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For introductory courses in Literature.

This version of Backpack Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing has been updated the reflect the 8th edition of the MLA Handbook (April 2016).*

Cultivate a Love of Literature…

The smallest and most economical member of the Kennedy/Gioia family, Backpack Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing , 5/e is a brief paperback version of the discipline's most popular literature anthology.

Backpack Literature introduces college students to the appreciation and experience of literature in its major forms and develops the student’s ability to think critically and communicate effectively through writing. The book is built on the assumption that great literature can enrich and enlarge the lives it touches. Both editors, literary writers themselves, believe that textbooks should be not only informative and accurate but also lively, accessible, and engaging.

* The 8th edition introduces sweeping changes to the philosophy and details of MLA works cited entries. Responding to the “increasing mobility of texts,” MLA now encourages writers to focus on the process of crafting the citation, beginning with the same questions for any source. These changes, then, align with current best practices in the teaching of writing which privilege inquiry and critical thinking over rote recall and rule-following.

X. J. Kennedy, after graduating from Seton Hall and Columbia, became a journalist second class in the Navy. His poems, some published in The New Yorker, were first collected in Nude Descending a Staircase (1961). Since then he has published seven more collections, including a volume of new and selected poems in 2007, several widely adopted literature and writing textbooks, and seventeen books for children, including two novels. He has taught at Michigan, North Carolina (Greensboro), California (Irvine), Wellesley, Tufts, and Leeds. Cited in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations and reprinted in some 200 anthologies, his verse has brought him a Guggenheim fellowship, a Lamont Award, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, an award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, an Aiken-Taylor prize, and the Award for Poetry for Children from the National Council of Teachers of English. He now lives in Lexington, Massachusetts, where he and his wife Dorothy have collaborated on five books and five children.

Dana Gioia is a poet, critic, and teacher. Born in Los Angeles of Italian and Mexican ancestry, he attended Stanford and Harvard before taking a detour into business. After years of writing and reading late in the evenings after work, he quit a vice presidency to write and teach. He has published four collections of poetry, Daily Horoscope (1986), The Gods of Winter (1991), Interrogations at Noon (2001), which won the American Book Award, and Pity the Beautiful (2012); and three critical volumes, including Can Poetry Matter? (1992), an influential study of poetry's place in contemporary America.
Gioia has taught at Johns Hopkins, Sarah Lawrence, Wesleyan (Connecticut), Mercer, and Colorado College. From 2003 to 2009 he served as the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. At the NEA he created the largest literary programs in federal history, including Shakespeare in American Communities and Poetry Out Loud, the national high school poetry recitation contest. He also led the campaign to restore active literary reading by creating The Big Read, which helped reverse a quarter century of decline in U.S. reading. He is currently the Judge Widney Professor of Poetry and Public Culture at the University of Southern California.

FICTION

Talking with Amy Tan

1 READING A STORY

THE ART OF FICTION

TYPES OF SHORT FICTION

Sufi Legend, Death Has an Appointment in Samarra

A student tries to flee from Death in this brief, sardonic fable.

Aesop, The North Wind and the Sun

The North Wind and the Sun argue who is stronger and decide to try their powers on an unsuspecting traveler.

Bidpai, The Tortoise and the Geese

A fable that gives another dimension to Andrew Lang’s quip, “He missed an invaluable opportunity to hold his tongue.”

Chuang Tzu , Independence

The Prince of Ch’u asks the philosopher Chuang Tzu to become his advisor and gets a surprising reply in this classic Chinese fable.

Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm , Godfather Death

Neither God nor the Devil came to the christening. In this stark folktale, a young man receives magical powers with a string attached.

PLOT

THE SHORT STORY

John Updike , A & P

In walk three girls in nothing but bathing suits, and Sammy finds himself no longer an aproned checkout clerk but an armored knight.

WRITING EFFECTIVELY

THINKING ABOUT PLOT

CHECKLIST: Writing About Plot

TOPICS FOR WRITING on plot

TERMS FOR REVIEW

2 POINT OF VIEW

IDENTIFYING POINT OF VIEW

TYPES OF NARRATORS

how much does a narrator know?

STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS

William Faulkner , A Rose for Emily

Proud, imperious Emily Grierson defied the town from the fortress of her mansion. Who could have guessed the secret that lay within?

Edgar Allan Poe , The Tell-Tale Heart

The smoldering eye at last etinguished, a murderer finds that, despite all his attempts at a cover-up, his victim will be heard.

Eudora Welty , Why I Live at the P.O.

Since no one appreciates Sister, she decides to live at the Post Office. After meeting her family, you won’t blame her.

Jamaica Kincaid , Girl

“Try to walk like a lady, and not like the slut you are so bent on becoming.” An old-fashioned mother tells her daughter how to live.

WRITING EFFECTIVELY

THINKING ABOUT POINT OF VIEW

CHECKLIST: Writing About Point of View

topics for writing ON POINT OF VIEW

TERMS FOR REVIEW

3 CHARACTER

CHARACTERization

motvation

Katherine Anne Porter, The Jilting of Granny Weatherall

For sity years Ellen Weatherall has fought back the memory of that terrible day, but now once more the priest waits in the house.

Tobias Wolff , Bullet in the Brain 0

Anders is in line when armed robbers enter the bank, and he can’t help but get involved.

Alice Walker , Everyday Use

When successful Dee visits from the city, she has changed her name to reflect her African roots. Her mother and sister notice other things have changed, too.

Raymond Carver , Cathedral

He had never epected to find himself trying to describe a cathedral to a blind man. He hadn’t even wanted to meet this odd, old friend of his wife.

WRITING EFFECTIVELY

THINKING ABOUT CHARACTER

CHECKLIST: Writing About Character

topics for writing ON CHARACTER

TERMS FOR REVIEW

4 SETTING

ELEMENTS OF SETTING

HISTORICAL FICTION

REGIONALISM

NATURALISM

Kate Chopin , The Storm

Even with her husband away, Calita feels happily, securely married. Why then should she not shelter an old admirer from the rain?

Jack London, To Build a Fire

Seventy-five degrees below zero. Alone ecept for one mistrustful wolf dog, a man finds himself battling a relentless force.

Jorge Luis Borges, The Gospel According to Mark

A young man from Buenos Aires is trapped by a flood on an isolated ranch. To pass the time, he reads the Gospel to a family with unforeseen results.

Amy Tan, A Pair of Tickets

A young woman flies with her father to China to meet two half sisters she never knew eisted.

WRITING EFFECTIVELY

THINKING ABOUT SETTING

CHECKLIST: Writing About Setting

TOPICS FOR WRITING ON SETTING

TERMS FOR REVIEW

5 TONE AND STYLE

TONE

STYLE

DICTION

Ernest Hemingway , A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

All by himself each night, the old man lingers in the bright café. What does he need more than brandy?

William Faulkner , Barn Burning

This time when Ab Snopes wields his blazing torch, his son Sarty faces a dilemma: whether to obey or defy the vengeful old man.

IRONY

Guy de Maupassant , The Necklace

A woman enjoys one night of luury–and then spends years of her life paying for it.

Kate Chopin, The Story of an Hour

“There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name.”

WRITING EFFECTIVELY

THINKING ABOUT TONE AND STYLE

CHECKLIST: Writing About Tone and Style

TOPICS FOR WRITING ON TONE AND STYLE

TERMS FOR REVIEW

6 THEME

PLOT VERSUS THEME

summarizing the THEME

FINDING THE THEME

Chinua Achebe , Dead Men’s Path

The new headmaster of the village school was determined to fight superstition, but the villagers did not agree.

Sandra Cisneros , The House on Mango Street

Does where we live tell what we are? A little girl dreams of a new house, but things don’t always turn out the way we want them to.

Luke, The Parable of the Prodigal Son

A father has two sons. One demands his inheritance now and leaves to spend it with ruinous results.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr ., Harrison Bergeron

Are you handsome? Off with your eyebrows! Are you brainy? Let a transmitter sound thought-shattering beeps inside your ear.

