Writing and Critical Thinking Through Literature

by Heather Ringo & Athena Kashyap

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This text offers instruction in analytical, critical, and argumentative writing, critical thinking, research strategies, information literacy, and proper documentation through the study of literary works from major genres, while developing students’ close reading skills and promoting an appreciation of the aesthetic qualities of literature.

Description from LibreTexts.

Publisher
Open Educational Resources Initiative
Subjects
Humanities
Licence
CC BY-NC 4.0, as LibreTexts states it. Non-commercial use only.
Who can read
Teens profiles and older, judged from its title and subjects

Contents

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  1. Front Matter
  2. TitlePage
  3. InfoPage
  4. Table of Contents
  5. Licensing
  6. 1: Introduction
  7. 1.1: What is Literature?
  8. 1.2: Why Read and Write About Literature?
  9. 1.3: What is Literary Analysis?
  10. 1.4: Language, Misconceptions, and Authorial Intention in Literature
  11. 1.5: Inferences in Literature
  12. 1.6: The Rough Guide to Literary Style, a Historical Overview
  13. 1.7: Discussion Activity - What is Literature To You?
  14. 1.8: The Literary Landscape- Four Major Genres
  15. 2: About Creative Nonfiction
  16. 2.1: What is Creative Nonfiction?
  17. 2.2: Elements of Creative Nonfiction
  18. 2.3: How to Read Creative Nonfiction
  19. 2.4: Featured Creative Nonfiction Author- Frederick Douglass
  20. 2.5: Creative Nonfiction Reading Discussion Questions
  21. 2.6: Descriptive Imagery Worksheets
  22. 2.7: The Personal Narrative Essay
  23. 3: Creative Nonfiction Readings
  24. 3.1: Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi "The Danger of a Single Story" (2009)
  25. 3.2: Anderson, Karen "Six Short Essays" (2017)
  26. 3.3: Bierce, Ambrose "What I Saw of Shiloh" (1881)
  27. 3.4: Cantú, Francisco "Bajadas" (2015)
  28. 3.5: Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845)
  29. 3.6: DuBois, W.E.B. "Of Our Spiritual Strivings" from The Souls of Black Folk (1903)
  30. 3.7: Oomen, Anne-Marie "The Blue" (2018)
  31. 3.9: Sun Tzu. The Art of War (5th Century B.C.)
  32. 3.10: Swift, Jonathan. "A Modest Proposal." (1729)
  33. 3.11: Wordsworth, Dorothy "Daffodils" entry from Grasmere journal (1802)
  34. 4: About Fiction - Short Stories and the Novel
  35. 4.1: What is Fiction?
  36. 4.2: Short Stories versus the Novel
  37. 4.3: Types of Novels
  38. 4.4: How to Read Fiction
  39. 4.5: How to Analyze Fiction - Elements of Literature
  40. 4.6: Character
  41. 4.7: Plot
  42. 4.8: Setting
  43. 4.9: Narration, Point of View, Dialogue
  44. 4.10: Word Choice, Tone, Voice and Style
  45. 4.11: Rhetorical and Literary Devices
  46. 4.12: Theme
  47. 4.13: A Review and Questions
  48. 4.14: Match and Learn Quiz
  49. 5: Fiction Readings
  50. 5.1: Bierce, Ambrose "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" (1890)
  51. 5.2: Chopin, Kate "The Story of an Hour" (1894)
  52. 5.3: Gilman, Charlotte Perkins "The Yellow Wallpaper" (1892)
  53. 5.4: Hawthorne, Nathaniel "The Birthmark" (1846)
  54. 5.5: Irving, Washington "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (1820)
  55. 5.6: Melville, Herman. "Bartleby, The Scrivener" (1853)
  56. 5.7: Moore, Alice Ruth "Violets" (1895)
  57. 5.8: Poe, Edgar Allan "The Purloined Letter" (1844)
  58. 5.9: Wilde, Oscar "The Nightingale and the Rose" (1888)
  59. 5.10: Woolf, Virginia "Kew Gardens" (1921)
  60. 5.11: Cather, Willa. "On the Gull's Road" (1908)
  61. 5.12: Davis, Rebecca Harding. "Life in the Iron-Mills" (1861)
  62. 5.13: Ray Bradbury’s “The Veldt”
  63. 5.14: A Hunger Artist by Franz Kafka
  64. 5.15: Flannery O'Connor's A Good Man is Hard to Find and Good Country People
  65. 5.16: William Faulker's "A Rose for Emily" and "Barn Burning"
  66. 5.17: Zora Neale Hurston's The Sweat
  67. 6: About Poetry
  68. 6.1: What is Poetry?
  69. 6.2: Music and Poetry
  70. 6.3: Reading Poetry
  71. 6.4: Case Study- A Close Reading of a Poem
  72. 6.5: Why Analyze Poetry?
  73. 6.6: The Line in Poetry
  74. 6.7: Word Choice, Word Order and Tone
  75. 6.8: Voice
  76. 6.9: Imagery
