Literature to Go
Fifth Edition ©2024 Michael Meyer; D. Quentin Miller Formats: E-book, Print
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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).
Table of Contents
*New to the 5th Edition
Resources for Reading and Writing about Literature
Preface for Instructors
Introduction: Reading Imaginative Literature
The Nature of Literature
*Danusha Laméris, “Feeding the Worms”
The Value of Literature
The Changing Literary Canon
*Approaching Sensitive Subjects
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 PAPER: Differences in Responses to Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour”
Explorations and Formulas
Ann Beattie, “Janus”
2. Plot
T.C. Boyle, “The Hit Man”
*Joy Harjo, “The Reckoning”
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”
3. Character
Tobias Wolff, “Powder”
*Zadie Smith, “Martha, Martha”
James Baldwin, “Sonny’s Blues”
4. Setting
Ernest Hemingway, “Soldier’s Home”
Ursula K. LeGuin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper”
5. Point of View
*Third-Person Narrator (Nonparticipant)
*First-Person Narrator (Participant)
John Updike, “A & P”
Manuel Muñoz, “Zigzagger”
*Lorrie Moore, “How to Become a Writer”
6. Symbolism
Louise Erdrich, “The Red Convertible”
Zora Neale Hurston, "Sweat"
Cynthia Ozick, “The Shawl”
A SAMPLE STUDENT RESPONSE: Layers of Symbol in Cynthia Ozick’s “The Shawl”
7. Theme
*Adrian Tomine, “Intruders” (graphic short story)
*A SAMPLE STUDENT RESPONSE: Danger among Us: Distilling the Theme in “Intruders”
Shirley Jackson, “The Lottery”
*Carmen Maria Machado, “Eight Bites”
8. Style, Tone, and Irony
Style
Tone
Irony
George Saunders, “I Can Speak ™”
Flannery O’Connor, “A Good Man is Hard to Find”
Mark Twain, “The Story of the Good Little Boy”
9. A Collection of Stories
John Cheever, “The Enormous Radio”
Judith Ortiz Cofer, “Volar”
Edwidge Danticat, “The Missing Peace”
*N. K. Jemisin, “Sinners, Saints, Dragons, and Haints, in the City Beneath the Still Waters”
James Joyce, “Eveline”
Jamaica Kincaid, “Girl”
*Alice Munro, “Silence”
Joyce Carol Oates, “Tick”
Edgar Allen Poe, “The Cask of Amontillado”
Kurt Vonnegut, “Happy Birthday, 1951”
POETRY
The Elements of Poetry
10. Reading Poetry
Reading Poetry Responsively
Lisa Parker, “Snapping Beans”
*Linda Pastan, “Jump Cabling”
John Updike, “Dog’s Death”
The Pleasure of Words
Gregory Corso, “I am 25”
A SAMPLE CLOSE READING: An Explication of “I am 25”
Robert Francis, “Catch”
A SAMPLE STUDENT ANALYSIS: Tossing Metaphors in Robert Francis’s “Catch”
*Jane Hirschfield, “This Morning, I Wanted Four Legs”
Robert Morgan, “Mountain Graveyard”
E. E. Cummings, “l(a”
Anonymous, “Western Wind”
Regina Barreca, “Nighttime Fires”
SUGGESTIONS FOR APPROACHING POETRY
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”
*Ada Limón, “The End of Poetry”
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”
11. Word Choice, Word Order, and Tone
Word choice
Diction
Denotations and Connotations
Randall Jarrell, “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner”
Allusion
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”
Martín Espada, “Latin Night at the Pawnshop”
*Joy Harjo, “Granddaughters”
Diction and Tone in Four Love Poems
*Shamim Azad, “First Love”
*Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Sonnet XLIII”
*John Frederick Nims, “Love Poem”
*Pablo Neruda, “Drunk as drunk on turpentine”
Poems for Further Study
Walt Whitman, “The Dalliance of the Eagles”
Kwame Dawes, “History Lesson at Eight a.m.”
Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken”
Alice Jones, “The Lungs”
Louis Simpson, “In the Suburbs”
12. Images
Poetry’s Appeal to the Senses
William Carlos Williams, “Poem”
Walt Whitman, “Cavalry Crossing a Ford”
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, “House of Cards”
Sally Croft, “Home-Baked Bread”
13. 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”
Poems for Further Study
William Carlos Williams, “To Waken an Old Lady”
Ernest Slyman, “Lightning Bugs”
Martín 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”
Robert Pinsky, “Icicles”
Kay Ryan, “Learning”
14. Symbol, Allegory, and Irony
Symbol
Robert Frost, “Acquainted with the Night”
Allegory
James Baldwin, “Guilt, Desire and Love”
Irony
Edwin Arlington Robinson, “Richard Cory”
*Gwendolyn Brooks, “Sadie and Maud”
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”
15. Sounds
Listening to Poetry
*Kamau Brathwaite, “Ogun”
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 the Walk—”
Rhyme
Richard Armour, “Going to Extremes”
Robert Southey, from “The Cataract of Lodore”
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”
Kay Ryan, “Dew”
Andrew Hudgins, “The Ice-Cream Truck”
Robert Francis, “The Pitcher”
Helen Chasin, “The Word Plum”
Major Jackson, “Autumn Landscape”
16. 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”
17. 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?”
Countee Cullen, “Yet Do I Marvel”
Mark Jarman, “Unholy Sonnet”
R.S. Gwynn, “Shakespearean Sonnet”
Villanelle
Dylan Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”
*Denise Duhamel, “Please Don’t Sit Like a Frog, Sit Like a Queen”
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 Bashō, “Under cherry trees”
Carolyn Kizer, “After Bashō”
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
Gwendolyn Brooks, “We Real Cool”
Joan Murray, “We Old Dudes”
Picture Poem
Michael McFee, “In Medias Res”
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”
*William Carlos Williams, “The Red Wheelbarrow”
Major Jackson, “The Chase”
Julio Marzán, “The Translator at the Reception for Latin American Writers”
PERSPECTIVE: Elaine Mitchell, “Form”
Poetry in Depth
*18. A Cultural Case Study: Harlem Renaissance Poets Claude McKay, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen
Claude McKay:
“If We Must Die”
*“The Lynching”
*“America”
Georgia Douglas Johnson:
*“Youth”
*“Foredoom”
*“Prejudice”
Langston Hughes:
*“The Negro Speaks of Rivers”
*“Jazzonia”
“The Weary Blues”
Countee Cullen:
*“Incident”
*“Heritage”
19. Case Study: Song Lyrics as Poetry
Frederic Weatherly, “Danny Boy”
*Bessie Smith, “Careless Love Blues”
*Woody Guthrie, “Pretty Boy Floyd”
Hank Williams, “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry”
Bob Dylan, “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)”
John Lennon and Paul McCartney, “I Am the Walrus”
*Ani DiFranco, “Not a Pretty Girl”
Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan, “Alice”
*Adrianne Lenker, “Not”
20. A Thematic Case Study: Our Fragile Planet
*Eileen Cleary, “The Way We Fled”
*Tess Gallagher, “Choices”
*Joy Harjo, “Singing Everything”
J. Estanislao Lopez, “Meditation on Beauty”
Gail White, “Dead Armadillos”
Allen Ginsberg, “Sunflower Sutra”
Mary Oliver, “Wild Geese”
Sylvia Plath, “Pheasant”
*Teresa Mei Chuc, “Rainforest”
*Jennifer Franklin “Memento Mori: Apple Orchard”
SUGGESTED TOPICS FOR LONGER PAPERS
21. 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”
The Thought beneath so slight a film—
“To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee”
“Success is counted sweetest”
“Water, is taught by thirst”
“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
Emily Dickinson, “A Description of Herself”
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, “On Meeting Dickinson for the First Time”
Mabel Loomis Todd, “The Character of Amherst”
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’”
QUESTIONS FOR WRITING ABOUT AN AUTHOR IN DEPTH
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
A Collection of Poems
22. Poems for Further Reading
*José Angel Araguz, “The Name”
Charles Baudelaire, “A Carrion”
William Blake, “Infant Sorrow”
Anne Bradstreet, “Before the Birth of One of Her Children”
Emily Brontë, “Stars”
Michelle Cliff, “The Land of Look Behind”
Gregory Corso, “Marriage”
John Donne, “The Flea”
T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
Robert Frost, “Mending Wall”