WRITING EFFECTIVELY

THINKING ABOUT THEME

CHECKLIST: Writing About Theme

TOPICS FOR WRITING ON THEME

TERMS FOR REVIEW

7 SYMBOL

ALLEGORY

SYMBOLS

RECOGNIZING SYMBOLS

John Steinbeck , The Chrysanthemums

Fenced-in Elisa feels emotionally starved–then her life promises to blossom with the arrival of the scissors-grinding man.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman , The Yellow Wallpaper

A doctor prescribes a “rest cure” for his wife after the birth of their child. The new mother tries to settle in to life in the isolated and mysterious country house they have rented for the summer. The cure proves worse than the disease in this Gothic classic.

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

Omelas is the perfect city. All of its inhabitants are happy. But everyone’s prosperity depends on a hidden evil.

Shirley Jackson, The Lottery

Splintered and faded, the sinister black bo had worked its annual terror for longer than anyone in town could remember.

WRITING EFFECTIVELY

THINKING ABOUT SYMBOLS

CHECKLIST: Writing About Symbols

TOPICS FOR WRITING ON SYMBOLS

TERMS FOR REVIEW

8 STORIES FOR FURTHER READING

Sherman Aleie, This Is What It Means to Say Phoeni, Arizona

The only one who can help Victor when his father dies is a childhood friend he’s been avoiding for years.

Margaret Atwood, Happy Endings

John and Mary meet. What happens net? This witty eperimental story offers five different outcomes.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, Young Goodman Brown 0

Urged on through deepening woods, a young Puritan sees–or dreams he sees–good villagers hasten toward a diabolic rite.

O. Henry, The Gift of the Magi

A young husband and wife find ingenious ways to buy each other Christmas presents, in the classic story that defines the word “irony.”

Zora Neale Hurston , Sweat

Delia’s hard work paid for her small house. Now her drunken husband Sykes has promised it to another woman.

Ha Jin , Saboteur 0

When the police unfairly arrest Mr. Chiu, he hopes for justice. After witnessing their brutality, he quietly plans revenge.

James Joyce, Araby

If only he can find her a token, she might love him in return. As night falls, a Dublin boy hurries to make his dream come true.

Franz Kafka, Before the Law

A man from the country comes in search of the Law. He never guesses what will prevent him from finding it, in this modern parable .

Katherine Mansfield, Miss Brill

Sundays had long brought joy to solitary Miss Brill, until one fateful day when she happened to share a bench with two lovers in the park.

Joyce Carol Oates , Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

Alone in the house, Connie finds herself helpless before the advances of Arnold Friend, a spellbinding imitation teenager.

Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried

What each soldier carried into the combat zone was largely determined by necessity, but each man’s necessities differed.

Flannery O’Connor, A Good Man Is Hard to Find

Wanted: The Misfit, a cold-blooded killer. An ordinary family vacation leads to horror–and one moment of redeeming grace.

Juan Rulfo , Tell Them Not to Kill Me!

A violent episode from decades past catches up with an old man. Will he be saved from the firing squad?

Virginia Woolf , A Haunted House

Whatever hour you woke, a door was shutting. From room to room the ghostly couple walked, hand in hand.

Poetry

Talking with Kay Ryan

9 READING A POEM

POETRY OR VERSE

HOW TO READ A POEM

Paraphrase

William Butler Yeats, The Lake Isle of Innisfree

Lyric Poetry

Robert Hayden, Those Winter Sundays

Adrienne Rich, Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers

Narrative Poetry

Anonymous, Sir Patrick Spence

Robert Frost, “Out, Out–”

DRAMATIC POETRY

Robert Browning, My Last Duchess

DIDACTIC POETRY

WRITING EFFECTIVELY

THINKING ABOUT PARAPHRASING

William Stafford, Ask Me

William Stafford, A Paraphrase of “Ask Me”

