Making Arguments about Literature : A Compact Guide and Anthology

Making Arguments about Literaturecombines a complete text on argumentative writing with a flexible anthology of literature in a compact format.

JOHN SCHILB (Ph.D., State University of New York -- Binghamton) is an associate professor of English at Indiana University, Bloomington, where he holds the Culbertson Chair in Writing. He has coedited Contending with Words: Composition and Rhetoric in a Postmodern Age (1991) and, with John Clifford, Writing Theory and Critical Theory (1994). He is author of Between the Lines: Relating Composition Theory and Literary Theory (1996).

JOHN CLIFFORD (Ph.D., New York University) is a professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. Author or editor of several composition textbooks, he has published numerous scholarly articles on pedagogy, critical theory and composition theory, and has edited two books on those subjects: The Experience of Reading: Louise Rosenblatt and Reader-Response Theory (1991) and, with John Schilb, Writing Theory and Critical Theory.

  Preface for Instructors
    
PART I. MAKING ARGUMENTS
    
  1. What Is Literature: What Is Argument?
    How Have People Defined Literature?
    Why Read Literature?
    What is Argument?
    SUMMING UP
    
  2. Developing Arguments about Literature
    Responding to Four Poems about Work
       William Blake, The Chimney Sweeper
       Stephen Dunn, Hard Work
       Dorianne Laux, What I Wouldn't Do
       Maura Stanton, Shoplifters
    The Elements of Argument
       Issues / Claims / Persuasion /Audience / Evidence / Warrants
    Literature as Argument
       John Milton, When I Consider How My Light Is Spent
    Investigating Topics of Literary Criticism
       Lynda Hull, Night Waitress
    SUMMING UP
    
  3. Writing an Argument
       William Wordsworth, The Solitary Reaper
    Exploring
    Planning
    Composing
    Title / Style / Introduction / Development / Emphasis / Conclusion /
    Further Suggestions for Developing an Argument about a Work of Literature
    Sample Student Paper: First Draft
       Abby Hazelton, The Passage of Time in "The Solitary Reaper"
    Revising
    Recognizing and Avoiding Fallacies / Logic / Organization / Clarity /
    Emphasis / Style / Grammar / Physical Appearance
    Sample Student Paper: Revised Draft
       Abby Hazelton, The Passage of Time in "The Solitary Reaper"
    Writing a Comparative Paper
    Ted Kooser, Four Secretaries
    Sample Comparative Paper
    Marla Tracy, When Singing Is Not Singing
    SUMMING UP
    
  4. Making Arguments about Stories
    Eudora Welty, A Visit of Charity
    William Carlos Williams, The Use of Force
    Rebecca Brown, The Gift of Sweat
    Students' Personal Responses to the Stories
    The Elements of Short Fiction
       Plot and Structure / Point of View / Characters / Setting / Imagery / Language / Theme
    Sample Student Paper: Final Draft
       Alison Caldwell, Forms of Blindness in "The Use of Force"
    SUMMING UP
    
  5. Making Arguments about Poems
    Rosanna Warren, In Creve Couer, Missouri
    Charles Fort, We Did Not Fear the Father
    Philip Levine, What Work Is
    Edwin Arlington Robinson, The Mill
    Yusef Komunyakaa, Blackberries
    Mary Oliver, Singapore
    A Student's Personal Responses to the Poems
    Sample Student Paper: First Draft
       Michaela Fiorruci, Boundaries in Robinson, Komunyakaa, and Oliver
    The Elements of Poetry
    Speaker and Tone / Diction and Syntax / Figures of Speech / Sound/ /Rhythm and Meter / Theme
    Revised Student Draft
    Michaela Fiorruci, Negotiating Boundaries
    SUMMING UP
    
  6. Making Arguments about Plays
       August Strindberg, The Stronger
       Susan Glaspell, Trifles
    A Student's Personal Response to the Plays
    The Elements of Drama
       Plot and Structure/ Characters/ Stage Directions and Setting/ Imagery / Language / Theme
    Writing
    Sample Student Paper
       Trish Carlisle, "Which Is the Stronger Actress in Strindberg's Play?"
    SUMMING UP
    
