A Short Guide to Writing About Literature (Paperback, 11th)

PREFACE xiv


LETTER TO STUDENTS xvii



PART 1

Jumping In


1-WRITING ABOUT LITERATURE: A CRASH COURSE 3

The Pleasures of Reading?and of Writing about Literature 3
The Writing Process 5

. A Checklist of Basic Matters 9



2-THE WRITER AS READER: READING AND RESPONDING 10

Kate Chopin, “Ripe Figs” 10

The Act of Reading 11
Reading with a Pen in Hand 13
Recording Your First Responses 14
Audience and Purpose 15
A Writing Assignment on “Ripe Figs” 16

The Assignment 16
A Sample Essay: “Images of Ripening in Kate Chopin’s ‘Ripe Figs’ ” 16
The Student’s Analysis Analyzed 18

Critical Thinking and the Study of Literature 19



3-THE READER AS WRITER: DRAFTING AND WRITING 21

Pre-writing: Getting Ideas 21

Annotating a Text 21
More about Getting Ideas: A Second Story by Kate Chopin, “The Story of an Hour” 22

Kate Chopin: “The Story of an Hour” 22
Brainstorming for Ideas for Writing 24
Focused Free Writing 25
Listing 26
Asking Questions 27
Keeping a Journal 28

Critical Thinking: Arguing with Yourself 29

Arriving at a Thesis and Arguing It 31

Writing a Draft 33

A Sample Draft: “Ironies in an Hour” 33
Revising a Draft 35

. A Checklist for Revising for Clarity 36
Two Ways of Outlining a Draft 37

. A Checklist for Reviewing a Revised Draft 38
Peer Review 39

The Final Version 41

Sample Essay: “Ironies of Life in Kate Chopin’s ‘The Story of an Hour’ ” 41
The Analysis Analyzed 43

Quick Review 44

From First Responses to Final Version: Writing an Essay about a Literary Work 44



4-TWO FORMS OF CRITICISM: EXPLICATION AND ANALYSIS 45

Explication 45

A Sample Explication: Langston Hughes’s “Harlem” 45
Working toward an Explication of “Harlem” 46
Some Journal Entries 48
The Final Draft: “Langston Hughes’s ‘Harlem’ ” 50
The Analysis Analyzed 51
. Checklist: Drafting an Explication 52

Analysis: The Judgment of Solomon 52

Thinking about Form 54
Thinking about Character 55
Thoughts about Other Possibilities 55
Comparison: An Analytic Tool 57
. A Checklist: Revising a Comparison 60

Finding a Topic 60
Considering the Evidence 61
Organizing the Material 61
Communicating Judgments 62
Review: How to Write an Effective Essay 63

1. Pre-writing 63

2. Drafting 64

3. Revising 65

4. Editing 66
. Editing Checklist: Questions to Ask Yourself When Editing 67



5-OTHER KINDS OF WRITING ABOUT LITERATURE 69

A Summary 69
A Paraphrase 71
A Review 72

A Review of a Dramatic Production 73
A Sample Review: “An Effective Macbeth” 74





PART 2

Standing Back: Thinking Critically about Literature



6-LITERATURE, FORM, AND MEANING 81
Literature and Form 81

Literature and Meaning 84
Arguing about Meaning 84

Form and Meaning 85

Robert Frost, “The Span of Life” 85

Suggestions for Further Reading 88


7-WHAT IS INTERPRETATION? 90

Interpretation and Meaning 90
Is the Author’s Intention a Guide to Meaning? 91
Characteristics of a Good Interpretation 92
An Example: Interpreting Pat Mora’s “Immigrants” 93
Thinking Critically about Literature 95
A Student Interpretation of Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” 96

Sample Essay: “Stopping by Woods and Going On” 97

Suggestions for Further Reading 100



8-WHAT IS EVALUATION? 101
Criticism and Evaluation 101
Are There Critical Standards? 102

Morality and Truth as Standards 103
Other Ways to Think about Truth and Realism 105

Suggestions for Further Reading 107



9-WRITING ABOUT LITERATURE: AN OVERVIEW 108
The Nature of Critical Writing 108
Some Critical Approaches 109

Formalist Criticism (New Criticism) 110
Deconstruction 112
Reader-Response Criticism 113
Archetypal (or Myth) Criticism 115
Historical Criticism 116
Marxist Criticism 116
The New Historicism 117
Biographical Criticism 118
Psychological (or Psychoanalytic) Criticism 118
Gender (Feminist, and Lesbian and Gay) Criticism 119

Suggestions for Further Reading 123





PART 3

Up Close: Thinking Critically about Literary Forms



10-WRITING ABOUT FICTION: THE WORLD OF THE STORY 131
Plot and Character 131

Writing about a Character 133
A Sample Essay on a Character: “Holden’s Kid Sister” 136
The Analysis Analyzed 137

Foreshadowing 138

Organizing an Essay on Foreshadowing 140

Setting and Atmosphere 141
Symbolism 142

A Sample Essay on Setting as Symbol: “Spring Comes to Mrs.