CHECKLIST: Writing a Paraphrase

TOPICS FOR WRITING ON PARAPHRASING

TERMS FOR REVIEW

10 LISTENING TO A VOICE

TONE

Theodore Roethke, My Papa’s Waltz

Stephen Crane, The Wayfarer

Anne Bradstreet, The Author to Her Book

Walt Whitman, To a Locomotive in Winter

Emily Dickinson, I like to see it lap the Miles

Weldon Kees, For My Daughter

THE SPEAKER IN THE POEM

Natasha Trethewey, White Lies

Edwin Arlington Robinson, Luke Havergal

Anonymous, Dog Haiku

Langston Hughes, Theme for English B

Charlotte Mew, The Farmer’s Bride

William Carlos Williams, The Red Wheelbarrow

IRONY

Robert Creeley, Oh No

W. H. Auden, The Unknown Citizen

Sharon Olds, Rite of Passage

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Second Fig

Thomas Hardy, The Workbo

FOR REVIEW AND FURTHER STUDY

Amy Uyematsu , Deliberate

Richard Lovelace, To Lucasta

Wilfred Owen, Dulce et Decorum Est

WRITING EFFECTIVELY

THINKING ABOUT TONE

CHECKLIST: Writing About Tone

TOPICS FOR WRITING ON TONE

TERMS FOR REVIEW

11 WORDS

LITERAL MEANING: WHAT A POEM SAYS FIRST

William Carlos Williams, This Is Just to Say

DICTION

John Masefield, Cargoes

John Donne, Batter my heart, three-personed God, for You

THE VALUE OF A DICTIONARY

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Aftermath

Kay Ryan, That Will to Divest

J. V. Cunningham, Friend, on this scaffold Thomas More lies dead

Samuel Menashe, Bread

Carl Sandburg, Grass

WORD CHOICE AND WORD ORDER

Robert Herrick, Upon Julia’s Clothes

Thomas Hardy, The Ruined Maid

Wendy Cope, Lonely Hearts

FOR REVIEW AND FURTHER STUDY

E. E. Cummings, anyone lived in a pretty how town

Anonymous, Carnation Milk

Gina Valdés, English con Salsa

William Wordsworth , My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold 0

William Wordsworth , Mutability

Lewis Carroll, Jabberwocky

WRITING EFFECTIVELY

THINKING ABOUT DICTION

CHECKLIST: Writing About Diction

TOPICS FOR WRITING ON WORD CHOICE

TERMS FOR REVIEW

12 SAYING AND SUGGESTING

DENOTATION AND CONNOTATION

William Blake, London

Wallace Stevens, Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock

Robert Frost, Fire and Ice

Diane Thiel, The Minefield

Rhina Espaillat, Bilingual/Bilingüe

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Tears, Idle Tears

Richard Wilbur, Love Calls Us to the Things of This World

WRITING EFFECTIVELY

THINKING ABOUT DENOTATION AND CONNOTATION

CHECKLIST: Writing About What a Poem Says and Suggests

TOPICS FOR WRITING ON DENOTATION AND CONNOTATION

TERMS FOR REVIEW

13 IMAGERY

Ezra Pound, In a Station of the Metro

Taniguchi Buson, The piercing chill I feel

IMAGERY

T. S. Eliot, The winter evening settles down

Theodore Roethke, Root Cellar

Elizabeth Bishop, The Fish

Emily Dickinson, A Route of Evanescence

Jean Toomer, Reapers

Gerard Manley Hopkins, Pied Beauty

ABOUT HAIKU

Arakida Moritake, The falling flower

Matsuo Basho, Heat-lightning streak

Matsuo Basho, In the old stone pool

Taniguchi Buson, On the one-ton temple bell

Taniguchi Buson, Moonrise on mudflats

Kobayashi Issa, only one guy

Kobayashi Issa, Cricket

HAIKU FROM JAPANESE INTERNMENT CAMPS

Suiko Matsushita, Rain shower from mountain

Suiko Matsushita, Cosmos in bloom

Hakuro Wada, Even the croaking of frogs

Neiji Ozawa, The war–this year

CONTEMPORARY HAIKU

Nick Virgilio , The Old Neighborhood

Lee Gurga , Visitor’s Room

Jennifer Brutschy, Born Again

Adelle Foley, Learning to Shave

FOR REVIEW AND FURTHER STUDY

John Keats, Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art

Tami Haaland, Lipstick

William Carlos Williams, El Hombre

Li Po, Drinking Alone by Moonlight

Stevie Smith, Not Waving but Drowning

Robert Bly, Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter

WRITING EFFECTIVELY

THINKING ABOUT IMAGERY

CHECKLIST: Writing About Imagery

TOPICS FOR WRITING ON IMAGERY

TERMS FOR REVIEW

14 FIGURES OF SPEECH

WHY SPEAK FIGURATIVELY?