*Eliza Gonzalez, “In Quarantine, I Reflect on the Death of Ophelia”
*Amanda Gorman, “In This Place (An American Lyric)”
Seamus Heaney, “Digging”
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”
*Dionisio D. Martínez, “Flood: Years of Solitude”
Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Spring”
*Jim Moore, “How to Come Out of Lockdown”
Naomi Shihab Nye, “To Manage”
Edgar Allan Poe, “Annabel Lee”
*Lois Red Elk, “All Thirst Quenched”
Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ozymandias”
*Patricia Smith, “What It’s Like to Be a Black Girl (for those of you who aren’t)”
Wallace Stevens, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”
*Natasha Trethewey, “Graveyard Blues”
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
23. Reading Drama
Reading Drama Responsively
Susan Glaspell, Trifles
A SAMPLE CLOSE READING: An Annotated Section of Trifles
Elements of Drama
24. A Study of Sophocles
Theatrical Conventions of Greek Drama
Tragedy
Sophocles, Oedipus the King (trans. by David Grene)
25. 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
26. Modern Drama
Realism
Naturalism
Theatrical Conventions of Modern Drama
Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
27. Contemporary Drama
Beyond Realism
Musical Theater
Drama in Popular Forms
*Quiara Alegría Hudes, Water by the Spoonful
*A SAMPLE STUDENT PAPER: Water by the Spoonful: Exploring the Internet’s Role in Bettering the Self
*28. A Collection of Contemporary Plays
Lynn Nottage, POOF!
*Suzan-Lori Parks: A Collection of Six Very Short Plays:
*Veuve Clicquot
*Here Comes the Message
*The Ends of the Earth
*Beginning Middle End
*What Do You See
*Orange
STRATEGIES FOR READING AND WRITING
29. Critical Strategies for Reading
Critical Thinking
Formalist Strategies
Biographical Strategies
Psychological Strategies
Historical Strategies
Marxist Criticism
New Historicist Criticism
Cultural Criticism
Gender Strategies
Feminist Criticism
LGBTQ+ Criticism
Mythological Strategies
Reader-Response Strategies
Deconstructionist Strategies
*Affect Theory Approaches
30. Writing about Literature
Why Am I Being Asked to Do This?
From Reading and Discussion to Writing
Reading the Work Closely
Prewriting
Annotating the Text and Journal Note Taking
Choosing a Topic
More Focused Prewriting
Arguing about Literature
Writing
Writing a First Draft
Textual Evidence: Using Quotations, Summarizing, and Paraphrasing
Writing the Introduction and Conclusion
Revising and Editing
QUESTIONS FOR WRITING: A REVISION CHECKLIST
Writing about Fiction, Poetry, And Drama
Writing about Fiction
QUESTIONS FOR RESPONSIVE READING AND WRITING ABOUT FICTION
A SAMPLE STUDENT ESSAY: John Updike’s “A & P” as a State of Mind
Writing about Poetry
QUESTIONS FOR RESPONSIVE READING AND WRITING ABOUT POETRY
The Elements Together
John Donne, “Death Be Not Proud”
A SAMPLE CLOSE READING: An Annotated Version of “Death Be Not Proud”
A SAMPLE FIRST RESPONSE
Organizing Your Thoughts
A SAMPLE INFORMAL OUTLINE
The Elements and Theme
A SAMPLE EXPLICATION: The Use of Conventional Metaphors for Death in John Donne’s “Death Be Not Proud”
Writing about Drama
QUESTIONS FOR RESPONSIVE READING AND WRITING ABOUT DRAMA
A SAMPLE STUDENT PAPER: The Feminist Evidence in Susan Glaspell’s Trifles
31. The Literary Research Paper
Choosing a Topic
Finding Sources
Evaluating Sources and Taking Notes
Developing a Draft, Integrating Sources, and Organizing the Essay
Documenting Sources and Avoiding Plagiarism
The List of Works Cited
Parenthetical References
A SAMPLE STUDENT RESEARCH PAPER: How William Faulkner’s Narrator Cultivates a Rose for F
Glossary of Literary Terms
Index of First Lines
Index of Authors and Titles
Index of Terms
Product Updates
9 Stories, 45 Poems, and 7 Plays are new, representing rich collection of traditional, contemporary, and multicultural literature, including:
- Stories by Zadie Smith, Carmen Maria Machado, N.K. Jemisin, and Adrian Tomine
- Poems by José Angel Araguz, Kamau Brathwaite, and Amanda Gorman
- Plays by Quiara Alegría Hudes and Suzan-Lori Parks
New Section in the Introduction, “Approaching Sensitive Subjects” explores how to engage with challenging literature – literature with explicit themes, disturbing depictions of reality, or offensive language. Students are encouraged to respond to these literary texts cautiously and responsibly while considering historical, cultural, and societal contexts that may alter the meaning of these works.
