Strategies for Reading and Arguing About Literature

For courses in English Composition, Argumentative Writing, and Introduction to Literature."Strategies for Reading and Arguing about Literature "brings together the often divergent studies of argumentation and literature. This textbook teaches the art of academic argumentation through a focus on classic and contemporary literature. Using this book, students will learn, practice and master critical reading strategies, critical writing and research strategies, the essentials of academic argumentation, and basic literary theory as it relates to the development of an argument. Concurrently, students will explore and appreciate a variety of literature ranging from the classical to the contemporary in a variety of genres and critical analyses of literary works.

List of contents

Chapter Practices and Writing Assignment Suggestions

Part 1:  Introduction to Argument and Arguing about Literature

Chapter 1:  Text as Argument-Argument as Text

Why Argue about Anything? Why We Can Argue about Literature What about Literature Is Arguable? Turning In / Turning Out Why Should We Be Concerned about Argument? What Is the Urgency that Prompts an Argument? Who Are You Trying to Influence? What Are Some Possible Audience Responses? What are some barriers the audience may create to resist the argument? What are some of the constraints within which you must work? Conclusion Chapter 1Selections Poem, “We Real Cool,” Gwendolyn Brooks Short Story, “The Holocaust Party,” Robin Hemley

Chapter 2:  Argument Structure and Strategies

• Argument Structure
• Claims
• Claim Qualifiers
• Evidence
• Kinds of Support
• Characteristics of Support
• Warrants
• Backing
• Refutation
• Conclusion

Chapter 2 Selections

Review, “A Curtain Up Review: The Laramie Project,” Elyse Sommer

Review, “(Mostly) Harmless Theatre Production: The Laramie Project,” Steve Callahan

Essay, “A Modest Proposal,” Jonathan Swift

 

 

Part 2:  Reading Strategies

Overview:  Why Are You Reading

§        The Process(es) of reading for pleasure vs. reading for an academic assignment

 

Chapter 3:  Reading to Understand the Text

• What's Going on Here?
• Annotation  
• Skeleton Outline
• Summary

Chapter 3 Selections

Song Lyrics, “Say I,” Scott Stapp and Mark Tremonti

Short Story, “Black Elvis,” Geoffrey Becker

Poem, “Call It Fear,” Joy Harjo

Short Sotry, “The Welcome Table,” Alice Walker

 

Chapter 4:  Exploring Your Response to a Text

• What's Happening Within The Reader?
• Photo Collage
• Dialogue
• Identifying Patterns of Response

Chapter 4 Selections

Poem, “Aborted Fetus,” Christopher Davis

Poem, “Heartbeats,” Melvin Dixon

Short Story, “Riding the Whip,” Robin Hemley

 

 

Chapter 5:  Understanding a Text in Context

§         What is the framework for this text?

§         Personal Inventory

§         Author Inventory

§         Cultural/Historical Inventory

 

Chapter 5 Selections

Poem, “At an Intersection,” Christopher Davis

Short Story, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” Flannery O'Connor

 

 

Part 3:  Tools and Techniques for Argument

Chapter 6:  Contextualizing Claims and Evidence:  Turning In

• Making and Supporting Claims about Literature
• Tools for Turning In:  Deconstruction
• Repetition
• Opposition
• Tools for Turning In:  New Criticism
• Imagery and Symbolism
• Similes and Metaphors
• Connotation and Denotation

Chapter 6 Selections

Poem, “Ethics,” Linda Pastan

Student Essay, “Turning In: An Exploration of 'The Second Sermon on the Warpland,” Monica Martin-Kendrick

 

Chapter 7:  Contextualizing Claims and Evidence:  Turning Out

• Looking Outside the Text
• Turning Out with a Focus on Gender Studies
• Turning Out with a Focus on Psychological Theory
• Turning Out with a Focus on Historicism
• Turning Out with a Focus on New Historicism

 

Chapter 7 Selections

Poem, “The White House,” Charles McKay

Student Essay, “Anne Sexton's 'Cinderella,'” Amanda Clark

 

 

Part 4:  Writing Strategies

 

Chapter 8:  The Writing Process: Planning

• Where to Begin?
• Generating Hypotheses--Good Guesses
• Generating Content:  Invention Exercises
• Unstructured Invention Strategies
• Structured Invention Strategies
• Finding a Focus 
• Conclusion

Chapter 8 Selection

Poem, “In a Station of the Metro,” Ezra Pound

 

Chapter 9:  The Writing Process:  Drafting, Revising, and Editing

• Devising an Organizational Plan
• Choosing an Appropriate Style
• Revising and Editing
• Conclusion

