Part 1: A GUIDE TO WRITING ABOUT LITERATURE. 1. Understanding Literature. Imaginative Literature. Conventional Themes. The Literary Canon. Luisa Valenzuela, All about Suicide. Interpreting Literature. Robert Frost, Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening. Evaluating Literature. Using Literary Criticism. CHECKLIST: Evaluating Literary Criticism. 2. Reading and Writing about Literature. Reading Literature. CHECKLIST: Using Highlighting Symbols. Writing about Literature. CHECKLIST: Using Sources. CHECKLIST: Conventions of Writing about Literature. Exercise: Three Model Student Essays. 3. Writing Literary Arguments. Planning a Literary Argument. CHECKLIST: Developing an Argument Thesis. Using Evidence Effectively. Organizing a Literary Argument. 4. Using Sources in Your Writing Choosing a Topic. Doing Exploratory Research. Narrowing Your Topic. Doing Focused Research. CHECKLIST: Evaluating Library Sources. CHECKLIST: Evaluating Websites. Taking Notes. Integrating Sources. EXERCISE: Integrating Quotations. Developing a Thesis Statement. Constructing a Formal Outline. Drafting Your Essay. Model Essay with MLA Documentation. 5. Documenting Sources and Avoiding Plagiarism. Avoiding Plagiarism. CHECKLIST: Avoiding Unintentional Plagiarism. Documenting Sources. CHECKLIST: Guidelines for Punctuating In-Text Citations. Part 2: FICTION. 6. Understanding Fiction. Origins of Modern Fiction. Defining the Short Story. Ernest Hemingway, Hills Like White Elephants. The Boundaries of Fiction. 7. Fiction Sampler: The Short-Short Story. Sandra Cisneros, Geraldo No Last Name. Dave Eggers, Accident. Bret Anthony Johnston, Encounters with Unexpected Animals. Stephen Graham Jones, Discovering America. Jamaica Kincaid, Girl. Ed Park, Slides to Unlock. George Saunders, Sticks. 8. Fiction Sampler: Graphic Fiction. Franz Kafka, A Hunger Artist. R. Crumb, A Hunger Artist. 9. Plot. Conflict. Stages of Plot. Order and Sequence. CHECKLIST: Writing about Plot. Kate Chopin, The Story of an Hour. Neil Gaiman, How to Talk to Girls at Parties. William Faulkner, A Rose for Emily. 10. Character. Round and Flat Characters. Dynamic and Static Characters. Motivation. CHECKLIST: Writing about Character. John Updike, A&P. Katherine Mansfield, Miss Brill. Charles Baxter, Gryphon. Zadie Smith, The Girl with Bangs. 11. Setting. Historical Setting. Geographical Setting. Physical Setting. CHECKLIST: Writing about Setting. Kate Chopin, The Storm. Alberto Alvaro Rios, The Secret Lion. Tillie Olsen, I Stand Here Ironing. 12. Point of View. First-Person Narrators. Third-Person Narrators. Selecting an Appropriate Point of View. CHECKLIST: Selecting an Appropriate Point of View: Review. CHECKLIST: Writing about Point of View. Richard Wright, Big Black Good Man. Edgar Allan Poe, The Cask of Amontillado. William Faulkner, Barn Burning. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Disappearance. 13. Style, Tone, and Language. Style and Tone. The Uses of Language. Formal and Informal Diction. Imagery. Figures of Speech. CHECKLIST: Writing about Style, Tone, and Language. James Joyce, Araby. (Mary) Flannery O'Connor, A Good Man Is Hard to Find. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper. 14. Symbol, Allegory, and Myth. Symbol. Allegory. Myth. CHECKLIST: Writing about Symbol, Allegory, and Myth. Shirley Jackson, The Lottery. Alice Walker, Everyday Use. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Young Goodman Brown. 15. Theme. Interpreting Themes. Identifying Themes. CHECKLIST: Writing about Theme. Eudora Welty, A Worn Path. David Michael Kaplan, Doe Season. Stephen Crane, The Open Boat. Robert Huff, Rainbow. 