About this Book
Cover Page
Inside Front Cover
Haltitle Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Preface for Instructors
Brief Contents
Contents
Selections by Form and Theme
Part One: Reading and Writing about Literature
Chapter 1: Introduction to Reading and Writing about Literature
Why Read Literature?
Why Write about Literature?
What to Expect in a Literature Class
Literature and Enjoyment
Chapter 2: The Role of Good Reading
The Value of Rereading
Critical Reading
The Myth of “Hidden Meaning”
Active Reading
Annotating
Note-Taking
Journal Keeping
Using Reference Materials
Asking Critical Questions of Literature
Questions about the Text
Questions about the Author
Questions about the Cultural Context
Questions about the Reader
Chapter 3: The Writing Process
Prewriting
Choosing a Topic
Developing an Argument
The Thesis
Gathering Support for Your Thesis
Organizing Your Paper
Drafting the Paper
Introductions, Conclusions, and Transitions
Revising and Editing
Global Revision
Local Revision
Final Editing and Proofreading
Peer Editing and Workshops
Tips for Writing about Literature
Using Quotations Effectively
Avoiding Floating Quotations
Integrating Quotations
Adding to or Altering a Quotation
Omitting Words from a Quotation
Quotations within Quotations
Quotation Marks with Other Punctuation
Quoting From Stories
Short Quotations
Long Quotations
Quoting From Poems
Short Quotations
Long Quotations
Quoting From Plays
Short Single-Speaker Passages
Longer or More Complex Passages
Verse Drama
Tips for Quoting
Formatting Your Paper
Chapter 4: Common Writing Assignments
Summary
Response
Explication
Analysis
Comparison and Contrast
Essay Exams
Open-Book versus Closed-Book Exams
Develop a Plan
Aim for Clarity
Watch the Time
Chapter 5: Writing about Stories
Elements of Fiction
Plot
Character
Point of View
Setting
Theme
Symbolism
Style
Stories for Analysis
Student Essay: An Essay that Compares and Contrasts
Chapter 6: Writing about Poems
Elements of Poetry
The Speaker
The Listener
Imagery
Sound and Sense
Two Poems for Analysis
Student Essay: An Explication
Chapter 7: Writing about Plays
Elements of Drama
Plot, Character, and Theme
Diction
Spectacle
Setting
How to Read a Play
Watching the Play
The Director’s Vision
Student Essay: An Analysis
Chapter 8: Writing a Literary Research Paper
Finding Sources
Online Indexes
Using the Best Search Terms
Evaluating the Results
Periodicals
Books
Interlibrary Loan
The Internet
Evaluating Sources
Working with Sources
Quotations
Paraphrases and Summaries
Commentaries
Keeping Track of Your Sources
Writing the Paper
Refine Your Thesis
Organize Your Evidence
Start Your Draft
Revise
Edit and Proofread
Understanding and Avoiding Plagiarism
What to Document and What Not to Document
Documenting Sources: MLA Format
In-Text Citations
Preparing Your Works Cited List
Sample Research Paper
Chapter 9: Literary Criticism and Literary Theory
Formalism and New Criticism
Feminist and Gender Criticism
Queer Theory
Marxist Criticism
Cultural Studies
Postcolonial Criticism
Historical Criticism and New Historicism
Psychological Theories
Reader-Response Theories
Structuralism
Poststructuralism and Deconstruction
Ecocriticism
Part Two: 40 Stories
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Young Goodman Brown
Edgar Allan Poe, The Cask of Amontillado
Ambrose Bierce, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
Kate Chopin, The Story of an Hour
Anton Chekhov, The Lady with the Dog
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper
Sui Sin Far (Edith Maud Eaton), In the Land of the Free
Sherwood Anderson, Hands
James Joyce, The Dead
Virginia Woolf, Kew Gardens
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
Katherine Mansfield, Bliss
Zora Neale Hurston, Sweat
William Faulkner, A Rose for Emily
Ernest Hemingway, Hills Like White Elephants
John Cheever, Reunion
Ralph Ellison, Battle Royal
Shirley Jackson, The Lottery
James Baldwin, Sonny’s Blues
Flannery O’Connor, A Good Man Is Hard to Find
Gabriel García Márquez, A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings
Raymond Carver, Cathedral
Joyce Carol Oates, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
Margaret Atwood, Happy Endings
Toni Cade Bambara, The Lesson
Alice Walker, Everyday Use
Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried
Jamaica Kincaid, Girl
Louise Erdrich, The Red Convertible
Sandra Cisneros, My Name
George Saunders, Sticks
