Literature: A World of Writing Stories, Poems, Plays and Essays, 2nd edition

PART 1 A READER’S GUIDE TO THE WORLD OF WRITING

1. Reading and Thinking about Literature: A World of Meaning

Meaningless Words and the World of Meaning

Literary Form and Assumptions about Meaning

The Point of Literary Meaning

Forming Literary Meaning

Making Sense

Making Meaning out of Misunderstanding

Roberto Fernández, Wrong Channel

Deciphering Meaning: The Riddle Game

The Riddle as a Literary Device

Sylvia Plath, Metaphors

Reading for What Does Not Make Sense

Strategies for Reading Critically

Writer @ Work: The Reading Process

Sharon Olds, The Possessive

Student Writing: Justin Schiel reads and annotates The Possessive

Clarity and Ambiguity of Language

Working with Ambiguity in Literary Writing

Reading versus Writing

Working with Clarity in Nonliterary Writing: The Summary

Student Writing: Four Summaries ofThe Possessive

Clarity and Ambiguity in Storytelling

Franz Kafka, Before the Law

Student Writing: Two Summaries of Before the Law

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wife’s Story

Clarity and Ambiguity of Argument: Summarizing an Essay

Rosa Ehrenreich Brooks, I Hate Trees

Student Writing: Melissa Kim, A Summary of Rosa Ehrenreich Brooks, “I Hate Trees”

Clarity and Ambiguity in Literary Genres

Plot Conventions and Expectations

Margaret Atwood, Happy Endings

Clarity and Ambiguity in Visual Culture

Visual Assumptions

Writing a Summary of an Image

Cornelius Gijsbrechts, Letter Rack with Christian V’s Proclamation

Student Writing: Alan Green, A Summary of Letter Rack with Christian V’s Proclamation

Looking Back: A World of Meaning

2. Argument, Critical Thinking, and the Process of Writing: Writing in the World

Crafting an Argument

Analyzing an Argumentative Essay

May Sarton, The Rewards of Living a Solitary Life

Making Your Own Argument

Argument versus Thesis

From Idea to Thesis

Chinua Achebe, Dead Men’s Path

Student Idea Map for “Dead Men’s Path”

Critical Thinking: Reading, Questioning, Writing

Writer @ Work: Critical Thinking from First Impressions to Finished Paper

Critical Thinking Step by Step

Mary Oliver, August

Student Writing: Katherine Randall, sample writing from drafts to final paper

Student Writing: Three Summaries of August

Critical Thinking in a Comparison Paper

Ellen Hunnicutt, Blackberries

Leslie Norris, Blackberries

Student Writing: Cynthia Wilson, Leave the Picking to the Boys

Thinking Critically about Visual Culture

Signs

Still Images

Sequential Images

Moving Images

Interactive Images

Looking Back: Writing in the World

3. Planning, Writing, and Revising a Research Paper: Investigating the World

Finding a Topic

Student Writing: Rob Lanney, Paper Topic and Revised Paper Topic

Finding, Evaluating, and Summarizing Your Sources in the Annotated Bibliography

Primary Sources and Secondary Sources

The MLA Works-Cited List

Plagiarism and How to Avoid It

The Annotated Bibliography

Student Writing: Rob Lanney, Annotated Bibliography—Source #1

From the Annotated Bibliography to the First Draft

Making an Outline

Student Writing: Rob Lanney, The Castle in Productions and Films of Hamlet—An Outline

Writing the First Draft

MLA In-Text Citations

Writer @ Work: Revising

Student Writing: Rob Lanney, Hamlet’s Elsinore–Initial draft

Student Writing: Rob Lanney, Hamlet’s Elsinore

Student Writing: Lorraine Betesh, The Brooklyn Bridge in Illustrations and Photographs

Looking Back: Investigating the World

PART 2 The Writer’s World: Genres And The Craft Of Literature

4. Stories: Describing the World

What Is Fiction?

Fiction and History

Types of Fiction

The Craft of Fiction

Padgett Powell, A Gentleman’s C

The Materials of Fiction

The Tools of Fiction

Writer @ Work: Description

Julia Alvarez, Snow

Student Writing: Hashim Naseem, The Motherland

Describing the World: Topics for Essays

Looking Back: Describing the World

5. Poetry: Imagining the World

What Is Poetry?