Chapter 9 Selection

Excerpt from Critical Essay, “Handing the Power-Glasses Back and Forth':  Women and Technology in the Poems by Adrienne Rich,” Audrey Crawford

 

Chapter 10:  Researching Arguments about Literature

• Becoming a Literary Detective
• Identifying Your Purpose
• Common Research Tools:  Major Print Sources and Web Sites
• Evaluating the Credibility of Web Sources
• Information Gathering:  Responsible Research Strategies
• Avoiding Plagiarism
• Information Processing:  Reading Responsibly
• Using Sources Skillfully
• In-Text Documentation

 

Chapter 10 Selections

Song Lyrics, “Whos Got My Back?” Scott Stapp and Mark Tremonti

Poem, “The Emperor of Ice Cream,” Wallace Stevens

Critical Essay, “Wallace Stevens, 'The Emperor of Ice Cream,'” Arthur F. Bethea

Student Essay, “Critical Annotated Bibliography,” Amanda Clark

 

§         End-of-Text Documentation: Constructing a Works Cited Page

Part 5:  Six Thematic Casebooks

Casebook 1:  Me, Myself and I:  Exploring Identity

• Poetry
  • “I Am,” John Clare
  •  “No Coward Soul Is Mine,” Emily Bronte
  • From “Song of Myself,” Walt Whitman
  • “An Agony.  As Now.” Amiri Baraka
  • “Black Hair,” Gary Soto
  • “Poem about My Rights,” June Jordan
  •  “Behind the Golden Son,” Brandon Bowlin
• Fiction
  •  “A & P,” John Updike
  •  “I Stand Here Ironing,” Tillie Olson
• Drama
  •  “Beauty,” Jane Martin
• A Closer Look:  Kurt Vonnegut
  • Interview:  “The Joe and Kurt Show,” Playboy Magazine
  • Short Story:  “Harrison Bergeron”
  • Critical Essay:  “The politics of Kurt Vonnegut's 'Harrison Bergeron',” Darryl Hattenhauer

 

Casebook 2:  Growing Up and Older:  His and Hers-Rites of Passage

Poetry

o       “Grown Up,” Edna St. Vincent Millay

o       “Anthem for a Doomed Youth,” Wilfred Owen

o       “A Walk after Dark,” W. H. Auden

o       “Men at Forty,” Donald Justice

o       “Diving Into the Wreck,” Adrienne Rich

o       “First Boyfriend,” Sharon Olds

o        “Oranges,” Gary Soto

o        “Adolescence I, II, III,” Rita Dove

o        “Something to Look Forward to,” Marge Piercy

Fiction

• “The Man Who Was Almost a Man,” Richard Wright
• “Boys and Girls,” Alice Munro

Drama

• “Love Letters,” A.R. Gurney

A Closer Look:  Gwendolyn Brooks

• Interview:  “A Conversation with Gwendolyn Brooks,” Sherman Hackney
• Poem:  “The Sundays of Satin-Legs Smith”
• Poem:  “The Lovers of the Poor”
• Poem:  “A Song in the Front Yard”
• Critical Essay:  “The Love Song of Satin-Legs Smith:  Gwendolyn Brooks Revisits Prufrock's Hell.”

Casebook 3:  The Ties That Bind:  Relating and Relationships

Poetry

• “Sonnet 18,” William Shakespeare
• “A Prayer for My Daughter,” William Butler Yeats
•  “The Bean Eaters,” Gwendolyn Brooks
• “Daddy,” Sylvia Plath
• “Cinderella,” Anne Sexton
• “My Papa's Waltz,” Theodore Roethke
• “The Power of My Mother's Arms,” Florence Weinberger
•  “I Like My Body When It Is with Your,” E.E. Cummings
• “Connecting,” Glenn Hutchinson

Fiction

• “Night School,” Raymond Carver
• “Happy Endings,” Margaret Atwood

Drama

• “WASP,” Steve Martin

A Closer Look:  Adrienne Rich

• Interview:  “Interview with Adrienne Rich”
• Poem:  “The Burning of Paper Instead of Children”
• Poem:  “From “Twenty-One Love Poems”
• Poem:  “Trying to Talk with a Man”
• Critical Essay:  “This is the oppressor's language/ yet I need it to talk to you”: Language, a Place of Struggle,” bell hooks

 

Casebook 4:  Land of the Free, Home of the Brave:  Defining America(ns)

Poetry

• “I Hear America Singing,” Walt Whitman
•  “Freedom's Plow,” Langston Hughes
• “America,” Claude McKay
• “America,” Allen Ginsberg
• “In Response to Executive Order 9066,” Dwight Okita
• “Sermon on the Warpland,” Gwendolyn Brooks
  • “The Sermons on the Warpland:  Gwendolyn Brooks' Moral Vision,” Malin Pereira
• “For My People,” Margaret Walker
• “A Postcolonial Tale,” Joy Harjo
• “Five Americans,” e. e. cummings

