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Table of Contents

*New to the 4th Edition                                                              
 
Preface for Instructors
 
Introduction
 
Fiction
 
The Elements of Fiction
 
1. Reading Fiction
Reading Fiction Responsively
Kate Chopin, “The Story of an Hour”
A SAMPLE CLOSE READING: An Annotated Section of “The Story of An Hour”
A SAMPLE STUDENT RESPONSE: Differences in Responses to Kate Chopin’s
“The Story of an Hour”
Explorations and Formulas
A Comparison of Two Stories
*Grace Paley, “Wants”
*Judith Ortiz Cofer, “Volar”
 
2. Plot
*T.C. Boyle, “The Hit Man”
William Faulkner, “A Rose for Emily”
A SAMPLE CLOSE READING: An Annotated Section of “A Rose for Emily”
A SAMPLE STUDENT RESPONSE: Conflict in the Plot of William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily”
*Joyce Carol Oates, “Tick”
 
3. Character
*Tobias Wolff, “Powder”
*Xu Xi, “Famine”
*James Baldwin, “Sonny’s Blues”
 
4. Setting
Ernest Hemingway, “Soldier’s Home”
PERSPECTIVE: Ernest Hemingway, “On What Every Writer Needs”
*Ursula LeGuin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”
*Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper”
 
5. Point of View
Third-Person and First-Person Narrators
John Updike, “A & P”
*Manuel Muñoz, “Zigzagger”
Maggie Mitchell, “It Would Be Different If”
    
6. Symbolism
*Louise Erdrich, “The Red Convertible”
*Cynthia Ozick, “The Shawl”
*A SAMPLE STUDENT RESPONSE: On Cynthia Ozick’s “The Shawl”
*Ann Beattie, “Janus”
 
7. Theme
*Shirley Jackson, “The Lottery”
*Edgar Allen Poe, “The Cask of Amontillado”
*Zora Neale Hurston, “Sweat”
 
8. Style, Tone, and Irony
Raymond Carver, “Popular Mechanics”
A SAMPLE STUDENT RESPONSE: The Minimalist Style of Raymond Carver’s “Popular Mechanics”
*George Saunders, “I Can Speak ™”
Mark Twain, “The Story of the Good Little Boy”
 
Fiction in Depth
 
 9. A Study of Flannery O’Connor
A Brief Biography and Introduction
Flannery O’Connor:
“A Good Man is Hard to Find”
*“Good Country People”
*“Revelation”
PERSPECTIVES
Flannery O’Connor, “On the Use of Exaggeration and Distortion”
Josephine Hendin, “On O’Connor’s Refusal to ‘Do Pretty’”
Claire Katz, “The Function of Violence in O’Connor’s Fiction”
TIME Magazine, “On A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories”    

10.  A Collection of Stories
*John Cheever, “The Enormous Radio”
*Edwidge Danticat, “The Missing Peace”
Dagoberto Gilb, “Love in L.A.”
James Joyce, “Eveline”
Jamaica Kincaid, “Girl”
*Jhumpa Lahiri, “Sexy”
*ZZ Packer, “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere”
Annie Proulx, “55 Miles to the Gas Pump”
*Kurt Vonnegut, “Happy Birthday, 1951”

 
Poetry
 
The Elements of Poetry
 
 11. Reading Poetry
Reading Poetry Responsively
Lisa Parker, “Snapping Beans”
Robert Hayden, “Those Winter Sundays”
John Updike, “Dog’s Death”
The Pleasure of Words
*Gregory Corso: “I am 25”
Robert Francis, “Catch”
A SAMPLE STUDENT ANALYSIS: Tossing Metaphors in Robert Francis’s “Catch”
Poetic Definitions of Poetry
*Marianne Moore, “Poetry”
Billy Collins, “Introduction to Poetry”
Ruth Forman, “Poetry Should Ride the Bus”
*Charles Bukowski, “A Poem is a City”
Philip Larkin, “A Study of Reading Habits”
Robert Morgan, “Mountain Graveyard”
e.e. Cummings, “l(a”
Anonymous, “Western Wind”
Regina Barreca, “Nighttime Fires”
Recurrent Poetic Figures: Five Ways of Looking at Roses
*Robert Burns, “A Red, Red Rose”
*Edmund Waller, “Go, Lovely Rose”
*William Blake, “The Sick Rose”
*Dorothy Parker, “One Perfect Rose”
*H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), “Sea Rose”
Poems for Further Study
Mary Oliver, “The Poet with His Face in His Hands”
Alberto Ríos, “Seniors”
Robert Frost, “Design”
Edgar Allan Poe, “Sonnet – To Science”
Cornelius Eady, “The Supremes”
 