14. Fiction for Further Reading. Ambrose Bierce, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. T. Coraghessan Boyle, Greasy Lake. Junot Diaz, No Face. Louise Erdrich, The Red Convertible. Zora Neale Hurston, Sweat. Joyce Carol Oates, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? Edgar Allan Poe, The Tell-Tale Heart. John Steinbeck, The Chrysanthemums. Amy Tan, Two Kinds. Part 3: POETRY. 17. Understanding Poetry. Archibald Macleish, Ars Poetica. Billy Collins, Introduction to Poetry. Origins of Modern Poetry. Defining Poetry. William Shakespeare, That time of year thou mayst in me behold. E.E. Cummings, l(a). Recognizing Kinds of Poetry. 18. Voice. Emily Dickinson, I'm nobody! Who are you? The Speaker in the Poem. Louise Gluck, Gretel in Darkness. Langston Hughes, Negro. Robert Browning, My Last Duchess. Further Reading: The Speaker in the Poem. Leslie Marmon Silko, Where Mountain Lion Lay Down with Deer. Rafael Campo, My Voice. The Tone of the Poem. Robert Frost, Fire and Ice. Thomas Hardy, The Man He Killed. Amy Lowell, Patterns. Further Reading: The Tone of the Poem. William Wordsworth, The World Is Too Much with Us. Sylvia Plath, Morning Song. Robert Herrick, To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time. Irony. Robert Browning, Porphyria's Lover. Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias. Further Reading: Irony. Agha Shahid Ali, The Wolf's Postscript to 'Little Red Riding Hood.' Wislawa Szymborska, Hitler's First Photograph. CHECKLIST: Writing about Voice. 19. Word Choice, Word Order. Bob Holman, Beautiful. Word Choice. Walt Whitman, When I heard the Learn'd Astronomer. Further Reading: Word Choice. Rhina Espaillat, Bilingual/Bilingue. Adrienne Rich, Living in Sin. Levels of Diction. Margaret Atwood, The City Planners. Jim Sagel, Baca Grande. Further Reading: Levels of Diction. Adrienne Su, The English Canon. Paul Laurence Dunbar, We Wear the Mask. Gwendolyn Brooks, We Real Cool. Gwendolyn Brooks, What Shall I Give My Children? Word Order. Edmund Spenser, One day I wrote her name upon the strand. Further Reading: Word Order. A.E. Housman, To an Athlete Dying Young. Charles Jensen, Poem in Which Words Have Been Left Out. CHECKLIST: Writing about Word Choice and Word Order. 20. Imagery. Jane Flanders, Cloud Painter. William Carlos Williams, Red Wheelbarrow. Ezra Pound, In a Station of the Metro. Gary Snyder, Some Good Things to Be Said for the Iron Age. William Carlos Williams, The Great Figure. Further Reading: Imagery. F.J. Bergmann, An Apology. David Trinidad, 9773 Comanche Avenue. Lola Ridge, Wall Street at Night. Robert Frost, Nothing Gold Can Stay. Jean Toomer, Reapers. Kobayashi Issa, Haiku. Frederick Morgan, The Busses. William Shakespeare, My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun. CHECKLIST: Writing about Imagery. 21. Figures of Speech. William Shakespeare, Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Simile, Metaphor, and Personification. Langston Hughes, Harlem. Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Constantly Risking Absurdity. Audre Lorde, Rooming houses are old women. Further Reading: Simile, Metaphor, and Personification. Robert Burns, Oh, my love is like a red, red rose. N. Scott Momaday, Simile. Sylvia Plath, Metaphors. Randall Jarrell, The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner. John Donne, A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning. Hyperbole and Understatement. Sylvia Plath, Daddy. Edna St. Vincent Millay, If I should learn, in some quite casual way. Further Reading: Hyperbole and Understatement. Anne Bradstreet, To My Dear and Loving Husband. Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress. Robert Frost, Out, Out--. Countee Cullen, Incident. Metonymy and Synecdoche. Richard Lovelace, To Lucasta Going to the Wars. Apostrophe. Nancy Mercado, Going to work. Further Reading: Apostrophe. John Keats, Ode to a Nightingale. Allen Ginsberg, A Supermarket in California. CHECKLIST: Writing about Figures of Speech. 