New Chapter 18, A Cultural Case Study: The Harlem Renaissance is a beautifully illustrated and thoughtfully curated presentation of the work of four canonical poets — Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Georgia Douglas Johnson, and Claude McKay — who helped shape the movement.
New student sample papers with up-to-date MLA guidelines are used as examples on how to write about literature, including a graphic short story that is new to this edition.
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).
Table of Contents
*New to the 5th Edition
Resources for Reading and Writing about Literature
Preface for Instructors
Introduction: Reading Imaginative Literature
The Nature of Literature
*Danusha Laméris, “Feeding the Worms”
The Value of Literature
The Changing Literary Canon
*Approaching Sensitive Subjects
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 PAPER: Differences in Responses to Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour”
Explorations and Formulas
Ann Beattie, “Janus”
2. Plot
T.C. Boyle, “The Hit Man”
*Joy Harjo, “The Reckoning”
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”
3. Character
Tobias Wolff, “Powder”
*Zadie Smith, “Martha, Martha”
James Baldwin, “Sonny’s Blues”
4. Setting
Ernest Hemingway, “Soldier’s Home”
Ursula K. LeGuin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper”
5. Point of View
*Third-Person Narrator (Nonparticipant)
*First-Person Narrator (Participant)
John Updike, “A & P”
Manuel Muñoz, “Zigzagger”
*Lorrie Moore, “How to Become a Writer”
6. Symbolism
Louise Erdrich, “The Red Convertible”
Zora Neale Hurston, "Sweat"
Cynthia Ozick, “The Shawl”
A SAMPLE STUDENT RESPONSE: Layers of Symbol in Cynthia Ozick’s “The Shawl”
7. Theme
*Adrian Tomine, “Intruders” (graphic short story)
*A SAMPLE STUDENT RESPONSE: Danger among Us: Distilling the Theme in “Intruders”
Shirley Jackson, “The Lottery”
*Carmen Maria Machado, “Eight Bites”
8. Style, Tone, and Irony
Style
Tone
Irony
George Saunders, “I Can Speak ™”
Flannery O’Connor, “A Good Man is Hard to Find”
Mark Twain, “The Story of the Good Little Boy”
9. A Collection of Stories
John Cheever, “The Enormous Radio”
Judith Ortiz Cofer, “Volar”
Edwidge Danticat, “The Missing Peace”
*N. K. Jemisin, “Sinners, Saints, Dragons, and Haints, in the City Beneath the Still Waters”
James Joyce, “Eveline”
Jamaica Kincaid, “Girl”
*Alice Munro, “Silence”
Joyce Carol Oates, “Tick”
Edgar Allen Poe, “The Cask of Amontillado”
Kurt Vonnegut, “Happy Birthday, 1951”
POETRY
The Elements of Poetry
10. Reading Poetry
Reading Poetry Responsively
Lisa Parker, “Snapping Beans”
*Linda Pastan, “Jump Cabling”
John Updike, “Dog’s Death”
The Pleasure of Words
Gregory Corso, “I am 25”
A SAMPLE CLOSE READING: An Explication of “I am 25”
Robert Francis, “Catch”
A SAMPLE STUDENT ANALYSIS: Tossing Metaphors in Robert Francis’s “Catch”
*Jane Hirschfield, “This Morning, I Wanted Four Legs”
Robert Morgan, “Mountain Graveyard”
E. E. Cummings, “l(a”
Anonymous, “Western Wind”
Regina Barreca, “Nighttime Fires”
SUGGESTIONS FOR APPROACHING POETRY
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”
*Ada Limón, “The End of Poetry”
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”
11. Word Choice, Word Order, and Tone
Word choice
Diction
Denotations and Connotations
Randall Jarrell, “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner”
Allusion
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”
Martín Espada, “Latin Night at the Pawnshop”
*Joy Harjo, “Granddaughters”
Diction and Tone in Four Love Poems
*Shamim Azad, “First Love”
*Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Sonnet XLIII”
*John Frederick Nims, “Love Poem”
*Pablo Neruda, “Drunk as drunk on turpentine”
Poems for Further Study
Walt Whitman, “The Dalliance of the Eagles”
Kwame Dawes, “History Lesson at Eight a.m.”
Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken”
Alice Jones, “The Lungs”
Louis Simpson, “In the Suburbs”
12. Images
Poetry’s Appeal to the Senses
William Carlos Williams, “Poem”
Walt Whitman, “Cavalry Crossing a Ford”
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, “House of Cards”
Sally Croft, “Home-Baked Bread”
13. 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”
Poems for Further Study
William Carlos Williams, “To Waken an Old Lady”
Ernest Slyman, “Lightning Bugs”
Martín 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”
Robert Pinsky, “Icicles”
Kay Ryan, “Learning”
14. Symbol, Allegory, and Irony
Symbol
Robert Frost, “Acquainted with the Night”
Allegory
James Baldwin, “Guilt, Desire and Love”
Irony
Edwin Arlington Robinson, “Richard Cory”
*Gwendolyn Brooks, “Sadie and Maud”
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”
15. Sounds
Listening to Poetry
*Kamau Brathwaite, “Ogun”
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 the Walk—”
Rhyme
Richard Armour, “Going to Extremes”
Robert Southey, from “The Cataract of Lodore”
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”
Kay Ryan, “Dew”
Andrew Hudgins, “The Ice-Cream Truck”
Robert Francis, “The Pitcher”
Helen Chasin, “The Word Plum”
Major Jackson, “Autumn Landscape”
16. 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”
17. 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?”
Countee Cullen, “Yet Do I Marvel”
Mark Jarman, “Unholy Sonnet”
R.S. Gwynn, “Shakespearean Sonnet”
Villanelle
Dylan Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”
*Denise Duhamel, “Please Don’t Sit Like a Frog, Sit Like a Queen”
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 Bashō, “Under cherry trees”
Carolyn Kizer, “After Bashō”
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
Gwendolyn Brooks, “We Real Cool”
Joan Murray, “We Old Dudes”
Picture Poem
Michael McFee, “In Medias Res”
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”
*William Carlos Williams, “The Red Wheelbarrow”
Major Jackson, “The Chase”
Julio Marzán, “The Translator at the Reception for Latin American Writers”
PERSPECTIVE: Elaine Mitchell, “Form”
Poetry in Depth
*18. A Cultural Case Study: Harlem Renaissance Poets Claude McKay, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen
Claude McKay:
“If We Must Die”
*“The Lynching”
*“America”
Georgia Douglas Johnson:
*“Youth”
*“Foredoom”
*“Prejudice”
Langston Hughes:
*“The Negro Speaks of Rivers”
*“Jazzonia”
“The Weary Blues”
Countee Cullen:
*“Incident”
*“Heritage”
19. Case Study: Song Lyrics as Poetry
Frederic Weatherly, “Danny Boy”
*Bessie Smith, “Careless Love Blues”
*Woody Guthrie, “Pretty Boy Floyd”
Hank Williams, “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry”
Bob Dylan, “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)”
John Lennon and Paul McCartney, “I Am the Walrus”
*Ani DiFranco, “Not a Pretty Girl”
Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan, “Alice”
*Adrianne Lenker, “Not”
20. A Thematic Case Study: Our Fragile Planet
*Eileen Cleary, “The Way We Fled”
*Tess Gallagher, “Choices”
*Joy Harjo, “Singing Everything”
J. Estanislao Lopez, “Meditation on Beauty”
Gail White, “Dead Armadillos”
Allen Ginsberg, “Sunflower Sutra”
Mary Oliver, “Wild Geese”
Sylvia Plath, “Pheasant”