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The Eagle

William Shakespeare, Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Howard Moss, Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?

METAPHOR AND SIMILE

Emily Dickinson, My Life had stood — a Loaded Gun

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Flower in the Crannied Wall

William Blake, To see a world in a grain of sand

Sylvia Plath, Metaphors

N. Scott Momaday, Simile

Craig Raine, A Martian Sends a Postcard Home

OTHER FIGURES OF SPEECH

James Stephens, The Wind

Margaret Atwood, You fit into me

Timothy Steele, Epitaph

Dana Gioia, Money

Carl Sandburg, Fog

FOR REVIEW AND FURTHER STUDY

Robert Frost, The Secret Sits

Kay Ryan, Turtle

Emily Brontë, Love and Friendship

John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn

WRITING EFFECTIVELY

THINKING ABOUT METAPHORS

CHECKLIST: Writing About Metaphors

TOPICS FOR WRITING ON FIGURES OF SPEECH

TERMS FOR REVIEW

15 SOUND

SOUND AS MEANING

William Butler Yeats, Who Goes with Fergus?

Edgar Allan Poe, from Ulalume

William Wordsworth, A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal

ALLITERATION AND ASSONANCE

Frances Cornford , The Watch

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The splendor falls on castle walls

RIME

Hilaire Belloc, The Hippopotamus

William Butler Yeats, Leda and the Swan

Gerard Manley Hopkins, God’s Grandeur

Robert Frost, Desert Places

How to read a POEM ALOUD

Michael Stillman, In Memoriam John Coltrane

WRITING EFFECTIVELY

THINKING ABOUT A POEM’S SOUND

CHECKLIST: Writing About a Poem’s Sound

TOPICS FOR WRITING ON SOUND

TERMS FOR REVIEW

16 RHYTHM

STRESSES AND PAUSES

STRESS AND Meaning

line endings

Gwendolyn Brooks, We Real Cool

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Break, Break, Break

Dorothy Parker, Résumé

METER

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Counting-out Rhyme

A. E. Housman, When I was one-and-twenty

Walt Whitman, Beat! Beat! Drums!

WRITING EFFECTIVELY

THINKING ABOUT RHYTHM

CHECKLIST: Scanning a Poem

TOPICS FOR WRITING ON RHYTHM

TERMS FOR REVIEW

17 CLOSED FORM

the value of form

FORMAL PATTERNS

Ernest Dowson, “Days of Wine and Roses”

John Donne, Song (“Go and catch a falling star”)

ballads

Anonymous, Bonny Barbara Allan

Dudley Randall, Ballad of Birmingham

THE SONNET

William Shakespeare, Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Edna St. Vincent Millay, What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why