22. Sound. Walt Whitman, Had I the Choice. Rhythm. Gwendolyn Brooks, Sadie and Maud. Meter. Emily Dickinson, I like to see it lap the Miles--. Further Reading: Rhythm and Meter. Adrienne Rich, Aunt Jennifer's Tigers. Thomas Lux, A Little Tooth. Lewis Carroll, A Boat beneath a Sunny Sky. Alliteration and Assonance. Robert Herrick, Delight in Disorder. Rhyme. Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken. Further Reading: Alliteration, Assonance, and Rhyme. Gerard Manley Hopkins, Pied Beauty. Shel Silverstein, Where the Sidewalk Ends. Jacob Saenz, Evolution of My Block. Lewis Carroll, Jabberwocky. CHECKLIST: Writing about Sound. 23. Form. John Keats, On the Sonnet. Closed Form. William Shakespeare, When, in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes. Further Reading: The Sonnet. John Keats, On First Looking into Chapman's Homer. Edna St. Vincent Millay, Love is not all. Lynn Aarti Chandhok, The Carpet Factory. The Sestina. Alberto Alvaro Rios, Nani. Further Reading: The Sestina. Elizabeth Bishop, Sestina. Patricia Smith, Ethel's Sestina. The Villanelle. Theodore Roethke, The Waking. Deborah Paredez, Wife's Disaster Manual. The Epigram. Further Reading: The Epigram. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, What Is an Epigram? Dorothy Parker, News Item. Martin Espada, Why I Went to College. Haiku. Further Reading: Haiku. Matsuo Basho, Four Haiku. Open Form. Carl Sandburg, Chicago. E.E. Cummings, the sky was can dy. Further Reading: Open Form. Walt Whitman, from Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking. William Carlos Williams, Spring and All. Yusef Komunyakaa, Nude Interrogation. Concrete Poetry. May Swenson, Women. George Herbert, Easter Wings. CHECKLIST: Writing about Form. 24. Symbol, Allegory, Allusion, Myth. William Blake, The Sick Rose. Symbol. Robert Frost, For Once, Then, Something. Emily Dickinson, Volcanoes be in Sicily. Further Reading: Symbol. Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven. Virgil Suarez, Isla. Allegory. Christina Rossetti, Uphill. Further Reading: Allegory. May Swenson, The Watch. Allusion. William Meredith, Dreams of Suicide. Further Reading: Allusion. R. S. Gwynn, Shakespearean Sonnet. Myth. Countee Cullen, Yet Do I Marvel. Further Reading: Myth. William Butler Yeats, Leda and the Swan. W.H. Auden, Musee des Beaux Arts. CHECKLIST: Writing about Symbol, Allegory, Allusion, Myth. 25. Discovering Themes in Poetry. Robert Herrick, The Argument of His Book. Poems about Parents. Theodore Roethke, My Papa's Waltz. Robert Hayden, Those Winter Sundays. Seamus Heaney, Digging. Judith Ortiz Cofer, My Father in the Navy. Mitsuye Yamada, The Night Before Goodbye. Andrew Hudgins, Elegy for My Father, Who Is Not Dead. Dylan Thomas, Do not go gentle into that good night. Poems about Nature. William Wordsworth, I wandered lonely as a cloud. Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Windhover. A.E. Housman, Loveliest of Trees. Carl Sandburg, Fog. Robert Frost, Birches. Joy Harjo, Invisible Fish. Poems about Love. Robert Browning, Meeting at Night. Robert Browning, Parting at Morning. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, How Do I Love Thee? Edna St. Vincent Millay, What lips my lips have kissed. Jehanne Dubrow, Before the Deployment. Leigh Hunt, Jenny Kissed Me. Dorothy Parker, General Review of the Sex Situation. Poems about War. Wilfred Owen, Dulce et Decorum Est. Siegfried Sassoon, Atrocities. Rupert Brooke, The Soldier. W.H. Auden, from In Time of War. Yusef Komunyakaa, Facing It. David Hernandez, Mosul. Naomi Shahib Nye, All Things Not Considered. Wislawa Szymborska, The End and the Beginning. 26. Poetry for Further Reading. Anonymous, Bonny Barbara Allan. Anonymous, Go Down, Moses. Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach. William Blake, The Chimney Sweeper. William Blake, The Lamb. William Blake, London. William Blake, To see a World in a Grain of Sand. William Blake, The Tyger. Anne Bradstreet, The Author to Her Book. Gwendolyn Brooks, The Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock. Gwendolyn Brooks, Medgar Evers. George Gordon, Lord Byron, She Walks in Beauty. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan. E.E. Cummings, next to of course god america i. Emily Dickinson, Because I could not stop for Death--. Emily Dickinson, 'Faith' is a fine invention. Emily Dickinson, 'Hope' is the thing with feathers . Emily Dickinson, I heard a Fly buzz--when I died--. Emily Dickinson, Much Madness is divinest Sense--. Emily Dickinson, My Life had stood--a Loaded Gun. Emily Dickinson, The Soul selects her own Society--. Emily Dickinson, There is no Frigate like a Book. Emily Dickinson, There's a certain Slant of light. Emily Dickinson, This is my letter to the World. John Donne, Death Be Not Proud. John Donne, The Flea. T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. James A. Emanuel, Emmett Till. Louise Erdrich, Indian Boarding School: The Runaways. Martin Espada, The Community College Revises Its Curriculum in Response to Changing Demographics. Robert Frost, Mending Wall. Thomas Hardy, The Convergence of the Twain. William Ernest Henley, Invictus. Gerard Manley Hopkins, God's Grandeur. Langston Hughes, Birmingham Sunday. Langston Hughes, The Negro Speaks of Rivers. Langston Hughes, Theme for English B. John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn. John Keats, When I Have Fears. Ada Lim n, The Contract Says: We'd Like the Conversation to Be Bilingual. Christopher Marlowe, The Passionate Shepherd to His Love. Claude McKay, If We Must Die. Harriet Levin Millan, Bucharest 1918. John Milton, When I Consider How My Light is Spent. Pablo Neruda, The United Fruit Co. Sir Walter Raleigh, The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd. Edwin Arlington Robinson, Richard Cory. William Shakespeare, Let me not to the marriage of true minds. William Shakespeare, Not marble, nor the gilded monuments. Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ode to the West Wind. Stevie Smith, Not Waving but Drowning. Wallace Stevens, Anecdote of the Jar. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Ulysses. Phillis Wheatley, On Being Brought from Africa to America. Walt Whitman, I Hear America Singing. Walt Whitman, A Noiseless Patient Spider. Walt Whitman, from Song of Myself. William Wordsworth, Composed Upon Westminster Bridge. William Wordsworth, London, 1802. William Wordsworth, My heart leaps up when I behold. William Butler Yeats, The Lake Isle of Innisfree. William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming. Part 4: DRAMA. 27. Understanding Drama. Dramatic Literature. Origins of Modern Drama. Tragedy and Comedy. Defining Drama. Anton Chekhov, The Brute. A Note on Translations. 28. Drama Sampler: Ten-Minute Plays. Jane Martin, Beauty. Steven Korbar, What Are You Going to Be? James McLindon, Choices. Jeni Mahoney, Come Rain or Come Shine. Harold Pinter, Applicant. Jose Rivera, Tape. 29. Plot. Plot Structure. Plot Development. CHECKLIST: Writing about Plot. Susan Glaspell, Trifles. Henrik Ibsen, A Doll s House. Arthur Miller, All My Sons. 30. Character. Characters' Words. Characters' Actions. Stage Directions. Actors' Interpretations. CHECKLIST: Writing about Character. Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie. William Shakespeare, Hamlet. 31. Staging. Stage Directions. The Uses of Staging. A Final Note. CHECKLIST: Writing about Staging. Milcha Sanchez-Scott, The Cuban Swimmer. Sophocles, Oedipus the King. 32. Theme. Titles. Conflicts. Dialogue. Characters. Staging. A Final Note. CHECKLIST: Writing about Theme. Sophocles, Antigone. August Wilson, Fences. Appendix.