Mallard” 143
“Spring Comes to Mrs. Mallard” 144

Point of View 147

Third-Person Narrators 147
First-Person Narrators 150

Notes and a Sample Essay on Narrative Point of View in James Joyce’s “Araby” 151

“The Three First-Person Narrators of Joyce’s ‘Araby’ ” 153
The Analysis Analyzed 155

Theme: Vision or Argument? 155

Determining and Discussing the Theme 156

Preliminary Notes and a Sample Essay on the Theme of Eudora

Welty’s “A Worn Path” 156

Preliminary Notes 157
“Rising into Love” 160
A Brief Overview of the Essay 163
Basing the Paper on Your Own Responses 163
A Note on Secondary Sources 164

A Second Essay about Theme: Notes and the Final Version of an Essay on Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” 166

“ We All Participated in ‘The Lottery’ ” 168
The Analysis Analyzed 169
Suggestions for Further Reading 170

. A Checklist: Getting Ideas for Writing about Fiction 171
. A Checklist: Getting Ideas for Writing about a Film Based on a Work of Literature 175


11-WRITING ABOUT DRAMA 178

A Sample Essay 178

Preliminary Notes 179
“The Solid Structure of The Glass Menagerie” 180

Types of Plays 184

Tragedy 184
. A Checklist: Writing about Tragedy 188
Comedy 188
. A Checklist: Writing about Comedy 190
Aspects of Drama 190

Theme 190
Plot 192
. A Checklist: Writing about Plot 195
Characterization and Motivation 197
Conventions 198
Costumes, Gestures, and Settings 199

A Sample Essay on Setting in Drama 202

“ What the Kitchen in Trifles Tells Us” 203
The Analysis Analyzed 204

Suggestions for Further Reading 205

. A Checklist: Getting Ideas for Writing about Drama 206
. A Checklist: Getting Ideas for Writing about a Film Based on a Play 208

A Student’s Essay on a Filmed Version of a Play 209

“Branagh’s Film of Hamlet” 209
A Checklist: Topics for Critical Thinking and Writing 212



12-WRITING ABOUT POETRY 214

The Speaker and the Poet 214

Emily Dickinson, “Wild Nights?Wild Nights” 215
The Language of Poetry: Diction and Tone 216
Edna St. Vincent Millay, “I, being born a woman and distressed” 217
Writing about the Speaker: Robert Frost’s “The Telephone” 219
Robert Frost, “The Telephone” 219
Journal Entries 221

Figurative Language 223

John Keats, “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” 224
Preparing to Write about Figurative Language 227
William Blake, “The Sick Rose” 228

Structure 229

Robert Herrick, “Upon Julia’s Clothes” 230
Annotating and Thinking about a Poem 230
The Student’s Finished Essay: “Herrick’s Julia, Julia’s Herrick” 232
Some Kinds of Structure 233
William Wordsworth, “A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal” 234
John Donne, “The Flea” 235
Verbal Irony 236
Paradox 236

Explication 237

A Sample Explication of Yeats’s “The Balloon of the Mind” 237
William Butler Yeats, “The Balloon of the Mind” 238

Rhythm and Versification: A Glossary for Reference 240

Rhythm 240
Meter 242
Patterns of Sound 245
Stanzaic Patterns 247

Blank Verse and Free Verse 248
Walt Whitman, “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” 248

Preparing to Write about Prosody 250
Sample Essay on Metrics: “Sound and Sense in A. E. Housman’s ‘Eight O’Clock’” 251

“Sound and Sense in A. E. Housman’s ‘Eight O’Clock’ ” 251
The Analysis Analyzed 255

Suggestions for Further Reading 256

. A Checklist: Getting Ideas for Writing about Poetry 256



13-WRITING ABOUT AN AUTHOR IN DEPTH 259

A Case Study: Writing about Langston Hughes 260

Langston Hughes, “The South” 261
Langston Hughes, “Ruby Brown” 263
Langston Hughes, “Ballad of the Landlord” 264
“A National Problem: Race and Racism in the Poetry of Langston Hughes” 265
A Brief Overview of the Essay 268





PART 4

Inside: Style, Format, and Special Assignments



14-STYLE AND FORMAT 273

Principles of Style 273

Get the Right Word 274
Write Effective Sentences 278
. A Checklist for Revising for Conciseness 280
Write Unified and Coherent Paragraphs 282
. A Checklist: Revising Paragraphs 288
Write Emphatically 289
Notes on the Dash and the Hyphen 290

Remarks about Manuscript Form 290

Basic Manuscript Form 290
Quotations and Quotation Marks 292


15-WRITING A RESEARCH PAPER 297

What Research Is Not, and What Research Is 297

Primary and Secondary Materials 298

Locating Material: First Steps 298
Other Bibliographic Aids 300

The Basics 300
Moving Ahead: Finding Sources for Research Work 301
What Does Your Own Institution Offer? 301
Taking Notes 302
Drafting Your Paper 304
Focus on Primary Sources 306
Documentation 306

What to Document: Avoiding Plagiarism 306
. A Checklist for Avoiding Plagiarism 308
How to Document: Footnotes, Internal Parenthetical Citations, and a List of Works Cited (MLA Format) 309

Sample Essay with Documentation: “The Women in Death of a Salesman” 321

. A Checklist: Reading the Draft of a Research Paper 328

Electronic Sources 329

Encyclopedias: Print and Electronic Versions 329
The Internet/World Wide Web 329

Evaluating Sources on the World Wide Web 330

. A Checklist: A Review for Using the World Wide Web 330

Documentation: Citing a Web Source 331

. A Checklist: Citing World Wide Web Sources 331



APPENDIX A: TWO STORIES 334
James Joyce, “Araby” 334
Eudora Welty, “A Worn Path” 338



APPENDIX B: GLOSSARY OF LITERARY TERMS 345



CREDITS 359



INDEX OF AUTHORS, TITLES, AND FIRST LINES OF POEMS 360



INDEX OF TERMS 362