R. S. Gwynn, Shakespearean Sonnet

Sherman Aleie , The Facebook Sonnet

THE EPIGRAM

Sir John Harrington, Of Treason

Langston Hughes, Two Somewhat Different Epigrams

OTHER FORMS

Dylan Thomas, Do not go gentle into that good night

Paul Laurence Dunbar , We Wear the Mask 0

Elizabeth Bishop, Sestina

WRITING EFFECTIVELY

THINKING ABOUT A SONNET

CHECKLIST: Writing About a Sonnet

TOPICS FOR WRITING ON closed form

TERMS FOR REVIEW

18 OPEN FORM

Denise Levertov, Ancient Stairway

FREE VERSE

E. E. Cummings, Buffalo Bill ’s

William Carlos Williams, The Dance

Stephen Crane, The Heart

Walt Whitman, Cavalry Crossing a Ford

Wallace Stevens, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

PROSE POETRY

Charles Simic, The Magic Study of Happiness

FOR REVIEW AND FURTHER STUDY

E. E. Cummings, in Just-

Carole Satyamurti, I Shall Paint My Nails Red

Langston Hughes , I, Too

WRITING EFFECTIVELY

THINKING ABOUT FREE VERSE

CHECKLIST: Writing About Line Breaks

TOPICS FOR WRITING ON OPEN FORM

TERMS FOR REVIEW

19 SYMBOL

THE MEANINGS OF A SYMBOL

T. S. Eliot , The Boston Evening Transcript

Emily Dickinson, The Lightning is a yellow Fork

IDENTIFYING SYMBOLS

Thomas Hardy , Neutral Tones

Yusef Komunyakaa, Facing It

ALLEGORY

Matthew , The Parable of the Good Seed

George Herbert, Redemption

Antonio Machado , Proverbios y Cantares (I)

Translated by Dana Gioia , Traveler

Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken

Christina Rossetti, Up-Hill

FOR REVIEW AND FURTHER STUDY

Mary Oliver, Wild Geese

Lorine Niedecker, Popcorn-can cover

Wallace Stevens, Anecdote of the Jar

WRITING EFFECTIVELY

THINKING ABOUT SYMBOLS

CHECKLIST: Writing About Symbols

TOPICS FOR WRITING ON SYMBOLISM

TERMS FOR REVIEW

20 MYTH AND NARRATIVE

The subjects and uses OF MYTH

origins OF MYTH

Robert Frost, Nothing Gold Can Stay

William Wordsworth, The world is too much with us

H.D., Helen

ARCHETYPE

Louise Bogan, Medusa

A. E. Stallings, First Love: A Quiz

PERSONAL MYTH

William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming

Diane Thiel, Memento Mori in Middle School

Sylvia Plath, Lady Lazarus

MYTH AND POPULAR CULTURE

Anne Seton, Cinderella

WRITING EFFECTIVELY

THINKING ABOUT MYTH

CHECKLIST: Writing About Myth

TOPICS FOR WRITING ON MYTH

TERMS FOR REVIEW

21 WHAT IS POETRY?

some definitions of poetry

Dante, Samuel Johnson, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Thomas Hardy, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, Mina Loy, T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, José Garcia Villa, Christopher Fry, Elizabeth Bishop, Joy Harjo, Octavio Paz, Denise Levertov, Lucille Clifton, Charles Simic, —

22 POEMS FOR FURTHER READING

Aaron Abeyta, thirteen ways of looking at a tortilla

Kim Addonizio, First Poem for You

Sherman Aleie, The Powwow at the End of the World

Anonymous (Navajo chant), Last Words of the Prophet

Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach

W. H. Auden, Musée des Beau Arts

Elizabeth Bishop, One Art

William Blake, The Tyger

Gwendolyn Brooks, the mother

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways

Robert Browning, Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister

Charles Bukowski, Dostoevsky

Judith Ortiz Cofer, Quinceanera

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan

Billy Collins, Care and Feeding

Emily Dickinson, Wild Nights — Wild Nights!

Emily Dickinson, I felt a Funeral, in my Brain

Emily Dickinson, Because I could not stop for Death

John Donne, Death be not proud

John Donne, The Flea

T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Robert Frost, Mending Wall

Robert Frost, Birches

Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Allen Ginsberg, A Supermarket in California

Thomas Hardy, The Convergence of the Twain

Seamus Heaney, Digging

George Herbert, Easter Wings

Robert Herrick, To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time

Gerard Manley Hopkins, Spring and Fall

Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Windhover

A. E. Housman, Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

A. E. Housman, To an Athlete Dying Young

Langston Hughes, The Negro Speaks of Rivers

Langston Hughes, Harlem [Dream Deferred]

