Instructor's Review Copy for A Short Guide to Writing About Literature

Part of Longman's successful Short Guide Series, A Short Guide to Writing about Literature emphasizes writing as a process and incorporates new critical approaches to writing about literature. The twelfth edition continues to offer students sound advice on how to become critical thinkers and enrich their reading response through accessible, step-by-step instruction.   This highly respected text is ideal as a supplement to any course where writing about literature or literary studies is emphasized.

Table of Contents:
PREFACE LETTER TO STUDENTS   PART 1 Jumping In 1–WRITING ABOUT LITERATURE: A CRASH COURSE The Pleasures of Reading–and of Writing about Literature The Open Secret of Good Writing The Writing Process A Checklist of the Basics    2–THE WRITER AS READER: READING AND RESPONDING      Kate Chopin, “Ripe Figs”      The Act of Reading      Reading with a Pen in Hand      Recording Your First Responses      Audience and Purpose      A Writing Assignment on “Ripe Figs”      The Assignment      A Sample Essay: “Images of Ripening in Kate Chopin’s `Ripe Figs’ ”      The Student’s Analysis Analyzed      Critical Thinking and the Study of Literature    3–THE READER AS WRITER: DRAFTING AND WRITING      Pre-writing: Getting Ideas      Annotating a Text      More about Getting Ideas: A Second Story by Kate Chopin, “The Story of an Hour”      Kate Chopin: “The Story of an Hour”      Brainstorming for Ideas for Writing      Focused Free Writing      Listing      Asking Questions      Keeping a Journal      Critical Thinking: Arguing with Yourself      Arriving at a Thesis and Arguing It      Writing a Draft      A Sample Draft: “Ironies in an Hour”      Revising a Draft                A Checklist for Revising for Clarity     Two Ways of Outlining a Draft                A Checklist for Reviewing a Revised Draft      Peer Review      The Final Version      Sample Essay: “Ironies of Life in Kate Chopin’s `The Story of an Hour’ ”       The Analysis Analyzed      Quick Review: From First Response to Final Version: Writing an Essay about a Literary Work    4–TWO FORMS OF CRITICISM: EXPLICATION AND ANALYSIS      Explication      A Sample Explication: Langston Hughes’s “Harlem”      Working toward an Explication of “Harlem”       Some Journal Entries       The Final Draft: “Langston Hughes’s `Harlem’ ”       The Analysis Analyzed                   A Checklist: Drafting an Explication      Analysis: The Judgment of Solomon      Thinking about Form      Thinking about Character      Thoughts about Other Possibilities     For Further reading and Analysis: The Parable of the Prodigal Son  NEW Comparison: An Analytic Tool            A Checklist: Revising a Comparison   For Further Reading and Comparison: Gwendolyn Brooks’s “We Real Cool” NEW      Finding a Topic      Considering the Evidence      Organizing the Material      Communicating Judgments      Review: How to Write an Effective Essay          1. Pre-writing          2. Drafting          3. Revising          4. Editing             An Editing Checklist: Questions to Ask Yourself When Editing         For Further Reading, Explication, and Comparison: William Blake’s “The Tyger” NEW   5—OTHER KINDS OF WRITING ABOUT LITERATURE      A Summary      A Paraphrase      A Review      A Review of a Dramatic Production       A Sample Review: “An Effective Macbeth”      PART 2 Standing Back: Thinking Critically about Literature   6—LITERATURE, FORM, AND MEANING      Literature and Form     Literature and Meaning      Arguing about Meaning      Form and Meaning      Robert Frost, “The Span of Life”      Literature, Texts, Discourses, and Cultural Studies Suggestions for Further Reading 7—WHAT IS INTERPRETATION?      Interpretation and Meaning       Is the Author’s Intention a Guide to Meaning?       