*Teresa Mei Chuc, “Rainforest”
*Jennifer Franklin “Memento Mori: Apple Orchard”
SUGGESTED TOPICS FOR LONGER PAPERS
21. 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”
The Thought beneath so slight a film—
“To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee”
“Success is counted sweetest”
“Water, is taught by thirst”
“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
Emily Dickinson, “A Description of Herself”
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, “On Meeting Dickinson for the First Time”
Mabel Loomis Todd, “The Character of Amherst”
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’”
QUESTIONS FOR WRITING ABOUT AN AUTHOR IN DEPTH
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
A Collection of Poems
22. Poems for Further Reading
*José Angel Araguz, “The Name”
Charles Baudelaire, “A Carrion”
William Blake, “Infant Sorrow”
Anne Bradstreet, “Before the Birth of One of Her Children”
Emily Brontë, “Stars”
Michelle Cliff, “The Land of Look Behind”
Gregory Corso, “Marriage”
John Donne, “The Flea”
T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
Robert Frost, “Mending Wall”
*Eliza Gonzalez, “In Quarantine, I Reflect on the Death of Ophelia”
*Amanda Gorman, “In This Place (An American Lyric)”
Seamus Heaney, “Digging”
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”
*Dionisio D. Martínez, “Flood: Years of Solitude”
Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Spring”
*Jim Moore, “How to Come Out of Lockdown”
Naomi Shihab Nye, “To Manage”
Edgar Allan Poe, “Annabel Lee”
*Lois Red Elk, “All Thirst Quenched”
Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ozymandias”
*Patricia Smith, “What It’s Like to Be a Black Girl (for those of you who aren’t)”
Wallace Stevens, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”
*Natasha Trethewey, “Graveyard Blues”
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
23. Reading Drama
Reading Drama Responsively
Susan Glaspell, Trifles
A SAMPLE CLOSE READING: An Annotated Section of Trifles
Elements of Drama
24. A Study of Sophocles
Theatrical Conventions of Greek Drama
Tragedy
Sophocles, Oedipus the King (trans. by David Grene)
25. 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
26. Modern Drama
Realism
Naturalism
Theatrical Conventions of Modern Drama
Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
27. Contemporary Drama
Beyond Realism
Musical Theater
Drama in Popular Forms
*Quiara Alegría Hudes, Water by the Spoonful
*A SAMPLE STUDENT PAPER: Water by the Spoonful: Exploring the Internet’s Role in Bettering the Self
*28. A Collection of Contemporary Plays
Lynn Nottage, POOF!
*Suzan-Lori Parks: A Collection of Six Very Short Plays:
*Veuve Clicquot
*Here Comes the Message
*The Ends of the Earth
*Beginning Middle End
*What Do You See
*Orange
STRATEGIES FOR READING AND WRITING
29. Critical Strategies for Reading
Critical Thinking
Formalist Strategies
Biographical Strategies
Psychological Strategies
Historical Strategies
Marxist Criticism
New Historicist Criticism
Cultural Criticism
Gender Strategies
Feminist Criticism
LGBTQ+ Criticism
Mythological Strategies
Reader-Response Strategies
Deconstructionist Strategies
*Affect Theory Approaches
30. Writing about Literature
Why Am I Being Asked to Do This?
