Literary Conversation: Thinking, Talking, and Writing About Literature

Designed for introductory literature courses, Literary Conversation presents critical thinking, reading, and writing strategies designed to elicit successful interpretation of literary works. The text invites students to join widening and concentric circles of conversation, beginning with the interaction of the reader with the voices in the literary work, and expanding to include the contributions of other readers, the dialogues of the disciplinary community, and finally the voices of other experienced readers in published criticism. Within each circle of conversation, students can explore their observations through reading notebooks, through collaborative reading groups, and through essays which ask them to look at a work from a series of progressively complicated positions: students write responses to, analyses of, critical arguments about, and research essays on literary works. Unlike texts organized by genre, literary technique, or theme, Literary Conversation is both a rhetoric of reading and a rhetoric of writing about reading.

Table of Contents:
1. Interpretation as Conversation: The Reader, the Writer, the Work. Interpretation as Conversation. A Person is a Person Because of Other People, Jeremy Cronin, 1983. Interpreting as Cultural Conversation. Two Loves I Have of Comfort and Despair (Sonnet #144), Shakespeare. Responsible Interpretation. Interpretation as Classroom Conversation. Reading Notebooks Reading Groups Writing Groups. An Invitation to Write. Writing Group Activity. Sample Writing. Reader's Notebook Entry on A Person is a Person Because of Other People. Extra Practice: Additional Writing Invitations. 2. Interpretation as Shared Inquiry: Finding Questions, Examining Answers. Conversing with the Work. Asking and Answering Questions Engaging with the Work Reflecting on the Work to Identify Questions the Work Raises Analyzing the Work to Perceive Patterns and Connections Filling Station, Elizabeth Bishop. Conversing with Others about the Work. Thinking about Talking about Literature (Your Ideas Matter) Writing about Literature (Your Contributions). An Invitation to Write. Home, Gwendolyn Brooks. Writing Group Activity. Sample Writing. Reflecting in Your Reading Process. Moving Inside. Extra Practice: Additional Writing Invitations. 3. Interpretation as Experience: Reading and Writing to Respond. Responding as an Individual and Shared Experience. The Poet's Farewell to His Teeth, William Dickey. Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? Joyce Carol Oates. What Shapes Response. Identifying Key Terms and Questions at Issue. Stalking Muskrats, Annie Dillard. Components of Response. Reading and Writing to Respond. Summary. An Invitation to Write. The Response Essay. Writing Group Activity. Sample Writing 1. Muskrats and Memories of My Brother. Sample Writing 2. A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, Ernest Hemingway Old Men. Extra Practice: Additional Writing Invitations. 4. Interpretation and Informed Analysis: Making Observations, Perceiving Patterns, Recognizing Conventions. Literary Analysis. Observing (My Papa's Waltz, Theodore Roethke) Generalizing Interpreting. What Do We Look At When We Analyze Literature? Looking at the Language of the Experience (I Sing of a Maiden) Looking at the Shape of the Experience (The Story of an Hour, Kate Chopin.) Looking at the Participants in the Experience Looking at Other Literary Elements. Reading and Writing to Analyze. An Invitation to Write. The Analysis Essay In Cold Storm Light, Leslie Marmon Silko. Writing Group Activity. Sample Writing. Analysis Essay 1 (Seeing the Ordinary as Extraordinary) Sample Writing. Analysis Essay 2 (Good, Evil and Gender in Sonnet #144) Extra Practice: Additional Writing Invitations. 5. Interpretation and Responsible Reasoning. Developing the Literary Argument Argument and Literature Asking and Answering Interpretive Questions. Three Kinds of Interpretive Questions Traveling Through the Dark, William Stafford. (Questions of Response; Questions of Analysis; Questions of Interpretation and Evaluation) Reading and Writing to Construct Arguments. Identifying the Question at Issue Seeing the Components of a Thesis Statement Recognizing the Thesis Statement behind an Argument Constructing the Thesis Statement Behind Your Argument Clarifying the Terms of Your Argument. Critical Reasoning Illustrated. The Evolution of a Thesis Statement. Planning Your Paper. An Invitation to Write. The Critical Essay When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be, John Keats. Writing Group Activity. Sample Writing. From Response to Analysis to Thesis Statement to Critical Essay Connie, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? Extra Practice: Additional Writing Invitations. 6. Interpretation within a Literary Community: Reading with Experienced Readers. How Experienced Readers Can Enrich Our Reading Experience. Dover Beach, Matthew Arnold, 1867 Critical Possibilities Emerge from Our Responses Dover Beach Revisited: A New Fable for Critics, Theodore Morrison. Critical Approaches as Methods of Inquiry. Kinds of Critical Questions Experienced Readers Ask. The Reader and the Work The Work as Art The Work in Time The Work and Other Works The Work and Other Ideas. Mediating Critical Questions through Dialogue. Debate the Cannon in Class, Gerald Graff. Critical Resistances. The Dover Bitch: A Criticism of Life, Anthony Hecht. Kinds of Critical Research. Primary and Secondary Trifles, Susan Glaspell. Reading the Research. Listening to Diverse Critical Voices Writing and Critical Research. Answering Your Question An Invitation to Write. The Research Essay Writing Group Activity. Sample Writing. The Research Essay (Trial by Trifles: Why Didn't They Tell?) Extra Practice: Additional Writing Invitations. Appendix. Coming to Terms: Literary Language and its Uses Part A: Categories of Terms and Questions to Ask. Shape: Design and Development Language Participants Situation Part B: An Alphabetized Glossary.