Prosody: An Introduction

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, from Metrical Feet— Lesson for a Boy

Poetic Diction

Poetic Forms

Writer @ Work: Three Poems about Social Relations

William Blake, London

Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Mary Oliver, Singapore

Student Writing: Melissa Pabon, Summaries of London, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, and Singapore

Student Writing: Melissa Pabon, The Importance of Everyday Occurrences in London, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, and Singapore

Imagining the World: Topics for Essays

Writer @ Work: Reading and Writing Essays

Student Writing: Scott Nathanson, The Meaning of Death

Types of Essays

Looking Back: Imagining the World

6. Plays: Staging the World

What Is a Play?

Susan Glaspell, Trifles

Dramatic Structure

Characters

Staging

Form and Genre

Writer @ Work: Writing about a Live or a Taped Performance

Samuel Beckett, Krapp’s Last Tape

Student Writing: Joshua Cohen,Notes on Krapp’s Last Tape, directed by Atom Egoyan

Student Writing: Joshua Cohen, Response Paper on Krapp’s Last Tape

Staging the World: Topics for Essays

Looking Back: Staging the World

7. Essays: Explaining the World

What Is Nonfiction?

The Essay

Virginia Woolf, The Death of the Moth

Annie Dillard, Death of a Moth

Analyzing an Essay

Writer @ Work: Arguing with an Essay

George Packer, How Susie Bayer’s T-Shirt Ended Up on Yusuf Mama’s Back

Student Writing: Jacquelynn Messina, The Used Clothes Trade: Who Benefits?

Explaining the World: Topics for Essays

Looking Back: Explaining the World

8. Working with Literary Devices: Writing the World

Literary Devices

Patterns of Repetition

Patterns of Inversion

Patterns of Contradiction

Ambiguity and Double Meaning

Imagery

Referring to Other Texts

Word Pictures

John Keats, Drawing of the Sosibios Vase

John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn

Hiram Powers, Greek Slave

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, On Hiram Powers’ Greek Slave

Peter Brueghel the Elder, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

William Carlos Williams, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

W. H. Auden, Musée des Beaux Arts

Michael Hamburger, Lines on Brueghel’s Icarus

Robert Hass, Heroic Simile

Akira Kurosawa, movie still from The Seven Samurai

Writing the World: Topics for Essays

PART 3 The Reader’s World: Exploring The Themes Of Literature

9. Me and You: The World Closest to Us

Photographs from The Family of Man

FAMILIES

**Dagoberto Gilb, Look on the Bright Side

Flannery O’Connor, A Good Man Is Hard to Find

James Baldwin, Sonny’s Blues

Jonathan Safran Foer, A Primer for the Punctuation of Heart Disease

Alice Walker, Everyday Use

Mary TallMountain, There Is No Word for Goodbye

Robert Hayden, Those Winter Sundays

Lucille Clifton, wishes for sons

**Rita Dove, Daystar

**A.R. Ammons, Coward

William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

Scott Russell Sanders, Buckeye

Amy Tan, from Mother Tongue

Families: Topics for Essays

CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS

Jamaica Kincaid, Girl

Lorrie Moore, The Kid’s Guide to Divorce

James Joyce, Araby

John Updike, A & P

**Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, Little Red Cap

Anne Sexton, Red Riding Hood

Agha Shahid Ali, The Wolf’s Postscript to “Little Red Riding Hood”

Gary Soto, Behind Grandma’s House

**Martin Espada, Why I Went to College

Langston Hughes, Salvation

Children and Adolescents: Topics for Essays

LOVERS

John Steinbeck, The Chrysanthemums

**Haruki Murakami, The Year of Spaghetti

Amanda Holzer, Love and Other Catastrophes: A Mix Tape

Uruttiran, What She Said to Her Girl Friend

Ono no Komachi, Three tanka

William Shakespeare, How oft, when thou, my music, music play’st (Sonnet 128)

William Shakespeare, Let me not to the marriage of true minds (Sonnet 116)

William Shakespeare, When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes (Sonnet 29)