  7. Making Arguments about Essays
       June Jordan, Many Rivers to Cross
       Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mother's Gardens
    A Student's Personal Response
    The Elements of Essays
       Voice / Style / Structure / Ideas /
    Sample Student Paper
       Isla Bravo, Resisting Women's Roles
    SUMMING UP
    
  8. Writing a Research Paper
    Identifying an Issue and a Tentative Claim
    Finding and Using Secondary Sources
       Finding Sources in the Library
       Evaluating Sources
       Finding Sources with a Computer
    Taking Notes: Summarizing, Paraphrasing, Quoting, and Avoiding Plagiarism
    Writing the Paper: Integrating Sources
    Documenting Sources: MLA Format
       MLA In-Text Citation
       MLA Works Cited
          Books / Short Works from Collections and Anthologies/ Works in Periodicals / CD-ROMs / The Internet / Personal Communication / Multiple Works by the Same Author
       Sample Student Research Paper
       Rebecca Stanley, Racial Disharmony and "Désirée's Baby"
    Using a Literary Work as a Springboard for Examining Social Issues
    Sample Student Research Paper
       Jason Fisk, "Effectively ‘Managing' Grief"
    SUMMING UP   
PART II. THEMATIC CLUSTERS OF LITERATURE
    
  Story Clusters
    Mothers and Daughters
       Tillie Olsen, I Stand Here Ironing
       Amy Tan, Two Kinds
       Alice Walker, Everyday Use
    Romantic Dreams
       Leslie Marmon Silko, Yellow Woman
       James Joyce, Araby
       John Updike, A & P
    Revenge
       Edgar Allan Poe, The Cask of Amontillado
       Louise Erdrich, Fleur
       Andre Dubus, Killings
    Losing Innocence: Re-Visions of Little Red Riding Hood
       Charles Perrault, Little Red Riding Hood
       Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, Little Red Cap
       Angela Carter, The Company of Wolves
    
  Poetry Clusters
    Reconciling with Fathers
       Lucille Clifton, forgiving my father
       Robert Hayden, Those Winter Sundays
       Theodore Roethke, My Papa's Waltz
       Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Father from Asia
    Responding to Teachers
       Langston Hughes, Theme for English B
       Linda Pastan, Ethics
       Henry Reed, Naming of Parts
       Walt Whitman, When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer
       Rosemary Catacalos, David Talamantez on the Last Day of Second Grade
    Gays and Lesbians in Families
       Essex Hemphill, Commitments
       Kitty Tsui, A Chinese Banquet
       Minnie Bruce Pratt, Two Small-Sized Girls
    True Love
       William Shakespeare, Let me not to the marriage of true minds
       Anne Bradstreet, To My Dear and Loving Husband
       e. e. cummings, somewhere i have never travelled
       Edna St. Vincent Millay, Love Is Not All
    Poetry of the Holocaust
       Pastor Martin Niemoller, "First They Came for the Jews"
       Nelly Sachs, "A Dead Child Speaks"
       Yevgeny Yevtuchenko, "Babii Yar"
       Karen Gershon, "Race"
       Anne Sexton, "After Auschwitz"
    Imagining the End: A Collection of Writings by Emily Dickinson
       Emily Dickinson, I like a look of Agony
          I've seen a Dying Eye
          I heard a Fly buzz -- when I died --
          Because I could not stop for Death--
    Disrespecting Death
       John Donne, Death Be Not Proud
       Dylan Thomas, Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night
       Wyslawa Szymborska, On Death, without Exaggeration
    
  A Drama Cluster
    A Family's Dreams: Cultural Contexts for Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun
       Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun
       Cultural Contexts:
          The Crisis, The Hansberrys of Chicago: They Join Business Acumen with Social Vision
          Lorraine Hansberry, April 23, 1964, Letter to the New York Times
          Alan Ehrenhalt, From The Lost City: Discovering the Forgotten Virtues of Community in the Chicago of the 1950s
          Sidney Poitier, From The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography
    