Sherman Alexie, This is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona
Alexander Chee, Mine
Ted Chiang, The Great Silence
Junot Díaz, Fiesta, 1980
Maile Meloy, Tome
Yiyun Li, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
Zz Packer, Brownies
Adrian Tomine, Echo Ave.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The Thing Around Your Neck
Part Three: 200 Poems
Anonymous, The Wife’s Lament
Anonymous, Western Wind
Sir Thomas Wyatt, Whoso list to hunt
Queen Elizabeth I, On Monsieur’s Departure
Christopher Marlowe, The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
Walter Ralegh, The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 18
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 73
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116
Aemilia Lanyer, Eve’s Apology in Defense of Women
John Donne, A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
John Donne, Death, be not proud
Ben Jonson, On My First Son
Robert Herrick, To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time
George Herbert, The Collar
Hester Pulter, The Eclipse
John Milton, When I consider how my light is spent
Anne Bradstreet, Here Follows Some Verses upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666
Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress
Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
Phillis Wheatley, On Being Brought from Africa to America
William Blake, The Lamb
William Blake, The Tyger
Kobayashi Issa, (“All the time I pray to Buddha”)
Kobayashi Issa, (“Don’t worry, spiders,”)
Kobayashi Issa, (“Goes out, comes back — ”)
William Wordsworth, Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan
George Gordon, Lord Byron, Prometheus
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ode to the West Wind
John Keats, When I have fears that I may cease to be
John Keats, Ode to a Nightingale
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, How do I love thee?
Edgar Allan Poe, Annabel Lee
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Ulysses
Robert Browning, My Last Duchess
Walt Whitman, From Song of Myself
Walt Whitman, When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer
Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach
Emily Dickinson, Wild Nights — Wild Nights!
Emily Dickinson, I heard a Fly buzz — when I died
Emily Dickinson, Much Madness is divinest Sense
Emily Dickinson, Because I could not stop for Death
Emily Dickinson, There’s a certain Slant of light
Lewis Carroll, Jabberwocky
Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Windhover
A. E. Housman, To an Athlete Dying Young
William Butler Yeats, The Lake Isle of Innisfree
William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming
William Butler Yeats, Leda and the Swan
Edwin Arlington Robinson, Richard Cory
Paul Laurence Dunbar, We Wear the Mask
Robert Frost, After Apple-Picking
Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Robert Frost, Acquainted with the Night
Rainer Maria Rilke, Archaic Torso of Apollo
Wallace Stevens, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
Wallace Stevens, The Emperor of Ice-Cream
Guillaume Apollinaire, Il Pleut/It’s Raining
Mina Loy, Moreover, the Moon —
William Carlos Williams, The Red Wheelbarrow
William Carlos Williams, This Is Just to Say
Ezra Pound, In a Station of the Metro
Ezra Pound, The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter
H. D. (Hilda Doolittle), Helen
Marianne Moore, Poetry
T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Claude Mckay, America
Edna St. Vincent Millay, What lips my lips have kissed
Wilfred Owen, Dulce et Decorum Est
E. E. Cummings, in Just-
E. E. Cummings, “next to of course god america i
Federico García Lorca, Dawn
Langston Hughes, The Negro Speaks of Rivers
Langston Hughes, The Weary Blues
Langston Hughes, Theme for English B
Langston Hughes, Harlem
Countee Cullen, Incident
Pablo Neruda, Body of a Woman
W. H. Auden, Funeral Blues
Theodore Roethke, My Papa’s Waltz
Elizabeth Bishop, The Fish
Elizabeth Bishop, One Art
Czesław Miłosz, Dedication
Robert Hayden, Middle Passage
Muriel Rukeyser, Waiting for Icarus
Dudley Randall, Ballad of Birmingham
William Stafford, Traveling through the Dark
Randall Jarrell, The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
Dylan Thomas, Do not go gentle into that good night
Gwendolyn Brooks, the mother
Gwendolyn Brooks, We Real Cool
Robert Lowell, For the Union Dead