 12. Word Choice, Word Order, and Tone
Word choice
Diction
Denotations and Connotations
Randall Jarrell, “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner”
Word Order
Tone
*Marilyn Nelson, “How I Discovered Poetry”
Katharyn Howd Machan, “Hazel Tells LaVerne”
A SAMPLE STUDENT RESPONSE: Tone in Katharyn Howd Machan’s “Hazel Tells Laverne”
Martin Espada, “Latin Night at the Pawnshop”
*Jonathan Swift, “The Character of Sir Robert Walpole”
Diction and Tone in Three Love Poems
Robert Herrick, “To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time”
Andrew Marvell, “To His Coy Mistress”
Ann Lauinger, “Marvell Noir”
Poems for Further Study
Walt Whitman, “The Dalliance of the Eagles”
*Kwame Dawes, “History Lesson at Eight a.m.”
Robert Frost, “Out, Out – ”
Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken”
Alice Jones, “The Lungs”
Louis Simpson, “In the Suburbs”
 
13. Images
Poetry’s Appeal to the Senses
William Carlos Williams, “Poem”
Walt Whitman, “Cavalry Crossing a Ford”
David Solway, “Windsurfing”
Matthew Arnold, “Dover Beach”
Poems for Further Study
Adelaide Crapsey, “November Night”
Ruth Fainlight, “Crocuses”
William Blake, “London”
*Kwame Dawes, “The Habits of Love”
Charles Simic, “Fork”
Sally Croft, “Home-Baked Bread”
 
14. Figures of Speech
William Shakespeare, From Macbeth
Simile and Metaphor
Langston Hughes, “Harlem”
*Jane Kenyon, “The Socks”
Anne Bradstreet, “The Author to her Book”
Other Figures
Edmund Conti, “Pragmatist”
Dylan Thomas, “The Hand that Signed the Paper”
Janice Townley Moore, “To a Wasp”
Tajana Kovics, “Text Message”
Poems for Further Study
William Carlos Williams, “To Waken an Old Lady”
Ernest Slyman, “Lightning Bugs”
Martin Espada, “The Mexican Cabdriver’s Poem for his Wife, Who Has Left Him”
Judy Page Heitzman, “The Schoolroom on the Second Floor of the Knitting Mill”
*Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Spring”
*Robert Pinsky, “Icicles”
Kay Ryan, “Learning”
 
 15. Symbol, Allegory, and Irony
Symbol
Robert Frost, “Acquainted With the Night”
Allegory
*James Baldwin, “Guilt, Desire, and Love”
Irony
Edwin Arlington Robinson, “Richard Cory”
Kenneth Fearing, “Ad”
e.e. cummings, “Next To Of Course God America I”
Stephen Crane, “A Man Said to the Universe”
Poems for Further Study
*Christina Rossetti, “Goblin Market”
*Jane Kenyon, “The Thimble”
Kevin Pierce, “Proof of Origin”
Carl Sandburg, “A Fence”
Julio Marzán, “Ethnic Poetry”
Mark Halliday, “Graded Paper”
Robert Browning, “My Last Duchess”
William Blake, “A Poison Tree”
 
 16. Sounds
Listening to Poetry
John Updike, “Player Piano”
Emily Dickinson, “A Bird Came Down the Walk –”
A SAMPLE STUDENT RESPONSE: Sound in Emily Dickinson’s “A Bird came down to walk—”
Rhyme
Richard Armour, “Going to Extremes”
Robert Southey, from “The Cataract of Lodore”
Andrew Hudgins, “The Ice-Cream Truck”
Sound and Meaning
*Gerard Manley Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur”
Poems for Further Study
Lewis Carroll, “Jabberwocky”
William Heyen, “The Trains”
*Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Break, Break, Break”
John Donne, “Song”
Kay Ryan, “Dew”
Robert Francis, “The Pitcher”
Helen Chasin, “The Word Plum”
*Major Jackson, “Autumn Landscape”
 