Fiction

• “In the American Society,” Gish Jen
• “The Lottery,” Shirley Jackson

Drama

• “Body Indian,” Hanay Geiogamah

A Closer Look:  Moises Kaufman

• Interview:  “As Far As He Could Go:  An Interview with the Playwright,” Jesse McKinley
• Drama:  “The Laramie Project”
• Critical Essay:  “Town in a Mirror,” Don Shewey

 

Casebook 5:  (Hu)Man /Nature

Poetry

• “Earth's Answer,” William Blake
• “The Eternity of Nature,” John Clare
• “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” Langston Hughes
• “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” Wallace Stevens
• “Blackberry Eating,” Galway Kinnel
• “Heart of Autumn,” Robert Penn Warren
•  “The Bear,” N. Scott Momaday
• “The Common, Living Dirt,” Marge Piercy
• “Where Mountain Lion Lay Down with Deer,” Leslie Marmon Silko
• “Eagle Poem,” Joy Harjo

Fiction

• “Amen,” Linda Hogan
• “The Bear,” William Faulkner

Drama

• “The Tempest,” William Shakespeare

A Closer Look:  William Stafford

• Interview:  “William Stafford:  An Interview,” Thomas Kennedy
• Poem:  “Traveling Through the Dark”
• Poem:  “Waking at 3am”
• Poem:  “Evolution”
• Critical Essay:  “Stafford's 'Traveling Through the Dark',” Terry Fairchild

 

 

 

Preface

Alternate TOC #2: Chapter Literature Selections

Chapter 1

Poem, “We Real Cool,” Gwendolyn Brooks

Short Story, “The Holocaust Party,” Robin Hemley

 

Chapter 2

Review, “A Curtain Up Review: The Laramie Project,” Elyse Sommer

Review, “(Mostly) Harmless Theatre Production: The Laramie Project,” Steve Callahan

Essay, “A Modest Proposal,” Jonathan Swift

 

Chapter 3

Song Lyrics, “Say I,” Scott Stapp and Mark Tremonti

Short Story, “Black Elvis,” Geoffrey Becker

Poem, “Call It Fear,” Joy Harjo

Short Sotry, “The Welcome Table,” Alice Walker

 

Chapter 4

Poem, “Aborted Fetus,” Christopher Davis

Poem, “Heartbeats,” Melvin Dixon

Short Story, “Riding the Whip,” Robin Hemley

 

Chapter 5

Poem, “At an Intersection,” Christopher Davis

Short Story, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” Flannery O'Connor

 

Chapter 6

Poem, “Ethics,” Linda Pastan

Student Essay, “Turning In: An Exploration of 'The Second Sermon on the Warpland,” Monica Martin-Kendrick

 

Chapter 7

Poem, “The White House,” Charles McKay

Student Essay, “Anne Sexton's 'Cinderella,'” Amanda Clark

 

Chapter 8

Poem, “In a Station of the Metro,” Ezra Pound

 

Chapter 9

Excerpt from Critical Essay, “Handing the Power-Glasses Back and Forth':  Women and Technology in the Poems by Adrienne Rich,” Audrey Crawford

 

Chapter 10

Song Lyrics, “Whos Got My Back?” Scott Stapp and Mark Tremonti

Poem, “The Emperor of Ice Cream,” Wallace Stevens

Critical Essay, “Wallace Stevens, 'The Emperor of Ice Cream,'” Arthur F. Bethea

Student Essay, “Critical Annotated Bibliography,” Amanda Clark

 

 

 

 

Summary

 
 
 

For courses in English Composition, Argumentative Writing, and Introduction to Literature.

Strategies for Reading and Arguing about Literature brings together the often divergent studies of argumentation and literature.   This textbook teaches the art of academic argumentation through a focus on classic and contemporary literature.  Using this book, students will learn, practice and master critical reading strategies, critical writing and research strategies, the essentials of academic argumentation, and basic literary theory as it relates to the development of an argument.  Concurrently, students will explore and appreciate a variety of literature ranging from the classical to the contemporary in a variety of genres and critical analyses of literary works. 

Product details

• Authors: Meg Morgan, Kim Stallings, Julie Townsend
• Publisher: Pearson Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 01.01.2006
• EAN: 9780130938534
• ISBN: 978-0-13-093853-4
• No. of pages: 672
• Weight: 770 g
• Series: Longman; Longman
• Subject: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative linguistics