John Donne, The Flea

**Monica Ferrell, Rime Riche

Edgar Allan Poe, Annabel Lee

T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

**Jack Spicer, A Book of Music

Sei Shonagon, fromHateful Things

***Joan Didion, Marrying Absurd

Lovers: Topics for Essays

Working Further with the World Closest to Us

**Reading Globally, Writing Locally: Marjane Satrapi and The Literature of the Middle East

**Marjane Satrapi, from Persepolis

**Marjane Satrapi, Iran and Israel

**From 1001 Nights: The Wonderful Bag

**Yehuda Amichal, The Diameter of the Bomb

**Yehuda Amichal, Wildpeace

**Mahmoud Darwish, Who Am I without Exile?

**Working Further with the Literature of the Middle East

10. Beliefs and Ethics: The Worlds around Us

Images of Good and Evil in the World

BELIEFS: CREATIONS AND BEGINNINGS

from Genesis

Salman Rushdie, Imagine There’s No Heaven

K. C. Cole, Murmurs

**Italo Calvino, All at One Point

Creation and Beginnings: Topics for Essays

ETHICS: DESTUCTION AND ENDINGS

Nathaniel Hawthorne, Young Goodman Brown

Kate Chopin, The Story of an Hour

Ernest Hemingway, Hills Like White Elephants

Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried

**Tobias Wolff, Bullet in the Brain

William Carlos Williams, Complete Destruction

Robert Frost, Fire and Ice

John Donne, Death, Be Not Proud

Dylan Thomas, Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night

Emily Dickinson, I like a look of Agony

Emily Dickinson, Because I could not stop for Death –

Emily Dickinson, I felt a Funeral, in my Brain

Emily Dickinson, I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –

Emily Dickinson, It was not Death, for I stood up

Emily Dickinson, A Toad, can die of Light –

Emily Dickinson, Tell all the Truth but tell it slant –

Wilfrid Owen, Dulce et Decorum Est

Carolyn Forché, The Colonel

Sophocles, Antigone

Destruction and Endings: Topics for Essays

Working Further with the Worlds Around Us

Reading Globally, Writing Locally: Naguib Mahfouz and the Literature of Africa

Naguib Mahfouz, Half a Day

Naguib Mahfouz, Zaabalawi

Binyavanga Wainaina, How to Write about Africa

Jeremy Cronin, To learn how to speak . . .

Chenjerai Hove, You Will Forget

Working Further with the Literature of Africa

11. Spaces and Places: The World We Live in

Imagining Spaces

IN-BETWEEN SPACES

Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty

Eudora Welty, A Worn Path

Raymond Carver, Cathedral

Sherman Alexie, This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona

Robert Frost, Mending Wall

James Wright, Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota

Louise Erdrich, Dear John Wayne

Yusuf Komunyakaa, Facing It

Rachel Carson, fromThe Marginal World

***Studs Terkel, The Mason: Carl Murray Bates

In-Between Spaces: Topics for Essays

CONFINED SPACES

Edgar Allan Poe, The Cask of Amontillado

William Faulkner, A Rose for Emily

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper

***Daniel Orozco, Orientation

Paul Laurence Dunbar, Sympathy

Stevie Smith, Not Waving but Drowning

Robert Browning, My Last Duchess

Henrik Ibsen, A Doll’s House

Malcolm X, fromThe Autobiography of Malcolm X

Confined Spaces: Topics for Essays

Working Further with the World We Live In

Reading Globally, Writing Locally: Jhumpa Lahiri and the Literature of Asia

Jhumpa Lahiri, My Two Lives

Jhumpa Lahiri, When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine

Kazuo Ishiguro, A Family Supper

Garrett Hongo, Who Among You Knows the Essence of Garlic?

Xu Gang, Red Azalea on the Cliff

Working Further with the Literature of Asia

12. Nature, Cities, and the Environment: The World We Share

Imagining City and Nature Together

LIVING IN THE CITY

Toni Cade Bambara, The Lesson

Allen Ginsberg, A Supermarket in California

Ezra Pound, In a Station of the Metro

***Valzhyna Mort, New York

Langston Hughes, Theme for English B

***David Ives, Sure Thing

Bill Buford, Lions and Tigers and Bears

Living in the City: Topics for Essays

LIVING IN NATURE

Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Three Projects

Julio Cortázar, Axolotl

T. Coraghessan Boyle, Greasy Lake

Bash o , Four haiku

Richard Wright, Haiku

William Carlos Williams, so much depends

Elizabeth Bishop, The Fish

***Kay Ryan, Turtle

Walt Whitman, When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer

Langston Hughes, The Negro Speaks of Rivers

Gerard Manley Hopkins, Inversnaid

Louis D. Owens, The American Indian Wilderness

Donella Meadows, Living Lightly and Inconsistently on the Land

Living in Nature: Topics for Essays

Working Further with the World We Share

Reading Globally, Writing Locally: Gabriel GarcÌa Márquez and the Literature of the Americas

Gabriel García Márquez, The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World

Gabriel García Márquez, The Very Old Man with Enormous Wings

Pablo Neruda, The Word

Jimmy Santiago Baca, So Mexicans Are Taking Jobs from Americans

Tino Villanueva, Variation on a Theme by William Carlos Williams

Working Further with the Literature of the Americas

Appendix A: The World of Literary Criticism

Appendix B: MLA Documentation Guidelines

Glossary