 
17. Patterns of Rhythm
Some Principles of Meter
Walt Whitman, from “Song of the Open Road”
William Wordsworth, “My Heart Leaps Up”
Suggestions for Scanning a Poem
Timothy Steele, “Waiting for the Storm”
A SAMPLE STUDENT RESPONSE: The Rhythm of Anticipation in Timothy Steele’s “Waiting for the Storm”
William Butler Yeats, “That the Night Come”
Poems for Further Study
John Maloney, “Good!”
Alice Jones, “The Foot”
Robert Herrick, “Delight in Disorder”
e.e. cummings, “O Sweet Spontaneous”
William Blake, “The Lamb”
William Blake, “The Tyger”
Robert Frost, “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening”
*Langston Hughes, “The Weary Blues”
Gwendolyn Brooks, “We Real Cool”
 
18. Poetic Forms
Some Common Poetic Forms
A.E. Housman, “Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now”
Robert Herrick, “Upon Julia’s Clothes”
Sonnet
John Keats, “On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer”
William Shakespeare, “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?”
William Shakespeare, “My Mistress’ Eyes are Nothing Like the Sun”
*Countee Cullen, “Yet Do I Marvel”
*Mark Jarman, “Unholy Sonnet”
R.S. Gwynn, “Shakespearean Sonnet”
*Claude McKay, “If We Must Die”
Villanelle
Dylan Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”
Sestina
Florence Cassen Mayers, “All-American Sestina”
*Julia Alvarez, “Bilingual Sestina”
Epigram
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “What Is an Epigram?”
David McCord, “Epitaph on a Waiter”
Paul Laurence Dunbar, “Theology”
Limerick
Arthur Henry Reginald Buller, “There was a Young Lady Named Bright”
Laurence Perrine, “The Limerick’s Never Averse”
Haiku
Matsuo Basho, “Under Cherry Trees”
Carolyn Kizer, “After Basho”
Amy Lowell, “Last Night It Rained”
Gary Snyder, “A Dent in a Bucket”
Ghazal
*Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib, “Ghazal 4”
*Patricia Smith, “Hip Hop Ghazal”
Elegy
Ben Jonson, “On My First Son”
*Kate Hanson Foster, “Elegy of Color”
Ode
Alexander Pope, “Ode on Solitude”
John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”
Parody
Blanche Farley, “The Lover Not Taken”
Joan Murray, “We Old Dudes”
Picture Poem
Michael McFee, “In Medias Res”
PERSPECTIVE: Elaine Mitchell, “Form”
 
 19. Open Form  
Walt Whitman, from “I Sing the Body Electric”
A SAMPLE STUDENT RESPONSE: The Power of Walt Whitman’s Open Form Poem “I Sing the Body Electric”
*Reginald Shepherd, “Self Portrait Surviving Spring”
David Shumate, “Shooting the Horse”
*Major Jackson, “The Chase”
Natasha Trethewey, “On Captivity”
Julio Marzán, “The Translator at the Reception for Latin American Writers”
Charles Harper Webb, “Descent”
Anonymous, “The Frog”
David Hernandez, “All-American”
FOUND POEM:  Donald Justice, “Order in the Streets”
 