From Reading and Discussion to Writing
Reading the Work Closely
Prewriting
Annotating the Text and Journal Note Taking
Choosing a Topic
More Focused Prewriting
Arguing about Literature
Writing
Writing a First Draft
Textual Evidence: Using Quotations, Summarizing, and Paraphrasing
Writing the Introduction and Conclusion
Revising and Editing
QUESTIONS FOR WRITING: A REVISION CHECKLIST
Writing about Fiction, Poetry, And Drama
Writing about Fiction
QUESTIONS FOR RESPONSIVE READING AND WRITING ABOUT FICTION
A SAMPLE STUDENT ESSAY: John Updike’s “A & P” as a State of Mind
Writing about Poetry
QUESTIONS FOR RESPONSIVE READING AND WRITING ABOUT POETRY
The Elements Together
John Donne, “Death Be Not Proud”
A SAMPLE CLOSE READING: An Annotated Version of “Death Be Not Proud”
A SAMPLE FIRST RESPONSE
Organizing Your Thoughts
A SAMPLE INFORMAL OUTLINE
The Elements and Theme
A SAMPLE EXPLICATION: The Use of Conventional Metaphors for Death in John Donne’s “Death Be Not Proud”
Writing about Drama
QUESTIONS FOR RESPONSIVE READING AND WRITING ABOUT DRAMA
A SAMPLE STUDENT PAPER: The Feminist Evidence in Susan Glaspell’s Trifles
31. The Literary Research Paper
Choosing a Topic
Finding Sources
Evaluating Sources and Taking Notes
Developing a Draft, Integrating Sources, and Organizing the Essay
Documenting Sources and Avoiding Plagiarism
The List of Works Cited
Parenthetical References
A SAMPLE STUDENT RESEARCH PAPER: How William Faulkner’s Narrator Cultivates a Rose for F
Glossary of Literary Terms
Index of First Lines
Index of Authors and Titles
Index of Terms
Product Updates
9 Stories, 45 Poems, and 7 Plays are new, representing rich collection of traditional, contemporary, and multicultural literature, including:
- Stories by Zadie Smith, Carmen Maria Machado, N.K. Jemisin, and Adrian Tomine
- Poems by José Angel Araguz, Kamau Brathwaite, and Amanda Gorman
- Plays by Quiara Alegría Hudes and Suzan-Lori Parks
New Section in the Introduction, “Approaching Sensitive Subjects” explores how to engage with challenging literature – literature with explicit themes, disturbing depictions of reality, or offensive language. Students are encouraged to respond to these literary texts cautiously and responsibly while considering historical, cultural, and societal contexts that may alter the meaning of these works.
New Chapter 18, A Cultural Case Study: The Harlem Renaissance is a beautifully illustrated and thoughtfully curated presentation of the work of four canonical poets — Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Georgia Douglas Johnson, and Claude McKay — who helped shape the movement.
New student sample papers with up-to-date MLA guidelines are used as examples on how to write about literature, including a graphic short story that is new to this edition.
A brief anthology of the literature you love to teach—with the critical thinking, reading, and writing support your students need
Drawn from our best-selling anthology The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature, Literature to Go is a brief, inexpensive collection of stories, poems, and plays accompanied by thorough critical reading and writing support. With literature from many periods, cultures, and diverse voices, the book is also a complete guide to close reading, critical thinking, and thoughtful writing about literature. This edition features 62 new works.
Achieve with The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature puts student reading, writing, and revision at the core of your course, with interactive close reading models, skill-building close reading activities, LearningCurve for Literature, reading comprehension quizzes, videos of professional writers and students, and a dedicated composition space that guides students through draft, review, source check, reflection, and revision.
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If you’re a verified instructor, you can request a free sample of our courseware, e-book, or print textbook to consider for use in your courses. Only registered and verified instructors can receive free print and digital samples, and they should not be sold to bookstores or book resellers. If you don't yet have an existing account with Macmillan Learning, it can take up to two business days to verify your status as an instructor. You can request a free sample from the right side of this product page by clicking on the "Request Instructor Sample" button or by contacting your rep. Learn more.
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Literature to Go
Drawn from our best-selling anthology The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature, Literature to Go is a brief, inexpensive collection of stories, poems, and plays accompanied by thorough critical reading and writing support. With literature from many periods, cultures, and diverse voices, the book is also a complete guide to close reading, critical thinking, and thoughtful writing about literature. This edition features 62 new works.
Achieve with The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature puts student reading, writing, and revision at the core of your course, with interactive close reading models, skill-building close reading activities, LearningCurve for Literature, reading comprehension quizzes, videos of professional writers and students, and a dedicated composition space that guides students through draft, review, source check, reflection, and revision.
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