  77. 6.10: Figurative Language
  78. 6.11: Sound in Poetry- Meter
  79. 6.12: Sound in Poetry- Alliteration, Consonance, Assonance
  80. 6.13: Sound in Poetry- Rhyme
  81. 6.14: Form in Poetry
  82. 7: Poetry Readings
  83. 7.1: Romantic Poets
  84. 7.2: Emily Dickinson
  85. 7.3: Percy Bysshe Shelley
  86. 7.4: Poet - William Wordsworth
  87. 7.5: Wordsworth, William "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" (1807)
  88. 7.6: Robert Frost
  89. 7.7: Walt Whitman
  90. 7.8: Featured Period - The Harlem Renaissance
  91. 7.9: Cavendish, Margaret "The Hunting of the Hare" (1653)
  92. 7.10: Crane, Stephen "In the Desert" (1895)
  93. 7.11: Burns, Robert "To a Mouse" (1785)
  94. 7.12: Behn, Aphra. Two Poems. (1688)
  95. 7.13: Dong-joo, Yoon. Selected Poems from Sky, Wind, and Stars. Trans. Kyung-nyun Kay Richards and Steffen F. Richards (2003)
  96. 7.14: Hill, Sean "Distance Between Desires" from Dangerous Goods (2013)
  97. 7.15: Hughes, Langston "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" (1921)
  98. 7.16: Keats, John. Selected Poems. (1819)
  99. 7.17: Marlowe, Christopher "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" (1599)
  100. 7.18: Moore, Alice Ruth "Amid the Roses" (1895)
  101. 7.19: Nguyen, Hieu Minh. "The Study" and "White Boy Time Machine- Override" (2018)
  102. 7.20: Raleigh, Walter "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" (1600)
  103. 7.21: Robinson, Edwin Arlington "Richard Cory" (1897)
  104. 7.22: Wheatley, Phillis. Selections from Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773)
  105. 7.23: Williams, William Carlos. Selected poems (1913-1923).
  106. 7.24: Tennyson, Alfred Lord "The Lady of Shalott" (1832)
  107. 7.25: Allen Gingsbert- Beat Poet
  108. 7.26: Athena Kashyap
  109. 7.27: Sylvia Plath
  110. 7.28: The Book of Songs- China (before 551 B.C.E.)
  111. 7.29: 7.29 Pound, Ezra. Selected poems. (1885-1972)
  112. 8: About Drama
  113. 8.1: What is Drama?
  114. 8.2: Elements of Drama
  115. 8.3: Reading and Responding to Drama
  116. 8.4: Featured Playwright - William Shakespeare
  117. 8.5: Drama Discussion Questions, Assignments, and Supplemental Resources
  118. 9: Drama Readings
  119. 9.1: Glaspell, Susan. Trifles and The Verge (1916)
  120. 9.2: Tagore, Rabindranath. Chitra (1914)
  121. 10: About Literary Criticism
  122. 10.1: Literary Criticism
  123. 10.2: What is Literary Criticism?
  124. 10.3: Formalism
  125. 10.4: Psychoanalytic Criticism
  126. 10.5: Gender Criticism
  127. 10.6: Postcolonial and Ethnic Studies Criticism
  128. 10.7: New Historicism
  129. 10.8: Ecocriticism
  130. 11: Literary Criticism Readings
  131. 11.1: Aristotle. Poetics. (335 B.C.)
  132. 11.2: Eliot, T.S. "Hamlet and His Problems" from The Sacred Wood (1919)
  133. 11.3: Showalter, Elaine. "Ophelia, Gender, and Madness" (2016)
  134. 12: Writing About Literature
  135. 12.1: What Does My Professor Want?
  136. 12.2: The Writing Process for Literary Essays
  137. 12.3: Prewriting for Literature Essays
  138. 12.4: Writing About Fiction and Creative Nonfiction
  139. 12.5: Outlining for Literary Essays
  140. 12.6: Literary Thesis Statements
  141. 12.7: Essay as Argument
  142. 12.8: Summarizing
  143. 12.9: Essay Type- Literary Response
  144. 12.10: Essay Type- Literary Analysis
  145. 12.11: Essay Type- Comparing and Contrasting Literature
  146. 12.12: Essay Type- Literary Research
  147. 12.13: How to Perform Literary Research (Navigating Secondary Sources and Library Databases)
  148. 12.14: Sample Student Literary Analysis Essays
  149. 12.15: Writing About Poetry
  150. 12.16: Analyzing Poetry
  151. 12.17: Compare and Contrast Poetry Assignments
  152. 12.18: Robert Browning's Memorablia
  153. 12.19: Writing About Drama
  154. 13: Citations and Formatting Guide for Literature (MLA)
  155. 13.1: Avoiding Plagiarism Through Ethical Attribution
  156. 13.2: What is MLA?
  157. 13.3: Formatting a Literature Essay (MLA)
  158. 13.4: MLA Works Cited page
  159. 13.5: MLA In-Text Citations
  160. 13.6: Quotation, Paraphrase, and Summary
  161. Back Matter
  162. Literature in the Classroom- A Teacher's Guide
  163. Index
  164. Glossary
  165. Detailed Licensing