Poetry in Depth
 
20.  A Study of Emily Dickinson
A Brief Biography
An Introduction to Her Work
Emily Dickinson:
*“If I can Stop One Heart from Breaking”
*“If I Shouldn’t Be Alive”
*“To Make a Prairie It Takes a Clover and One Bee”
*“Success is Counted Sweetest”
*“Water, is Taught by Thirst”
*“Safe in Their Alabaster Chambers” (1861 version)
*“Portraits Are to Daily Faces”
*“Some Keep the Sabbath Going to Church”
*“I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed”
*“‘Heaven’ Is What I Cannot Reach”
*“I Like a Look of Agony”
“Wild Nights – Wild Nights!”
*“The Soul Selects Her Own Society”
“Much Madness Is Divinest Sense”
*“I Dwell In Possibility”
“I Heard a Fly Buzz – When I Died”
*“Because I Could Not Stop for Death”
“Tell All the Truth But Tell It Slant”
PERSPECTIVES ON EMILY DICKINSON
*Emily Dickinson, “A Description of Herself”
*Thomas Wentworth Higgonson, “On Meeting Dickinson for the First Time”
*Mabel Loomis Todd, “The Character of Amherst”
*Richard Wilbur, On Dickinson’s Sense of Privation”
*Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, “On Dickinson’s White Dress”
*Paula Bennett, “On ‘I heard a Fly buzz—when I died—’”
*Martha Nell Smith, “On ‘Because I could not stop for Death’”
A Sample In-Depth Study
Emily Dickinson:
*“‘Faith’ is a fine invention”
*“I know that He exists”
*“I never saw a Moor”
*“Apparently with no surprise”
*A SAMPLE STUDENT PAPER: Religious Faith in Four Poems by Emily Dickinson
SUGGESTED TOPICS FOR LONGER PAPERS
 
21. A Study of Billy Collins: The Author Reflects on Three Poems
A Brief Biography and Introduction to His Work
INTRODUCTION: Billy Collins, “How Do Poems Travel?”
POEM: Billy Collins, “Questions About Angels”
ESSAY: Billy Collins, “On Writing ‘Questions About Angels’”
POEM: Billy Collins, “Litany”
ESSAY: Billy Collins, “On Writing ‘Litany’”
POEM: Billy Collins, “Building With Its Face Blown Off”
PERSPECTIVE: Billy Collins, “On ‘Building with Its Face Blown Off’: Michael Meyer Interviews Billy Collins”
 
22. A Case Study: Song Lyrics as Poetry
*Anonymous, “Lord Randal”
*Frederic Weatherly, “Danny Boy”
*W.C. Handy, “Beale Street Blues”
*Woody Guthrie, “Gypsy Davy”
*Hank Williams, “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry”
*Bob Dylan, “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”
*Bob Dylan, “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)”
*John Lennon and Paul McCartney, “I Am the Walrus”
*Van Morrison, “Astral Weeks”
*Joni Mitchell, “Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire”
Bruce Springsteen, “You’re Missing”
*Janelle Monae, Americans
 
23. A Thematic Case Study: The Natural World
*J. Estanislao Lopez, “Meditation on Beauty”
*Jane Hirschfield, “Optimism”
*Wendell Berry, “The Peace of Wild Things”
*Gail White, “Dead Armadillos”
*Dave Lucas, “November”
*Walt McDonald, “Coming Across It”
Alden Nowlan, “The Bull Moose”
*Kay Ryan, “Turtle”
*Allen Ginsburg, “Sunflower Sutra”
*Mary Oliver, “Wild Geese”
*Sylvia Plath, “Pheasant”
SUGGESTED TOPICS FOR LONGER PAPERS
 
A Collection of Poems
 
24. Poems for Further Reading
*Margaret Atwood, “Owl Song”
*Charles Baudelaire, “A Carrion”
*William Blake, “Infant Sorrow”
*Anne Bradstreet, “Before the Birth of One of Her Children”
*Emily Brontë, “Stars”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “How Do I Love Thee?  Let Me Count the Ways”
*Michelle Cliff, “The Land of Look Behind”
*Gregory Corso, “Marriage”
*Bei Dao, “Notes from the City of the Sun”
*John Donne, “The Flea”
T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
*Lawrence Ferlinghetti, “Constantly Risking Absurdity”
*Robert Frost, “Mending Wall”
*Louise Glück, “Celestial Music”
*Seamus Heaney, “Personal Helicon”
*Brionne Janae, “Alternative Facts”
*John Keats, “When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be”
*Philip Larkin, “Sad Steps”
Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus”
*Robert Lowell, “Skunk Hour”
*Naomi Shihab Nye, “To Manage”
*Edgar Allan Poe, “Annabelle Lee”
Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ozymandias”
*Stevie Smith, “Not Waving But Drowning”
*Wallace Stevens, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”
*Jonathan Swift, “A Description of the Morning”
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Ulysses”
*Natasha Trethewey, “Incident”
*Phillis Wheatley, “To S.M., a young African Painter, on seeing his Works”
Walt Whitman, “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer”
*William Wordsworth, “I wandered lonely as a cloud”
William Butler Yeats, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”
 
Drama
 
The Study of Drama
 
 25. Reading Drama 
Reading Drama Responsively
Susan Glaspell, Trifles
A SAMPLE CLOSE READING: An Annotated Section of Trifles
Elements of Drama
*Lynn Nottage, POOF!
 
