"What is Literature? A Critical Anthology" explores the most fundamental question in literary studies. 'What is literature?' is the name of a problem that emerges with the idea of literature in European modernity. This volume offers a cross-section of modern literary theory and reflects on the history of thinking about literature as a…

"Writings of Healing and Resistance: Empathy and the Imagination-Intellect" is a multi-authored, interdisciplinary journey. It continues the work started in Public Education and the Imagination-Intellect (Peter Lang, 2003) by extending the importance of empathy in developing an action-based social consciousness. Mary E. Weems doesn't argue for a…

The discussion questions and essay prompts in this collection were compiled from contributions made by participants in the 1991 Arizona Shakespeare-Milton Institute. After an introduction which presents some general guidelines for teachers and students, the collection addresses the following works: "As You Like It"; "The…

Asking the question "What Is Poetry?" these essays seek out the art of true poetry--differentiating between facile novelty and genuine originality; asserting the poet's ability to question and lay bare reality; and demonstrating the subtle power of language in the "fruitful ambiguities" of its most ordinary parts, such as the…

This collection of some of the critical works of a lauded contemporary poet, Kenneth Koch, gathers together poems, articles and interviews which are about poetry--Koch's critical work has mainly taken the form of poems about poetry (including parodies) and books about teaching the writing of poetry to schoolchildren. Focused on the practical…

This centrally focused collection of articles and lectures examines literary interpretation and the relation of literature to language. The first of the book's three parts introduces the distinction between natural discourse and fictive discourse (verbal structures that function as representatives of natural utterances). It also deals with the…

This anthology collects essays by current and former lecturers at the Warren Wilson College (North Carolina) MFA Program for Writers. Some of the poets whose essays are included are: Joan Aleshire, Marianne Boruch, Carl Dennis, Stephen Dobyns, Reginald Gibbons, Louise Gluck, Allen Grossman, Robert Hass, Tony Hoagland, Heather McHugh, Gregory Orr,…

This book is a sample of what actually happens when the professional teaching poet sits down with the student poem. It allows the reader to observe the poets in their roles as teachers. The collection of student workshop poems and the teachers' essays about the poems--their analysis, specific criticisms, teaching techniques and procedures--are…

Drawn from talks given at a conference held at the University of New Hampshire in October 1984, the papers in this collection explore the relationship of composition to reading and literature studies. Following an introductory chapter written by Thomas Newkirk, which contains background information about that relationship as well as an overview of…

Ten papers discuss the relationship between cultural awareness and literature, with specific references to cultural resonances between East and West and between developed and developing nations. The papers represent seminar presentations of the Contact Literature Project in Honolulu in 1981. Contact literature refers to the study of literary…

Drawing on the literary heritage of New England, this collection of articles highlights the works of six different authors spanning the early English settlements to the post-Civil War period. Originally presented at six seminars for teachers and designed to feature humanities in Connecticut schools, the articles and their authors are as follows:…