Features of a Good Interpretation      An Example: Interpreting Pat Mora’s “Immigrants”       Thinking Critically about Literature       A Student Interpretation of Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”      Sample Essay: “Stopping by Woods and Going On”  For Further Interpretation, Comparison, and Writing: Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” NEW  Suggestions for Further Reading        A Checklist: Writing an Interpretation NEW   8—WHAT IS EVALUATION?       Criticism and Evaluation       Are There Critical Standards?      Morality and Truth as Standards       Other Ways to Think about Truth and Realism      Suggestions for Further Reading           9—WRITING ABOUT LITERATURE: AN OVERVIEW       The Nature of Critical Writing       Some Critical Approaches      Formalist Criticism (New Criticism)       Deconstruction       Reader-Response Criticism       Archetypal (or Myth) Criticism       Historical Criticism      Marxist Criticism       The New Historicism       Biographical Criticism      Psychological (or Psychoanalytic) Criticism       Gender (Feminist, and Lesbian and Gay) Criticism      Suggestions for Further Reading     PART 3 Up Close: Thinking Critically about Literary Forms   10–WRITING ABOUT FICTION: THE WORLD OF THE STORY       Plot and Character      Writing about a Character       A Sample Essay on a Character: “Holden’s Kid Sister”       The Analysis Analyzed      Foreshadowing      Organizing an Essay on Foreshadowing      Setting and Atmosphere      Symbolism      A Sample Essay on Setting as Symbol: “Spring Comes to Mrs. Mallard”       “Spring Comes to Mrs. Mallard”      Point of View      Third-Person Narrators      First-Person Narrators      Notes and a Sample Essay on Narrative Point of View in James Joyce’s “Araby”      “The Three First-Person Narrators of Joyce’s `Araby’ ”       The Analysis Analyzed      Theme: Vision or Argument?      Determining and Discussing the Theme      Preliminary Notes and a Sample Essay on the Theme of Eudora Welty’s “A Worn Path”      Preliminary Notes       “Rising into Love” (essay on “A Worn Path”)       A Brief Overview of the Essay          A Checklist: Writing about Theme NEW Basing the Paper on Your Own Responses       A Note on Secondary Sources       A Second Essay about Theme: Notes and the Final Version of an Essay on Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”      “ We All Participate in `The Lottery’ ”       The Analysis Analyzed       Suggestions for Further Reading            A Checklist: Getting Ideas for Writing about Fiction             A Checklist: Getting Ideas for Writing about a Film Based on a Work of Literature    11—GRAPHIC FICTION   NEW         Letters and Pictures        Grant Wood’s “Death on the Ridge Road” (painting)        Topic for Writing        Reading an Image: A Short Story Told in One Panel        Tony Carillo’s “F Minus”    12—WRITING ABOUT DRAMA      A Sample Essay      Preliminary Notes       “The Solid Structure of The Glass Menagerie”      Types of Plays      Tragedy             A Checklist: Writing about Tragedy      Comedy Writing about Comedy           A Checklist: Writing about Comedy      Aspects of Drama      Theme      Plot            A Checklist: Writing about Plot      Characterization and Motivation      Conventions      Costumes, Gestures, and Settings      A Sample Essay on Setting in Drama      “ What the Kitchen in Trifles Tells Us”      The Analysis Analyzed      Suggestions for Further Reading           A Checklist: Getting Ideas for Writing about Drama            A Checklist: Getting Ideas for Writing about a Film Based on a Play      A Student’s Essay on a Filmed Version of a Play      “Branagh’s Film of Hamlet”             A Checklist: Topics for Critical Thinking and Writing    13–WRITING ABOUT POETRY      The Speaker and the Poet      Emily Dickinson, “Wild Nights–Wild Nights”       The Language of Poetry: Diction and Tone       Edna St. Vincent Millay, “I, being born a woman and distressed”       Writing about the Speaker: Robert Frost’s “The Telephone”       Robert Frost, “The Telephone”       Journal Entries      Figurative Language      John Keats, “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer”       Preparing to Write about Figurative Language      Imagery and Symbolism William