A brief, innovative guide to reading literature and writing arguments about it.

More and more, first- year writing courses foreground skills of critical analysis and argumentation. In response, A Brief Guide to Arguing about Literature first hones students’ analytical skills through instruction in close critical reading of texts; then, it shows them how to turn their reading into well-supported and rhetorically effective argumentative writing. For instructors who prefer to aggregate their own anthology of readings and literary works for their literature-based composition courses, A Brief Guide to Arguing about Literature comprises only the writing-guide chapters of John Schilb and John Clifford’s admired Arguing about Literature: Guide and Reader.  In response to reviewer suggestions, this new edition of A Brief Guide to Arguing about Literature includes even more instruction in the key skills of argumentation, critical reading, and research than its predecessor.