Randall Jarrell, The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

Robinson Jeffers, Fire on the Hills

Ha Jin, Missed Time

Ben Jonson, On My First Son

Donald Justice, On the Death of Friends in Childhood

John Keats, Ode to a Nightingale

Philip Larkin, Home is so Sad

D. H. Lawrence, Piano

Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Learning to love America

Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress

Claude McKay, The Harlem Dancer

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Recuerdo

John Milton, When I consider how my light is spent

Pablo Neruda, We are Many

Wilfred Owen, Anthem for Doomed Youth

Sylvia Plath, Daddy

Edgar Allan Poe, Annabel Lee

Ezra Pound, The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter

Henry Reed, Naming of Parts

Edwin Arlington Robinson, Miniver Cheevy

Christina Rossetti, Song

William Shakespeare, When, in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes

William Shakespeare, My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun

Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias

Wallace Stevens, The Emperor of Ice-Cream

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Ulysses

Dylan Thomas, Fern Hill

Walt Whitman, When I Heard the Learn’d Astonomer

Walt Whitman, O Captain! My Captain!

William Carlos Williams, Spring and All

William Carlos Williams, Queen-Anne’s-Lace

William Wordsworth, Composed upon Westminster Bridge

James Wright, Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio

Mary Sidney Wroth, In this strange labyrinth

William Butler Yeats, He wishes for the Cloths of heaven

William Butler Yeats, Sailing to Byzantium

William Butler Yeats, When You Are Old

DRAMA

Talking with David Ives

23 . READING A PLAY

THEATRICAL CONVENTIONS

Elements of a Play

Susan Glaspell, Trifles

Was Minnie Wright to blame for the death of her husband? While the menfolk try to unravel a mystery, two women in the kitchen turn up revealing clues.

Analyzing Trifles

WRITING EFFECTIVELY

THINKING ABOUT A PLAY

CHECKLIST: Writing About a Play

TOPICS FOR WRITING ON trifles

TERMS FOR REVIEW

24 . MODES OF DRAMA: TRAGEDY AND COMEDY

TRAGEDY

Christopher Marlowe, Scene from Doctor Faustus (Act 2, Scene 1)

In this scene from the classic drama, a brilliant scholar sells his soul to the devil. How smart is that?

COMEDY

Oscar Wilde, Scene from The Importance of Being Earnest (Act 1, Scene 1–Lady Bracknell Interviews Her Daughter’s Suitor)

Lady Bracknell is no softie when interviewing a potential future son-in-law.

WRITING EFFECTIVELY

THINKING ABOUT COMEDY

CHECKLIST: Writing About Comedy

TOPICS FOR WRITING ABOUT TRAGEDY

TOPICS FOR WRITING ABOUT COMEDY

TERMS FOR REVIEW

25 . THE THEATER OF SOPHOCLES

THE THEATER OF SOPHOCLES

THE CIVIC ROLE OF GREEK DRAMA

ARISTOTLE’S CONCEPT OF TRAGEDY

SOPHOCLES

THE ORIGINS OF OEDIPUS THE KING

Sophocles, Oedipus the King (Translated by David Grene)

The dark story of Oedipus is considered by many to be the greatest eample of classical Greek tragedy.

WRITING EFFECTIVELY

THINKING ABOUT GREEK TRAGEDY

CHECKLIST: Writing About Greek Drama

TOPICS FOR WRITING ON SOPHOCLES

TERMS FOR REVIEW

26. THE THEATER OF SHAKESPEARE

THE THEATER OF SHAKESPEARE

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

A NOTE ON OTHELLO

PICTURING OTHELLO

William Shakespeare, Othello, the Moor of Venice

Here is a story of jealousy, that “green-eyed monster which doth mock / The meat it feeds on”–of a passionate, suspicious man and his blameless wife, of a serpent masked as a friend.

WRITING EFFECTIVELY

UNDERSTANDING SHAKESPEARE

CHECKLIST: Writing About Shakespeare

TOPICS FOR WRITING ON shakespeare

27 . THE MODERN THEATER

REALISM

Henrik Ibsen, A Doll’s House (Translated by R. Farquharson Sharp, revised by Viktoria Michelsen)

The founder of modern drama portrays a troubled marriage. Helmer, the bank manager, regards his wife Nora as a “little featherbrain”–not knowing the truth may shatter his smug world.

Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie

Painfully shy and retiring, shunning love, Laura dwells in a world as fragile as her collection of tiny figurines–until one memorable night a gentleman comes to call.

Tennessee Williams on Writing, How to Stage The Glass Menagerie

EPERIMENTAL DRAMA

Milcha Sanchez-Scott, The Cuban Swimmer

Nineteen-year-old Margarita Suárez wants to win a Southern California distance swimming race. Is her family behind her? Quite literally!

WRITING EFFECTIVELY

THINKING ABOUT DRAMATIC REALISM

CHECKLIST: Writing About a Realist Play

TOPICS FOR WRITING ON REALISM

TERMS FOR REVIEW

28 . PLAYS FOR FURTHER READING

David Henry Hwang, The Sound of a Voice

A strange man arrives at a solitary woman’s home in the remote countryside. As they fall in love, they discover disturbing secrets about one another’s past.

David Henry Hwang on Writing, Multicultural Theater

Jane Martin, Pomp and Circumstance

The King interviews a musician for the position of court composer

Brighde Mullins, Click

A long-distance phone call leads to darkly comic misunderstandings between this man and woman.

August Wilson, Fences

A proud man’s love for his family is choked by his rigidity and self-righteousness, in this powerful drama by one of the great American playwrights of our time.

WRITING

29 . WRITING ABOUT LITERATURE

READ ACTIVELY

Robert Frost , Nothing Gold Can Stay

PLAN YOUR ESSAY

PREWRITING: GENERATE IDEAS AND ISSUES

Sample Student Prewriting Eercises —

DEVELOP YOUR ARGUMENT

STRENGTHEN YOUR ARGUMENT: RHETORICAL APPEALS

Logical Argumentation and Evidence

Emotional Argumentation

Credibility: Tone, Balance, and Organization

CHECKLIST: Developing an Argument

DRAFT YOUR ARGUMENT

Sample Student Paper , Rough Draft

REVISE YOUR ARGUMENT

CHECKLIST: Revising Your Argument

FINAL ADVICE ON REWRITING

SAMPLE STUDENT ARGUMENT PAPER

Sample Student Paper , Argument

WHAT’S YOUR PURPOSE? COMMON APPROACHES TO WRITING ABOUT LITERATURE

Eplication

Sample Student Paper , Eplication

Analysis

Sample Student Paper, Analysis

Comparison and Contrast

Sample Student Paper , Comparison and Contrast

Response Paper

Sample Student Response Paper

the form of your finished paper

TOPICS FOR WRITING ABOUT FICTION

TOPICS FOR WRITING ABOUT POETRY

TOPICS FOR WRITING ABOUT DRAMA

30 . WRITING A RESEARCH PAPER

BROWSE THE RESEARCH

CHOOSE A TOPIC

BEGIN YOUR RESEARCH

Reliable Web Sources

Print Resources

Online Databases

CHECKLIST: Finding Reliable Sources

Visual Images

CHECKLIST: Using Visual Images

EVALUATE YOUR SOURCES

Trustworthy Resources Build Your Paper’s Credibility

CHECKLIST: Evaluating Your Sources

ORGANIZE YOUR RESEARCH

CREATE AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

REFINE YOUR THESIS

ORGANIZE YOUR PAPER

WRITE AND REVISE

MAINTAIN ACADEMIC INTEGRITY

What Is Plagiarism?

Papers for Sale Are Papers that “Fail”

A Warning Against Internet Plagiarism

ACKNOWLEDGE ALL SOURCES

Using Quotations

Citing Ideas

DOCUMENT SOURCES USING MLA STYLE

List of Sources

Parenthetical References

Works-Cited List

Citing Print Sources in MLA Style

Citing Web Sources in MLA Style

Sample List of Works Cited

Reference Guide for mla Citations

Literary Credits

Photo Credits

Index of Major Themes

Index of Authors and Titles

Index of Literary Terms

What is included with this book?

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Backpack Literature An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing, MLA Update Edition

Backpack Literature An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing, MLA Update Edition

0134586441

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials