A Family Supper

Poetry

Garrett Hongo, Who among You Knows the Essence of Garlic?

Xu Gang, Red Azalea on the Cliff

Working further with the literature of Asia

11. The World We Share: Nature, Cities, and the Environment

Living in the City

Fiction

Toni Cade Bambara, The Lesson

Poetry

Allen Ginsberg, Supermarket in California

Ezra Pound, In a Station of the Metro

Sharon Olds, On the Subway

Langston Hughes, Theme for English B

Nonfiction

Bill Buford, Lions and Tigers and Bears

Living in the City: Topics for essays

Living in Nature

Fiction

Sarah Orne Jewett, A White Heron

T. C. Boyle, Greasy Lake

Poetry

Haiku by Basho and Richard Wright

H. D., The Sea Rose

William Carlos Williams, So Much Depends

Elizabeth Bishop, The Fish

Walt Whitman, When I Heard the Learned Astronomer

Langston Hughes, The Negro Speaks of Rivers

Gerard Manley Hopkins, Inversnaid

Wendell Berry, Stay Home

Robert Frost, A Brook in the City

W. S. Merwin, Rain at Night

Nonfiction

Louis D. Owens, The American Indian Wilderness

Donella Meadows, Living Lightly and Inconsistently on the Land

Living in Nature: Topics for Essays

Working further with the World Around Us

Reading Globally, Writing Locally IV:

Gabriel García Márquez and the Literature of the Americas

Fiction

Gabriel García Márquez, The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World

Gabriel García Márquez, A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings

Poetry

Pablo Neruda, The Word

Jimmy Santiago Baca, So Mexicans Are Taking Jobs from Americans

Tino Villanueva, Variation on a Theme by William Carlos Williams

Working further with the literature of the Americas

Appendix A: The World of Literary Criticism

Appendix B: MLA Documentation Guidelines