Denise Levertov, The Ache of Marriage
Jack Gilbert, Failing and Flying
Maxine Kumin, Morning Swim
Frank O’Hara, The Day Lady Died
Allen Ginsberg, A Supermarket in California
Galway Kinnell, After Making Love We Hear Footsteps
Galway Kinnell, When one has lived a long time alone
John Ashbery, They Knew What They Wanted
W. S. Merwin, One of the Butterflies
James Wright, Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota
Philip Levine, What Work Is
Anne Sexton, Cinderella
Adrienne Rich, Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers
Adrienne Rich, Diving into the Wreck
Etheridge Knight, Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane
Linda Pastan, love poem
Sylvia Plath, Morning Song
Sylvia Plath, Daddy
Audre Lorde, Coal
Mary Oliver, The Summer Day
Lucille Clifton, at the cemetery, walnut grove plantation, south carolina, 1989
Lucille Clifton, homage to my hips
C. K. Williams, On the Métro
Charles Simic, Eyes Fastened with Pins
Seamus Heaney, Digging
Seamus Heaney, Mid-Term Break
Robert Pinsky, Shirt
Mahmoud Darwish, Identity Card
Billy Collins, Forgetfulness
Toi Derricotte, A Note on My Son’s Face
Richard Garcia, Why I Left the Church
Sharon Olds, I Go Back to May 1937
Louise Glück, Mock Orange
Quincy Troupe, A Poem For “Magic”
Bernadette Mayer, Sonnet
Marilyn Nelson, Emmett Till’s name still catches in my throat,
Yusef Komunyakaa, Facing It
Jane Kenyon, Happiness
Linda Hogan, Crow Law
Victor Hernández Cruz, Problems with Hurricanes
Carolyn Forché, The Boatman
Jorie Graham, Prayer
Linda Gregerson, Prodigal
Marie Howe, Death, the last visit
Dana Gioia, Majority
Joy Harjo, Fear Poem, or I Give You Back
Jimmy Santiago Baca, Family Ties
Judith Ortiz Cofer, The Latin Deli: An Ars Poetica
Naomi Shihab Nye, Gate A-4
Gary Soto, Moving Away
Mary Ruefle, Rain Effect
Rita Dove, Fifth Grade Autobiography
Alberto Ríos, Nani
Cherríe Moraga, Loving in the War Years
Harryette Mullen, Elliptical
Mark Doty, A Display of Mackerel
Tony Hoagland, History of Desire
Louise Erdrich, Indian Boarding School: The Runaways
Kim Addonizio, First Kiss
Patricia Smith, Skinhead
Marilyn Chin, How I Got That Name
Cathy Song, Heaven
Martín Espada, Alabanza: In Praise of Local 100
Li-Young Lee, Eating Alone
Kathy Fish, Collective Nouns for Humans in the Wild
Claudia Rankine, (“You are in the dark, in the car …”)
Spencer Reece, The Clerk’s Tale
A. Van Jordan, from
Taylor Mali, What Teachers Make
Margaret Noodin, Agoozimakakiig Idiwag / What the Peepers Say
Natasha Trethewey, History Lesson
Sherman Alexie, Postcards to Columbus
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, Unidentified Female Student, Former Slave
Allison Joseph, On Being Told I Don’t Speak Like a Black Person
Adrienne Su, Substitutions
Brian Turner, What Every Soldier Should Know
Suji Kwock Kim, Occupation
Terrance Hayes, Talk
Monica Youn, Goldacre
Jen Bervin, 64
Oliver De La Paz, Autism Screening Questionnaire — Speech and Language Delay
Tracy Smith, Declaration
Eduardo Corral, In Colorado My Father Scoured and Stacked Dishes
Ross Gay, A Small Needful Fact
Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Self-Portrait as Scallop
Katy Didden, “Embrace Them All”
Jericho Brown, Bullet Points
Mahogany L. Browne, Black Girl Magic
Ada Limón, How to Triumph Like a Girl
Matthew Olzmann, Letter Beginning with Two Lines by Czesław Miłosz
Aracelis Girmay, Ode to the Watermelon
Ilya Kaminsky, We Lived Happily during the War
Maggie Smith, Good Bones
Natalie Diaz, When My Brother Was an Aztec
Jenny Johnson, Tail
Amit Majmudar, Arms and the Man
Tarfia Faizullah, En Route to Bangladesh, Another Crisis of Faith
Patricia Lockwood, Rape Joke
Jacob Saenz, Blue Line Incident
Ocean Vuong, Aubade with Burning City
Kaveh Akbar, Portrait of the Alcoholic with Relapse Fantasy
Fatimah Asghar, Pluto Shits on the Universe
Danez Smith, alternate names for black boys
Javier Zamora, El Salvador
Noah Baldino, Passing
Layli Long Soldier, 38
Part Four: 9 Plays
Sophocles, Oedipus the King
William Shakespeare, Othello, the Moor of Venice
Henrik Ibsen, A Doll House
Susan Glaspell, Trifles
Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
August Wilson, Fences
Nilo Cruz, Anna in the Tropics
Neena Beber, Misreadings
Lynn Nottage, Sweat
Biographical Notes on the Authors
Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms
Acknowledgments
Index of Authors, Titles, and First Lines
Inside Back Cover
Back Cover