  Essay Clusters
    Community Justice
          Scott Russell Sanders, Doing Time in the Thirteenth Chair
          Joyce Carol Oates, I, the Juror
          Maxine Hong Kingston, No Name Woman
    Reflecting on Killing Animals
          George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant
          Annie Dillard, The Deer at Providencia
          Bruce Weigl, Spike
    Comparing School Culture with the Culture of Home: Critical Commentaries on Richard Rodriguez's "Aria"
       Richard Rodriguez, Aria
       Critical Commentaries:
          Ramón Saldívar, From Chicano Narrative
          Tomás Rivera, From "Richard Rodriguez's Hunger of Memory as Humanistic Antithesis"
          Victor Villanueva Jr., From "Whose Voice Is It Anyway?"
    
PART III. A GALLERY OF LITERATURE
    
    A Gallery of Stories
       James Baldwin, Sonny's Blues
       Toni Cade Bambara, The Lesson
       Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk about Love
       Kate Chopin, Desiree's Baby
       Kate Chopin, The Story of an Hour
       Willliam Faulkner, A Rose for Emily
       Gabriel Garcia Marquez, The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World
       Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper
       Nathaniel Hawthorne, Young Goodman Brown
       Pam Houston, How to Talk to a Hunter
       Jamaica Kincaid, Girl
       Bharati Mukherjee, The Management of Grief
       Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried
       Flannery O'Connor, A Good Man Is Hard to Find   
    A Gallery of Poems
       Sherman Alexie, Capital Punishment
       Julia Alvarez, How I Learned to Sweep
       Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach
       Elizabeth Bishop, One Art
       Elizabeth Bishop, The Fish
       Gwendolyn Brooks, The Mother
       Robert Browning, My Last Duchess
       Countee Cullen, Incident
       Toi Derricotte, Fears of Eighth Grade
       Mark Doty, Night Ferry
       Cornelius Eady, Who Am I?
       T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
       Carolyn Forche, The Colonel
       Robert Frost, After Apple-Picking
          Mending Wall
       Nikki Giovanni, Legacies
       Louise Gluck, The School Children
       Seamus Heaney, Punishment
       Linda Hogan, Heritage
       Gerard Manley Hopkins, Spring and Fall
       A. E. Housman, Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now
       John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn
       Maxine Kumin, Woodchucks
       D. H. Lawrence, Snake
       Denise Levertov, The Ache of Marriage
       Philip Levine, Among Children
       Robert Lowell, To Speak of the Woe That Is Marriage
       Christopher Marlowe, The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
       Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress
       Marge Piercy, To Be of Use
       Sylvia Plath, Daddy
       Walter Raleigh, The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd
       Alberto Rios, Mi Abuelo
       Edwin Arlington Robinson, Richard Cory
       Anne Sexton, The Farmer's Wife
       Percy Shelley, Ozymandias
       Stevie Smith, Not Waving But Drowning
       Cathy Song, The Grammar of Silk
       Gary Soto, Behind Grandma's House
       William Stafford, Traveling through the Dark
       Wislawa Szymborska, True Love
       William Carlos Williams, The Last Words of My English Grandmother
       James Wright, Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota
       William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming
       Adam Zagajewski, Try to Praise the Mutilated World
    
    A Gallery of Plays
       Sophocles, Antigone
       William Shakespeare, Hamlet
    
    A Gallery of Essays
       Diane Ackerman, The Perfect Union
       bell hooks, Inspired Eccentricity
       Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail
       N. Scott Momaday, The Way to Rainy Mountain
       Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal
    
    Appendix: Making Arguments Using Critical Approaches
       Contemporary Schools of Criticism
          New Criticism; Feminist Criticism; Psychoanalytic Criticism; Marxist Criticism; Deconstruction; @b=Reader-Response Criticism; Postcolonial Criticism; New Historicism
       Working with the Critical Approaches
          James Joyce, Counterparts
          Ann Petry, Like a Winding Sheet
    Index of Authors, Titles, and First Lines
    Index of Key Terms (inside back cover)