26. A Study of Sophocles
Theatrical Conventions of Greek Drama
Tragedy
Sophocles, Oedipus the King (trans. by David Grene)
 
27. A Study of William Shakespeare
Shakespeare’s Theater
The Range of Shakespeare’s Drama: History, Comedy, and Tragedy
A Note on Reading Shakespeare
William Shakespeare, Othello, the Moor of Venice
SUGGESTED TOPICS FOR LONGER PAPERS
 
28. Henrik Ibsen and Modern Drama
Realism
Theatrical Conventions of Modern Drama
Henrik Ibsen, A Doll’s House (trans. R. Farquharson Sharp)
 
29. Plays for Further Reading
*David Auburn, Proof
*Paula Vogel, How I Learned to Drive
*Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

30. Critical Strategies for Reading
Critical Thinking
Formalist Strategies
Biographical Strategies
Gender Strategies
Mythological Strategies
Reader-Response Strategies
Deconstructionist Strategies

31. Writing about Literature
Why Am I Being Asked to Do This?
From Reading and Discussion to Writing
Prewriting
Arguing about Literature
Writing
Revising and Editing
Writing about Fiction, Poetry, and Drama
Writing about Fiction
Writing about Poetry
The Elements Together
Organizing Your Thoughts
The Elements and Theme
Writing about Drama

32. The Literary Research Paper
Finding Sources
Evaluating Sources and Taking Notes
Developing a Draft, Integrating Sources, and Organizing the Paper
Documenting Sources and Avoiding Plagiarism

Authors

Michael Meyer

Michael Meyer, Emeritus Professor of English, taught writing and literature courses for more than thirty years — since 1981 at the University of Connecticut, and before that at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and the College of William and Mary. In addition to being an experienced teacher, Meyer is a highly regarded literary scholar. His scholarly articles have appeared in distinguished journals such as American Literature, Studies in the American Renaissance, and Virginia Quarterly Review. An internationally recognized authority on Henry David Thoreau, Meyer is a former president of the Thoreau Society and coauthor (with Walter Harding) of The New Thoreau Handbook, a standard reference source. His first book, Several More Lives to Live: Thoreau’s Political Reputation in America, was awarded the Ralph Henry Gabriel Prize by the American Studies Association. He is also the editor of Frederick Douglass: The Narrative and Selected Writings. He has lectured on a variety of American literary topics from Cambridge University to Peking University. His other books for Bedford/St. Martin’s include The Bedford Introduction to Literature, Literature to Go, Thinking and Writing about Poetry, Poetry: An Introduction, and Thinking and Writing about Literature.

D. Quentin Miller

D. Quentin Miller, Professor of English, has taught literature and writing at Suffolk University in Boston since 2000. Prior to that he taught at Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota, at the University of Connecticut (where he wrote his dissertation under the direction of Michael Meyer), and in a variety of other settings, including prisons. Miller is the author, editor, or co-editor of a dozen books and over two dozen critical essays in collections and in scholarly journals such as American Literature, African American Review, and The James Baldwin Review. He is an internationally renowned scholar on the works of James Baldwin and has also published reviews in such publications as TLS and original fiction. His most recent books are The Routledge Introduction to the American Novel (2024), James Baldwin in Context (2019), Understanding John Edgar Wideman (2018), American Literature in Transition: 1980-1990 (2018), and The Routledge Introduction to African American Literature (2016).

Related Titles

Literature to Go with 2021 MLA Update

Michael Meyer; D. Quentin Miller | Fourth Edition | 2020 | ISBN:9781319462482

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