Blake, “The Sick Rose”      Structure      Robert Herrick, “Upon Julia’s Clothes”     Annotating and Thinking about a Poem       The Student’s Finished Essay: “Herrick’s Julia, Julia’s Herrick”       Some Kinds of Structure       Repetitive Structure William Wordsworth, “A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal”       Logical Structure John Donne, “The Flea”       Verbal Irony       Paradox      Explication      A Sample Explication of Yeats’s “The Balloon of the Mind”       William Butler Yeats, “The Balloon of the Mind”      Rhythm and Versification: A Glossary for Reference      Rhythm      Meter      Patterns of Sound      Stanzaic Patterns      Blank Verse and Free Verse       Walt Whitman, “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer”      Preparing to Write about Prosody       Sample Essay on Metrics: “Sound and Sense in A. E. Housman’s `Eight O’Clock’”      “Sound and Sense in A. E. Housman’s `Eight O’Clock’ ”       The Analysis Analyzed      Suggestions for Further Reading            A Checklist: Getting Ideas for Writing about Poetry    14—POEMS AND PICTURES   NEW     A Poem and a Sample Student Essay        Vincent van Gogn, “The Starry Night” (painting)         Anne Sexton, “The Starry Night”        Sample Essay: “Two Ways of Looking at a Starry Night”        The Language of Pictures        Writing about Pictures        Comparing and Contrasting        William Notman, “Foes in ’76, Friends in `85” (photograph)        Analyzing and Evaluating Evidence        Thinking Critically: Arguing with Oneself,                Asking Questions, and Comparing—E.E. Cummings’s “Buffalo Bill’s”               A Writing Assignment: Connecting a Picture with a Work of Literature        Sample essay: “Two Views of Buffalo Bill”   15—WRITING ABOUT AN AUTHOR IN DEPTH      A Case Study: Writing about Langston Hughes      Langston Hughes, “The South”       Langston Hughes, “Ruby Brown”      Langston Hughes, “Ballad of the Landlord”       Sample essay: “A National Problem: Race and Racism in the Poetry of Langston Hughes”       A Brief Overview of the Essay      PART 4 Inside: Style, Format, and Special Assignments   16—STYLE AND FORMAT      Principles of Style      Get the Right Word      Write Effective Sentences            A Checklist for Revising for Conciseness      Write Unified and Coherent Paragraphs            A Checklist: Revising Paragraphs      Write Emphatically      Notes on the Dash and the Hyphen      Remarks about Manuscript Form      Basic Manuscript Form      Quotations and Quotation Marks 17—WRITING A RESEARCH PAPER      What Research Is Not, and What Research Is       Primary and Secondary Materials      Locating Material: First Steps      Other Bibliographic Aids      The Basics      Moving Ahead: Finding Sources for Research Work      What Does Your Own Institution Offer?      Taking Notes      Incorporating Your Reading into Your Thinking: The Art and Science of Synthesis NEW  Drafting Your Paper      Focus on Primary Sources      Documentation      What to Document: Avoiding Plagiarism             A Checklist for Avoiding Plagiarism       How to Document: Footnotes, Internal Parenthetical Citations, and a List of Works Cited (MLA Format)      Sample Essay with Documentation: “The Women in Death of a Salesman”            A Checklist: Reading the Draft of a Research Paper      Electronic Sources      Encyclopedias: Print and Electronic Versions       The Internet/World Wide Web      Evaluating Sources on the World Wide Web            A Checklist: A Review for Using the World Wide Web      Documentation: Citing a Web Source  A Checklist: Citing World Wide Web Sources    18—Essay Examinations   NEW      What Examinations Are     Writing Essay Answers               A Checklist: Writing Essay Examinations     APPENDIX A: TWO STORIES       James Joyce, “Araby”       Eudora Welty, “A Worn Path”    APPENDIX B: GLOSSARY OF LITERARY TERMS    APPENDIX C: HOW MUCH DO YOU KNOW ABOUT CITING SOURCES? A QUIZ WITH ANSWERS   CREDITS    INDEX OF AUTHORS, TITLES, AND FIRST LINES OF POEMS    INDEX OF TERMS